Painting is the art of representing to the eyes, by means of figures and colours, every object in nature that is discernible by the sight; and of sometimes expressing, by figures, the various emotions of the mind.

1. It is to be imagined that men must naturally and very early have conceived an idea of the first principles of the art of painting: the shadow of each plant and animal, and of each edifice, must have afforded them the means of conceiving the method of imitating the figures of all bodies whatever. But as in the first ages of the world the art of writing was unknown, as mankind were ignorant of astronomy, and as their year certainly did not consist of the same number of days as does that of the moderns, how is it possible to determine the epoch, the precise date, of the rise of each art or science? The Egyptians pretend that painting was in use among them many ages before it was known among the Greeks: And the matter is highly probable; for the Egyptians being the most ancient people, the Greeks drew from them many other branches of learning; the hieroglyphics of the former were, moreover, a sort of painting. Diodorus Siculus, l. ii. c. 4. relates, that Semiramis, having re-established Babylon, built there a wall of two leagues and a half in circumference, the bricks of which were painted before they were burnt, and represented various kinds of animals. He adds, that she had another wall, on which were the figures of all sorts of animals painted in their natural colours; and that there were among them even pictures which represented hunting-matches and combats. This is, in fact, an anecdote of great antiquity.

2. The Greeks were acquainted with the art of writing: they were highly ostentatious, and had among them men of real genius. This was sufficient to make them attribute the invention of all the arts and sciences to themselves. Their authors, however, do not agree about the inventor of painting. Pliny, in his Natural History, l. xxxv. c. 12, affirms us, that Dibutades, a potter of Sicyonia, invented the art of making figures in clay; but that he owed the invention to his daughter, who, on taking leave of her lover that was going to a distant country, contrived to trace on a wall, by the means of a lamp, the outline of his shadow: the father, by applying his clay to those lines, formed a statue, which he hardened in his stove; and which was preserved in the temple of the Nymphs, till the time that Mummius figured himself by the destruction of Corinth. Love, therefore, was the first master of painting; and that god seems, at this day, to have renewed in France that method of the Greeks, by those portraits drawn from shadows, which they call a la Silhouette. It should seem, however, that neither the Greek historians, nor Pliny, were acquainted with that book of Moses intitled Genesis; for they would have there seen, in the xxix chapter, that Rachel, the wife of Jacob, stole from her father Laban his images, or little figures of household gods; which was in the time of the highest antiquity: that Aaron afterwards made in the desert a golden calf; that the ark of the covenant of the Hebrews was ornamented with figures of cherubims; that Moses forbade the people the use of images: all of which supposes a knowledge of delight.

Be this as it may, the Greeks seem to have carried the art to great perfection; if we may believe the stories related of their Apelles and Zeuxis.

3. The Romans were not without considerable matters in this art, in the latter times of the republic, and under the first emperors; but the inundation of barbarians, who ruined Italy, proved fatal to painting, and almost reduced it to its first elements. It was in Italy, however, that the art returned to its ancient honour, and in the beginning of the 15th century; when Cimabue, betaking himself to the pencil, translated the poor remains of the art, from a Greek painter or two, into his own country. He was seconded by some Florentines. The first who got any reputation was Ghirlandai, Michael Angelos matter; Pietro Perugino, Raphael Urbins matter; and Andrea Verocchio, Leonardo Da Vincis matter. But the scholars far surpassed the masters; they not only effaced all that had been done before them, but carried painting to the highest perfection of which it is capable. It was not by their own noble works alone that they advanced painting; but by the number of pupils they bred up, and the schools they formed. Angelo, in particular, founded the school of Florence; Raphael, the school of Rome; and Leonardo, the school of Milan; to which must be added the Lombard school, established about the same time, and which became very considerable under Giorgione and Titian.

Besides the Italian masters, there were others on this side the Alps, who had no communication with those of Italy: such were Albert Durer, in Germany; Holbein, in Switzerland; Lucas, in Holland; and others in France and Flanders. But Italy, and particularly Rome, was the place where the art was practised with the greatest success; and where, from time to time, the greatest masters were produced.

To Raphael's school, succeeded that of the Caracci; which has lasted, in its scholars, almost to the present time.

It is of the different parts of this art thus re-established, extended, and improved, that we are here to treat.

PART I. Principles of the Art, and the Order of the Artist's Studies.

Sect. I. Of the First Exercises of a Painter.

