A Treatise on Painting

architecture, and there also exist a quantity of his drawings for
buildings for both sacred and secular uses; and it is said that while still a
young man he was the first to reason upon a canal, which
was intended to be made from Pisa to Florence using the waters of the Arno.
All the enterprises in which he occupied himself in these times, all
were most admirable and almost impossible; because so
high were his concepts, that he could not then finish them,
it not appearing to him that his hand could obey and
complete that which he nourished in his intellect. Beyond
measure whimsical and lively, at times he rendered himself extravagant,
and gave himself over to interpreting the properties of herbs, the motions
of the stars, and other secrets of nature. And having become from this
a connoisseur of those studies, many pranks are told of him performed
to cheer his friends, such as spreading in the
rooms terrible odors, or occupying the places of entertainment
with a quantity of inflated bladders original: "gonfie budella" - literally "swollen guts," used here as balloons, which were
by his ingenuity folded in such a way that, when inflated by a
hidden bellows, they immediately filled the whole place
to the astonishment of the bystanders, and other similar caprices,
which to narrate here would be long. But leaving aside such minute
things, it will not be useless to speak of his studies on the art
of painting. His first aim in this study
was that of imitating nature, in which—not being satisfied
with ordinary forms—he painted her more beautiful, avoiding
the defects into which those stumble who do not know how to
depart from that pure imitation. He learned from good
reliefs sculptural models the vigor of contours, the boldness of muscles,
the observations of shadows, and the powerful strikes of light
that are formed by the light of a lamp original: "lucerna" - referring to his study of artificial light and deep shadows, and in this part
of the art he was so supreme, that there is no one who can
stand against him in comparison. Of the first things that he made—