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Is not that a greater difference, think you, than one of mere decadence? This 'maniera goffa e sproporzionata' of Vasari is not, then, merely the wasting away of former leonine strength into thin rigidities of death? There is another change going on at the same time, body perhaps subjecting itself to spirit. I will not teaze you with farther questions. The facts are simple enough.
As men of a school, they are to be summed under the general name of 'Byzantines; their work all alike showing specific characters of attenuate, rigid, and in many respects offensively unbeautiful, design, to which Vasari's epithets of "goffa, e sproporzionata" are naturally applied by all persons trained only in modern principles.
Behold, the Christians despising the Dunce Greeks, as the Infidel modernists despise the Dunce Christians. I sketched for you, when I was last at Pisa, a few arches of the apse of the duomo, and a small portion of the sculpture of the font of the Temple of St. John. I have placed them in your rudimentary series, as examples of "quella vecchia maniera Greca, goffa e sproporzionata."
It is necessary, therefore, for you first to know precisely the manner of these Greek masters in their decayed power; the manner which Vasari calls, only a sentence before, "That old Greek manner, blundering, disproportioned," Goffa, e sproporzionata. "Goffa," the very word which Michael Angelo uses of Perugino.
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