Copy 1, Volume 3

Lives of the most eminent painters, sculptors, and architects / translated ... With notes ... from various commentators. By Mr. J. Foster.

  • Vasari, Giorgio, 1511-1574
Date:
1850-1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lives of the most eminent painters, sculptors, and architects / translated ... With notes ... from various commentators. By Mr. J. Foster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    522/540 (page 514)
    minor importance,* seeing that faults committed merely from want of better imformation, or from a too easy credulity, are worthy of pardon. Nor have even Aristotle, Pliny, and many other great writers that might be named, wholly escaped the commission of such. There are besides occasions where an author may hold opinions differing from those asserted by others, and even though these may be erroneous, yet is he not to be censured for the expression thereof.f Enea likewise designed and engraved fifty plates which have contributed largely to the convenience as well as satis¬ faction of artists and others. These exhibit the various costumes of different nations, such as are worn that is to say in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Flanders, and other parts of the world, habiliments of men as well as women, and those worn by the peasantry as well as by citizens ; this was a very ingenious thought, and is executed in a beautiful and fanciful manner. He also published a genealogical tree of all the emperors, which is also an ex¬ ceedingly fine work; and finally, after many labours and turmoils, he now enjoys a becoming repose beneath the shadow of Alfonso the Second, Duke of Ferrara. For this prince Enea Vico has engraved a genealogical tree of all the Marquises and Dukes of the house of Este ; and for all the labours here enumerated, as well as for many others which he has executed and still continues to perform, I have thought it well to add this honourable record to his merits among those here inscribed to the renown of so many other distinguished men. Many artists, in addition to those here enumerated, have occupied themselves with the engraving of copper-plates, and if these have not attained to so high a degree of per¬ fection as the masters I have named, they have at least done much service to the world by their labours, seeing that they have caused the works of the best masters to be more extensively known than they could otherwise have been, and * Bottari observes that Enea Vico is to be treated all the more tenderly by his critics, inasmuch as that the subject chosen by him was at that time surrounded by difficulties, the science being then quite in its infancy. f Whatever our author here says in justification of Enea Vico may be urged with equal justice in his own defence.—Masselli.