The mind which is
capable of the very highest painting knows where the lives and pleasures
of the pre-sumptuous lead them and what they are, and how they die
nameless and without knowledge of the things which in the world are most
worthy of being known and esteemed, and how we cannot even remember that
such a man was born however much money he may have kept in his coffers.
And thus he understands that good work and the good name of immortal
virtue is the felicity of this life and all or almost all that is to be
desired; and therefore he esteems himself more because he is on the road
to attain that glory than one who does not know this and never even knew
how to desire it. Many are content with much less power than that of
imitating a work of God as in painting; and if one never attained to the
distinction of governing a great province, it is but human to be satisfied
with things which are more difficult and more uncertain than governing a
country which stretched from the Columns of Hercules to the Indian River
Ganges. Such an one never killed an enemy more difficult to conquer than
is the conforming the work to the desire or idea of the great painter, and
the one was never so satisfied drinking out of a golden cup as the other
drinking out of an earthen pot. Nor was the Emperor Maximilian wrong in
saying that he could indeed make a duke or a count, but as for an
excellent painter God alone could make him when He so pleased, for which
reason he abstained from putting to death a painter who deserved to die.
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