And thus it is that his figures show so much art and learning, so that they are inimitable by any painter whatever.

I have always been of this opinion, that the forces and efforts of nature have a prescribed end, fixed and ordained by God, which it is impossible for ordinary powers to pass; and this is so not only in painting and sculpture, but universally in all arts and sciences; and that she gives power to one person that he may be a rule and example in a particular art, giving him the first place; so that afterwards, if any one desires to bring forth a great work in that art, worthy to be read or seen, he must work in the same way as the first great example, or, at least, similarly, and go by his road; for if he does not his work will be much inferior, the worse the more he diverges from the direct path.

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..