Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/505

Rh wise to be remarked, that Luca exercised much care as well as ingenuity in the execution of his works, since whatever portion of the picture recedes into the distance has precisely the degree of force required, each being less clearly made out as the distance increases, exactly as we find it in nature, becoming gradually lost to the sight, as it is known that natural objects become less and less clear to the eyes of the observer with increased distance: at a word, he treats every part so judiciously and with so much softness and harmony that better effects could not be produced, even, with colours; the results of this master’s careful thought have indeed opened the eyes of many subsequent artists. Luca likewise executed numerous plates of a small size, with many pictures of the Madonna; the twelve Apostles surrounding our Saviour Christ, various Saints, male and female, with arms, as, for example, helmets, and other objects of similar character. There is one also, and which is very fine, of a peasant who is in the act of having a tooth drawui, and is so completely absorbed by the pain which he suffers that he takes no notice of a woman who is robbing him of his purse All these productions of Albert Dürer and Luca have given rise to many other and similar works, which have been since executed by various Flemish and German artists.

But to return at length to Marcantonio. Arrived in Rome, he made a copper-plate engraving of a most beautiful design by Raffacllo da Urbino, the Roman Lucrezia namely, who is destroying her own life: this he executed in so fine a manner and with so much care, that the work having been carried by some of his friends to Raffaello, the latter determined to permit some of his own designs to be published by engravings, and the first that he selected for this purpose was one which he had previously made of the Judgment of Paris, wherein Raphael had taken it into his head to delineate the Chariot of the Sun, the Nymphs of the Woods, those of the Fountains, and those of the Rivers, with vases, the helms of ships, and other fanciful and beautiful representations, the whole of