had been trouble in the house of Paolo the ex-muleteer, and Baccio's
already serious mind had been awed by the sight of death. His little
brother, Domenico, died in 1486 at seven years of age. His father,
Paolo, died in 1487; thus Baccio, at the age of twelve or thirteen, was
left the head of the family, and the supporter of his stepmother and
her babes. This may account for his leaving Cosimo so young, and
setting up his studio with Mariotto as his companion, in his own house
at the gate of S. Pier Gattolini; this partnership began presumably
about the year 1490.

Conscious that they were not perfected by Cosimo's teaching, they both
set themselves to undergo a strict discipline in art, and, friends as
they were, their paths began to diverge from this point. Their natural
tastes led them to opposite schools--Baccio to the sacred shrine of art
in the shadowed church, Mariotto to the greenery and sunshine of the
Medici garden, where beauty of nature and classic treasures were heaped
in profusion; whose loggie [Footnote: Arched colonnades.] glowed with
the finest forms of Greek sculpture, resuscitated from the tombs of
ages to inspire newer artists to perfection, but alas! also to debase
the aim of purely Christian art.

Baccio's calm devotional mind no doubt disliked the turmoil of this
garden, crowded with spirited youths; the tone of pagan art was not in
accordance with his ideal, and so he learned from Masaccio and Lippi
that love of true form and harmonious composition, which he perfected
afterwards by a close study of Leonardo da Vinci, whose principles of
_chiaroscuro_ he seems to have completely carried out. With this
training he rose to such great celebrity even in his early manhood,
that Rosini [Footnote: Rosini, _Storia della Pittura_, chap. xvii.
p. 48.] calls him "the star of the Florentine school in Leonardo and