INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD PART.[1]
Truly important was the progress towards perfection which was secured to the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, by means of the excellent masters whose works we have described in the second part of these Lives. Eule, order, proportion, design, and manner, have all been added by them to the characteristics exhibited by those of the first period, if not in the utmost perfection, yet making so near an approach to the truth, that the masters of the third period, of which we are henceforward to treat, have been enabled, by the light thus afibrded them, to reach that summit which the best and most renowned of modern works prove them to have attained.
But to the end that the character of the amelioration effected bv the above-mentioned artists, the masters of the second period, namely, may be more clearly understood, it may not be out of place to describe, in few words, the five distinctive properties, or characteristics, which I have just enumerated, and briefly to declare the origin of that truly good manner, which, surpassing that of the older period, has contributed to render the modern era so glorious. To begin with the first-mentioned, therefore;[2] the Rule in
- ↑ Bottari, in his first edition of our author (Rome, 1759), has displaced this introduction simply for the purpose of equalizing the form of his work, but he has thereby deprived it of a portion of its significance and propriety, since Vasari divides his work into three parts, to each of which he has prefixed its appropriate introduction. In the first of these Proemia, for example, he treats of the revival of art from Cimabue to Masaccio and his contemporaries; in the second, of its development from Masaccio to Luca Signorelli; and in the third, he finally describes the period of that high cultivation and triumphant reign of art, which from the time of Leonardo da Vinci to the middle of the sixteenth century, was rendered memorable by the production of the most valuable works whereby the domain of the arts has yet been enriched.
- ↑ The following definitions are far from possessing the clearness and precision that might be desired, but the student of art will know how to supply all the deficiencies of our author; and the reader who may desire to be further enlightened, will find ample materials, in the rich variety of authors who have treated the subject, for the rectifications that cannot here find place.
