do about buying a pig, father, if you
have no money?" To which Lorentino would answer, "Some Saint will help
us." But when he had said this many times and the season was passing by
without any pig appearing, they had lost hope, when at length there
arrived a peasant from the Pieve a Quarto, who wished to have a S.
Martin painted in fulfilment of a vow, but had no means of paying for
the picture save a pig, which was worth five lire. This man, coming to
Lorentino, told him that he wished to have the S. Martin painted, but
that he had no means of payment save the pig. Whereupon they came to an
agreement, and Lorentino painted him the Saint, while the peasant
brought him the pig; and so the Saint provided the pig for the poor
children of this painter.

Another disciple of Piero was Pietro da Castel della Pieve,[4] who
painted an arch above S. Agostino, and a S. Urban for the Nuns of S.
Caterina in Arezzo, which has been thrown to the ground in rebuilding
the church. His pupil, likewise, was Luca Signorelli of Cortona, who did
him more honour than all the others.

Piero Borghese, whose pictures date about the year 1458, became blind
through an attack of catarrh at the age of sixty, and lived thus up to
the eighty-sixth year of his life. He left very great possessions in the
Borgo, with some houses that he had built himself, which were burnt and
destroyed in the strife of factions in the year 1536. He was honourably
buried by his fellow-citizens in the principal church, which formerly
belonged to the Order of Camaldoli, and is now the Vescovado. Piero's
books are for the most part in the library of Frederick II, Duke of
Urbino, and they are such that they have deservedly acquired for him the
name of the best geometrician of his time.

[Illustration: THE VISION OF CONSTANTINE

(_After the fresco by =Piero della Francesca=. Arezzo: S. Francesco_)

_Alinari_]

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Luca Signorelli.

[4] Pietro Perugino.

FRA GIOVANNI DA FIESOLE

FRA GIOVANNI DA FIESOLE

[_FRA ANGELICO_]

PAINTER OF THE ORDER OF PREACHING FRIARS

Fra Giovanni Angelico da Fiesole, who was known in the world as Guido,
was no less excellent as painter and illuminator than he was upright as
churchman, and for both one and the other of these reasons he deserves
that most honourable record should be made of him. This man, although he
could have lived in the world with the greatest comfort, and could have
gained whatever he w