Such are the architects whom recent investigations enable us to claim as authors of the palace at Urbino, which Vasari and many others have celebrated for the beauty and comfort of its internal arrangements, the magnificence of its saloons, the convenience of its imposing stairs; for its smiling chambers, its vast corridors, its airy porticoes and pleasant baths, its gilded doors and windows, its rich furniture, carpets, and brocades. The assertion of that writer, so often inaccurate as to Umbrian matters, ascribing its merit to Francesco di Giorgio, may now be considered as disposed of, notwithstanding the zeal with which his countrymen of Siena have reasserted his claims; but the lights lately thrown upon his performances by Promis of Turin, enable us to restore to him the credit of certain bellicose decorations, often imputed to Roberto Valturio, and which have attracted attention rather from their adaptation to the genius of Count Federigo than from their artistic value. They consist of a frieze of military machines, which Vasari mentions as painted in fresco, but which were carved in relief along the exterior basement of the palace: designs for most of these remain among the MSS. of Francesco, and they have been engraved and tediously explained in Bianchini's ponderous work. Their original object was no doubt to illustrate the pompous inscription which surrounds the great court in immense capitals.[122] After being injured and scattered, they were again collected about a century ago, and arranged by Cardinal Stoppani along the corridor of the principal story. They are each about three feet by two, rudely representing seventy-two engines long since disused in war, and interesting only to the antiquary. Among the sculptors employed upon them, and similar architectural ornaments in the Corte, was Ambrogio Baroccio of Milan, great-grandfather of a painter as to whom we shall have much to say in our fifty-third chapter. [Footnote 122: "Federicus Urbini Dux, Montisferetri ac Durantis Comes, sanctæ Ro. ecclesiæ Confalonerius, atque Italici Confederationis Imperator, hanc domum a fundamentis erectam, gloriæ et posteritati suæ exædificavit: Qui bello pluries depugnavit, sexies signa contulit, octies hostem profligavit, omniumque preliorum victor ditionem auxit. Ejusdem justitia, clementia, liberalitas, et religio pace victorias equarunt, ornaruntque."]