a well-informed contemporary description which remained unpublished: Benedetto Mellini's Saggio della Roma Descritta which was written around 1656. Mellini states that the panel above Sigismondo's tomb represents The royal ancestors of the Virgin, while the other panel above Agostino's tomb shows The sacerdotal ancestors of the Virgin. The royal ancestors are King David with the harp and Goliath's head, and a younger king, undoubtedly Solomon, the Temple Builder, kneeling and looking up at heaven. A boy holding a sword places his foot on the severed head triumphantly on the right, on the other side a child kneels with a circlet on his head, perhaps Solomon's young heir, Rehoboam. The sacerdotal ancestors are represented through a Jewish High Priest in traditional garb and his helpers offering doves and incense to God. The lunette paintings thematically complement Sebastiano del Piombo's altar-piece creating a link between the nativity of the Virgin and the stories of the Old Testament depicted on the tambour. During a 20th-century restoration the wall under the panels was exposed but no previous decoration was discovered. The semicircular wooden panels are set in a similar gilded bronze frame as the main altar-piece. Pavement The present pavement was designed by Bernini who walled in a preexisting opening in front of the altar and raised the altar by two steps emphasizing its symbolic importance (the third step is a later addition which disrupts the decorative pattern). The elegantly molded original steps were made of monolith blocks of statuario marble. The white and grey bardiglio marble pavement has a geometric pattern corresponding with the decoration of the dome. There is an inlaid opus sectile roundel at the center, surrounded by a frame of stylized roses and oak leaves. Inside the figure of a winged skeleton is lifting the coat-of-arms of the Chigi family symbolizing the triumph of dynastic virtue over death. There is a scroll with a Latin inscription under the figure: Mors aD CaeLos (meaning "through death to heaven"). The capital letters add up the date of the beginning of the reconstruction in Roman numerals: MDCL = 1650. The roundel was executed by stonecutter Gabriele Renzi in 1653/54. (Contemporary sources prove that the inscription was originally "Mors aD CaeLos Iter", the letters adding up to 1651, the year when Fabio Chigi returned to Rome on the last day of November after his long absence abroad.) Furniture At present there is almost no