Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/154

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Rarely does it happen that a good old stock fails to throw out some fair branch, which, increasing with time, imparts a new ornament and supplies with its foliage a fresh garment to that desolate trunk, putting forth fruit also in which there are ultimately perceived, by those who taste it, the savours which they had formerly derived from the ancient tree.

And that what we here say is true will be made manifest in the life of Giovan-Antonio Lappoli, which we are now about to write. This artist, on the death of his father Matteo, the latter a very well-reputed painter of his day, was left with an easy income to the guardianship of his mother, under whose care he remained until his twelfth year. But having attained that age, Giovan-Antonio, not wishing to engage in any other calling than that of the painter, whereunto he was disposed, among other causes, by the desire he felt to follow the footsteps and to adopt the art of his father; Giovan-Antonio, I say, then commenced his studies under Domenico Pecori, a painter of Arezzo who had for some time been the fellow disciple of his father Matteo, under Clemente; and from this Pecori therefore, who was his earliest master, Giovan-Antonio now learned the first principles of design.

After having been for some time with Domenico Pecori, Giovan-Antonio, desiring to make better progress than he found himself doing under that master, and in a place where he had not sufficient opportunity for independent study, to which he was much inclined, began to turn his thoughts towards a settlement in Florence. And to this his intention Fortune proved herself not unfavourable, for having been left alone by the death of his mother, there remained only that he should give his sister in marriage, which he did while she was still very young, bestowing her on Leonardo Ricoveri, one of the first and richest citizens of Arezzo: that done, he departed from Arezzo and repaired to Florence.