Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/149

1397-1475] their ranks. With Donatello he was especially intimate, and the portrait which he painted of the great sculptor, together with those of Giotto, Brunellesco, Antonio Manetti the mathematician, and his own were seen by Vasari in the house of Giuliano di Sangallo, and are now in the Louvre. Fired by the example of these men, Paolo devoted himself with ardour to the study of perspective, which absorbed his whole time and thoughts, and became the passion of his life. He would sit up half the night, studying rules of perspective and working out problems at his desk, and when his wife urged him to take a little rest, would only exclaim: "Oh! how sweet a thing is perspective!" Vasari describes him as a strange, eccentric being, who would live like a hermit for weeks and months without speaking to any one, and shrank from the sight of his fellow-creatures. Once when he was painting some frescoes for the Benedictines of San Miniato he disappeared altogether, and the more the monks tried to find him, the more persistently he eluded their search. At length, however, two of the monks, who were younger than the rest, caught sight of Paolo in the street, and, running after him, asked why he had left his work unfinished; upon which the shy painter told them that their Abbot had given him nothing but dishes made of cheese to eat, and that he felt sure if he stayed in their convent any longer he should be turned into cheese himself! The monks heard his story with peals of laughter, and left him with many assurances that he should be treated better in future, if he would only return and finish his frescoes. The result of this love of solitude and indifference to gain, Vasari tells us, was that he remained