Alvaro di Piero of Portugal flourished at the same time, and adopted a very similar style, but made his colouring more clear and his figures shorter. In Volterra he did several pictures, and there is one in S. Antonio at Pisa and others in various places, but as they are of no great excellence it is not necessary to mention them. In our book there is a sheet of drawings by Taddeo, containing a Christ and two angels, etc., very skilfully executed. Lorenzo di Bicci, Painter of Florence. When those who excel in any honourable employment, no matter what, unite with their skill as craftsmen, a gentleness of manners and of good breeding, and especially courtesy, serving those who employ them with speed and goodwill, there is no doubt that they are pursuing to their great honour and advantage almost everything which can be desired in this world. This was the case with Lorenzo di Bicci, painter of Florence, born in Florence in the year 1400, at the very moment when Italy was beginning to be disturbed by the wars which ended so badly for her, was in very good credit from his earliest years; for under his father's discipline he learned good manners, and from Spinello's instruction he acquired the art of painting, so that he had a reputation not only of being an excellent painter, but of being a most courteous and able man. While he was still a youth, Lorenzo did some works in fresco at Florence and outside to gain facility, and Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, having remarked the excellence of his style, employed him to paint in the hall of the old house of the Medici, which afterwards was left to Lorenzo, natural brother of Cosmo the Ancient, after the great palace was built, all those famous men who may still be seen in a fairly good state of preservation. This work being completed, Lorenzo di Bicci was anxious, like the doctors who experiment in their art on the skins of poor rustics, to have practice in the art of painting in a place where things are not so closely criticised, and for some time he accepted everything which presented itself; hence, outside the gate of S. Friano at the ponte a Scandicci, he painted a tabernacle, as it may now be seen, and at Cerbaia under a portico he painted very agreeably a Madonna and many saints on a wall. Afterwards a chapel in S. Marco at Florence was allotted to him by the family of the Martini, and on the walls he painted in fresco a number of scenes from the life of Our Lady, and on the altar picture the Virgin herself in the midst of many saints. In the same church over the chapel of St John the Evangelist, of the family of the Landi, he painted in fresco the angel Raphael and Tobias. In the year 1418 for Ricciardo di M. Niccolo Spinello, on the piazza front of the convent of S. Croce he painted a large scene in fresco of St Thomas examining the wounds of Jesus Christ in the presence of all the other apostles who are kneeling reverently at the sight. Next to this scene and also