If the actual number of globes constructed shortly before and shortly after 1500 appears to have been small, judging from the number extant, we often find additional assurance of interest in such instruments in the use that was made of them for illustrative purposes, and for decoration. Terrestrial and celestial globes, as well as armillary spheres, frequently appeared on title-pages (Figs. 26, 27), in paintings (Fig. 28), or constituted a part of library furnishings (Fig. 29).[124] [Illustration: Fig. 26. Title-page of Johann Schöner’s Terrae Descriptio, 1518.] [Illustration: Fig. 27. Second Title-page of Mauro Fiorentino’s Sphera Volgare, 1537.] [Illustration: Fig. 28. Holbein’s Ambassadors, ca. 1536.] [Illustration: Fig. 29. Library of Escorial.] Among the ducal houses, famous in Italy in this period for interest in matters geographical, none was more conspicuous than was the house of Este of Ferrara.[125] We have an interesting letter dated Rome, January 17, 1509, and written by Fioramonte Brognoli to Isabel of Este, wife of Francis II, Marquis of Mantua, daughter of Hercules I, Duke of Ferrara, who was responsible for the draughting of the Cantino map of the year 1502,[126] and granddaughter of Duke Borso, to whom Donnus Nicholas Germanus dedicated or addressed, in 1466, his twenty-seven Ptolemy maps.[127] Brognoli, having received from the Marchioness an order for a copy of the globes, terrestrial and celestial, possessed by Pope Julius II, made reply that “the map and celestial signs which are painted on two solid spheres in the library of the Pope, of which your Excellency would like to have copies, I have ordered, and the same to be made by a good painter of the Palace, who tells me that it will take some time because the matter is quite difficult. I will not fail in care, and will provide the necessary funds, so that as soon as possible I will send them to you by a trusty messenger.”[128] Again the Roman correspondent wrote, the letter bearing date February 1, 1505, “That master painter who would like to make copies of the map and the zodiac which are in the library of the Pope, about which Your Excellency wrote me some time ago, tells me that to make them with linen it will cost more than forty ducats, but to draw them on paper according to a certain design which is painted on canvas in that place, it would cost very little. I thought I would inform Your Excellency before giving the order, that I might ascertain your wishes, for I shall do exactly that which you desire.”[129] February 20, 1505, the Marchioness replied from Mantua, saying that “the expense of forty ducats will not deter us, if the copy of the map and of the zodiac is well made and is similar to that found in the library of the Pope. You may order it to be made with extreme diligence and with exactness.”[130]