PREFACE 



I OWE to Mr. Bernhard Berenson the suggestion which 

 led me to make the notes which are the foundation of 

 this book. 



In the chapter on the Rudiments of Connoisseurship 

 in the second series of his Study and Criticism of 

 Italian Art, after speaking of the characteristic features 

 in the painting of human beings by which authorship 

 may be determined, he says : " We turn to the animals 

 that the painters of the Renaissance habitually intro- 

 duced into pictures, the horse, the ox, the ass, and 

 more rarely birds. They need not long detain us, 

 because in questions of detail all that we have found 

 to apply to the human figure can easily be made to 

 apply by the reader to the various animals. I must, 

 however, remind him that animals were rarely petted 

 and therefore rarely observed in the Renaissance. 

 Vasari, for instance, gets into a fury of contempt when 

 describing Sodoma's devotion to pet birds and horses." 



Having from my schooldays been accustomed to 



keep animals and birds, to sketch them and to look 



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