highly extolled without ceasing in those who
have passed away. And that this is true we see from the fact that
Florence produced in one and the same age Filippo, Donato, Lorenzo,
Paolo Uccello, and Masaccio, each most excellent in his own kind, and
thus not only swept away the rough and rude manners that had prevailed
up to that time, but incited and kindled so greatly, by reason of the
beautiful works of these men, the minds of those who came after, that
the work of those professions has been brought to that grandeur and to
that perfection which are seen in our own times. Wherefore, in truth, we
owe a great obligation to those early craftsmen who showed to us, by
means of their labours, the true way to climb to the greatest height;
and with regard to the good manner of painting, we are indebted above
all to Masaccio, seeing that he, as one desirous of acquiring fame,
perceived that painting is nothing but the counterfeiting of all the
things of nature, vividly and simply, with drawing and with colours,
even as she produced them for us, and that he who attains to this most
perfectly can be called excellent. This truth, I say, being recognized
by Masaccio, brought it about that by means of continuous study he
learnt so much that he can be numbered among the first who cleared away,
in a great measure, the hardness, the imperfections, and the
difficulties of the art, and that he gave a beginning to beautiful
attitudes, movements, liveliness, and vivacity, and to a certain relief
truly characteristic and natural; which no painter up to his time had
ever done. And since he had excellent judgment, he reflected that all
the figures that did not stand firmly with their feet in foreshortening
on the level, but stood on tip-toe, were lacking in all goodness of
manner in the essential points, and that those who make them thus show
that they do not understand foreshortening. And although Paolo Uccello
had tried his hand at this, and had done something, solving this
difficulty to some extent, yet Masaccio, introducing many new methods,
made foreshortenings from every point of view much better than any other
who had lived up to that time. And he painted his works with good unity
and softness, harmonizing the flesh-colours of the heads and of the
nudes with the colours of the draperies, which he delighted to make with
few folds and simple, as they are in life and nature. This has been of
great use to craftsmen, and he deserves therefore