ings by means of
letters, and as happened, among others, to Phormio the Peripatetic of
Ephesus, who, in order to display his eloquence, lecturing and making
disputation about the virtues and parts of the excellent captain, made
Hannibal laugh not less at his presumption than at his ignorance.

I say, then, that sculpture and painting are in truth sisters, born from
one father, that is, design, at one and the same birth, and have no
precedence one over the other, save insomuch as the worth and the
strength of those who maintain them make one craftsman surpass another,
and not by reason of any difference or degree of nobility that is in
truth to be found between them. And although by reason of the diversity
of their essence they have many different advantages, these are neither
so great nor of such a kind that they do not come exactly into balance
together and that we do not perceive the infatuation or the obstinacy,
rather than the judgment, of those who wish one to surpass the other.
Wherefore it may be said with reason that one and the same soul rules
the bodies of both, and by reason of this I conclude that those do evil
who strive to disunite and to separate the one from the other. Heaven,
wishing to undeceive us in this matter and to show us the kinship and
union of these two most noble arts, has raised up in our midst at
various times many sculptors who have painted and many painters who have
worked in sculpture, as will be seen in the Life of Antonio del
Pollaiuolo, of Leonardo da Vinci, and of many others long since passed
away. But in our own age the Divine Goodness has created for us
Michelagnolo Buonarroti, in whom both these arts shine forth so perfect
and appear so similar and so closely united, that the painters marvel at
his pictures and the sculptors feel for the sculptures wrought by him
supreme admiration and reverence. On him, to the end that he might not
perchance need to seek from some other master some convenient
resting-place for the figures that he wrought, nature has bestowed so
generously the science of architecture, that without having need of
others he has strength and power within himself to give to this or the
other image made by himself an honourable and suitable resting-place, in
a manner that he rightly deserves to be called the king of sculptors,
the prince of painters, and the most excellent of architects, nay
rather, of architecture the true master. And indeed we can affirm with
certai