“The three Magi with a cavalcade of more than 200 horse adorned with many splendors came to make offerings to the New Born Christ.” New ed. of Muratori, Tom. XXII, p. 173. Probably all the artists mentioned in this chapter saw these two splendid pageants and many more. Such sights count for much in the alert and profusely ornamented painting of the fifteenth century. PAGEANTS IN 1466 Piero de’ Medici “in order to give men something to think about which should take their thoughts from the state, and a year having passed since Cosimo had died, seized the occasion to enliven the city and ordered two elaborate celebrations, following the others that are customary in that city. One which represented, when the three Kings, the Magi, came from the East behind the star which showed the birth of Christ; the which was of such pomp and so magnificent, that in arranging and holding it the entire city was occupied for several months.” Machiavelli, _Istorie fiorentine_, Lib. VII, cap. xii. “The other [festival, Machiavelli continues] was a tournament (for so they used to call a spectacle, which represented a cavalry skirmish) where the first youths of the city exercised themselves against the most famous knights of Italy; and among the young men of Florence the most in repute was Lorenzo, first-born son of Piero, who not by favor, but by his own valor carried off the first honours.” Lorenzo was then a likely lad of seventeen. A SIDE-LIGHT ON GHIRLANDAIO’S PATRONS _A Trick for getting a Family Chapel in 1488_ The choir of Santa Maria Novella was under the patronage of the Ricci family, but they were poor and had been unable to repair the waterstained frescoes of Orcagna, which had been painted a century and a quarter earlier. So Giovanni Tornabuoni got permission to redecorate the chapel on condition of setting the Ricci arms “in the most conspicuous and honourable place in that chapel.” And so the contract was drawn. Domenico Ghirlandaio actually set the Tornabuoni arms in huge scale on the side pilasters, whereas he painted the Ricci arms half a foot high on the door of the ciborium in the centre of the base of his altar-piece. The rest in Vasari’s words (de Vere’s translation, Vol. III, p. 224):