In The Lives of the Artists, the venerated art historian, Giorgio Vasari, recounts an amusing tale. It is the story of a Florentine master-painter being bamboozled by his prodigious pupil and according to some, the episode preludes the stylistic shift from impressive classical imitations and emulations of Byzantine aesthetics to the phase of true-to-nature compositions that characterised the High Renaissance. Apocryphal or not, the anecdote is a charming reminiscence of extraordinary talent being discovered by an astonished instructor.