Note 213 — Chapter XIV

Cf. i. 405. G. Milanesi, Sulla Storia dell’Arte Toscana, p. 292. Crowe and Cavalcaselle (iii. 159) strangely see in this commission a proof of the estimation in which Botticelli was held as an artist. These pictures of shame, with which tardy debtors were also punished, e.g. Ranuccio Farnese in 1425 (Gaye, l. c., i. 550) were not much relished by artists, and seem to have been only executed at a high price; in this case it was forty florins. Andrea del Castagno, to whom Vasari erroneously attributed these paintings, which were executed more than forty years after his death, received from a similar commission in 1445 the surname ‘degli Impiccati,’ which poor Andrea del Sarto seems to have likewise dreaded during the siege in 1530.