and lead. On the application of fire to the whole,
this composition turns black, leaving the design strongly outlined.]

PREFACE TO THE LIVES

I have no manner of doubt that it is with almost all writers a common
and deeply-fixed opinion that sculpture and painting together were first
discovered, by the light of nature, by the people of Egypt, and that
there are certain others who attribute to the Chaldaeans the first rough
sketches in marble and the first reliefs in statuary, even as they also
give to the Greeks the invention of the brush and of colouring. But I
will surely say that of both one and the other of these arts the design,
which is their foundation, nay rather, the very soul that conceives and
nourishes within itself all the parts of man's intellect, was already
most perfect before the creation of all other things, when the Almighty
God, having made the great body of the world and having adorned the
heavens with their exceeding bright lights, descended lower with His
intellect into the clearness of the air and the solidity of the earth,
and, shaping man, discovered, together with the lovely creation of all
things, the first form of sculpture; from which man afterwards, step by
step (and this may not be denied), as from a true pattern, there were
taken statues, sculptures, and the science of pose and of outline; and
for the first pictures (whatsoever they were), softness, harmony, and
the concord in discord that comes from light and shade. Thus, then, the
first model whence there issued the first image of man was a lump of
clay, and not without reason, seeing that the Divine Architect of time
and of nature, being Himself most perfect, wished to show in the
imperfection of the material the way to add and to take away; in the
same manner wherein the good sculptors and painters are wont to work,
who, adding and taking away in their models, bring their imperfect
sketches to that final perfection which they desire. He gave to man that
most vivid colour of flesh, whence afterwards there were drawn for
painting, from the mines of the earth, the colours themselves for the
counterfeiting of all those things that are required for pictures. It is
true, indeed, that it cannot be affirmed for certain what was made by
the men before the Flood in these arts in imitation of so beautiful a
work, although it is reasonable to believe that they too carved and
painted in every manner; seeing that Belus, son of the proud