st incredible carnage, what with the wounded, the fallen, and the
dead. In these Piero counterfeited in fresco the glittering of their
arms, for which he deserves no less praise than he does for the flight
and submersion of Maxentius painted on the other wall, wherein he made a
group of horses in foreshortening, so marvellously executed that they
can be truly called too beautiful and too excellent for those times. In
the same story he made a man, half nude and half clothed in the dress of
a Saracen, riding a lean horse, which reveals a very great mastery of
anatomy, a science little known in his age. For this work, therefore, he
well deserved to be richly rewarded by Luigi Bacci, whom he portrayed
there in the scene of the beheading of a King, together with Carlo and
others of his brothers and many Aretines who were then distinguished in
letters; and to be loved and revered ever afterwards, as he was, in that
city, which he had made so illustrious with his works.
[Illustration: THE RESURRECTION
(_After the fresco by =Piero della Francesca=. Borgo San Sepolchro_)
_Alinari_]
In the Vescovado of the same city, also, he made a S. Mary Magdalene in
fresco beside the door of the sacristy; and for the Company of the
Nunziata he painted the banner that is carried in processions. At the
head of a cloister at S. Maria delle Grazie, without that district, he
painted S. Donatus in his robes, seated in a chair drawn in perspective,
together with certain boys; and in a niche high up on a wall of S.
Bernardo, for the Monks of Monte Oliveto, he made a S. Vincent, which is
much esteemed by craftsmen. In a chapel at Sargiano, a seat of the Frati
Zoccolanti di S. Francesco, without Arezzo, he painted a very beautiful
Christ praying by night in the Garden.
In Perugia, also, he wrought many works that are still to be seen in
that city; as, for example, a panel in distemper in the Church of the
Nuns of S. Anthony of Padua, containing a Madonna with the Child in her
lap, S. Francis, S. Elizabeth, S. John the Baptist, and S. Anthony of
Padua. Above these is a most beautiful Annunciation, with an Angel that
seems truly to have come out of Heaven; and, what is more, a row of
columns diminishing in perspective, which is indeed beautiful. In the
predella there are scenes with little figures, representing S. Anthony
restoring a boy to life; S. Elizabeth saving a child that has fallen
into a well; and S. Francis receiving the Stigmata. In S
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