Hence it is that, after Gozzoli, by far the most interesting part of this building is its associations.  For here lived Cosimo de’ Medici, whose building of the palace was interrupted by his banishment as a citizen of dangerous ambition; here lived Piero de’ Medici, for whom Gozzoli worked; here was born and here lived Lorenzo the Magnificent.  To this palace came the Pazzi conspirators to lure Giuliano to the Duomo and his doom.  Here did Charles VIII—­Savonarola’s “Flagellum Dei”—­lodge and loot, and it was here that Capponi frightened him with the threat of the Florentine bells; hither came in 1494 the fickle and terrible Florentine mob, always passionate in its pursuit of change and excitement, and now inflamed by the sermons of Savonarola, to destroy the priceless manuscripts and works of art; here was brought up for a year or so the little Catherine de’ Medici, and next door was the house in which Alessandro de’ Medici was murdered.

It was in the seventeenth century that the palace passed to the Riccardi family, who made many additions.  A century later Florence acquired it, and to-day it is the seat of the Prefect of the city.  Cosimo’s original building was smaller; but much of it remains untouched.  The exquisite cornice is Michelozzo’s original, and the courtyard has merely lost its statues, among which are Donatello’s Judith, now in the Loggia de’ Lanzi, and his bronze David, now in the Bargello, while Verrocchio’s David was probably on the stairs.  The escutcheon on the corner of the house gives us the period of its erection.  The seven plain balls proclaim it Cosimo’s.  Each of the Medici sported these palle, although each had also his private crest.  Under Giovanni, Cosimo’s father, the balls were eight in number; under Cosimo, seven; under Piero, seven, with the fleur-de-lis of France on the uppermost, given him by Louis XI; under Lorenzo, six; and as one walks about Florence one can approximately fix the date of a building by remembering these changes.  How many times they occur on the facades of Florence and its vicinity, probably no one could say; but they are everywhere.  The French wits, who were amused to derive Catherine de’ Medici from a family of apothecaries, called them pills.

The beautiful lantern at the corner was added by Lorenzo and was the work of an odd ironsmith in Florence for whom he had a great liking—­Niccolo Grosso.  For Lorenzo had all that delight in character which belongs so often to the born patron and usually to the born connoisseur.  This Grosso was a man of humorous independence and bluntness.  He had the admirable custom of carrying out his commissions in the order in which they arrived, so that if he was at work upon a set of fire-irons for a poor client, not even Lorenzo himself (who as a matter of fact often tried) could induce him to turn to something more lucrative.  The rich who cannot wait he forced to wait.  Grosso also always insisted upon something in advance and payment on delivery, and pleasantly described his workshop as being the Sign of the Burning Books,—­since if his books were burnt how could he enter a debt?  This rule earned for him from Lorenzo the nickname of “Il Caparra” (earnest money).  Another of Grosso’s eccentricities was to refuse to work for Jews.