- ly surprised at seeing productions of such merit from
an uninstructed hand, willingly took Lionardo as a pupil. He was soon much more astonished when he perceived the rapid progress his pupil made; he felt his own inferiority, and when Lionardo painted an angel in a picture of the Baptism of Christ, in S. Salvi at Vallombrosa, so much superior to the other figures that it rendered the inferiority of Verocchio apparent to all, he immediately relinquished the pencil for ever. This picture is now in the academy at Florence. The first original work by Lionardo, mentioned by Vasari, was the so-called Rotella del Fico, a round board of a fig-tree, upon which his father requested him to paint something for one of his tenants. Lionardo, wishing to astonish his father, determined to execute something extraordinary, that should produce the effect of the Head of Medusa; and having prepared the rotella, and covered it with plaster, he collected almost every kind of reptile, and composed from them a monster of most horrible appearance; it seemed alive, its eyes flashed fire, and it appeared to breathe destruction from its open mouth. The picture produced the desired effect upon his father, who thought it so wonderful that he carried it immediately to a picture dealer in Florence, sold it for a hundred ducats, and purchased for a trifle an ordinary piece for his tenant.
