Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/15



TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND MOST EXCELLENT SIGNOR COSMO DE’ MEDICI, DUKE OF FLORENCE, MY MOST REVERED LORD. by your own natural magnanimity, and following the example of your illustrious progenitors, your Excellency has never ceased to favour and exalt every kind of talent, wheresoever it may be found, more particularly do you protect the arts of design; and since your gracious disposition towards those who exercise these arts, with your knowledge of, and pleasure in, their best and rarest works, is fully manifest, I have thought that this labour which I have undertaken—of writing the lives, describing the works, and setting forth the various relations of those who, when art had become extinct, first revived, and then gradually conducted her to that degree of beauty and majesty wherein we now see her, would not be other than pleasing to your Excellency.

And since almost all these masters were Tuscans, the greater part of them your own Florentines, many of whom were aided and encouraged by your illustrious ancestors with every sort of honour and reward, it may be truly affirmed that the arts were recalled to life in your own States—nay, in your own most fortunate house. Thus is the world indebted to your ancestors for the recovery of these noble arts, by which it is both ennobled and embellished.

Reflecting, therefore, on the gratitude which this age—the arts and their masters—owe alike to your ancestors, and to yourself, as the heir of their virtues, and their patronage of these professions,—reflecting also on what I owe them in my own person, whether as subject or servant, and for what I have learned from them. Brought up under the Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici, and under Alexander, your predecessor, and deeply honouring the memory of the magnanimous Ottaviano de’ Medici, by whom I was supported, befriended,