These pillars are indescribably right: so solid and yet so light, so powerful and yet so comely.

Their duty was to support the bells, and particularly the Vacca, when he rocked his gigantic weight of green bronze to and fro to warn the city.
Seen from a distance the columns are always beautiful; seen close by they are each a tower of comfortable strength.

And how the wind blows through them from the Apennines! The David on the left of the Palazzo Vecchio main door is only a copy.
The original stood there until 1873, when, after three hundred and sixty-nine years, it was moved to a covered spot in the Accademia, as we shall there see and learn its history.

If we want to know what the Palazzo Vecchio looked like at the time David was placed there, a picture by Piero di Cosimo in our National Gallery tells us, for he makes it the background of his portrait of Ferrucci, No.

895.
The group on the right represents Hercules and Cacus, [5] and is by Baccio Bandinelli (1485-1560), a coarse and offensive man, jealous of most people and particularly of Michelangelo, to whom, but for his displeasing Pope Clement VII, the block of marble from which the Hercules was carved would have been given.