giving all the expression of the passions, which sculpture also has, as far as features go, it gives them the proper colour, which is singularly serviceable in characterising: it presents a perfect imitation of breath, water, winds, tempests, rain, clouds, hail, snow, ice, thunder and lightning, night, twilight, moonlight, the shining of the stars, light, the different sorts of air, whether pure or loaded with vapour, the heat more or less great of the sun or a fire, the degrees (strong or slight) of natural or artificial light, and finally the sun itself in all its splendour.

"The wisdom or folly of painting is formed in the head; and this fine art receives either its life or death there. It gives both with their different degrees. The brilliant freshness of colours, of youth, and health: the condition more or less languishing of mortals: their dif ferent maladies, with the exterior symptoms; wounds from which the blood yet flows, or from which it has ceased to do so; death just come, or less recent; the gentle appearance of fish living in limpid water; the delicacy of flowers, and their infinite shades; those not less variegated of birds and other living things; the colour of the hair and beard, waving in the zephyrs or wild winds, or their curls tight and

compact, emblems of force: how can a sculptor, let him be as skilful as he will, do all this with stone or marble? Alas, my dear Varchi, what have you made me say? You have drawn me into an abyss from which I shall not be able to extricate myself to-morrow; for I have comprehended in the art of painting all that nature does, and with which one can give life and colour. Why have I not yet mentioned divine perspective, and all its marvellous effects, which deceive the sight, and mislead it in a thousand ways? Do me, in sculpture, a figure which, like that in the fable of the Satyr and the Countryman, renders the smoke of the soup which the latter wishes to eat with his spoon, and the breath which proceeds from his mouth to cool the meat he is swallowing. But let us

leave all that.

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Painting employs fresco, water and oil colours, three methods differing in the process, but tending to the same end. If a painter does not design well or colours ill, he has lost his time. If a good colourist and a bad designer, the end he proposes is lost. If he has acquired these two essential parts of his art, and is not a good architect, he cannot do a regular perspective, because the plane and profile produce

height, breadth, and foreshortening with their lines. Then he has to paint portraits capable of deceiving the eye, as we have seen in our day in the portrait of Pope Paul the Third, painted by Titian, which, being placed for some time in the sun upon a terrace, was considered alive by the passers-by, who bowed to it: which has never happened in sculpture.

"In fine, the least part of painting has great difficulties; whence it proceeds that the greatest geniuses always find something to learn, of which they were ignorant. In thinking of that, I have sometimes said to myself, that if I had employed the study, time, and application which I had employed upon this art, and that to little purpose, on any other science, I think that, unless I am much mistaken, I should have been exalted, canonized, and should never die.

"I forgot to say that I have paid great attention to the flight of armies in ancient basreliefs, and their movements, &c.; but I could never find the sweat, the foam upon the soldiers' lips, the glittering of their arms, nor the horses' hair, nor the reflection of these different bodies, which sculpture can no more express, than it can represent silk, velvet, gold, silver, and the glittering of precious stones.

"You will excuse me if I have not satisfied you; it is my pen you must blame, for I am not so well accustomed to the use of it as of the pencil. I own I could have finished a picture sooner than I have this letter. Farewell, and love me.-Your

"GEORGE VASARI D'AREzzo."

"MOST REVEREND SIR,

"When a plan consists of different parts, all those which are of the same sort of quality and quantity ought to be ornamented in the same fashion and manner; it is the same too in their meetings, or when opposite each other. But when the plan differs entirely in form, then it is not only permitted, but altogether necessary, that the ornaments should differ, and the same of their meetings: The middle ones are always open, and may be arranged as you please.

"As the nose, which is in the middle of the face, has nothing in common with either eye, whilst one hand must be like the other, and one eye like the other, on account of the sides and correspondences, so it is certain that the

parts of architecture answer to the members of the human body. He who has not been, or is not a good master of figures, and above all of anatomy, cannot understand any thing of this. "MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTTI."

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TO M. GIOVANNI FRANCESCO GRIMANI.

"Rome, 26th July, 1543." :

"I went to sup last night at Treio, a garden of M. Agabito Belluomo. I experienced there three pleasures at once which, like the three Graces, caused me much content and satisfaction I saw, heard, and bathed, and then I drank some of that beautiful water, which is so clear and pure, that it really seemed a virginspring and, indeed, by that name it is called. I gave many praises to the young girl, who showed the sources of this spring to some soldiers, whose labours afterwards procured an increased supply of it. It seemed to me that she deserved that she should give name to it, and that above the fountain there ought to be placed a statue of her showing the springs. But I praised Agrippa much more, who, besides many other benefits conferred on the Roman people, and after having rebuilt the Appian, Arian, and Martian aqueducts, now