[*137] Gentile da Fabriano was the pupil of Allegretto Nuzi, not of Fra Angelico.
[*138] There is only one fragment of Gentile's work in the Duomo of Orvieto: a Madonna, painted in 1425.
[*139] A fine work still remains at Perugia, No. 39, in Sala V., Pinacoteca.
[*140] We do not know who Perugino's Perugian master was; but it was more likely to be Fiorenzo di Lorenzo than Bonfigli.
[*141] There is no trace of Masaccio's influence in Perugino's work. He was influenced by Signorelli, and slightly by Verrocchio.
[*142] Piero della Francesca was the pupil of Domenico Veneziano.
[*143] Piero was born in 1416.
[*144] Cf. Pichi, La Vita e le Opere di Piero della Francesca (Borgo S. Sepolcro, 1893); Witting, Piero dei Franceschi (Strassburg, 1898); Crowe & Cavalcaselle, op. cit., vol. III. Berenson, op. cit., p. 69, says: "The pupil of Domenico Veneziano in characterisation, of Paolo Uccello in perspective, himself an eager student of this science, as an artist he [Piero] was more gifted than either of his teachers." Fra Luca Pacioli, one of the finest mathematicians of his day, praises Piero, and speaks of his renowned treatise on perspective, "now in the library of our illustrious Duke of Urbino."
[*145] Cf. on this point Muntz, Precursori e propugnatori del Rinascimento (Firenze, 1902), p. 59 et seq. For his life Vita Leonis Baptistae de Albertis, by an anonymous author, believed to be Alberti himself, in Muratori R.I.S., vol. XXV., partly translated in Edward Hutton, Sigismondo Malatesta (Dent, 1906), pp. 163-9. Cf. also Mancini, Vita di L.B.A. (Firenze, 1882), and Nuovi documenti e notizie sulla vita e gli scritti di L.B.A., in Arch. St. It., Series IV., vol. XIX.; also Scipioni, in Giornale St. d. Lett. Ital., vol. II., p. 156 et seq., and vol. X., p. 255 et seq.
[*146] This is a tale like so much in Vasari. Piero was never blind at all it seems. Bossi, in his work on Leonardo's Cenacolo (Milan, 1810), deals minutely with this libel.