Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/244

236 in art, by the examples he left them in manner, design, and colouring; his works exhibiting fewer errors than those of any other Florentine; seeing that Andrea, as I have said before, understood the management of light and shade most perfectly, causing the objects depicted to take their due degree of prominence, or to retire within the shadows, with infinite ability, and painting his pictures with the utmost grace and animation. He likewise taught the method of working in fresco with perfect harmony, and without much retouching a secco^ which causes all his pictures in that manner to appear as if they were executed in a day; wherefore this master may serve as an example to the Tuscan artists on all occasions. He is entitled to the highest praise among the most eminent of their number, and well merits to receive the palm of honour.

It is a remarkable fact, that whenever women have at any time devoted themselves to the study of any art or the exercise of any talent, they have for the most part acquitted themselves well; nay, they have even acquired fame and distinction, a circumstance of which innumerable examples might easily be adduced. There is no one to whom their excellence in the general economy of life is unknown, but even in warlike enterprises they have sometimes been seen to distinguish themselves, as witness, Camilla, Arpalice, Valasca, Tomiris, Panthesilea, Molpadia, Orithya, Antiope, Hippolyta, Semiramis, Zenobia, and, finally, Mark Antony’s Fulvia, who so frequently armed herself, as the historian