Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/196

182 lives, but what is more important, they secure never-dying fame. Still more fortunate are they who to such dispositions add a character and manners calculated to render them acceptable to all men; but happy above all men is he (I am here alluding to artists) who, with natural talent cultivated by education, with a noble disposition and refinement of manners, possesses also the advantage of living at the same time with any renowned author, from whom, in return for some little portrait, or similar expression of artistic courtesy, he obtains the reward of being once mentioned in his writings, thereby-securing to himself eternal honour and fame. This advantage is above all to be desired by those who practise the arts of design, and most especially by the painter, since his work, lying simply on the surface, and being dependent on colours which cannot endure, may not hope for that perpetuity which is secured to the sculptor by his bronze and marble, as it is to the architect by the durability of his erections. Great, then, was the good fortune of Simon, in that he lived at the same time with Messer Francesco Petrarca, and that he further chanced to meet that love-devoted poet at the court of Avignon. For Petrarch, being desirous of possessing the image of his Madonna Laura from the hand of Maestro Simon, and having received it, beautiful as he could imagine or desire, at once immortalized the memory of the painter in two sonnets, one of which begins thus:— “ Per mirar Policleto a prova fiso Con gli altri, che ebber fama di quell’arte”; and the second commences as follows: “ Quando giunse a Simon l’alto concetto, Ch’a mio nome gli pose in man lo stile.” For it may be truly said that these Sonnets, and the mention made of the painter in the fifth book of Petrarch’s familiar letters, and in the epistle beginning “Non sum nescius,” have given more lustre to the poor life of Maestro Simon, than it has received, or ever will receive, from all his works. .