Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/47

Rh as of human existence, to receive birth, to progress, to become old, and to die, may thus more perfectly comprehend and follow the progress of her second birth to the high perfection which she has once more attained in these our days. I have further thought, that if even it should chance at any time, which may God forbid, that by the neglect of men, the malice of time, or the will of heaven, which but rarely suffers human things to remain long without change, the arts should once again fall into their former decay, these my labours, both what has been said and what yet remains to be said, should they be found worthy of a more happy fortune, may avail to keep those arts in life, or may at least serve as an incentive to exalted minds to provide them with more efficient aids and support, so that, by my own good intentions, and the help of such friends, the arts may abound in those facilities, of which, it it be permitted to speak the truth freely, they have ever been destitute even to this day. But it is now time to come to the life of , who, as he first commenced the new mode of designing and painting, so it is just that he should also commence these lives, wherein I shall do my utmost to observe the order of the manner, rather than that of the time. In describing the forms and features of the artists, I shall be very brief, since their portraits, which I have collected at great cost and with much labour, will show what the appearance of each artist was in a better manner than could ever be done by words. And if the portraits of some are wanting, that is not my fault, but because they were not to be found. Again, if these likenesses should appear to some persons to be dissimilar to other portraits with which they are acquainted, let them consider that the likeness of a man in his eighteenth or twentieth year will never resemble one taken fifteen or twenty years later ; to this may be added, that drawn portraits are never so exact in resemblance as those coloured, besides which, engravers, who know little of design, always injure the faces from inability to manage those minutiae, on which it is that the perfect resemblance of the portrait depends, thus depriving the work of that perfection which is rarely if ever preserved in likenesses cut in wood. But enough ; the labour, expense, and industry, which I have bestowed in this matter, will be manifest to all those who,