UCCELLO'S FIVE PORTRAITS.
Uccello was a man of very eccentric character and peculiar habits; but he was a great lover of art, and applauded those who excelled in any of its branches. He painted the portraits of five distinguished men, in one oblong picture, that he might preserve their memory and features to posterity. He kept it in his own house, as a memorial of them, as long as he lived. In the time of Vasari, it was in the possession of Giuliano da Sangallo. At the present day, (Editor's Florentine edition of Vasari, 1846) all trace of this remarkable picture is lost. The first of these portraits was that of the painter Giotto, as one who had given new light and life to art; the second, Fillippo Brunelleschi, distinguished for architecture; the third, Donatello, eminent for sculpture; the fourth, Uccello himself, for perspective and animals; and the fifth was his friend Giovanni Manetti, for the mathematics.