made in several ways,
but of all these I shall choose that which in my opinion can be done
with the greatest grace in painting. You must paint, then, a maiden of
such beauty as the poets strive to express with words, composing her
of roses, gold, purple, dew, and other suchlike graces; and so much
for the colours and flesh-tints of her person. As for her dress,
composing out of many one that appears most suitable, we must reflect
that, even as she has three stages and three distinct colours, so she
has three names--Alba, Vermiglia, and Rancia;[23] and for this reason
I would make her down to the girdle a garment delicate in texture, as
it were transparent, and white; from the girdle down to the knees an
outer garment of scarlet, with certain pinkings and tassels in
imitation of the reflections seen on the clouds when she is vermilion,
and from the knees down to the feet of the colour of gold, in order to
represent her when she is orange, taking heed that this dress must be
slit from the thighs downwards, in order to show the bare legs; and
both the under garment and the outer must be blown by the wind, so as
to flutter in folds. The arms, also, must be naked and of a rosy
flesh-tint; on the shoulders you must make her wings of various
colours, and on the head a crown of roses; and in her hands you must
place a lamp or a lighted torch, or rather, there must go before her a
Cupid who is carrying a torch, and after her another who with another
torch awakens Tithonus. She must be seated on a gilded throne in a
chariot likewise gilded, drawn by a winged Pegasus or by two horses,
for she is depicted both in the one way and in the other. As for the
colours of the horses, one must be shining white and the other shining
red, in order to denote them according to the names that Homer gives
them of Lampus and Phaethon. You must make her rising from a tranquil
sea, which should appear rippled, luminous, and glancing. On the wall
behind, upon the right-hand horn, you must paint her husband Tithonus,
and on the left her lover Cephalus. Tithonus should be an old man
white as snow, on an orange-coloured bed, or rather, in a cradle,
according to those who make him, on account of his great age, once
more a child; and he should be shown in the act of holding her back,
or gazing on her with amorous eyes, or sighing after her, as if her
departure grieved him. Cephalus must be a most beautiful young man
dressed in a doublet girt at the waist,