Where was the painter’s art until Giotto tardily restored it?…Sculpture and architecture, for long years sunk to the merest travesty of art, are only today in the process of rescue from obscurity; only now are they being brought to a new pitch of perfection by men of genius and erudition. Of letters and liberal studies at large, it were best to be silent altogether. For these, the real guides to distinction in all the arts, the solid foundation of all civilization, have been lost to mankind for 800 years and more. It is but in our own day that men dare boast that they see the dawn of better things…now indeed, may every thoughtful spirit thank God that he has been permitted to be born in this new age, so full of hope and promise, which already rejoices in a greater array of nobly-gifted souls than the world has seen in the thousand years that preceded it!

Source:  Matteo Palmieri (1406-1475), Della vita civile (1430).