was related. Their common ancestor Giorgio was known as a skilful potter. He handed down to his descendents a name which has become imperishable in connection with the history of Italian art. Lazzaro Vasari, the son of the potter, inherited the skill of his father, but carried on also the trade of a painter. 1 His thrift was sufficient to give him a respectable station in Arezzo, and enable him to help his brothers at Cor tona. His sister, who was married to Egidio di Ventura Signorelli of Cortona, was one of the partakers of his benevolence; and she was indebted to Lazzaro’s acquaint ance with Piero della Francesca for an apprenticeship for her son Luca in the atelier of that painter. 2 That Signorelli owes his style principally to this great Umbro-Florentine is not for a moment to be doubted. Under his tuition he paid more than usual attention to the study of anatomy which at that time was carried on almost openly in the burial-grounds of great cities; and though he probably did not fathom the depths, he intro duced into the stiffly and geometrically correct forms, of that master a greater liberty and force. He inaugurated a new phase in the science of Uccelli and Piero della Francesca, and prepared the way for its perfection in Michael Angelo. Signorelli in fact learnt to display the structure and mechanism of nude in immediate action with a power unattained in his day, and even went so far at last as to overstep the bounds of nature, and substitute for it unreal and conventional calculations of probabili ties. We judge of his daring play with the greatest dif ficulties of position that art can pretend to render, not merely by his pictures but by the remains of his original drawings from the naked model or from anatomical sub jects, in which a successful effort is made to suggest the internal formation, as well as imitate the external appear- 1 Vasari has written a short life of his great grandfather whom he describes as born in 1380 and de ceased in 1452. The works of Laz zaro who is said to have imitated Piero della Francesca have all per ished. (See Vas. IV. pp. 67—8.) 2 Vasari IV. 68.