We hear little about the palace until it was once more decorated and embellished by Poccetti for the wedding of the Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, who left the Church to ascend the throne and marry Christine of Lorraine. He added considerably to the palace on the eastern side, “where,” writes an old chronicler, “from the great door made by Tasso, carpenter and architect, as far as the corner of the said palace which is opposite to Borgo de’ Greci where one turns to go into the Piazza, there was an old and ugly curtain wall, eight or ten braccie high, so that the rooms of the palace near the said door were exposed to the view of all who passed by, and one saw balconies, terraces, little gardens and such-like. And between the said rooms and the curtain wall we have just mentioned, was a large vacant space full of rubbish, where in the time of the Signoria the lions had been kept.... Seeing all this ugliness, the Cardinal decided that the palace should have a fine and lordly façade behind as it had in front, that the number of rooms should be increased, another courtyard be made, and many other conveniences. Bernardo Buontalenti was ordered to make a design, and the work was at once begun. In a few years the handsome and rich façade we now see was finished, all of hewn stone and ‘_bozzi_,’ in the rustic style. It has a grand air, and contains many fine rooms, and a courtyard in the centre.” In those days great sculptors worked even in sugar for their patrons, as when Maria de’ Medici was married by proxy to Henry IV. of France in 1600, Giovanni da Bologna modelled various figures and statues in confectionery and in sugar, which were moved by hidden mechanism. Among them was an effigy of the King of France, mounted on a charger which trotted down the table in front of the Queen. He also arranged a huge _fleur-de-lis_, built up of an infinite number of gold and silver cups and goblets, statues of gold and silver, vases of rock crystal, and ornaments inlaid with precious stones, in the Sala of Leo X. in the Palazzo Vecchio. The marriage of Cosimo de’ Medici, son of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I., with the Archduchess Maria Maddalena of Austria, was celebrated with extraordinary pomp in 1607. A great banquet was given in the Hall of the Five Hundred to the Florentine nobility, of which an anonymous eyewitness has left a long description. Two hundred and forty ladies sat opposite the Princes, as “being more fair to look upon than men,” and after dinner appeared a Venus’ shell gliding forward on sham waves, which bore Zephyr, the messenger of the goddess who, stopping in front of the bride, offered her all his mistress could give. Then came the chariot of Venus drawn by black sparrows in which sat Love, who declared all he had was hers. On the raising of a curtain at the end of the hall, angels floating among clouds were seen, who chanted: