it seems an apt occasion. In
the said works that were thrown to the ground, so I have heard tell, he
had made some heads from nature, so beautiful and so well executed that
speech alone was wanting to give them life. Of these heads not a few
have come to light, because Raffaello da Urbino had them copied in order
that he might have the likenesses of the subjects, who were all people
of importance; for among them were Niccolo Fortebraccio, Charles VII,
King of France, Antonio Colonna, Prince of Salerno, Francesco
Carmignuola, Giovanni Vitellesco, Cardinal Bessarione, Francesco
Spinola, and Battista da Canneto. All these portraits were given to
Giovio by Giulio Romano, disciple and heir of Raffaello da Urbino, and
they were placed by Giovio in his museum at Como. Over the door of S.
Sepolcro in Milan I have seen a Dead Christ wrought in foreshortening by
the hand of the same man, in which, although the whole picture is not
more than one braccio in height, there is an effect of infinite length,
executed with facility and with judgment. By his hand, also, are some
apartments and loggie in the house of the Marchesino Ostanesia in the
same city, wherein there are many pictures wrought by him that show
mastery and very great power in the foreshortening of the figures. And
without the Porta Vercellina, near the Castle, in certain stables now
ruined and destroyed, he painted some grooms currying horses, among
which there was one so lifelike and so well wrought, that another horse,
thinking it a real one, lashed out at it repeatedly with its hooves.

[Illustration: PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA: FEDERIGO DA MONTEFELTRO, DUKE OF
URBINO

(_Florence: Uffizi, 1300. Panel_)]

But to return to Piero della Francesca; his work in Rome finished, he
returned to the Borgo, where his mother had just died; and on the inner
side of the central door of the Pieve he painted two saints in fresco,
which are held to be very beautiful. In the Convent of the Friars of S.
Augustine he painted the panel of the high-altar, which was a thing much
extolled; and he wrought in fresco a Madonna della Misericordia for a
company, or rather, as they call it, a confraternity; with a
Resurrection of Christ in the Palazzo de' Conservadori, which is held
the best of all the works that are in the said city, and the best that
he ever made. In company with Domenico da Vinezia, he painted the
beginning of a work on the vaulting of the Sacristy of S. Maria at
Loreto; but th