opened the ceiling and let down the representations of the planets, resting them on a stand which came out of the floor, and from the floor also appeared a terrestrial and a celestial globe each three and a half braccia in diameter, one of which had been made by Fra Ignazio, and the model of which I myself have.”[317] The terrestrial globe, at first placed in the room for which it was intended, was later removed to the gallery, where on account of much handling it was greatly injured, and in the year 1595 the cosmographer, Antonio Santucci, was entrusted with its restoration.[318] Admired as it has been for more than three hundred years, on account of its size and excellent workmanship, repeatedly handled through all these years by careless visitors, a second restoration was undertaken a few years since by Ferdinando Meucci, director of the museum to which it finally passed. Meucci directed this work with great care, studying minutely the construction of the globe under the opportunity thus offered. Fiorini, citing information especially given him by Meucci,[319] says that the diameter of this globe is 2.04 m.; that the ball is of wood having a papier-mâché covering, protected without by a wrapping of cord and metal plates, and that it is very substantially braced within. Danti himself in describing the construction of the globe, on receiving an order for a similar one, says that “the surface of this globe is thirty-six square braccia and it is supported within by an iron frame, as a globe of this size would not stand without bracing; it represents a new invention by means of which, though large, it can be moved in every direction with a single finger, and its pole can be easily elevated or depressed.”[320] These Medici globes, it seems, attracted much attention, and not alone in Italy. Pontanus, in the preface of his edition of Hues’ ‘Tractatus de Globis,’ after a reference to the celestial globe of Tycho Brahe, six feet in diameter, adds that Ferdinand I of Tuscany possessed two globes, one terrestrial and the other an armillary sphere with circles and orbs, and that these globes were constructed by the same hand.[321] This last statement we now know to be an error, since the terrestrial globe alone was the work of Ignazio Danti, the armillary sphere being the work of Antonio Santucci. The Biblioteca Nationale of Turin possesses a unique and highly interesting globe signed “Franciscus Bassus Mediolanensis feccit 1570,” called Basso in his day, although his name appears to have been Francesco Pelliccioni or Pilizzoni.[322] In this we have one of the finest examples of the style of constructing and ornamenting metal globes, described by Ruscelli as _agemina_, in which gold and silver threads and plates are forced into the engraved outlines on the surface of the ball.