He passed the ties under the floors and walls of the passages and rooms of the said second floor, and at the extremities of these same ties, at the back of the building, he placed the wonderful instruments furnished with screws invented by himself. With these, by means of certain levers, first one and then another was tightened and pulled, so that this great force was exercised little by little, and always equally. Thus almost insensibly, with the labour of but few men, the great wall returned to its place, and to insure it for ever from any new danger the ties were clenched also in the courtyard.” About the same time Ferdinando II. ordered Pietro da Cortona and his scholar Ciro Ferri to fresco the five large rooms on the first floor of the Palace (now part of the picture gallery). “Each room,” Inghirami tells us, “was distinguished by the name of a planet, and alluded to the five principal virtues of his father, the Grand Duke Cosimo II. The first, called Venus, signified benignity; the second, Apollo, stood for splendour; the third, Mars, for strong government; the fourth, Jupiter, for regal majesty and the recompense of merit; the fifth, Saturn, signified prudence and profound knowledge. In such guise the painter united mythology with history. The merit of these inventions is due to Michelangelo Buonarroti, a writer of much merit, surnamed the ‘Younger,’ to distinguish him from the famous artist of this name, who was his uncle.” In these rooms the Grand Duke hung his favourite pictures, and ordered the director Puccini to bring several back from the Uffizi, which had at various times been removed from the Pitti. Among these were the Madonna della Seggiola, and the portrait of Leo X. by Raphael. The beautiful Madonna del Granduca, also by Raphael, was bought by the Grand Duke for 300 zecchins, and the fine pictures inherited by his wife Vittoria della Rovere from her father, the Duke of Urbino, increased the treasures of the gallery, which may be said to have been begun by Ferdinando II.