4. It is not a matter of so little importance, as some are, perhaps, apt to imagine, upon what drawings a pupil is first put to exercise his talents. Let the first profiles, the first hands, the first feet, given him to copy, be of the best masters, so as to bring his eye and his hand early acquainted with the most elegant forms, and the most beautiful proportions. A youth, employed in copying the work of a middling painter, in order to proceed afterwards to something of Raphael's, having said, in the hearing of a master, That he did it in order to bring his hand in; the master, as sensibly as wittily, replied, "Say rather, to put it out." A painter, who has early acquired a fine style, finds it an easy matter to give dignity to the meanest features, while even the works of a Praxiteles or a Glycon are sure to suffer in the hands of another. A vessel will ever retain the scent which it has first contracted.

It would be proper also to make the pupil copy some fine heads from the Greek and Roman medals: not so much for the reasons just now laid down, as to make him acquainted, if we may use the expression, with those personages which in time he may have occasion to introduce into his pieces; and, above all, to improve him early in the art of copying from relief. Hence he will learn the rationale of light and shade, and the nature of that chiaroscuro, by which it is, properly speaking, that the various forms of things are distinguished. To this it is owing, that a boy will profit more by drawing after things in relief, though but meanly executed, than by copying the most excellent drawings. But, whatever he does, care should be taken to make him do it with delight, and finish it in the most accurate manner. Nothing in the world is so necessary as diligence; especially at the first entrance upon any study. Nor must he ever expect to have the compasses in his eye, who has not first had them for a long time in his hand.

Sect. II. Of Anatomy.

5. To ask if the study of anatomy is requisite to a painter, is the same thing as to ask if, in order to learn any science, a man must first make himself acquainted with the principles of it. It would be throwing away time to cite, in confirmation of this truth, the authorities of the ancient masters, and the most celebrated schools. A man, who is unacquainted with the form and construction of the several bones which support and govern the human frame, and does not know in what manner the muscles moving these bones are fixed to them, them, can make nothing of what appears of them thro' the integuments with which they are covered; and which appearance is, however, the noblest object of the pencil. It is impossible for a painter to copy faithfully what he sees, unless he thoroughly understands it. Let him employ so much time and study in the attempt, it cannot but be attended with many and great mistakes; just as it must happen to a man, who undertakes to copy something in a language which he does not understand; or to translate into his own, what has been written in another, upon a subject with which he is not acquainted.

It seldom happens, that nothing more is required of a painter than to copy exactly an object which he has before him. In still and very languid attitudes, in which every member is to appear motionless and dead, a living model may, no doubt, yield for a long time a faithful image, and prove an useful pattern to him. But in regard to gestures any way sudden, motions any way violent, or those momentary attitudes which it is more frequently the painter's business to express, the case is quite different. In these a living model can hold but an instant or two; it soon grows languid, and settles into a fixed attitude, which is produced by an instantaneous concourse of the animal-spirits. If, therefore, a painter possesses not so thoroughly all the principles of anatomy, as to be at all times able to have immediate recourse to them; if he knows not the various manners in which the several parts of the human body play, according to their various positions; living models, far from proving an useful pattern to him, will rather tend to lead him astray, and make him lose sight of truth and nature, by exhibiting the very reverse of what is required, or at least exhibiting it in a very faint and imperfect manner. In living models, we often behold those parts slow, which should be very quick; those cold and torpid, which should have the greatest share of life and spirit in them.

Nor is it, as some may be apt to imagine, merely to represent athletic and vigorous bodies, in which the parts are most bold and determined, that anatomy is requisite: it should be understood, to represent persons of the most delicate frame and condition, even women and children, whose members are smoothest and roundest, though the parts made known by it are not to be strongly expressed in such objects; just as logic is equally requisite under the polished insinuations of the orator and the rough arguments of the philosopher.

But it is needless to spend much time in proving, that a painter should be acquainted with anatomy; or in showing, how far his acquaintance with it should extend. For instance, it is unnecessary for him to enter into the different systems of the nerves, blood-vessels, bowels, and the like; parts which are removed from the sight, and which therefore may be left to the surgeon and the physician, as being a guide in the operations of the former and in the prescriptions of the latter. It is enough for the painter, to be acquainted with the skeleton; in other words, with the figure and conection of the bones, which are, in a manner, the pillars and props of the human body; the origin, progress, and shape, of the muscles, which cover these bones; as also the different degrees in which nature has clothed the muscles with fat, for this substance lies thicker upon them in some places than in others. Above all, he should know, in what manner the muscles effect the various motions and gestures of the body. A muscle is composed of two tendinous and slender parts, one called the head, the other the tail, both terminating at the bones; and of an intermediate part, called the belly. The action of a muscle consists in an extraordinary swelling of this intermediate part, while the head remains at rest, so as to bring the tail nearer the head, and consequently the part, to which the tail of the muscle is fixed, nearer to that part into which the head is inserted.

