Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/45

Rh strous figures, of which they traced the rude outline only in colour. These artists—the best as being the only ones—were conducted into Italy, whither they carried sculpture and painting, as well as mosaic, in such manner as they were themselves acquainted with them : these they taught, in their own coarse and rude style, to the Italians, who practised them, after such fashion, as I have said, and will further relate, down to a certain period. The men of those times, unaccustomed to works of greater perfection than those thus set before their eyes, admired them accordingly, and, barbarous as they were, yet imitated them as the most excellent models. It was only by slow degrees that those who came after, being aided in some places by the subtlety of the air around them, could begin to raise themselves from these depths ; when, towards 1250, Heaven, moved to pity by the noble spirits which the Tuscan soil was producing every day, restored them to their primitive condition. It is true that those who lived in the times succeeding the ruin of Rome, had seen remnants of arches, colossi, statues, pillars, storied columns, and other works of art, not wholly destroyed by the fires and other devastations ; yet they had not known how to avail themselves of this aid, nor had they derived any benefit from it, until the time specified above. When the minds then awakened, becoming capable of distinguishing the good from the worthless, and abandoning old methods, returned to the imitation of the antique, with all the force of their genius, and all the power of their industry.

But that my readers may the better comprehend what it is that I call “old”, and what “antique”, I add that the antique are works executed before the time of Constantine, in Corinth, Athens, Rome, and other far-famed cities, down to the times of Nero, Vespasian, Trajan, Adrian, and Antonine ; “old” are such as were executed from the days of St. Silvester, downwards by a certain residue of the Greeks, whose profession was rather that of dyeing than painting. For the greater part of the excellent earlier artists being extirpated in those times of war, there remained, as I have said, nothing to these Greeks (“old”, but not “antique”) save only the first rude outlines on a