EPISTLE.

does not move and attract viewers at first sight with pleasure and admiration. Because all of this, joined and united as if it were only a single body, must produce the same effect as the characters in a well-staged Comedy: or the parts of some good music, which harmonize and temper one another into a sweet and pleasant harmony. Furthermore, if the paintings described here by Philostratus were in truth actually painted in the past, and executed in colors; and if he only discoursed upon them to leave their memory to future times; foreseeing that their duration could not be as long as statues of bronze or marble, whose material is much more permanent and solid than cloth or wood: or if they are instead new subjects prepared by him in imitation of the ancients (which is much more likely), it should not matter much to us. Whatever the case, in this so great and plentiful variety of commonplaces, painters have much to fish for as they wish: many beautiful fantasies to mix, disguise, and diversify. If they also know how to exploit and perfect them with their brush as exactly as they have been designed here with the pen, they cannot fail to receive praise. Additionally, the arguments and annotations that we have placed here to serve as wings and frames original: "vollets, & enchassemens" will help them not a little; having taken pains to enrich and elaborate them as much as the body of the painting itself, that is to say the text: following the example of the so-renowned craftsman Phidias; whose diligence, among his other good qualities, was highly recommended for having been careful to finish the small figures carved on the throne and garments of the Olympian Jupiter, and on the shield and boots of Minerva in the castle of Athens, as exactly as the faces