Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/366

358 architecture was the process of measuring works of antiquity, and considering the plans and ground-work of ancient edifices in the construction of modern buildings. Order was the division of one mode from another, to the end that each might have the parts appropriate to itself, and that the Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Tuscan might no longer be mingled and interchanged. Proportion was the universal law prevailing in architecture as in sculpture, which demanded that all bodies should be exact and correct in form with all the members justly and duly organized: this was equally enforced in painting. Design was the imitation of the most beautiful parts of nature in all figures, whether sculptured or painted, and this requires that the hand and mind of the artist should be capable of reproducing, with the utmost truth and exactitude, on paper, panel, or such other level surface as may be used, whatever the eye beholds—a remark that also applies to works of relief in sculpture. Finally, Manner attained its highest perfection from the practice of frequently copying the most beautiful objects, and of afterwards combining the most perfect, whether the hand, head, torso, or leg, and joining them together to make one figure, invested with every beauty in its highest perfection: to do this in every figure for all the works executed, is what is called fine manner. These things neither Giotto, nor any other of the early masters, treated of in the first period, had done, although they had discovered the sources of all the difficulties in art, and even attained to a superficial knowledge thereof: thus their drawing was more correct, and made a closer approach to nature than had previously been seen; they displayed more harmony in colouring, and a better disposition of their figures in historical composition, with many other qualities of which we have sufficiently discoursed. The masters of the second period, although they effected very important ameliorations in art, as to all the characteristics described above, were yet not so far advanced as to be capable of conducting it to its ultimate perfection; there was yet wanting to their rule a certain freedom which,