Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/153

1475] been guilty of this act of sacrilege, is told with startling vividness. All the different actors in the story, the frightened children, the horses and soldiers who force open the doors of the house, the solemn procession of priests and magistrates, are represented in the most life-like manner; while the skilfully lighted interior, and the pleasant landscape with its orchards and gardens along the mountain-side, are reproduced with a truth and fidelity that make us realise the marvellous advance which had been effected during the lifetime of this one master. The presence of Paolo at Urbino is commemorated by Raphael's father Giovanni Santi, who gives Uccello a place among the illustrious painters in his rhyming Chronicle. By the following year he was back in Florence, where he describes himself in his income-tax return as old and ailing and quite unable to work, while his wife, Mona Tommasa, is also ill. Paolo had married late in life, after his return from Padua, and had a son of sixteen, named after his friend Donatello, and a daughter Antonia, who is described as being herself an artist, and who became a Carmelite nun after her father's death. Six years later, on the 11th of December, 1475, Paolo Uccello died, and was buried in his father's sepulchre in San Spirito.