e octagonal Temple of the Angeli; in the most fanciful
Church and Convent of the Abbey of Fiesole, and in the magnificent and
vast beginning of the Pitti Palace; besides the great and commodious
edifice that Francesco di Giorgio made in the Palace and Church of the
Duomo at Urbino, and the very strong and rich Castle of Naples, and the
impregnable Castle of Milan, not to mention many other notable buildings
of that time. And although there were not therein that delicacy and a
certain exquisite grace and finish in the mouldings, and certain
refinements and beauties in the carving of the leafage and in making
certain extremities in the foliage, and other points of perfection,
which all came later, as it will be seen in the Third Part, wherein
there will follow those who will attain to all that perfection, whether
in grace, or refinement, or abundance, or dexterity, to which the old
architects did not attain; none the less, they can be safely called
beautiful and good. I do not call them yet perfect, because later there
was seen something better in that art, and it appears to me that I can
reasonably affirm that there was something wanting in them. And although
there are in them some parts so miraculous that nothing better has yet
been done in our own times, nor will be, peradventure, in times to come,
such as, for example, the lantern of the cupola of S. Maria del Fiore,
and, in point of grandeur, the cupola itself, wherein Filippo was
emboldened not only to equal the ancients in the extent of their
structures, but also to excel them in the height of the walls; yet we
are speaking generically and universally, and we must not deduce the
excellence of the whole from the goodness and perfection of one thing
alone.

This I can also say of painting and sculpture, wherein very rare works
of the masters of that second age may still be seen to-day, such as
those in the Carmine by Masaccio, who made a naked man shivering with
cold, and lively and spirited figures in other pictures; but in general
they did not attain to the perfection of the third, whereof we will
speak at the proper time, it being necessary now to discourse of the
second, whose craftsmen, to speak first of the sculptors, advanced so
far beyond the manner of the first and improved it so greatly, that they
left little to be done by the third. They had a manner of their own, so
much more graceful and more natural, and so much richer in order, in
design, and in propor