Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 02 (of 10): Berna to Michelozzo MichelozziVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 02 (of 10): Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
The same do I say of sculpture, which, in that first age of its new
birth, had no little of the good; for after the extinction of the rude
Greek manner, which was so uncouth that it was more akin to the art of
quarrying than to the genius of the craftsmen--their statues being
entirely without folds, or attitudes, or movement of any kind, and truly
worthy to be called stone images--when design was afterwards improved by
Giotto, many men also improved the figures in marble and stone, as did
Andrea Pisano and his son Nino and his other disciples, who were much
better than the early sculptors and gave their statues more movement and
much better attitudes; as also did those two Sienese masters, Agostino
and Agnolo, who made the tomb of Guido, Bishop of Arezzo, as it has been
said, and those Germans who made the facade at Orvieto. It is seen,
then, that during this time sculpture made a little progress, and that
there was given a somewhat better form to the figures, with a more
beautiful flow of folds in the draperies, and sometimes a better air in
the heads and certain attitudes not so stiff; and finally, that it had
begun to seek the good, but was nevertheless lacking in innumerable
respects, seeing that design was in no great perfection at that time and
there was little good work seen that could be imitated. Wherefore those
masters who lived at that time, and were put by me in the First Part of
the book, deserve to be thus praised and to be held in that credit which
the works made by them merit, if only one considers--as is also true of
the works of the architects and painters of those times--that they had
no help from the times before them, and had to find the way by
themselves; and a beginning, however small, is ever worthy of no small
praise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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