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art; for this reason, having undertaken to write the history of the most
noble craftsmen, in order to assist the arts in so far as my powers
permit, and besides that to honour them, I have held to the best of my
ability, in imitation of men so able, to the same method, and I have
striven not only to say what these craftsmen have done, but also, in
treating of them, to distinguish the better from the good and the best
from the better, and to note with no small diligence the methods, the
feeling, the manners, the characteristics, and the fantasies of the
painters and sculptors; seeking with the greatest diligence in my power
to make known, to those who do not know this for themselves, the causes
and origins of the various manners and of that amelioration and that
deterioration of the arts which have come to pass at diverse times and
through diverse persons. And because at the beginning of these Lives I
spoke of the nobility and antiquity of these arts, in so far as it was
then necessary for our subject, leaving on one side many things from
Pliny and other authors whereof I could have availed myself, had I not
wished--contrary, perhaps, to the judgment of many--to leave each man
free to see the fantasies of others in their proper sources; it appears
to me expedient to do at present that which, in avoidance of tedium and
prolixity (mortal enemies of attention), it was not permitted me to do
then--namely, to declare more diligently my mind and intention, and to
demonstrate to what end I have divided this book of the Lives into Three
Parts.

Now it is true that greatness in the arts springs in one man from
diligence, in another from study, in this man from imitation, in that
man from knowledge of the sciences, which all render assistance to the
arts, and in some from all the aforesaid sources together, or from the
greater part of them; yet I, none the less, having discoursed
sufficiently, in the Lives of the individuals, of their methods of art,
their manners, and the causes of their good, better, and best work, will
discourse of this matter in general terms, and rather of the
characteristics of times than of persons; having made a distinction and
division, in order not to make too minute a research, into Three Parts,
or we would rather call them ages, from the second birth of these arts
up to the century wherein we live, by reason of that very manifest
difference that is seen between one and another of them. In the first