a male child whom he determined to call Niccolò, after the name of his own father. Though nothing more than a poor journeyman, Raffaello, perceiving the boy to have a good understanding and ready genius, resolved that he should be early taught, not only to read well, but to write and cast accounts also. He therefore sent him to school, but it chanced that the child, possessing extraordinary vivacity, and being animated, nay, even violent in all his actions, could never find room enough to satisfy himself, proving indeed a very devil, whether in school or among the children who were his companions, and keeping himself as well as all others in perpetual movement and turmoil, he thus fairly lost his name of Niccolò, and became so exclusively known by that of Tribolo,[1] as to be ever afterwards called the latter name and no other by every one.[2]
This Tribolo, then, having grown to a certain age, the father, partl}r by way of turning his services to account, and partly to restrain the vivacity of the boy, took him into his workshop and taught him his own trade; but perceiving in a few months that this was not the vocation of the youth, and that he became thin, pale, and otherwise out of health, he began to think that if he would preserve the life of his son, he must no longer permit him to support the heavier labours of his own occupation, and so set him to wood carving. But Raffaello, having heard that without drawing, which is the foundation of all the arts, the boy could not possibly become a good master in that calling, determined that he should begin by employing his time in drawing, wherefore he set him to copy various things, now cornices for example, now foliage or grottesche, and now other objects, matters all needful to the vocation for which he was destined.
Proceeding thus, Raffaello perceived that the youth was equally well served b}r liis head and hand, but considering, like a person of judgment as he was, that with him Niccolò
- ↑ Tribolo, a thistle, also a tormentor, a scapegrace.
- ↑ Bottari observes that the custom of calling men by some bye-name prevailed to such an extent in Florence, as not unfrequently to cause the loss of the family name. According to Baldinucci, Niccolò retained his father’s byename also, and was sometimes called Niccolò de1 Pericoli. Anguillesi, in his Notizie Storiche de’ R. R. Palazzi e Ville, a work compiled for the most part from unedited documents, calls this artist Niccolò Braccini, but without informing us where he found this family name.
