and because it was she who had brought him up
and assisted him to attain to the rank that his good-fortune held out to
him. Piero applied himself in his youth to mathematics, and although it
was settled when he was fifteen years of age that he was to be a
painter, he never abandoned this study; nay, he made marvellous progress
therein, as well as in painting. He was employed by Guidobaldo Feltro
the elder, Duke of Urbino, for whom he made many very beautiful pictures
with little figures, which have been for the most part ruined on the
many occasions when that state has been harassed by wars. Nevertheless,
there were preserved there some of his writings on geometry and
perspective, in which sciences he was not inferior to any man of his own
time, or perchance even to any man of any other time; as is demonstrated
by all his works, which are full of perspectives, and particularly by a
vase drawn in squares and sides, in such a manner that the base and the
mouth can be seen from the front, from behind, and from the sides; which
is certainly a marvellous thing, for he drew the smallest details
therein with great subtlety, and foreshortened the curves of all the
circles with much grace. Having thus acquired credit and fame at that
Court, he resolved to make himself known in other places; wherefore he
went to Pesaro and Ancona, whence, in the very thick of his work, he was
summoned by Duke Borso to Ferrara, where he painted many apartments in
his palace, which were afterwards destroyed by Duke Ercole the elder in
the renovation of the palace, insomuch that there is nothing by the hand
of Piero left in that city, save a chapel wrought in fresco in S.
Agostino; and even that has been injured by damp. Afterwards, being
summoned to Rome, he painted two scenes for Pope Nicholas V in the upper
rooms of his palace, in competition with Bramante da Milano; but these
also were thrown to the ground by Pope Julius II--to the end that
Raffaello da Urbino might paint there the Imprisonment of S. Peter and
the Miracle of the Corporale of Bolsena--together with certain others
that had been painted by Bramantino, an excellent painter in his day.

[Illustration: PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA: BATTISTA SFORZA, WIFE OF FEDERIGO
DA MONTEFELTRO

(_Florence: Uffizi, 1300. Panel_)]

Now, seeing that I cannot write the life of this man, nor particularize
his works, because they have been ruined, I will not grudge the
labour of making some record of him, for