t Lanzi says "he may be justly called the Bassano of his age." He was
living in 1436. Vasari places his birth in 1396-7, and his death in
1479, but later writers have proved his dates to be altogether
erroneous.

UCCELLO'S ENTHUSIASM.

"Paolo Uccello employed himself perpetually and without any
intermission," says Vasari, "in the consideration of the most difficult
questions connected with art, insomuch that he brought the method of
preparing the plans and elevations of buildings, by the study of linear
perspective, to perfection. From the ground plan to the cornice, and
summit of the roof, he reduced all to strict rules, by the convergence
of intersecting lines, which he diminished towards the centre, after
having fixed the point of view higher or lower, as seemed good to him;
he labored, in short, so earnestly in these difficult matters that he
found means, and fixed rules, for making his figures really to seem
standing on the plane whereon they were placed; not only showing how in
order manifestly to draw back or retire, they must gradually be
diminished, but also giving the precise manner and degree required for
this, which had previously been done by chance, or effected at the
discretion of the artist, as he best could. He also discovered the
method of turning the arches and cross-vaulting of ceilings, taught how
floors are to be foreshortened by the convergence of the beams; showed
how the artist must proceed to represent the columns bending round the
sharp corners of a building, so that when drawn in perspective, they
efface the angle and cause it to seem level. To pore over all these
matters, Paolo would remain alone, almost like a hermit, shut up in his
house for weeks and months without suffering himself to be approached."

UCCELLO AND THE MONKS OF SAN MINIATO.

Uccello was employed to decorate one of the cloisters of the monastery
of San Miniato, situated without the city of Florence, with subjects
from the lives of the Holy Fathers. While he was engaged on these works,
the monks gave him scarcely anything to eat but cheese, of which the
painter soon became tired, and being shy and timid, he resolved to go no
more to work in the cloister. The prior sent to enquire the cause of his
absence, but when Paolo heard the monks asking for him, he would never
be at home, and if he chanced to meet any of the brothers of that order
in the street, he gave them a wide berth. This extraordinary conduct
excited the