[8] So says Vasari, who writes his life, but Padre della Valle thinks it highly probable that he was the scholar of Cosimati, and not of Giotto; as Cavallini was contemporary with Giotto. I agree that he was only a very few years younger, and might have received some instructions in the school of Cosimati: but who, except Giotto himself, could have taught him that Giottesque and improved style scarcely inferior to Gaddi?
[9] In the archives of the Collegiate Church of S. Niccolo, in Fabriano, is preserved a catalogue of the pictures of the city, which has been communicated to me by Sig. Can. Claudio Serafini. This picture, which is divided into five compartments, is there mentioned; and it is added, that "many celebrated painters visited the place to view this excellent work, and in particular, the illustrious Raffaello."
[10] In the archives before alluded to, are also mentioned two ancient pictures of a Giuliano da Fabriano, the one in the church of the Domenicans, the other in the Church of the Capuchins.
[11] Tom. xxiii. page 83, &c. By the first, is the ancient picture of S. Maria della Consolazione in that church, erected in 1442. By the second, are the pictures in the church of S. Rocco, painted about the year 1463. The third artist painted a picture in the church of S. Liberato, in 1494.
[12] Galeazzo Sanzio and his sons will be noticed in the second epoch.
[13] See Vasari, Bologna edition, p. 260.
[14] The commentators of Vasari remark, that when he uses this phrase, he refers to the year of the death of the artist, or to the period when he relinquished his art. Pietro must therefore have become blind about the year 1458, in the sixtieth year of his age, and must have died about 1484, aged eighty-six. This painter was intimately connected with the family of Vasari. Lazaro the great-grandfather of Vasari, who died in 1452, was the friend and imitator of Pietro, and some time before his death assigned him his nephew Signorelli as a scholar. We must, therefore, give credit to Vasari's account of Borghese; for if we discredit him on this occasion, as some have done, when are we to believe him? It is true, indeed, that he is guilty of a strange anachronism in mentioning Guidubaldo, the old Duke of Urbino, as his first patron; but this kind of error is frequent in him, and not to be regarded.
[15] "Fu eccellentissimo prospettivo, e il maggior geometra de' suoi tempi." Romano Alberti, Trattato della nobiltà della pittura, p. 32. See also Pascoli, Vite, tom. i. p. 90.
[16] It appears that in this art he was preceded by Van Eych of Flanders. See tom. i. p. 81, &c.; and also the eulogium on him by Bartolommeo Facio, p. 46, where he praises his skill in geometry, and refers to several of his pictures, which prove him to have been highly accomplished, and almost unrivalled in perspective.
[17] If there be any truth in Pietro having been blind for twenty-four years, I do not know how he could have painted Sixtus IV. On the other hand this tradition of his blindness comes from Vasari, whose family was so intimately connected with that of Pietro della Francesca, that there was less room for error in the life of that artist than in any other. This excellent picture, of which I have seen a beautiful copy in the possession of the Duke di Ceri, I should myself rather attribute to Melozzo.