Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/173

1499] last entries record his restoration of the mosaics in the Baptistery of Florence and in the choir of S. Miniato, where, twenty-five years before, he had decorated the Cardinal of Portugal's Sepulchral Chapel with frescoes of the Prophets and an altarpiece of the Annunciation. A few of his smaller Madonnas may be seen in private collections in Paris and Florence, and a profile portrait of a lady in the National Gallery, which has been ascribed at different times to Piero dei Franceschi and Paolo Uccello, has been lately recognised by Mr Roger Fry as his work. The face is one of great charm and distinction, and the patterned brocade of the sleeve and beads of the necklace are painted in Baldovinetti's characteristic manner.

Alesso married about 1479, when he was already over fifty, but his wife, Mona Daria, died early, leaving him to a solitary old age. On the 17th of October 1498, being seventy-one years of age, the painter entered the hospital of S. Paolo, a house of charity belonging to the Third Order of St. Francis, and made a donation of all his goods after his death to this institution, on condition that his faithful maid-servant Mea should be supported to the end of her life. Ten months afterwards he died, on the 29th of August, and was buried in a grave which he had bought twenty years before in the Church of S. Lorenzo. Vasari relates how, after his death, a big chest which he had brought with him into the hospital was opened, and how, instead of being full of gold, as the Master of the Hospital expected, it only contained a few drawings and a book on the art of mosaic. "But no one was much surprised," adds the historian; "for he