...he who with words satisfies the hearing, and he who with painting satisfies the contentment of sight. But the art of words the less so, inasmuch as words are accidental and created by a lesser author than the works of nature, of which the painter is the imitator; and that nature is bounded within the figures of their surfaces.

[27] Reply of King Matthias to a poet who was competing with a painter.
On King Matthias's birthday a poet brought him a work composed in praise of the day on which that king had been born for the benefit of the world, and a painter presented him with a portrait of his beloved; at once the king closed the poet's book and turned to the painting, and fixed his gaze upon it with great admiration. Then the poet, greatly indignant, said: O king, read, read, and you will hear something of greater substance than a mute painting. Then the king, feeling himself rebuked for gazing at mute things, said: O poet, be silent, for you do not know what you are saying; this painting serves a better sense than yours, which is fit for the blind. Give me something that I can see and touch, and not merely something I can hear, and do not blame my choice in having placed your work under my elbow, while this of the painter I hold with both hands, presenting it to my eyes; for the hands of their own accord have chosen to serve a worthier sense than hearing. And I, for my part, judge that the proportion between the science of the painter and that of the poet is the same as that between their senses, of which these arts become the objects. Do you not know that our soul is composed of harmony, and that harmony is not en-...