After Plato and Aristotle, how many philosophers have we
seen who, not following them, have been worth anything? How many orators
after Demosthenes and Cicero? How many mathematicians after Euclid and
Archimedes? How many doctors after Hypocrates and Galen? Or poets after
Homer and Virgil? And if there has been any one who has been able by his
own abilities to arrive at the first place in any one of these sciences
and finds it already occupied, he either acknowledges the first one to
have arrived at perfection, and gives up the attempt, or if he has sense
he follows him as the ideal of the perfect. This has been exemplified in
our own day in Bembo, in Sanazzaro, in Caro, in Guidoccione, in the
Marchioness of Pescara, and in other writers and lovers of the Tuscan
rhyme, who, although gifted with the highest and most singular genius,
none the less, not being able of themselves to do better than nature
exemplifies in Petrarca, they set themselves to follow him, but so happily
that they are judged worthy to be read and counted with the best.
CHAPTER XI
CONCLUSION OF THE LIFE BY CONDIVI
LVII. Now to consider my remarks. I say, that it seems to me, that nature
has endowed Michael Angelo so largely with all her riches in these arts of
painting and sculpture, that I am not to be reproached for saying that his
figures are almost inimitable. Nor does it appear that I have allowed
myself to be too much carried away, for until now he alone has worthily
taken up both chisel and brush.
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