It does not, therefore, follow
that a sculptor will know how to paint or how to hold a brush, nor will he
know how to paint and make a stroke like a master, as I learnt a few days
ago on going to see Baccio Blandino,(197) the sculptor, whom I found
trying to paint in oils and unable to do so. The draughtsman will be a
master in building palaces or temples, and will carve statues and will
paint pictures; for the said Master Michael and Raphael and Baltesar di
Siena,(198) famous painters, taught architecture and sculpture, and
Baltesar di Siena, after briefly studying that art, equalled Bramante, a
most eminent architect, who passed all his life in its discipline, and yet
he used to say that it gave him an advantage, for he appreciated the
invention, fancy and freedom of drawing. I am speaking of true painters."
"But I say, Senhor Lactancio," said Michael, assisting M. Francisco, "that
the painter of whom he speaks not only will be instructed in liberal arts
and other sciences such as architecture and sculpture, which are his own
province, but also in all other manual crafts which are practised
throughout the world; should he wish, he will do them with more art than
the actual masters of them. However that may be, I sometimes set myself
thinking and imagining that I find amongst men but one single art or
science, and that is drawing or painting, all others being members
proceeding therefrom; for if you carefully consider all that is being done
in this life you will find that each person is, without knowing it,
painting this world, creating and producing new forms and figures here, in
dress and the various garbs, in building and occupying spaces with painted
buildings and houses, in cultivating the fields and ploughing the land
into pictures and sketches, in navigating the seas with sails, in fighting
and dividing the spoil, and finally in the 'firmamentos' and burials and
in all other operations, movements and actions.
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