Chapter CXXV: Section XVIII: But before it was finished, occasion had been discovered

for farther improvements. The Senate found their new Council Chamber inconveniently small, and, about thirty years after its completion, began to consider where a larger and more magnificent one might be built. The government was now thoroughly established, and it was probably felt that there was some meanness in the retired position, as well as insufficiency in the size, of the Council Chamber on the Rio. The first definite account which I find of their proceedings, under these circumstances, is in the Caroldo Chronicle: [Footnote: Cod. Ven., No. CXLI. p. 365.]

"1340. On the 28th of December, in the preceding year, Master Marco Erizzo, Nicolo Soranzo, and Thomas Gradenigo, were chosen to examine where a new saloon might be built in order to assemble therein the Greater Council.... On the 3rd of June, 1341, the Great Council elected two procurators of the work of this saloon, with a salary of eighty ducats a year."

It appears from the entry still preserved in the Archivio, and quoted by Cadorin, that it was on the 28th of December, 1340, that the commissioners appointed to decide on this important matter gave in their report to the Grand Council, and that the decree passed thereupon for the commencement of a new Council Chamber on the Grand Canal. [Footnote: Sansovino is more explicit than usual in his reference to this decree: "For it having appeared that the place (the first Council Chamber) is not capacious enough, the saloon on the Grand Canal was ordered." "Per cio parendo che il luogo non fosse capace, fu ordinata la Sala sul Canal Grande."--P. 324.]

_The room then begun is the one now in existence_, and its building involved the building of all that is best and most beautiful in the present Ducal Palace, the rich arcades of the lower stories being all prepared for sustaining this Sala del Gran Consiglio.