Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/59

Rh few little things done by him in miniature, from which, although they may now seem rather crude than otherwise, we may yet perceive how greatly the art of design was improved by his labours.

spoken, in my Preface to these Lives, of certain edifices, old, but not antique, of which I did not name the architects, because they were not known to me, I will now enumerate, in this introduction to the life of, some few other buildings, erected in his time or shortly before it, of which the authors are also unknown, and will afterwards speak of such as were built during his lifetime, and the architects of which are either known or can be ascertained from the mode of the building, and from different notices, writings, and inscriptions, left by them in the works they constructed. Nor will such discourse be out of place; for although these buildings are neither beautiful nor in a good style, but