reat softness and grace, that it is
beyond comparison superior to all his others; wherefore it has been
greatly praised from that time up to our own.

[Illustration: THE DELUGE

(_After the fresco by_ Paolo Uccello. _Florence: S. Maria Novella_)

_Alinari_]

In S. Maria del Fiore, in memory of Giovanni Acuto, an Englishman,
Captain of the Florentines, who had died in the year 1393, he made in
terra-verde a horse of extraordinary grandeur, which was held very
beautiful, and on it the image of the Captain himself, in chiaroscuro
and coloured with terra-verde, in a picture ten braccia high on the
middle of one wall of the church; where Paolo drew in perspective a
large sarcophagus, supposed to contain the corpse, and over this he
placed the image of him in his Captain's armour, on horseback. This work
was and still is held to be something very beautiful for a painting of
that kind, and if Paolo had not made that horse move its legs on one
side only, which naturally horses do not do, or they would fall--and
this perchance came about because he was not accustomed to ride, nor
used to horses as he was to other animals--this work would be absolutely
perfect, since the proportion of that horse, which is colossal, is very
beautiful; and on the base there are these letters: PAULI UCCELLI OPUS.

At the same time, and in the same church, he painted in colours the
hour-dial above the principal door within the church, with four heads
coloured in fresco at the corners. He wrought in terra-verde, also, the
loggia that faces towards the west above the garden of the Monastery of
the Angeli, painting below each arch a story of the acts of S. Benedict
the Abbot, and of the most notable events of his life, up to his death.
Here, among many most beautiful scenes, there is one wherein a monastery
is destroyed by the agency of the Devil, while a friar is left dead
below the stones and beams. No less notable is the terror of another
monk, whose draperies, as he flies, cling round his nude form and
flutter with most beautiful grace; whereby Paolo awakened the minds of
the craftsmen so greatly, that they have ever afterwards followed that
method. Very beautiful, also, is the figure of S. Benedict, the while
that with dignity and devoutness, in the presence of his monks, he
restores the dead friar to life. Finally, in all these stories there are
features worthy of consideration, and above all in certain places where
the very tiles of the roof