Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/18

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TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND MOST EXCELLENT SIGNOR COSMO DE’ MEDICI, DUKE OF FLORENCE AND SIENA, HIS MOST HONOURED LORD. years have now elapsed since I presented to your most illustrious Excellency the then but roughly sketched Lives of the most renowned Painters, Sculptors, and Architects; and now they once again return to present themselves before you, not indeed wholly finished, yet so changed from what they first were,—so enriched by the many works of which I had not been able to obtain an earlier knowledge, and so much more complete, that there remains, in my opinion, nothing more that my power can supply, to be desired for them. Again I present these Lives to you, therefore, most illustrious and most truly excellent My Lord Duke, with the addition of other noble and very famous artists, who, between the former period and the present, have passed from the miseries of this life to a better; as well as of some, who, though still in life amongst us, have so nobly laboured in their vocation, that they are most worthy to be had in eternal remembrance. And of a truth it has been of no small advantage to many, that I have been permitted, by the mercy of Him through whom live all things, to survive until I have been able to write this book almost anew; for, as I have expunged many things, which in my absence and without my knowledge, had been printed in the former one, I know not how, so I have also altered and added many things, which, although useful and even necessary, were previously wanting. And if the portraits of the many distinguished men, which I have added to this work, and of which great part have been procured by the favour and aid of your Excellency, are not always true to the life, and have not those characteristic expressions, or that resemblance more commonly given by the vivacity of colour, this is not because the drawings have not been made from the life, or are not the real and natural likeness of the artist, but arises from the fact, that they have been sent to me in great part by the friends that I possess in various places, and have not been taken by a master’s hand. I have also endured no small in-