Dondi (degli Orologi), showing the courses of the planets, the signs of the zodiacal and celestial phenomena, and it brought great fame to its maker, who was appointed clockmaker to the city in 1500.[185] Volpaia had a rival in one Dionisio da Viterbo, who, in June, 1477, was recommended by the rich Sienese banker Ambrogio Spannocchi to Lorenzo de’ Medici, to whom he wished to show an ornamental clock with numerous figures that moved at the same time.[186] The great number of architects in Lorenzo’s latter years shows how actively building was carried on. The works executed at that time by Simone del Pollaiuolo Cronaca cannot be chronologically arranged. But when it is considered that at Lorenzo’s death this talented man was thirty-five years old, and was soon after fully engaged on public works, it is easy to see that he must long have been in active occupation.[187] The Servite convent of the Annunziata, the interior of which was his work, has been entirely altered. On the foremost slope of the hill of San Miniato he built the Franciscan church, for which a rich citizen—Castello Quaratesi—had left to the guild of Calimala a large sum in 1449.[188] This man had intended to decorate Sta. Croce with a suitable façade, but the scheme came to nothing because he was refused permission to place his coat of arms on the building. The church of San Francesco recalls the abbey of Fiesole. Tradition relates that Michel Angelo admired the simple grace of this church (_La bella villanella_), in whose immediate neighbourhood he spent some time when in difficulties. The sacristy of Sto. Spirito, a very elegant octagon, was not finished till later; Cronaca’s cupola fell in when the scaffolding was taken away.[189] A great deal of building went on in the immediate neighbourhood of the city. The church of Montoliveto, which, from its cypress-crowned hill on the left bank of the river, overlooks city and country, was finished in 1472. Older conventual buildings were enlarged and churches beautified. This was the case above all with the before-mentioned Dominican nunnery of Annalena in the quarter of Oltrarno, and the monastery of the Jesuates at San Giusto, whose church contained numerous works of art. The building of the façade of Sta. Croce was contemplated in 1476, as is proved by a decree of the municipality, which assigned for the purpose a sum to be collected from backward taxpayers. It was reserved for our own times to witness the execution of the project, after a sketch said to be by Cronaca. The court in front of the Servites’ church, and the colonnade on the square in front of the church, opposite the Foundling Hospital and imitating its portico, are both attributed to Antonio da Sangallo, and, if not begun in Lorenzo’s lifetime, must at all events have been built soon after his death.