EPISTLE.

conch shell: the Ialysus of Protogenes: the furious Ajax of Timanthes: the Cupids of Aetion: together with several other such excellent works of the good masters of ancient times. And of the moderns as well; the banquet of the Gods by Raphael of Urbino: the judgment of Michelangelo: or the triumphs of Andrea Mantegna. Of statues likewise, the Laocoon, the Apollo, the Cleopatra of the Belvedere: the Satyr of the Capitol, and the Meleager of messere sir or master Francisque de Norche This refers to the sculptor Francesco da Sangallo: but the principal glory and honor of it has always been deferred to their inventors; as well as for translations. Therefore this part is the most necessary and required for a painter and an imagier image-maker or sculptor; with the dexterity and practice of knowing how to well-order several personages together, in suitable and not ridiculous gestures and actions; in order to express clearly and with an efficacy that satisfies the eye and the spirit of men, the thing that must be represented there, at least with strokes that one can do with; just as with words in an oration: and that there be nothing useless or superfluous: nothing lacking or to be said either, of all that can reasonably be desired there. For just as for a Poet it is not enough to know how to dye a beautiful verse: nor for a mason to properly carve a stone: they must afterwards be arranged for the structure of a Poem, or of an edifice; of which the members come to correspond, and the parts duly relate to their whole, as if it were only a single piece: the same is it for paintings; where it is not enough to know how to portray a face, an arm, a leg; nor even an entire figure: the importance is to order them well together, so that they make no ugly or impertinent grimace: that there be nothing disconnected, meager, or too common (for that is ordinarily placed in the rank of bad graces) and which