proved himself to possess every advantage exhibited by the best modern artists in the whole domain of painting; nay, all that can be desired from human genius, or from him who shall aspire to make manifest, by the beauty of colouring and the attraction of ornament, the difficulties, the excellence, and the grace which exist in the regions of that art; all, I say, were combined in Perino.
But let us speak more particularly concerning the origin of this artist. In the city of Florence there lived a man called Giovanni Buonaccorso, who distinguished himself greatly in the wars of Charles VIII., king of France. Youthful, courageous, and liberal, Giovanni dissipated his patrimony in gaming and in the duties of the field, until he had spent all that he possessed in the service of that prince wherein he finally lost his life also.[1] To this man was born a son whom he named Piero, and whose mother having died of the plague when he was but two months old, he was suckled by a goat, and brought up in the utmost poverty at a farm-house, while his father, having departed to Bologna, there took a second wife. This woman, who had lost her previous husband and her children in the plague, completed, with her pest-infected milk, the nursing of the infant Piero, whom they called Pierino by way of nom de caresse, as is for the most part the custom with respect to little children, and this name he retained ever afterwards.[2]
Being taken to Florence by his father, the little Piero was there left with certain kinsfolk of Giovanni, while the latter returned to France, but these relations, either not having the will to encumber themselves with the charge left to them, or not possessing the means to support the child and have him taught some ingenious occupation, apprenticed him to the apothecary of the Pinadoro,[3] to the intent that the boy should acquire his vocation; but Piero found no pleasure therein,
- ↑ Charles VIII. died in 1498, and as Perino was not born until the year 1500, his father could not have lost his life under Charles, whom he may nevertheless have served, probably during the expedition to Naples in 1495.
- ↑ “Our Pierino,” observes a Florentine annotator, “lived afterwards in places where this form of his name is not used, and is consequently better known as Perino.”
- ↑ So called from the sign of his shop, which was a gilded fir-cone (Pina d’oro).
