marvellous and celebrated spirits.

Accept, then, with a friendly mind, these my labours, which, whatever
they may be, have been lovingly carried to conclusion by me for the
glory of art and for the honour of her craftsmen, and take them as a
sure token and pledge of my heart, which is desirous of nothing more
ardently than of your greatness and glory, in which, seeing that I also
have been received by you into your company (for which I render my
thanks to you, and congratulate myself not a little on my own account),
I shall always consider myself in a certain sense a participator.

DOMENICO BECCAFUMI

LIFE OF DOMENICO BECCAFUMI OF SIENA

PAINTER AND MASTER OF CASTING

That same quality, the pure gift of nature, which has been seen in
Giotto and in some others among those painters of whom we have spoken
hitherto, has been revealed most recently in Domenico Beccafumi, the
painter of Siena, in that he, while guarding some sheep for his father
Pacio, the labourer of the Sienese citizen Lorenzo Beccafumi, was
observed to practise his hand by himself, child as he was, in drawing
sometimes on stones and sometimes in other ways. It happened that the
said Lorenzo saw him one day drawing various things with a pointed stick
on the sand of a small stream, where he was watching his little charges,
and he asked for the child from his father, meaning to employ him as his
servant, and at the same time to have him taught. The boy, therefore,
who was then called Mecherino, having been given up by his father Pacio
to Lorenzo, was taken to Siena, where Lorenzo caused him for a while to
spend all the spare time that he had after his household duties in the
workshop of a painter who was his neighbour. This painter, who was no
great craftsman, caused Mecherino to learn all that he could not himself
teach him from designs by eminent painters that he had in his
possession, of which he availed himself for his own purposes, as those
masters are wont to do who are not very able in design. Exercising his
hand, therefore, in this manner, Mecherino gave promise of being
destined to become an excellent painter.

During this time Pietro Perugino, then a famous painter, came to Siena,
where, as has been related, he painted two altar-pieces; and his manner
pleased Domenico greatly, so that he set himself to study it and to copy
those altar-pieces, and no long time passed before he had caught that
manner. Then, after the Chapel of Mi