FLORENCE, BEGINNINGS TO UCCELLO 



which is like a little dry lizard, while the camel is a 

 great ungainly beast." ^ 



In the house of the Medici he painted "several 

 pictures on canvas and in distemper representing 

 various animals, which he greatly delighted in, and 

 to the delineation of which he gave his most unwearied 

 attention." 



He was a conscientious and interested but not a 

 great artist. Mr. Berenson says that he " suggests the 

 surveyor and topographer rather than the painter." - 



1 Lives, vol. i. pp. 188-9. 



"Sir John Mandeville," whose Travels were frequently published in Italy 

 in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had already written : "And there 

 ben also in that Contree manye Camles, that is a lytille Best as a Goot 

 that is wylde, and he lyvethe be the Eyr, and etethe nought ne drynkethe 

 nought at no tyme. And he chaungethe his colour oftentyme." 



* The Central Italian Fai?iters of the ReJtaissance, 1909, p. 69. M. 

 Eugene Miintz is equally severe : " Le realisme de Paolo Uccello est le 

 realisme scientifique et sec par excellence, sans le gout qui distingue les 

 autres Florentins." — Histoire de V Art pendant la Retiaissance (Paris, i{ 

 vol. i. p. 340. 



29 



