Those who steal from mere poverty; who having nothing of their own, cannot exist a minute without making such depredations; who are so poor that they have no place in which they can even deposit what they have taken; to men of this description nothing can be said; but such artists as those to whom I suppose myself now speaking, men whom I consider as completely provided with all the necessaries and conveniences of art, and who do not desire to steal baubles and common trash, but wish only to possess peculiar rarities which they select to ornament their cabinets, and take care to enrich the general store with materials of equal or of greater value than what they have taken; such men surely need not be ashamed of that friendly intercourse which ought to exist among artists, of receiving from the dead and giving to the living, and perhaps to those who are yet unborn. The daily food and nourishment of the mind of an artist is found in the great works of his predecessors. There is no other way for him to become great himself. _Serpens, nisi serpentem comederit, non fit draco_,[14] is a remark of a whimsical natural history, which I have read, though I do not recollect its title; however false as to dragons, it is applicable enough to artists. Raffaelle, as appears from what has been said, had carefully studied the works of Masaccio; and, indeed, there was no other, if we except Michel Angelo (whom he likewise imitated), so worthy of his attention; and though his manner was dry and hard, his compositions formal, and not enough diversified according to the custom of Painters in that early period, yet his works possess that grandeur and simplicity which accompany, and even sometimes proceed from, regularity and hardness of manner. We must consider the barbarous state of the Arts before his time, when skill in drawing was so little understood that the best of the painters could not even foreshorten the foot, but every figure appeared to stand upon his toes; and what served for drapery, had, from the hardness and smallness of the folds, too much the appearance of cords clinging round the body. He first introduced large drapery flowing in an easy and natural manner: indeed, he appears to be the first who discovered the path that leads to every excellence to which the Arts afterwards arrived, and may, therefore, be justly considered as one of the great Fathers of modern Art.