Jacopo Sansovino made the statue of a youthful "Bacchus" in close imitation of a lad called Pippo Fabro.

Posing for hours together naked in a cold studio, Pippo fell into ill health, and finally went mad.

In his madness he frequently assumed the attitude of the "Bacchus" to which his life had been sacrificed, and which is now his portrait.

The legend of the painter who kept his model on a cross in order that he might the more minutely represent the agonies of death by crucifixion, is but a mythus of the realistic method carried to its logical extremity.
Piero della Francesca, a native of Borgo San Sepolcro, and a pupil of Domenico Veneziano, must be placed among the painters of this period who advanced their art by scientific study.

He carried the principles of correct drawing and solid modelling as far as it is possible for the genius of man to do, and composed a treatise on perspective in the vulgar tongue.