two vases
that Alcimedon had made in a cavern covered with a wild vine, with some
goats chewing willows, and some blue hills smoking in the distance; then
he remains resting on one hand the whole day, to study how many winds and
clouds he will put into the Tempest of AEolus, and how he will paint the
Port of Carthage in a bay, with an island standing apart, and with how
many rocks and woods he will surround it. Afterwards he paints Troy
burning; then some feasts in Sicily, and beyond near Cumas the gate of
hell with a thousand monsters, and chimeras, and many souls passing
Acheron; then the Elysian Fields, the host of the Blest, the pains and
torments of the Impious, and afterwards the Arms of Vulcan, a fine piece
of work; shortly afterwards a painted Amazon, and the ferocity of capless
Turnus. He paints the routs in battle, the many dead, the fates of noble
men, the many spoils and trophies. Read the whole of Virgil and you will
not find in it anything but the handicraft of a Michael Angelo. Lucan
employs a hundred pages in painting an enchantress and the breaking up of
a fine battle. Ovid is nothing else but a 'retavolo' (copyist). Statius
paints the house of sleep and the walls of great Thebes. The poet
Lucretius likewise paints, and Tibullus and Catullus and Propertius. One
paints a fountain, and a wood close by, with Pan, the shepherd, playing a
flute amongst the ewes. Another paints a shrine with nymphs around
dancing. Another draws the drunken Bacchus, surrounded by wild women, with
old Silenus, half falling from an ass, who would have fallen were he not
held up by a satyr who carries a leathern bottle. Even the satirical poet
paints the picture of the labyrinth. Now what do the lyric poets do, or
the wits of Martial, or the tragic or comic ones? What do they do but
paint reasonably? And what I say I do not invent, for each one of them
himself confesses that he paints: they called painting dumb poetry."

At this point I said: "Senhor Lactancio, in calling painting _dumb_ poetry
it seems to me that the poets did not know how to paint well, because, if
they understood how much more painting declares and speaks than poetry,
her sister, they would not say it was dumb, and I will maintain rather
that poetry is the more dumb."

The Marchioness said: "How will you prove, Spaniard, what you say? how
will you prove that painting is not dumb and that poetry is? Let us hear,
for in no more worthy discourse could this day b