These cut-up cartoons became the property of the whole workshop, and were used by the pupils when they wished.

No doubt the roughness of this treatment soon destroyed many of them.

Vasari, who cannot have seen the Cartoon of Pisa, gives us a long, enthusiastic description of it, ending with some helpful notes as to the materials with which it was drawn, and an account of its effect upon contemporary artists.

He continues: "In addition, you discovered groups of figures sketched in various methods, some outlined with charcoal, some shaded with lines, some rubbed in, some heightened with white-lead, the master having sought to prove his empire over all materials of draughtsmanship.( 84) The craftsmen of design remained therewith astonished and dumbfounded, recognising the fullest reaches of their art revealed to them by this unrivalled masterpiece.

Those who examined the forms I have described, painters who inspected and compared them with works hardly less divine, affirm that never in the history of human achievement was any product of man's brain seen like to them in mere supremacy.