When on his way from Bologna to Florence in 1580 Montaigne visited Pratolino and quaintly remarks, “the Grand Duke has used all his five senses to beautify it.... The house is contemptible as seen from afar, but very fine when you come near, though not so handsome as some of ours in France.... But marvellous is a grotto with several chambers; this surpasses anything we have seen elsewhere. It is all encrusted with certain stuff they say was brought from the mountains which is fastened on with invisible nails. Not only does the movement of water make music and harmony, but it causes various statues to move and doors to shut, animals also plunge in to drink, and other such devices. In one moment the whole grotto is filled with water, every chair squirts it over your thighs, and fleeing therefrom up the steps to the villa, if they choose they can start a thousand jets and drench you to the skin.” Montaigne goes on to describe the statues and the gardens, and particularly notices the ingenious manner of storing ice and snow, much as is done at the present time, invented by that universal genius Bernardo Buontalento, and the building of the huge statue of the Apennines, then nearly finished. Twelve years later Sir Henry Wotton writing to Lord Zouch in June about the feast day of St John says: “it was somewhat more than ordinary upon the arrival of the Count di Santa Fiore in the court here, who is espoused unto Leonora Ursina, but of the marriage day no speech; for the Grand Duke hath desire to celebrate the marriage of his Niece, and the other, both in one day, because they have been jointly brought up together and (for congruity sake) aparall’d all days alike. The fore-named Earl is nephew of the lively Cardinal Sforza.... In person not tall nor low, and one of the worst faces a man shall ordinarily see, so that some think Leonora Ursina would be contented to revoke the match, and take her first offer.” In August he writes again, “since my last unto your honour (contrary to the expectation of all) is the marriage of Leonora Ursina accomplished at Pratolino, where the Cardinal Sforza arrived on the 16 of August, and gave the ring on Sunday last. I hear the Gentlewoman to be in some pensiveness of mind and to have abandoned her Cythern, on which she was wont to play; having rather been the wife of the Prince of Transylvania than of the Count of Santa Fiore, but that, since she saw him, or rather (as some say) since she tried him. To grace her husband the better, they style him Duke Sforza, which here we laugh at.” The court, he notes in a later letter, “is still at Pratolino attending unto the fresh air.”[58]