Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/28

14 origin; seeing that, as we have said before, they were found to exist among the Chaldeans from the earliest times, and that some ascribe their origin to the Ethiopians, while the Greeks attribute it to themselves. It might, perhaps, be not unreasonable to suppose that the arts existed, from times still more remote, among the Tuscans, as our Leon. Batista Alberti maintains, and to the soundness of this opinion the marvellous sepulchre of Porsenna, at Chiusi, bears no unimportant testimony ; tiles in terra-cotta having been dug from the earth there, between the walls of the labyrinth, on which were figures in mezzo-relievo, so admirably executed, and in so good a manner, that all might perceive the arts to be far from their first attempts when these were formed ; nay, rather, from the perfection of the work, it might be fairly inferred that they were nearer to their highest summit than to their origin. Additional proof of this may be daily seen in the relics of red and black vases, constantly found at Arezzo, which were executed, as the manner would lead one to judge, about those times, and which, adorned as they are with the most graceful little figures and scenes in intaglio and basso- relievo, as also with numerous little masks in medallions delicately finished, must have been executed by masters who, even in that early age, were profoundly skilled and perfectly well practised in those arts. We are further assured, by the statues discovered at Viterbo, in the beginning of the pontificate of Alexander VI, that sculpture was in high esteem, and no inconsiderable perfection, in Tuscany, for although we cannot precisely determine the period when they were executed, the conjecture that they are all of the most remote antiquity is yet highly probable and well supported; since, from the character of the figures, the mode of burial, and the style of the buildings, no less than from the inscriptions, in Tuscan letters, found on them, it is obvious that they were executed in most remote times, and at a period when all things, in those lands, were in a prosperous and powerful condition. But what need have we of further or clearer proof than we now possess? for have we not found, even in our own days—that is, in 1554—while excavating ditches and raising walls for the fortifications of Arezzo, that figure of bronze, representing the Chimaera of Bellerophon, from the execution of which we clearly perceive the high perfection in which that art ex-