Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/317

Rh held in the highest esteem. He studied under the discipline of Andrea Verrocchio, and the first figures painted by him were executed for the Nuns of San Martino, at a convent without the gate of Prato, but which has now been ruined by the wars. At the Carthusian Monastery, also, he painted a San Girolamo in fresco, which was then highly esteemed by the Florentines, and is often cited by them with commendation, because the saint was represented as old, meagre, and wan, with the eyes fixed on the cross; nay, he was depicted as worn and consumed by fasting to such a degree that he was little more than a skeleton, as may be still seen from a copy of that picture which is now in the possession of the before-mentioned Bartolommeo Gondi. In a few years Pietro attained to such a height of reputation, that his works were dispersed, not only through Florence and all over Italy, but in France, Spain, and other countries, whither they had been despatched. His paintings being thus held in high estimation, and bearing a very great price, the merchants began to make purchases of them and to send them into different lands, to their great gain and advantage.

For the Nuns of Santa Chiara, Pietro painted a picture of the Dead Christ, the colouring of which was so beautiful as well as new, that it awakened in the artists of the time an expectation of the excellence which Pietro was destined to attain. In this work there are some most admirable heads of old men, and the Maries also, having ceased to weep, are contemplating the departed Saviour with an expression of reverence and love which is singularly fine: there is, besides, a Landscape, which was then considered to be exceedingly beautiful; the true method of treating landscapes, which was afterwards discovered, not