than for convenience within. Thus while these apartments are stately, they rarely adapted to cheerful indoor life, and in a northern climate they would be intolerably gloomy. When used, as they now often are, as galleries for the display of works of art, they do not serve well, very small portions of their vast wall spaces being well lighted, and the disposition of the openings often such as to produce embarrassing cross lights and reflections.
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Fig. 58.—Court of the Riccardi.
Vasari tells us that "after Brunelleschi, Michelozzi was held to be the most consistent architect of his time, and the one who with best judgment planned either palaces, monasteries or houses." And concerning the Riccardi he adds, "All the more praise is due him since this was the first palace in Florence built in the modern manner, and which has a disposition of apartments both useful and beautiful."[1] He does not explain in what the superior planning of the Riccardi consists, and it is doubtful whether these remarks were based on any definite idea. But however this may be, the building is indeed a stately and
- ↑ Le Vite, etc., vol. 2, pp. 432-433.
