tinually checking the {98} height, thickness and breadth
of each part, and by so doing accomplish no more than their duty. But
painting is marvellously devised of most subtle analyses, of which
sculpture is altogether devoid, since its range is of the narrowest.
To the sculptor who says that his science is more lasting than that of
painting, I answer that this permanence is due to the quality of the
material and not to that of the sculptor, and the sculptor has no right
to give himself the credit for it, but he should let it redound to
nature which created the material.

38.

Painting has a wider intellectual range and is more wonderful and
greater as regards its artistic resources than sculpture, because the
painter is by necessity constrained to amalgamate his mind with the
very mind of nature and to be the interpreter between nature and art,
making with art a commentary on the causes of nature's manifestations
which are the inevitable result of its laws; and showing in what way
the likenesses of objects which surround the eye correspond with the
true images of the pupil of the eye, and showing among objects of equal
size which of them will appear more or less dark, or more or less
clear; and among objects equally low which of them will appear more or
less low; or among those of the same height which of them will appear
more or less high; or among objects of equal size {99} placed at
various distances one from the other, why some will appear more clearly
than others. And this art embraces and comprehends within itself all
visible things, which sculpture in its poverty cannot do: that is, the
colours of all objects and their gradations; it represents transparent
objects, and the sculptor will show thee natural objects without the
painter's devices; the painter will show thee various distances with
the gradations of colour producing interposition of the air between the
objects and the eye; he will show thee the mists through which the
character of objects is with difficulty descried; the rains which
clouded mountains and valleys bring with them; the dust which is
inherent to and follows the contention between these forces; the rivers
which are great or small in volume; the fishes disporting themselves on
the surface or at the bottom of these waters; the polished pebbles of
various colours which are collected on the washed sands at bottom of
rivers surrounded by floating plants beneath the surface of the water;
the