Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/264

250 the study of natural history, and that of the science of botany in particular, which he had studied in Dioscorides. He took especial pleasure in investigating the nature and properties of plants, and finally, abandoning the practice of painting., he betook himself to the distillation of simples, applying himself earnestly to the acquirement of all particulars respecting them. Thus, from a painter, Antonio became a physician, and exercised this profession during a long time. Finally, being attacked by a disorder of the stomach, or as others say, by disease contracted while attending a patient sick of the plague, Antonio finished the course of his life in the seventy-fourth year of his age, and in the year 1384, when a grievous pestilence raged in Florence. No less expert as a physician than excellent as a painter, and having made many useful experiments in the latter capacity, Antonio left honourable memorials of his existence in both these arts. He drew extremely well with the pen, and so admirably in “ chiaro-scuro”, that some drawings in our book, of the works executed by this painter in the cloister of Santo Spirito, are considered the best of that period. The Florentine, Gherardo Stamina, was a disciple of Antonio, whom he imitated closely. Paolo Uccello was also his disciple, and did him no small honour. In the Campo Santo of Pisa, the portrait of Antonio Yiniziano may be seen, painted by his own hand.