among which was the head of Andrea del
Verrocchio, his master. In the same court, over the arches of the
columns, he made a frieze with heads of the size of life, very well
executed, among which was one of the said Prior, so lifelike and
wrought in so good a manner, that it was judged by the most
experienced craftsmen to be the best thing that Pietro ever made. In
the other cloister, over the door that led into the refectory, he
was commissioned to paint a scene of Pope Boniface confirming the
habit of his Order to the Blessed Giovanni Colombino, wherein he
portrayed eight of the aforesaid friars, and made a most beautiful
view receding in perspective, which was much extolled, and rightly,
since Pietro made a particular profession of this. In another scene
below the first he began a Nativity of Christ, with certain angels
and shepherds, wrought with the freshest colouring. And in an arch
over the door of the aforesaid oratory he made three half-length
figures--Our Lady, S. Jerome, and the Blessed Giovanni--with so
beautiful a manner, that this was held to be one of the best mural
paintings that Pietro ever wrought.

The said Prior, so I once heard tell, was very excellent at making
ultramarine blues, and, therefore, having an abundance of them, he
desired that Pietro should use them freely in all the above-mentioned
works; but he was nevertheless so mean and suspicious that he would
never trust Pietro, and always insisted on being present when he was
using blue in the work. Wherefore Pietro, who had an honest and
upright nature, and had no desire for another man's goods save in
return for his own labour, took the Prior's distrust very ill, and
resolved to put him to shame; and so, having taken a basin of water,
and having laid on the ground for draperies or for anything else that
he wished to paint in blue and white, from time to time he caused the
Prior, who turned grudgingly to his little bag, to put some
ultramarine into the little vase that contained the tempera-water, and
then, setting to work, at every second stroke of the brush Pietro
would dip his brush in the basin, so that there remained more in the
water than he had used on the picture. The Prior, who saw his little
bag becoming empty without much to show for it in the work, kept
saying time after time: "Oh, what a quantity of ultramarine this
plaster consumes!" "Does it not?" Pietro would answer. After the
departure of the Prior, Pietro took the ultramarin