Among the painters employed by Cosimo and his sons were the two Peselli, Giuliano d’Arrigo, and his grandson Pesellino; the former followed the artistic tendencies represented by Giotto, the latter was an earnest disciple of the realistic school. Much of the Medici furniture was painted by them, according to a fashion of the time, continued till the middle of the sixteenth century. Presses and coffers (_cassoni_) were ornamented with compositions of small figures, taken from history, sacred or profane, animals, hunting-scenes, &c. In the Florentine collections are many paintings of this kind, even down to Andrea del Sarto and his friends and pupils, the original destination of which is shown by their form. They were not all Florentines who painted for the Medici. A Veronese, Matteo de’ Pasti, wrote to Piero in 1441, that he trusted to send him works such as he had never before seen.[151] He probably alluded to the convex tablets (now in the Uffizi collection) representing scenes from Petrarca’s triumphs, which were doubtless intended to decorate a room. The various dealings of the Medici with Flanders, from the time of Cosimo, contributed to draw attention in Florence to the Van Eyck school of painting, which influenced Italian art in the fifteenth century, particularly in point of technicalities. It was through Tommaso Portinari, director of the Medici bank at Bruges, that the church of the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova—an old foundation of the family—obtained the most important work of the Flemish school to be found in Tuscany. This was the masterpiece of Hugo van der Goes, the ‘Adoration of the Shepherds,’ containing portraits of the members of the donor’s family.[152] The Flemish pictures mentioned by Vasari as being in the possession of the Medici (one of them, a portrait of Tommaso Portinari, is now in the Pitti Palace), prove the interest awakened by these works, great as was their difference in conception from Italian art. It is easy to imagine that other branches of artistic industry were furthered by this artistically inclined family at a period of such varied activity, and that their house kept constantly filling with treasures of all kinds. For it was the pride of the princes and rich citizens—and even of such as had to deny themselves many of the comforts of life in order to satisfy a noble passion—to surround themselves with ancient and modern works, to decorate halls, staircases, and courts with marbles and other antiquities; to collect old coins and intaglios; to deck their rooms with statues and sculptures by living artists, with handsome furniture, silver plate, rich silken hangings and carpets.