text:  We set aside the labyrinth of dates which with regard to the same persons' lives and deaths are inconsistent and irreconcilable; still there remains a continuous story not only probable as to its facts but confirmed by works that exist at this day; for whatever may have been the oil-painting of an earlier age (and it must be observed as Lanzi remarks that there is no certainty that many of the works said to have been in oil were of that vehicle for chemists have doubted and some have been of contrary opinion ) the oil-painting of that precise period when it is said by Vasari to have been introduced into Italy and as it continued subsequently is quite a different thing--and exactly agrees with the description of it given by Vasari and as it was practised in his time