Within the palace a large room, with a remarkably fine ceiling by Giuliano da San Gallo, is decorated with a series of frescoes from Roman history intended to be typical of events in the lives of Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo the Magnificent. Vasari says that, for a villa, this is _la più bella sala del mondo_. The frescoes, ordered by Pope Leo X. and the Cardinal Giulio, under the direction of Ottaviano dei Medici, were begun by Andrea dei Sarto, Francia Bigio and Jacopo da Pontormo, left unfinished for more than fifty years, and then completed by Alessandro Allori for the Grand Duke Francesco. The Triumph of Cicero, by Francia Bigio, is supposed to typify the return of Cosimo from exile in 1434; Caesar receiving tribute from Egypt, by Andrea del Sarto, refers to the coming of an embassy from the Soldan to Lorenzo in 1487, with magnificent gifts and treasures. Andrea's fresco is full of curious beasts and birds, including the long-eared sheep which Lorenzo naturalised in the grounds of the villa, and the famous giraffe which the Soldan sent on this occasion and which, as Mr Armstrong writes, "became the most popular character in Florence," until its death at the beginning of 1489. The Regent of France, Anne of Beaujeu, made ineffectual overtures to Lorenzo to get him to make her a present of the strange beast. This fresco was left unfinished on the death of Pope Leo in 1521, and finished by Alessandro Allori in 1582. The charming mythological decorations between the windows are by Jacopo da Pontormo. The two later frescoes by Alessandro Allori, painted about 1580, represent Scipio in the house of Syphax and Flamininus in Greece, which typify Lorenzo's visit to Ferrante of Naples, in 1480, and his presence at the Diet of Cremona in 1483, on which latter occasion, as Mr Armstrong puts it, "his good sense and powers of expression and persuasion gave him an importance which the military weakness of Florence denied to him in the field"--but the result was little more than a not very honourable league of the Italian powers against Venice. The Apples of the Hesperides, and the rest of the mythological decorations in continuation of Pontormo's lunette, are also Allori's. The whole has an air of regal triumph without needless parade. The road should be followed beyond the villa, in order to ascend to the left to the little church among the hills. A superb view is obtained over the plain to Florence beyond the Villa Reale lying below us. Behind, we are already among the Apennines. A beautiful glimpse of Prato can be seen to the left, four miles away.