s who profess to understand perspective without knowing even its
terms or its first principles. The truth, indeed, is that architecture
can never be practised to perfection save by those who have an excellent
judgment and a good mastery of design, or have laboured much in
painting, sculpture, or works in wood, for the reason that in it have to
be executed with true measurements the dimensions of their figures,
which are columns, cornices, and bases, and all the ornaments, which are
made for the adornment of the figures, and for no other reason. And thus
the workers in wood, by continually handling such things, in course of
time become architects; and sculptors likewise, by having to find
positions for their statues and by making ornaments for tombs and other
works in the round, come in time to a knowledge of architecture; and
painters, on account of their perspectives, the variety of their
inventions, and the buildings that they draw, are compelled to take the
ground-plans of edifices, seeing that they cannot plant houses or
flights of steps on the planes where their figures stand, without in the
first place grasping the order of the architecture.

Working in his youth excellently well at wood-inlaying, Baccio executed
the backs of the stalls in the choir of S. Maria Novella, in the
principal chapel, wherein are most beautiful figures of S. John the
Baptist and S. Laurence. In carving, he executed the ornaments of that
same chapel, those of the high-altar in the Nunziata, the decorations of
the organ in S. Maria Novella, and a vast number of other works, both
public and private, in his native city of Florence. Departing from that
city, he went to Rome, where he applied himself with great zeal to the
study of architecture; and on his return he made triumphal arches of
wood in various places for the visit of Pope Leo X. But for all this he
never gave up his workshop, where there were often gathered round him,
in addition to many citizens, the best and most eminent masters of our
arts, so that most beautiful conversations and discussions of importance
took place there, particularly in winter. The first of these masters was
Raffaello da Urbino, then a young man, and next came Andrea Sansovino,
Filippino, Maiano, Cronaca, Antonio da San Gallo and Giuliano da San
Gallo, Granaccio, and sometimes, but not often, Michelagnolo, with many
young Florentines and strangers.

Having thus given his attention to architecture in so thoro