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288 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Chap. XI. He not only revelled in the details of armour, saddlery, and plumes, which marked the panoplies of his time, but he studied horses, dogs, and birds. His partiality to the latter is the origin of his nickname. He even attempted to depict the strangest animals; and Vasari relates of him that, in the ceiling of the Loggia de’ Peruzzi at Florence, he figured the elements as four animals; the earth as a mole, water as a fish, and fire as a salamander. He should have symbolized air as a chameleon, but deceived by a similarity of structure in the name, he substituted for the lesser creature a camel. 1 In the next piece, at the Louvre, in which a leader in armour, on a sable horse, and with a high hat, has drawn his sword, and prepares to follow a first line of knights, starting with couchant lances, the action is more calm, yet the forms are still wooden. The movement of the foot men in the intervals of the cavalry are true; but, in them, as in the group of riders in armour at the right side, there is still a rigidity approaching that of stone. The best of these panels is that of the National Gallery, 2 re presenting the battle of S. Egidio, fought by Malatesta, who appears, with his youthful nephew Galeazzo at his side, issuing the order to advance. Without any colour in consequence of abrasion, without swing in the drawing, because of the sharpness and broken quality of the out lines, without dignity, because the figures are feeble and lean, and the costume of the time is not picturesque, this piece may still command attention. The heads of Malatesta and Galeazzo are modelled in soft and well fused tones of rosy hue and spare impasto; the shadows are slightly cold, but the whole is executed in the most careful style after the technical method observable in the works of Maso- lino and Fra Filippo. Galeazzo in profile, a boy of fair hair and complexion gorgeously attired in a gold embroider ed dress, 3 is a happy effort of the artist’s pencil. Uccelli 1 Vas. Vol. III. p. 97. 2 No. 683. 3 Note in the execution of de tails of costume, that the stuff and gold embroideries are glazed with a general warm and fluid tint.