About this time other able artists flourished at Florence, who were obscured by greater names. Of this number was Berto Linaiuolo, whose pictures in private houses were, for a long time, held in great repute. They were even ordered by the King of Hungary, and procured him great fame in that kingdom. Alessio Baldovinetti, of noble extraction, was a painter particularly diligent and minute, a good worker in mosaic, and the master of Ghirlandaio. In his picture of the Nativity in the porch of the Nunziata, and in his other works, the design, rather than the colouring, may now be said to remain; for the tints have vanished, from a defect in their composition. To them we may add Verrocchio, a celebrated statuary, a good designer, and a painter for amusement rather than by profession. While he painted the Baptism of Christ at S. Salvi, his scholar, L. da Vinci, then a youth, finished an angel, in a manner superior to the figures of his master, who, indignant at his own inferiority to a boy, never more handled the pencil. Baldinucci imagines that Andrea del Castagno, a name infamous in history, was a scholar of Masaccio: he was rather his imitator, in attitude, relief, and casting of the drapery, than in grace and colouring. He lived at the time that the secret of painting in oil (discovered by John Van Eych, or John of Bruges, about 1410),[73] was known in Italy, not only by report, but by experience of the advantages of this method. Our artists, admiring the harmony, delicacy, and brilliance, which colours received from this discovery, sighed to possess the secret. For this purpose, one Antonello da Messina, who had studied at Rome, travelled to Flanders, and having learned the secret, according to Vasari, from the inventor, went to Venice, where he communicated it to a friend named Domenico. After having practised much in his own country, at Loreto,[74] and other parts of the ecclesiastical states, Domenico came to Florence. There he became the general favourite, and on that account was envied by Castagna, whose dissembled friendship won him to impart the secret, and rewarded him by an atrocious assassination, which he perpetrated, in order that there might be none living to rival him in the art. The assassin was sufficiently skilful to conceal his crime, owing to which a number of innocent persons soon fell under suspicion, which did not induce the real criminal to avow the atrocious deed, until he lay upon his death-bed, when he disclosed his guilt and did justice to the innocence of others. He had the reputation of being the first artist of his time, for vigour, for design, and for perspective, having perfected the art of foreshortening. His finest works have perished: one of his pictures remains at S. Lucia de' Magnuoli, and also some of his historic pieces, executed with great diligence. There is also a Crucifixion, painted on a wall in the monastery of the Angeli.