DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7597#0015
viii
PREFACE.
took place in the painting and sculpture of the Italian schools, at
different periods of the before mentioned interval; and many of
those minute details, which, although they escape the notice of
the more general observer, often furnish, nevertheless, the best
criterion for judging of the age or school to which a work of art
appertains, were to me familiar. In short I became so far a
connoisseur in the very early pictures commonly known under the
generic and opprobrious term, Gothic, that I sometimes found my-
self in a situation to pronounce as to the probable authenticity
of a picture attributed to Cimabue, Giotto, Giovanni da Fiesole,
or Luca Signorelli, with the same confidence that others feel in
deciding as to the originality of a work of Raffaele, Titian, or Do-
menichino.
I have indulged myself in this apparent digression from the im-
mediate subject of the present work, because it was the information
which I had acquired during the pursuit therein mentioned, that
first occasioned me to suspect that the engraving above spoken of
might be by the hand of Maso Finiguerra; and finally led me to
the intimate conviction that such was really the case. This con-
viction was naturally followed by a desire of impressing others with
the same belief: a genuine print by Finiguerra was a desideratum
in the history of the art, and, indeed, was considered necessary
by many writers, in order to render the evidence of Vasari worthy
of credit, and thereby to establish the claims of Italy to the honour
of the invention in question. With this view, therefore, I entered
into a minute examination of the different passages in which any
mention is made of Finiguerra, or of his supposed discovery, by
Vasari and other old writers; and I had already prepared a disser-
PREFACE.
took place in the painting and sculpture of the Italian schools, at
different periods of the before mentioned interval; and many of
those minute details, which, although they escape the notice of
the more general observer, often furnish, nevertheless, the best
criterion for judging of the age or school to which a work of art
appertains, were to me familiar. In short I became so far a
connoisseur in the very early pictures commonly known under the
generic and opprobrious term, Gothic, that I sometimes found my-
self in a situation to pronounce as to the probable authenticity
of a picture attributed to Cimabue, Giotto, Giovanni da Fiesole,
or Luca Signorelli, with the same confidence that others feel in
deciding as to the originality of a work of Raffaele, Titian, or Do-
menichino.
I have indulged myself in this apparent digression from the im-
mediate subject of the present work, because it was the information
which I had acquired during the pursuit therein mentioned, that
first occasioned me to suspect that the engraving above spoken of
might be by the hand of Maso Finiguerra; and finally led me to
the intimate conviction that such was really the case. This con-
viction was naturally followed by a desire of impressing others with
the same belief: a genuine print by Finiguerra was a desideratum
in the history of the art, and, indeed, was considered necessary
by many writers, in order to render the evidence of Vasari worthy
of credit, and thereby to establish the claims of Italy to the honour
of the invention in question. With this view, therefore, I entered
into a minute examination of the different passages in which any
mention is made of Finiguerra, or of his supposed discovery, by
Vasari and other old writers; and I had already prepared a disser-