In 1452, when the members of all the major and minor Guilds were admitted to sit in the great council, the Hall, or Sala de’ Dugento, was declared to be too small, but seventeen years passed without any decision being taken. It was then determined to use certain moneys “the Jew Isahac owes to the Monte, or public pawnshop, for rebuilding the Council Hall in the Palace of our Magnificent Signori.” This second decision also came to nought, as the money of Isahac went to rebuild the walls and castle of Castrocaro. At last, in 1472, Giuliano di Nardo da Majano and Francesco di Giovanni, _alias_ Francione, were charged to do the work. Vasari attributes it to Benedetto da Majano, and in his life of that artist gives a long description of how he rebuilt the Sala de’ Dugento, and made two rooms above it; one called the Clock Room, because in it was a clock made by that excellent mechanician Lorenzo della Volpaia, the other the Audience Hall, with the triumph of Camillus painted by Salviati, while Domenico and Giuliano, brothers of Benedetto, made the ceilings. The marble door was sculptured by Benedetto himself, who “made a figure of Justice seated, with the sphere of the world in one hand and a sword in the other, and round the arch is written, _Diligete justitiam qui judicatis terram_.” The outer door of the Audience Hall was, according to tradition, a beautiful work. But nothing remains of Benedetto’s boys holding up festoons of flowers. Only the statue of the youthful S. John, which stood in the centre, is now in the National Museum in the Bargello. Vasari also attributes to Benedetto the wonderful intarsia doors, with Dante on one side and Petrarch on the other; but the archives show them to be the work of his brother Giuliano, and of Francione. The old Palazzo de’ Signori was decorated in a strange and horrible manner in 1478, when, in consequence of the Pazzi conspiracy, an Archbishop and several nobles, with priests, men-at-arms and serving-men, were hung round the outside from the columns of the windows. Filippo Strozzi was in the cathedral when the attempt to murder the Medici brothers was made, and has left a vivid account of what he saw. “I note a terrible event which happened in our city of Florence on the 26th April, 1478, a Sunday morning. The Very Reverend Messer Raffaello da Saona, Cardinal of S. Giorgio, nephew of Count Girolamo, a youth of about nineteen or twenty, had been at Montughi for about two months in the house of Messer Jacopo de’ Pazzi. He had lately received the cardinal’s hat at Pisa, and his chief adviser was Messer Francesco Salviati the Archbishop of Pisa. He, with others, instigated Lorenzo de’ Medici to invite him, and he did so for the said Sunday, and Messer Marino, ambassador of King Ferrando, Messer Filippo Sagramoro, orator of the Duke of Milan, Messer Niccolò of Ferrara, and six or seven cavaliers were asked to meet him. The said Cardinal was in Sta. Maria del Fiore at mass, and at the words