Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/24

 of contour—and in the first paintings, whatever these may have been, the softness, harmony, and that concord in discord, whence result light and shade. The first model, therefore, from which the first image of man arose, was a mass of earth; and not without significance, since the Divine Architect of time and nature, Himself all-perfect, designed to instruct us by the imperfection of the material, in the true method of attaining perfection, by repeatedly diminishing and adding to; as the best sculptors and painters are wont to do, for by perpetually taking from or adding to their models they conduct their work, from its first imperfect sketch, to that finish of perfection which they desire to attain. The Creator further adorned his model with the most vivid colours, and these same colours, being afterwards drawn by the painter from the mines of earth, enable him to imitate whatsoever object he may require for his picture. It is true, that we cannot with certainty declare what was accomplished in these arts and towards the imitation of so beautiful a model, by the men who lived before the deluge, although we are fully justified in believing that they produced works of every kind, both in sculpture and painting, since Belus, son of the proud Nimrod, about two hundred years after the deluge, caused the statue to be made, which, at a later period, gave birth to idolatry. His renowned daughter-in-law, moreover, Semiramis, queen of Babylon, when building that city, not only placed various figures of animals, drawn and coloured from nature, among the ornaments of her edifices, but added statues of herself and of her husband Ninus, with figures in bronze, representing her father-in-law, her mother-in-law, and the mother of the latter, calling them, as Diodorus relates, by the names of the Greeks, Jupiter, Juno, and Ops (which as yet were not in use). And it was probably from these statues that the Chaldeans learned to form the images of their gods, since we know, that a hundred and fifty years later, Rachael daughter of Laban, when flying from Mesopotamia with Jacob, her husband, stole the idols of her father, as is plainly set forth in the book of Genesis.

Nor were the Chaldeans the only people who devoted