tifully, whether in colouring, drawing, or
composition, that every craftsman at the present day stands in a marvel
thereat. And at that time it brought him such great fame, both in
Florence and abroad, that Pope Sixtus IV, having accomplished the
building of the chapel of his palace in Rome, and wishing to have it
painted, ordained that he should be made head of that work; whereupon he
painted therein with his own hand the following scenes--namely, the
Temptation of Christ by the Devil, Moses slaying the Egyptian, Moses
receiving drink from the daughters of Jethro the Midianite, and likewise
fire descending from Heaven on the sacrifice of the sons of Aaron, with
certain Sanctified Popes in the niches above the scenes. Having
therefore acquired still greater fame and reputation among the great
number of competitors who worked with him, both Florentines and men of
other cities, he received from the Pope a good sum of money, the whole
of which he consumed and squandered in a moment during his residence in
Rome, where he lived in haphazard fashion, as was his wont.

Having at the same time finished and unveiled the part that had been
assigned to him, he returned immediately to Florence, where, being a man
of inquiring mind, he made a commentary on part of Dante, illustrated
the Inferno, and printed it; on which he wasted much of his time,
bringing infinite disorder into his life by neglecting his work. He also
printed many of the drawings that he had made, but in a bad manner, for
the engraving was poorly done. The best of these that is to be seen
by his hand is the Triumph of the Faith effected by Fra Girolamo
Savonarola of Ferrara, of whose sect he was so ardent a partisan that he
was thereby induced to desert his painting, and, having no income to
live on, fell into very great distress. For this reason, persisting in
his attachment to that party, and becoming a Piagnone[27] (as the
members of the sect were then called), he abandoned his work; wherefore
he ended in his old age by finding himself so poor, that, if Lorenzo de'
Medici, for whom, besides many other things, he had done some work at
the little hospital in the district of Volterra, had not succoured him
the while that he lived, as did afterwards his friends and many
excellent men who loved him for his talent, he would have almost died of
hunger.

[Illustration: THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

(_After the panel by =Sandro Botticelli=. Florence: Uffizi, 1286_)

_M.