sity, and up to a certain point I could perhaps show that the above-named reading of your works has enabled me to do some little even in these matters.[1] For the present I have nevertheless contented myself with the limning of portraits, and the rather as the numerous duties, necessarily enforced upon me by mine office, do not leave me leisure for more.
“It was my wish, that I might show you my gratitude for having by your means acquired a most beautiful language, and learned to paint, to have sent you herewith a small portrait of my face, taken by myself with the aid of a mirror, but I am doubtful whether this my letter will find you in Rome or not, seeing that you may perhaps now be at Florence or in your native city of Arezzo.’^ In addition to the above, this letter contains many other particulars which need not be repeated here, and in other epistles that have followed, the writer has begged me, in the name of many able men of those countries, who have heard that these Lives are about to be reprinted, to add three Treatises on sculpture, painting, and architecture to the same, with designs, by way of elucidation, where such might be needful, and so to enforce the rules of art, as Albert Diirer, Sebastian Serlio, and Leon Battista Alberti have done, and whose writings have been translated by the Florentine gentleman and academician, Messer Cosimo Bartoli.
And this I would have done more than willingly, but my intention has been solely to write the Lives and record the works of our Artists, and not to teach the arts, or the method by which the lines are to be drawn in painting, architecture, and sculpture. The work has besides for many causes already grown much upon my hands, and has perhaps become too long, even without the addition of all those three Treatises thus proposed to me. Yet I could not have abridged more closely, or done otherwise than I have done, since it was not fitting ^that I should defraud any man of his due praise and honour, nor yet that the world should be deprived of the
- ↑ The writer of this courteous and gratifying letter, which it rejoices us to imagine our good Giorgio as reading, here alludes to the practical Treatise of our Author, which does not appear in the present edition, which comprises the “Lives” only; his letters and other works not entering into our present plans.
