Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/25

Rh themselves to sculpture and painting ; the Egyptians also laboured with great zeal in these arts, as is proved by the wondrous sepulchre of that ancient monarch, Osimandyas, described at length by Diodorus, and, as may be clearly inferred from the severe law enacted by Moses at the departure from Egypt, namely, that no image whatever should be raised to God, under pain of death. And when this lawgiver, descending from the Mount, found the golden calf set up and voluntarily adored by his people, he not only broke and reduced it to powder, in his great indignation at the sight of divine honours paid to a mere animal, but commanded that many thousands of the guilty Israelites, who had committed that idolatry, should be slain by the hands of the Levites. But that the worship, and not the formation of statues, was the deadly crime thus deprecated, we read in the book of Exodus, where the art of design and statuary, not only in marble, but in all kinds of metals, was given by the mouth of God Himself to Bezaleel, of the tribe of Judah, and to Aholiab, of the tribe of Dan, who were appointed to make the two cherubim of gold, the candlesticks, the veil, and the fringes of the sacerdotal vestments; with all the beautiful castings for the Tabernacle; and these embellishments were executed for no other purpose than to induce the people to contemplate and admire them.

It was from the works seen before the deluge, then, that the pride of man acquired the art of constructing statues of all those to whom they desired to attribute immortal fame; and the Greeks, who account for the origin of art in various methods, declare, according to Diodorus, that the Ethiopians constructed the first statues, affirming, that from them the Egyptians acquired the art, and that the Greeks derived it from the Egyptians. That sculpture and painting had attained their perfection in Homer’s time, is rendered obvious by the manner in which that divine poet speaks of the shield of Achilles, and which he sets before our eyes with so much art, that it is rather sculptured and painted, than merely described. Lactantius Firmianus attributes the discovery to Prometheus, who moulded the human form of clay, after the example of the Almighty himself, and the art