So Giovanni Santi, Raphael's father, described Desiderio da Settignano.
The following story is told about Benedetto's youth. He made two large inlaid chests or cassoni, adorned with all the skill of a worker in tarsia, or wood-mosaic, and carried these with him to King Matthias Corvinus, of Hungary. Part of his journey was performed by sea. On arriving and unpacking his chests, he found that the sea-damp had unglued the fragile wood-mosaic, and all his work was spoiled. This determined him to practise the more permanent art of sculpture. See Perkins, vol. i. p. 228.
For further description of the sculpture at Rimini, I may refer to my Sketches in Italy and Greece, pp. 250-252. For the student of Italian art, who has no opportunity of visiting Rimini, it is greatly to be regretted that these reliefs have never yet even in photography been reproduced. The palace of Duke Frederick at Urbino was designed by Luziano, a Dalmatian architect, and continued by Baccio Pontelli, a Florentine. The reliefs of dancing Cupids, white on blue ground, with wings and hair gilt, and the children holding pots of roses and gilly-flowers, in one of its great rooms, may be selected for special mention. Ambrogio or Ambrogino da Milano, none of whose handiwork is found in his native district, and who may therefore be supposed to have learned and practised his art elsewhere, was the sculptor of these truly genial reliefs.