e place many
small figures in bronze after the same manner, which are in the hands of
the said Lord Duke.

But since the dates of the works of the Greeks, the Ethiopians, and the
Chaldaeans are as doubtful as our own, and perhaps more, and by reason of
the greater need of founding our judgment about these works on
conjectures, which, however, are not so feeble that they are in every
way wide of the mark, I believe that I strayed not at all from the truth
(and I think that everyone who will consent to consider this question
discreetly will judge as I did), when I said above that the origin of
these arts was nature herself, and the example or model, the most
beautiful fabric of the world, and the master, that divine light infused
by special grace into us, which has not only made us superior to the
other animals, but, if it be not sin to say it, like to God. And if in
our own times it has been seen (as I trust to be able to demonstrate a
little later by many examples) that simple children roughly reared in
the woods, with their only model in the beautiful pictures and
sculptures of nature, and by the vivacity of their wit, have begun by
themselves to make designs, how much more may we, nay, must we
confidently believe that these primitive men, who, in proportion as they
were less distant from their origin and divine creation, were thereby
the more perfect and of better intelligence, that they, by themselves,
having for guide nature, for master purest intellect, and for example
the so lovely model of the world, gave birth to these most noble arts,
and from a small beginning, little by little bettering them, brought
them at last to perfection? I do not, indeed, wish to deny that there
was one among them who was the first to begin, seeing that I know very
well that it must needs be that at some time and from some one man there
came the beginning; nor, also, will I deny that it may have been
possible that one helped another and taught and opened the way to
design, to colour, and relief, because I know that our art is all
imitation, of nature for the most part and then, because a man cannot by
himself rise so high, of those works that are executed by those whom he
judges to be better masters than himself. But I say surely that the
wishing to affirm dogmatically who this man or these men were is a thing
very perilous to judge, and perchance little necessary to know, provided
that we see the true root and origin wherefrom art was