and with notices of all these artists; their works being arranged in the order of time, whereby you would confer that benefit also on your arts?” This, although I knew the undertaking to be beyond my strength, I was yet willing to attempt, with such power as I possessed, and promised to do it according to the best of my ability.
Thus having sat down to collect my notes and memoranda, which I had prepared even from my boyhood, for my own recreation, and because of a certain affection which I preserved towards the memory of our artists, every notice respecting whom had always been most interesting to me, I put together all that seemed to be suited for the purpose, and took them to Giovio. Having commended my pains, the latter then said, “My dear Giorgio, I would have you undertake this work yourself, for I see that you know perfectly well how to proceed therein; whereas I have not myself the courage to attempt it, not knowing the various particulars with which you are acquainted, nor possessing that judgment respecting the different manners of the artists which you have attained. Thus, even had I the heart to undertake this labour, the best I should make of it would be a little Treatise after the manner of Pliny. Do you, therefore, what I say, Vasari; for, by the specimen you give me in this narration, I perceive that you will succeed admirably well.”
Finding that I was, nevertheless, but slightly disposed to do as he recommended, Giovio caused Caro, Molza, Tolomei, and others of my intimate friends, to join their persuasions to his own; wherefore, having finally taken my resolution, I set hand to the work, intending to give it to one or other of them, when it was finished, to the end that he might look it over, and having brought the work into good order, might get it published under some other name than mine own.[1]
- ↑ In the following year our author sent a portion of the Lives to Caro accordingly, when the latter replying, in a letter which the reader will find in vol. i. of his Lettere Famigliari, encourages him to continue, exhorts him not to depart in any instance (as he had sometimes done) from the general simplicity of his own natural style, and ends by assuring him that he was performing “a beautiful and usehil work.” From this letter, as well as from internal evidence, to which we cannot here refer more minutely, it is manifest that the Lives of Vasari were written by himself, and not by Ton Silvano Hazzi or others, as some have affirmed.
