[*211] It is to Vasari we owe the statement that Piero was blind in 1458, being then sixty years old (cf. Vasari, Vite, vol. II., p. 500). This appears to be another of Vasari's mistakes. Fra Luca, who records so many facts concerning his master, is silent as to his blindness, while if dates are looked into they will easily disprove the statement. Cf. W.G. Waters, Piero della Francesca (London, 1901), p. 93.
[212] See his catalogue of painters in the Appendix to our second volume.
[213] The Abbé Pungileone, in his Elogio di Giovanni Sanzi, and Padre Marchese, in his Memorie dei Pittori Domenicani, both adopt, without examination, the identity of the Madonna and Child with the Duke's wife and son. The picture is engraved in Rosini, Plate 93, and in the Brera gallery.
[214] Several important medallions of Federigo are described in our thirtieth chapter, and, in our fifty-third, a statue erected to him in the palace at Urbino by his great-great-grandson, Francesco Maria II.
[*215] For the life of Guidobaldo, see Baldi, Vita e fatti di Guidobaldo I. di Montefeltro (Milano, 1821); Zaccagnini, La Vita e le opere edite e inedite di B. Baldi (Modena, 1903); Castiglione, Epistola ad Sacratissimum Britanniae Reg. Henricum de Guidobaldo Urb. Duce; Bembo, De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetta Gonzagia Urbini Ducibus liber (Cod. Vatic. Urbin., 1030), and Ugolini, op. cit., II., lib. VIII. and IX.; see also Madiai Commentari dello Stato di Urbino, in Arch. Stor. per le Marche e per l'Umbria, vol. III., pp. 419-464.
[*216] See supra [note *1], [p. 208]. There, too, Guidobaldo's names are given as Guido Paolo Ubaldo. As stated here they seem to be right.
[218] Guidobaldo always honoured and enriched Odasio, to whom he gave, for instance, a fine podere on 26 February, 1495 (cf. Arch. Centr. Perg. d'Urbino, p. 275). This eulogy was an ovation and nothing more; it was not the truth, or meant to be the truth. Cf. Ugolini, op. cit., vol. II., p. 151.
[*219] His sister, not his aunt. It was Elisabetta, the third child of Federigo, who married Roberto Malatesta, illegitimate son of Sigismondo. Roberto and Federigo of Urbino died on the same day (cf. Allegretti, ap. Fabr. II., 245, and E.G. Gardner, Dukes and Poets at Ferrara (Constable, 1904), p. 184).