 He was tall, strong and a fine athlete who could ride the wildest horse and jump over a man's head.He distinguished himself as a writer while he was still a child at school, and by the age of twenty had written a play which was successfully passed off as a genuine piece of Classical literature.In 1435, he began his first major written work, "Della pittura," which was inspired by the burgeoning pictorial art in Florence in the early 15th century.