I used to wonder and to regret at the same time that so many excellent and divine arts and sciences, which we see, through their works and copious historical accounts, during those very virtuous days of distant past, are thus now missing and almost entirely lost. Painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, geometricians, rhetoricians, augurs, and similar most noble and marvelous intellects today are found very rarely and [are] little to be praised. Hence I came to believe what many keep saying, that already Nature, mistress of things, by now aged and weary, no longer produced either giants or great minds like those which she produced very big and marvelous in her almost youthful and more glorious times. But as from the long exile, in which we the Alberti have grown old, I was returned to this father-land of ours, very ornate above all others, I recognized in many, but first in you, Filippo, and in that our great friend Donato the sculptor, and in those others, who are so well praised for their intellect, Nencio, Luca, and Masaccio,(1) that they are not to be [thought] inferior to any who might have been in antiquity, however famous they could have possibly been in these arts. Thus I perceived that the possibility of acquiring distinction in whatever [the] endeavor lies in our industry and diligence no less than in the good disposition of Nature and of the times.