[144] In the time of Leo X. the neighbouring city of Recanati had been burnt by the Turks. [145] The Santa Casa is built of stone and not of brick. [146] Montaigne’s offering had probably disappeared before the shrine was pillaged by the French, as there is no mention of it in a catalogue of the _ex votos_ by Murri, printed in 1792. In 1802 Eustace visited Loreto and found the treasury empty. “No vestige now remains of this celebrated collection of everything that was valuable; rows of empty shelves and numberless cases only enable the treasurer to enlarge on its immensity and curse the banditti that plundered it. ‘Galli,’ he adds, ‘semper rapaces, crudeles, barbarorum omnium Italis infestissimi.’”--_Classical Tour_, i. 166. [147] The marble casing of the Santa Casa was designed by Bramante and the sculptures executed by Sansovino, Girolamo Lombardo, Bandinelli, Giovanni da Bologna, Guglielmo della Porta, Raffaele da Montelupo, Sangallo, and others. It was begun under Leo X. and finished under Paul III. [148] Louis d’Amboise was born in 1479, and made cardinal by Julius II. He died at Ancona in 1517. [149] Georges d’Armagnac was born in Gascony in 1500, and became a Spanish ecclesiastic. He subsequently was made archbishop of Toulouse, and died at Avignon in 1585. [150] The principal works now in the church are by Luca Signorelli, and Melozzo da Forli. Montaigne does not notice the bronze doors by Girolamo Lombardo, which rival Ghiberti’s at Florence. The church was begun in 1468 on the site of an ancient one which, according to Vasari, was adorned with frescoes by Domenico Veneziano and his pupil Piero della Francesca. [151] According to Querlon, there is no record of any such person in the _Nomenclature alphabétique des nobles de Paris et provinces voisines_, a list made at the end of the sixteenth century. Neither does the Abbé Lebœuf, in his _Histoire de la ville et du diocese de Paris_, find the name of Marteau in connection with any one of the four places called La Chapelle described in his book. Transcriber’s Notes Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged. Italics are represented thus _italic_.