Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/29

Rh isted among the Tuscans, even to the most remote antiquity. The origin of this work is made manifest, not only by its Etruscan manner, but still more clearly by the letters inscribed on one of the paws, which, as they are but few, may be conjectured (for the Etruscan language is wholly unknown in these days) to record the name of the master and that of the figure: perhaps the date may be also given, as was usual in those times. The figure itself has been deposited, for its beauty and high antiquity, by the Lord Duke Cosmo, in the hall of the new rooms, lately added to his palace, and wherein certain passages from the life of Pope Leo X have been painted by myself. Many figures in bronze, besides the Chimaera, were discovered in the same place, all in the same manner, and now in the possession of my Lord the Duke. Upon the whole, then, as the state of art among the Greeks, Ethiopians, and Chaldeans, is equally dubious as among ourselves —nay, perhaps even more so—and as, at best, we have but the guidance of conjecture in matters of this kind, although this is not so entirely destitute of foundation as to be in danger of departing very materially from the truth, so I do not believe that I wandered far from the true solution, when I suggested above that the origin of these arts was Nature herself—the first image or model, the most beautiful fabric of the world—and the master, that divine light infused into us by special grace, and which has made us not only superior to all other animals, but has exalted us, if it be permitted so to speak, to the similitude of God Himself. This is my belief, and I think that every man who shall maturely consider the question, will be of my opinion. And if it has been seen in our times —as I hope to demonstrate presently by various examples— that simple children, rudely reared in the woods, have begun to practise the arts of design with no other model than those beautiful pictures and sculptures furnished by Nature, and no other teaching than their own genius—how much more easily may we believe that the first of mankind, in whom nature and intellect were all the more perfect in proportion as they were less removed from their first origin and divine parentage,—that these men, I say, having Nature for their guide, and the unsullied purity of their fresh intelligence for