...measures encompass the proportionality of the members of which such harmony is composed, no differently than the circumferential line encompasses the members from which human beauty is generated. But painting excels and lords it over music, because it does not die immediately after its creation, as hapless music does; rather it remains in being, and shows itself alive to you as what is in fact a single surface. O marvellous science, you preserve alive the fleeting beauties of mortals, which have more permanence than the works of nature, which are continually altered by time, which leads them to their due old age; and such a science has the same proportion to divine nature as its works have to the works of that nature, and for this it is adored.

[30] The musician speaks with the painter.
The musician says that his science is to be equated with that of the painter, because it composes a body of many members, of which the beholder contemplates all its grace in as many harmonic measures as are the measures in which it is born and dies, and with those measures it delights with grace the soul that resides in the body of its contemplator. But the painter answers and says that the body composed of human members does not give of itself pleasure in harmonic measures, in which that beauty must change, giving its figuration to another, nor that within those measures it must be born and die; rather, painting makes it permanent for very many years, and is of such excellence that it preserves alive that harmony of the proportioned members,...