Excerpt from Florence, Vol. 2 of 2 The love of art gradually became more general, and each citizen was anxious to have in his house likenesses of himself, of his ancestors, and of his gods, and as the native painters and sculptors were neither numerous enough nor clever enough, artists from Greece found ample employment. In course of time wealthy amateurs gave an additional stimulus to art by their liberal purchases of pictures, statues, and stone engravings; and as the demand creates the supply, there also came into existence plenty of clever forgers who imitated the names of successful artists on the pedestal of a statue or in the corner of a fresco. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.