Giancristoforo replied:
“I, my Lady, think that sculpture needs more pains, more skill, and is of greater dignity than painting.”
The Count rejoined:
“In that statues are more enduring, perhaps we might say they are of greater dignity; for being made as memorials, they fulfil better than painting the purpose for which they are made. But besides serving as memorials, both painting and sculpture serve also to beautify, and in this respect painting is much superior; for if less diuturnal (so to speak) than sculpture, yet it is of very long life, and is far more charming so long as it endures.”
Then Giancristoforo replied:
“I really think that you are speaking against your convictions and that you are doing so solely for the sake of your friend Raphael; and perhaps too the excellence you find in his painting seems to you so consummate that sculpture cannot rival it: but consider that this is praise of an artist and not of his art.”
MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI
1475-1564
Reduced from a photograph, specially made by Soame, of an anonymous and hitherto unpublished bronze head at Oxford. From a death-mask, Michelangelo’s pupil Daniele Ricciarelli da Volterra (1500-1566) prepared a mould, of which this and the similar “Piot” head in the Louvre are believed to be unchased castings. See C. Drury E. Fortnum’s article “On the Bronze Portrait Busts of Michelangelo,” etc., in the Archæological Journal.
Then he continued: