Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/365

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important was the progress towards perfection which was secured to the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, by means of the excellent masters whose works we have described in the second part of these Lives. Eule, order, proportion, design, and manner, have all been added by them to the characteristics exhibited by those of the first period, if not in the utmost perfection, yet making so near an approach to the truth, that the masters of the third period, of which we are henceforward to treat, have been enabled, by the light thus afibrded them, to reach that summit which the best and most renowned of modern works prove them to have attained.

But to the end that the character of the amelioration effected bv the above-mentioned artists, the masters of the second period, namely, may be more clearly understood, it may not be out of place to describe, in few words, the five distinctive properties, or characteristics, which I have just enumerated, and briefly to declare the origin of that truly good manner, which, surpassing that of the older period, has contributed to render the modern era so glorious. To begin with the first-mentioned, therefore; the Rule in