Note 99 — Chapter I

Dr A. Gherardi, Director of the State Archives at Florence, has been so kind as to make researches in the documents under his charge for the purpose of discovering Vasari’s authority for this statement. These investigations have so far however proved without result. Among the ‘Leggi e Bandi’ of the sixteenth century in Tuscany collected by Cantini in the first volume of his Legislazione Toscana there are various regulations about trades, prohibitions against cutting timber on the hills, measures facilitating the import of building materials into certain localities, and the like, which show that an edict such as Vasari refers to was quite possible in the early days of the Grand Ducal régime. The nearest approach to it that we have been able to discover are certain edicts of the end of the sixteenth century, published by Mariotti, La Legislazione delle Belle Arti, Roma, 1892, p. 246 f., that prohibit the exportation from the state of ‘pietre mischie dure’ (agates, jaspers, and the like) of which the Grand Duke had need for a certain chapel he was building, evidently the ‘Cappella dei Principi’ at S. Lorenzo.