small progress, seeing
that they reduced it to better proportion, and made their buildings not
only stable and stout, but also in some measure ornate, although it is
true that their ornamentation was confused and very imperfect, and, so
to speak, not greatly ornamental. For they did not observe that measure
and proportion in the columns that the art required, or distinguish one
Order from another, whether Doric, Corinthian, Ionic, or Tuscan, but
mixed them all together with a rule of their own that was no rule,
making them very thick or very slender, as suited them best; and all
their inventions came partly from their own brains, and partly from the
relics of the antiquities that they saw; and they made their plans
partly by copying the good, and partly by adding thereunto their own
fancies, which, when the walls were raised, had a very different
appearance. Nevertheless, whosoever compares their works with those
before them will see in them an improvement in every respect, although
he will also see some things that give no little displeasure to our own
times; as, for example, some little temples of brick, wrought over with
stucco, at S. Giovanni Laterano in Rome.

The same do I say of sculpture, which, in that first age of its new
birth, had no little of the good; for after the extinction of the rude
Greek manner, which was so uncouth that it was more akin to the art of
quarrying than to the genius of the craftsmen--their statues being
entirely without folds, or attitudes, or movement of any kind, and truly
worthy to be called stone images--when design was afterwards improved by
Giotto, many men also improved the figures in marble and stone, as did
Andrea Pisano and his son Nino and his other disciples, who were much
better than the early sculptors and gave their statues more movement and
much better attitudes; as also did those two Sienese masters, Agostino
and Agnolo, who made the tomb of Guido, Bishop of Arezzo, as it has been
said, and those Germans who made the facade at Orvieto. It is seen,
then, that during this time sculpture made a little progress, and that
there was given a somewhat better form to the figures, with a more
beautiful flow of folds in the draperies, and sometimes a better air in
the heads and certain attitudes not so stiff; and finally, that it had
begun to seek the good, but was nevertheless lacking in innumerable
respects, seeing that design was in no great perfection at that time and
there wa