against it.  The tower rising from this square fortress has at once grace and strength and presents a complete contrast to Giotto’s campanile; for Giotto’s campanile is so light and delicate and reasonable and this tower of the Signoria so stern and noble.  There is a difference as between a beautiful woman and a powerful man.  In the functions of the two towers—­the dominating towers of Florence—­is a wide difference also, for the campanile calls to prayer, while for years the sombre notes of the great Signoria bell—­the Vacca—­rang out only to bid the citizens to conclave or battle or to sound an alarm.

It was this Vacca wich (with others) the brave Piero Capponi threatened to ring when Charles VIII wished, in 1494, to force a disgraceful treaty on the city.  The scene was the Medici Palace in the Via Larga.  The paper was ready for signature and Capponi would not sign.  “Then I must bid my trumpets blow,” said Charles.  “If you sound your trumpets,” Capponi replied, “we will ring our bells;” and the King gave way, for he knew that his men had no chance in this city if it rose suddenly against them.

But the glory of the Palazzo Vecchio tower—­afer its proportions—­is that brilliant inspiration of the architect which led him, so to speak, to begin again by setting the four columns on the top of the solid portion.  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.  Bandinelli in his delight at obtaining it vowed to surpass that master’s David, and those who want to know what Florence thought of his effort should consult the amusing and malicious pages of Cellini’s Autobiography.  On its way to Bandinelli’s studio the block fell into the Arrio, and it was a joke of the time that it had drowned itself to avoid its fate at the sculptor’s hands.  Even after he had half done it, there was a moment when Michelangelo had an opportunity of taking over the stone and turning it into a Samson, but the siege of Florence intervened, and eventually Bandinelli had his way and the hideous thing now on view was evolved.