us
Thasius and others. And there were others of a more impatient nature who
used to waste and break up the works that they had done with so much
trouble and study, on seeing that they were not paid for as they deserved;
like the painter who was commanded by Caesar to paint a picture, and having
asked a sum of money for it that Caesar would not give, perhaps in order to
effect his intention the better, the painter took the picture and was
about to break it up, his wife and children around him bemoaning such
great loss; but Caesar then delighted him, in a manner proper to a Caesar,
giving him double the sum which he had previously asked, telling him that
he was a fool if he expected to vanquish Caesar."

"Now, Senhor Michael," said Joao Capata, a Spaniard, "one thing I cannot
understand in the art of painting: it is customary at times to paint, as
one sees in many places in this city, a thousand monsters and animals,
some of them with faces of women and with legs and with tails of fishes,
and others with arms like tigers' legs, and others with men's faces; in
short, painting that which most delights the painter and which was never
seen in the world."

"I am pleased," said Michael, "to tell you why it is usual to paint that
which was never seen in the world, and how right such licence is, and how
true it is, for some who do not understand him are accustomed to say that
Horace, a lyric poet, wrote this verse in abuse of painters:

Pictoribus adque poetis
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit acqua potestas.
Scimus et hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim.

This verse does not in any way insult painters, but rather praises and
honours them; for it says that poets and painters have power to dare, I
mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of; and this good insight and
this power they have always had, for whenever a great painter (which very
seldom happens) does a work which appears to be false and lying, that
falsity is very true, and if he were to put more truth into it it would be
a lie, as he will never do a thing which cannot be in itself, nor make a
man's hand with ten fingers, nor paint on a horse the ears of a bull or
the hump of a camel, nor will he paint the foot of an elephant with the
same feeling as for that of a horse, nor in the arm or face of a child
will he put the senses of an old man, nor an ear nor an eye out of its
place by as much as the thickness of a finger, nor is he even permitted to