PISA'S CAFÉ DELL'USSERO: A RENDEZVOUS FOR ARTISTS In May 1845 John Ruskin prolonged his stay in Pisa in order to draw the early 15th -century Palazzo Agostini on the Lungarno, or river bank, of the Tuscan city. "There is nothing like it in Italy that I know of", he said; and, writing to his father, he added: "They have knocked a great hole in the middle to put up a shield with a red lion and a yellow cock upon it for the sign of a consul, and they have knocked another at the bottom to put up  more...