Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/315

Rh day living in ease and quietness. It was liis wont to say, and almost in the manner of a proverb, that after bad weather the good must come; and that when it is fair weather, a man must build his house, that he may thus be under shelter when he most needs it.

But to the end that the progress of this artist may be the better understood, I begin with his beginning, and relate that, according to common report, there was born in the city of Perugia, to a poor man called Christofano, of Gastello della Pieve, a son, whom, at his baptism, they named Pietro. This child, brought up in penury and want, was given by his father to be the shop-drudge of a painter in Perugia, who was not particularly distinguished in his calling, but held the art in "great veneration and highly honoured the men who excelled therein; nor did he ever cease to set before Pietro the great advantages and honours that were to be obtained from painting, by all who acquired the power of labouring in it effectually; recounting to him all the rewards bestowed on the various masters, ancient and modern, thereby encouraging Pietro to the study of his art: insomuch that he kindled in the mind of the latter the desire to become one ot those masters, as he resolved, if fortune were propitious to him, that he would do. The boy would thus often inquire of such persons as he knew to have seen the world, in what city the best artists were formed? This question he addressed more particularly to his instructor, from whom he constantly received the same reply, namely, that Florence was the place, above all others, wherein men attain to perfection in all the arts, but more especially in painting. And to this, he said, they were impelled by three causes: first, by the censure freely expressed by so many persons and in such various modes, for the air of that city gives a natural quickness and freedom to the perceptions of men, so that they cannot