“Another manuscript copy of this compilation was in the possession of P. Orlandi, from whence it passed into the library of Smith[1].
“Cellini, in a discourse published by Morelli, says[2], that he possessed a copy of a book of De Vinci on Perspective, which he communicated to Serlio, and that this latter published from it all that he could comprehend. Might not this be the tract which Gori announces to be in the library of the Academy of Cortona[3]?”
The reputation in which the Treatise on Painting ought to be held, is not now for the first time to be settled; its merit has been acknowledged by the best judges, though at that time it laboured under great disadvantage from the want of a proper arrangement. In the present publication that objection is removed, and the attempt has been favourable to the work itself, as it has shewn it, by bringing together the several chapters that related to each other, to be a much more complete and connected treatise than was before supposed. Notwithstanding however the fair estimation in which it has always stood, and which is no more than its due, one person has been found hardy enough to endeavour, though
