many there, some of which are very good: he also undertook many commissions of various kinds in other places; among these is a picture in oil, for the Noviciate of San Marco;[1] the subject of which is Our Lady, standing, with the Child in her arms, with another for the church of Santo Spirito in Florence. This last is in the chapel of the Gino Capponi family, the subject being the Visitation of Our Lady, who is accompanied by San Niccolo and Sant’ Antonio,[2] the latter reading, with spectacles on his nose, a figure of great animation. In the same work our artist painted a book bound in parchment; it has the aspect of age, as having been much used, and is more like a real book than a mere painting, as are certain balls which he has given to St. Nicholas,[3] for these, being exceedingly shining and lustrous, reflect the light one upon another, proving the singularity of the conceits affected by this artist, and the pleasure he experienced in investigating the difiSculties of art. The peculiarities of Piero’s character became more strikingly manifest after the death of Cosimo, seeing that he thenceforward kept himself constantly shut up, he would not permit any one to see him work, but lived the life of a wild beast rather than that of a man. He would never suffer his rooms to be swept, and would eat just at such moments as he felt hungry, he would not have the soil of his garden cultivated, or the fruit-trees pruned, but suffered the vines to grow wild, and permitted their shoots to extend over the paths, neither would he have the fig or other trees properly trained and attended to, preferring to see all things wild and savage about him, as he was himself, and he used to say that every thing of that kind was better left to Nature, to be tended by herself alone without
- ↑ This work is supposed to be lost.
- ↑ This picture had disappeared from the church in the time of Bottari (1759), having been transferred to the private chapel of the Villa Capponi. al Legnaia. — Ed. Flor., 1832.
- ↑ Authorities are divided as to the exact signification of the balls, wliich are one of the distinctive characteristics of St. Nicholas, his proper attribute, indeed; some affirming them to allude to the well-known act of charity, by which he secretly furnished portions to the daughters of the poor noble; others considering them to be rather an allusion to the loaves of bread, wherewith he fed the people during a famine. They are by some writers believed to be merely “a general allusion to the Trinity.’’ — See Mrs. Jameson as before cited, vol. ii. p. CO, et seq.
