Mathematical Garden

Decorative horizontal ornament.

A large historiated initial 'S' depicts a figure in a landscape with trees and a building in the background.

Since your good will toward me, Antonio Boldu, is constant, and your many kindnesses and merits are clear, which compel me to think of you day and night: yet your singular humanity, study, and benevolence toward those who profess any liberal art, perceived and known by all, would easily entice me to love and observe you. Your excellent talent and exceptional virtue would cause me to wish for everything for your sake and to study to insinuate myself into your friendship. What I owe you, I pass over in silence now, but I will always display it. It sticks in my mind, and will always stick, that tenure of yours in Verona, in which you not only showed yourself a restrained and industrious official of the most noble Republic, but you also bestowed mercy and liberality upon the needy, eloquent patronage upon those who were struggling, dutiful service upon friends, and honor upon those skilled in military affairs or literature. You embraced me also most lovingly among them, because you thought well of my character, I suppose, and I seemed to you to be not at all ignorant of astrology, a science in which you yourself delight above all. Nor did I know you to be any different later in Venice than I had experienced you before in Verona, but distinguished by faith and kindness, excelling in greatness of spirit and other virtues, in no way inferior to your father Iacopo in the praise of innocence, and far superior in fortune, and very worthy of Leonardo, Antonio, and your other ancestors, who were quite illustrious in the arts of either war or peace. Therefore, so that you might eventually understand that you are held in as much esteem by me as you ought to be, and whatever...