, whether flat or round, are drawn in
perspective. And in the death of S. Benedict, while his monks are
performing his obsequies and bewailing him, there are some sick men and
cripples, all most beautiful, who stand gazing on him; and it is
noticeable, also, that among many loving and devout followers of that
Saint there is an old monk with crutches under his arms, in whom there
is seen a marvellous expression, with even a hope of being made whole.
In this work there are no landscapes in colour, nor many buildings, nor
difficult perspectives, but there is truly great design, with no little
of the good.

In many houses of Florence there are many pictures in perspective by the
hand of the same man, for the adornment of couches, beds, and other
little things; and in Gualfonda, in particular, on a terrace in the
garden which once belonged to the Bartolini, there are four
battle-scenes painted on wood by his hand, full of horses and armed men,
with very beautiful costumes of those days; and among the men are
portraits of Paolo Orsino, Ottobuono da Parma, Luca da Canale, and Carlo
Malatesti, Lord of Rimini, all captains-general of those times. And
these pictures, since they were spoilt and had suffered injury, were
restored in our own day by the agency of Giuliano Bugiardini, who did
them more harm than good.

Paolo was summoned to Padua by Donato, when the latter was working
there, and at the entrance of the house of the Vitali he painted some
giants in terra-verde, which, as I have found in a Latin letter written
by Girolamo Campagnola to Messer Leonico Tomeo, the philosopher, are so
beautiful that Andrea Mantegna held them in very great account. Paolo
wrought in fresco the Volta de' Peruzzi, with triangular sections in
perspective, and in the angles of the corners he painted the four
elements, making for each an appropriate animal--for the earth a mole,
for the water a fish, for the fire a salamander, and for the air a
chameleon, which lives on it and assumes any colour. And because he had
never seen a chameleon, he painted a camel, which is opening its mouth
and swallowing air, and therewith filling its belly; and great, indeed,
was his simplicity in making allusion by means of the name of the camel
to an animal that is like a little dry lizard, and in representing it by
a great uncouth beast.

[Illustration: PORTRAITS

(_After the panel by_ Paolo Uccello. _Paris: Louvre, 1272_)

_Mansell_]

Truly great were the l