Benvenuto Cellini tells us that for Federigo Ginori, “a young man of a very lofty spirit,” he made a medal “with Atlas bearing the world upon his shoulders, and applied to Michelangelo for a design. Michelangelo made this answer: ‘Go and find out a young goldsmith named Benvenuto; he will serve you admirably, and certainly he does not stand in need of sketches by me. However to prevent your thinking that I want to save myself the trouble of so slight a matter, I will gladly sketch you something; but meanwhile speak to Benvenuto, and let him make a model, he can then execute the better of the two designs.’ Federigo Ginori came to me, and told me what he wanted, adding thereto how Michelangelo had praised me, and how he had suggested I should make a waxen model while he undertook to supply a sketch. The words of that great man so heartened me, that I set to work at once with eagerness ... and when Michelangelo saw it, he praised it to the skies. This was a figure, as I have said, chiselled on a plate of gold; Atlas had the heaven upon his back, made out of a crystal ball, engraved with the zodiac upon a field of lapis-lazuli. The whole composition produced an indescribably fine effect; and under it ran the legend _Summa tulisse juvat_.”[35] Federigo was killed during the siege of Florence and his brother Leonardo, a spendthrift and a gambler, was the husband of the beautiful Caterina Soderini, whose story is a sad one. Forced by her father to forget her early love the poet Luigi Alamanni, and married to Leonardo Ginori, who had to fly to Naples to escape from his creditors, she was exposed to the persecutions of the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, and was the innocent cause of his murder (see p. 263). Her son Bartolommeo, famed for his strength and great stature, was chosen by Giovan Bologna for the model of the young man in his group of the rape of the Sabines. From him descended the Senator Carlo Ginori who founded the well-known china manufactory at Doccia near Florence in 1740. He chartered a ship for China and she brought back, not only models and specimens of the various earths used in making china, but many rare plants and the first gold fish that were seen in Europe.[36] The present Marquess Ginori lives in the old palace, and the Doccia factory, which has become a Company under the name of Richard Ginori, still keeps up its reputation. PALAZZO GINORI CONTI _Via Cavour. No. 7._