edge of colouring and became an excellent
master. He associated himself entirely with Piero, and they made many
pictures in company; among others, since they took great delight in
colour, a panel in oil in S. Miniato al Monte without Florence, for the
Cardinal of Portugal. On this panel, which was placed on the altar of
his chapel, they painted S. James the Apostle, S. Eustace, and S.
Vincent, which have been much extolled. Piero, in particular, painted
certain prophets on the wall in oil (a method that he had learnt from
Andrea dal Castagno), in the corners of the angles below the architrave,
where the lunettes of the arches run; and in one of the lunettes he
painted the Virgin receiving the Annunciation, with three figures. For
the Capitani di Parte he painted a Madonna with the Child in her arms in
a lunette, with a frieze of seraphim all round, also wrought in oil.
They also painted in oil, on canvas, on a pilaster of S. Michele in
Orto, an Angel Raphael with Tobias; and they made certain Virtues in the
Mercatanzia of Florence, in the very place where that Tribunal holds its
sittings. In the Proconsulate Antonio made portraits from life of Messer
Poggio, Secretary to the Signoria of Florence, who continued the History
of Florence after Messer Leonardo d'Arezzo, and of Messer Giannozzo
Manetti, a man of no small learning and repute, in the same place where
other masters some time before had made portraits of Zanobi da Strada, a
poet of Florence, Donato Acciaiuoli, and others. In the Chapel of the
Pucci, in S. Sebastiano de' Servi, he painted the panel of the altar,
which is a rare and excellent work, containing marvellous horses, nudes,
and very beautiful figures in foreshortening, and S. Sebastian himself
portrayed from life--namely, from Gino di Lodovico Capponi. This work
received greater praise than any other that Antonio ever made, since,
seeking to imitate nature to the utmost of his power, he showed in one
of the archers, who is resting his cross-bow against his chest and
bending down to the ground in order to load it, all the force that a man
of strong arm can exert in loading that weapon, for we see his veins and
muscles swelling, and the man himself holding his breath in order to
gain more strength. Nor is this the only figure wrought with careful
consideration, for all the others in their various attitudes also
demonstrate clearly enough the thought and the intelligence that he put
into this work, which was