CHARGE, or rather Overcharge, in Painting, is an exaggerated representation of any person; wherein the likeness is preserved, but at the same time ridiculed.
Few painters have the genius necessary to succeed in these charges: the method is, to select and heighten something already amiss in the face, whether by way of defect, or redundancy: thus, v. g. if Nature hath given a man a nose a little larger than ordinary, the painter falls in with her, and makes the nose extravagantly long: or if the nose be naturally too short, in the painting it will be a mere stump; and thus of the other parts.