 At the center of the court once stood the finest fountain in France, which received its own plate in Jacques Androuet du Cerceau's "Les Plus Excellents Bastiments de France".The fountain was commissioned 14 September 1506 from the Genoese sculptors Agostino Solari, Antonio della Porta and Pace Gazini, as a gift from the Republic of Venice to Cardinal d'Amboise, for having evicted the Sforza from Milan.It was twenty-two feet high, surmounted by a sculpture of John the Baptist, whose presence was a reminder of such fountains' origins in baptismal fonts, above stacked vase-forms with lactating Graces and urinating boys by Bertrand de Meynal and Jérôme Pacherot.