Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/362

348 know—by the ancient Romans, rendered it proper, as I thought, that it should be treated of at some length, which I have done accordingly. And if, after closing the life of Luca the elder, I have briefly stated other things relating to his descendants, who have lived even to our own days—this I have done that I may not have further occasion to recur to that matter. Luca moreover, be it observed, though he passed from one occupation to another—from marble to bronze, and from bronze to terra-cotta—was not induced to these changes by an idle levity, or because he was, as too many are found to be, capricious, unstable, and discontented with his vocation, but because he was by nature disposed to the search after new discoveries, and also because his necessities compelled him to seek a mode of occupation which should be in harmony with his tastes, while it was less fatiguing and more profitable. "Whence the arts of design and the world generally, were enriched by the possession of a new, useful, and beautiful decoration—from which, too, the master himself derived perpetual fame and undying glory. Luca della Robbia drew well and gracefully, as may be seen by certain drawings in our book, the lights of which are in white lead; and in one of them is his own portrait, made with great care by his own hand, looking at himself in a mirror.

would have proved himself the most original and inventive genius ever devoted to the art of painting, from the time of Giotti downwards, had he bestowed but half the labour on the delineation of men and animals that he lost and threw away over the minutiae of perspective. For, although these studies are meritorious and good in their way, yet he who is addicted to them beyond measure, wastes his time, exhausts his intellect, and weakens the force of his conceptions, insomuch that he frequently diminishes the fertility and readiness