Preface to the Second Edition
The lists have been thoroughly revised, and some of them considerably increased. Botticini, Pier Francesco Fiorentino, and Amico di Sandro have been added, partly for the intrinsic value of their work, and partly because so many of their pictures are exposed to public admiration under greater names. Botticini sounds too much like Botticelli not to have been confounded with him, and Pier Francesco has similarly been confused with Piero della Francesca. Thus, Botticini’s famous “Assumption,” painted for Matteo Palmieri, and now in the National Gallery, already passed in Vasari’s time for a Botticelli, and the attribution at Karlsruhe of the quaint and winning “Nativity” to the sublime, unyielding Piero della Francesca is surely nothing more than the echo of the real author’s name.
Most inadequate accounts, yet more than can be given here, of Pier Francesco, as well as of Botticini, will be found in the Italian edition of Cavalcaselle’s Storia della Pittura in Italia, Vol. VII. The latter painter will doubtless be dealt with fully and ably in Mr. Herbert P. Horne’s forthcoming book on Botticelli, and in this connection I am happy to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Horne for having persuaded me to study Botticini. Of Amico di Sandro I have written at length in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, June and July, 1899.
Fiesole, November, 1899.