it with all the kinds of birds together; to water,
its clearness, the fishes, the mosses, the foam, the undulations of the
waves, the ships, and all its various moods; and to the earth, the
mountains, the plains, the plants, the fruits, the flowers, the animals,
and the buildings; with so great a multitude of things and so great a
variety of their forms and of their true colours, that nature herself
many a time stands in a marvel thereat; and finally, giving to fire so
much of its heat and light that it is clearly seen burning things, and,
almost quivering with its flames, rendering luminous in part the
thickest darkness of the night. Wherefore it appears to them that they
can justly conclude and declare that contrasting the difficulties of the
sculptors with their own, the labours of the body with those of the
mind, the imitation of the mere form with the imitation of the
impression, both of quantity and of quality, that strikes the eye, the
small number of the subjects wherein sculpture can and does demonstrate
its excellence with the infinite number of those which painting presents
to us (not to mention the perfect preservation of them for the intellect
and the distribution of them in those places wherein nature herself has
not done so); and finally, weighing the whole content of the one with
that of the other, the nobility of sculpture, as shown by the intellect,
the invention, and the judgment of its craftsmen, does not correspond by
a great measure to that which painting enjoys and deserves. And this is
all that on the one side and on the other has come to my ears that is
worthy of consideration.

But because it appears to me that the sculptors have spoken with too
much heat and the painters with too much disdain, and seeing that I have
long enough studied the works of sculpture and have ever exercised
myself in painting, however small, perhaps, may be the fruit that is to
be seen of it; none the less, by reason of that which it is worth, and
by reason of the undertaking of these writings, judging it my duty to
demonstrate the judgment that I have ever made of it in my own mind (and
may my authority avail the most that it can), I will declare my opinion
surely and briefly over such a dispute, being convinced that I will not
incur any charge of presumption or of ignorance, seeing that I will not
treat of the arts of others, as many have done before to the end that
they might appear to the crowd intelligent in all th