The Anatomical Preparations, in wax and wood, belonging to the Latter, are supposed to be the finest in the World. They are so numerous as to require twenty Rooms for their systematical arrangement. In one of them is exhibited the progress of corruption from the moment of decease to the total decay of the body. In another are preserved the celebrated Representations of the Plague, done in the time of the Medicean Princes, so painfully exact that few Persons can bear to examine them.

There is an Observatory attached to this splendid Museum, furnished with ample apparatus for mechanical, mathematical, electrical, and hydraulic, experiments; as well as a numerous collec

tion of Animals, Plants, and Minerals,

systematically arranged.

Not far from the Academia Reale and in the care of the same Custodi are the Cloisters of the suppressed Brotherhood of San Giovanni Battista, in which Andrea del Sarto has painted, in twelve Compartments, the Life of John the Baptist, beginning with the dumbness of Zacharias, inflicted for his unbelief; and ending with the presentation of the Prophet's head to the revengeful Herodias. For these exquisite Performances Andrea is said to have received but twenty livres apiece.

The modern residence of the Grand Dukes, still called the Palazzo Pitti, from the name of a Merchant of Flo

rence,

rence, in the Fifteenth Century, who ruined himself by building it; and from whom, or his Assigns, it was bought by the Duke, then reigning, for a trifle, is a heavy and tasteless Structure, though designed by Brunellesco, and executed by Ammanati.

The Royal Apartments, however, are richly gilt, and superbly ornamented with Ceilings, painted by Pietro de Cortona; and they were once splendidly hung with the finest Pictures of the Italian Schools, most of which were removed to Paris before the inauguration of the New Sovereign. Those in which the Grand Dukes used to receive Company, are at once splendid and comfortable.

In the Collection were the well known Portraits of Titian, Julius II. Philip of Spain, and Paul III. together with the celebrated one of his own Mistress, the famous Picture of Raphael, in which he has introduced the Cardinals Giulio de Medicis, afterward Clement VII. and Luigi de Rossi, in the presence of Leo X. Rubens's Family Piece, including his Philosophic Friends, Grotius, and Lipsius; another of Cardinal Bentivoglio by Vandyke; one by Rembrandt; and a Holy Child, sleeping, by Carlo Dolce.

There was also a drawing of the Fatal Sisters, by Michael Angelo, which may probably remain upon the walls: for the French do not relish his Pindaric fire as much as the English; their taste is bet

ter

ter suited with the air of Raphael, and the grace of Guido.

In some gloomy Chamber were hung three Battle Pieces, and the Conspiracy of Cataline-dark with the savage dashes of Salvator Rosa.

The adjoining Gardens are nobly ornamented with a spouting Fountain, that falls into a bason of granite, twenty feet diameter, in which stands a marble Neptune, by Giovanni di Bologna, attended by recumbent Figures of the Euphrates, the Ganges, and the Nile; and in a dripping Grotto are four unfinished Figures, from the chisel of Michael Angelo, preserved, like the Torso, from the touch of inferior Artists.