There are many motions, to effect which several of the muscles (for this reason called co-operating muscles) must swell and operate together, while those calculated to effect a contrary motion (and therefore called antagonist muscles) appear soft and flaccid. Thus, for example, the biceps and the brachius internus labour when the arm is to be bent, and become more prominent than usual; while the gemellus, the brachius externus, and the anconeus, whose office is to extend the arm, continue, as it were, flat and idle. The same happens respectively in all the other motions of the body. When the antagonist muscles of any part operate at one and the same time, such part becomes rigid and motionless. This action of the muscle is called tonic.

Michael Angelo intended to have given the public a complete treatise upon this subject; and it is no small misfortune, that he never accomplished so useful a design. This great man, having observed, as we are told in his life by Condivi, that Albert Durer was deficient on the subject, as treating only of the various measures and forms of bodies, without saying a word of their attitudes and gestures, though things of much greater importance, resolved to compose a theory, founded upon his long practice, for the service of all future painters and statuaries. And, certainly, no one could be better qualified to give anatomical precepts for that purpose, than he, who, in competition with Da Vinci, designed that famous cartoon of naked bodies, which was studied by Raphael himself, and afterwards obtained the approbation of the Vatican, the greatest school of the art we are now treating of.

The want of Michael Angelo's precepts may, in some measure, be supplied by other books written on the same subject by Moro, Céno, and Tortebat; and lately by Boucheron, one of the most famous statuaries in France. But nothing can be of equal service to a young painter, with the lessons of some able dissector; under whom, in a few months, he may make himself master of every branch of anatomy which he need to be acquainted with. A course of osteology is of no great length: and of the infinite number of muscles discovered by curious myologists, there are not above 80 or 90, with which nature freely operates all those motions which he can ever have occasion to imitate or express. These, indeed, he should closely study, these he should carefully store up in his memory, so as never to be at the least loss for their proper figure, situation, office, and motion.

But there is another thing besides the dissection of dead bodies, by which a young painter may profit greatly; and that is, anatomical casts. Of these we have Anatomy have numbers by several authors; nay some, which pass under the name of Buonarroti himself. But there is one, in which, above all the rest, the parts are most distinctly and lively expressed. This is the performance of Hercules Lelli, who has, perhaps, gone greater lengths in this kind of study than any other master. We have, besides, by the same able hand, some casts of particular parts of the human body, so curiously coloured for the use of young painters, as to represent these parts exactly as they appear on removing the integuments; and thus, by the difference in their colour as well as configuration, render the tendinous and the fleshy parts, the belly and the extremities, of every muscle surprisingly distinct; at the same time that, by the various direction of the fibres, the motion and play of these muscles become very obvious; a work of the greatest use, and never enough to be commended! Perhaps, indeed, it would be an improvement, to give the muscles various tints; those muscles especially, which the pupil might be apt to mistake for others. For example, though the maitoides, the deltoides, the fatorinii, the fascia lata, the gastrocnemii, are, of themselves, sufficiently distinguishable, it is not so with regard to the muscles of the arm and of the back, the right muscles of the belly, and some others, which, either on account of the many parts into which they branch, or of their being interwoven one with another, do not so clearly and fairly present themselves to the eye. But let the cause of confusion to young beginners be what it will, it may be effectually removed by giving, as already hinted, different colours to the different muscles, and illuminating anatomical figures; in the same manner that maps are, in order to enable us readily to distinguish the several provinces of every kingdom, and the several dominions of every prince.

The better to understand the general effect, and remember the number, situation, and play of the muscles, it will be proper to compare, now and then, the anatomical casts, and even the dead body itself, with the living body covered with its fat and skin; and above all things, with the Greek statues still in being. It was the peculiar happiness of the Greeks, to be able to characterize and express the several parts of the human body much better than we can pretend to do; and this, on account of their particular application to the study of naked figures, especially the fine living ones which they had continually before their eyes. It is well known, that the muscles most used are likewise the most protuberant and conspicuous; such as, in those who dance much, the muscles of the legs; and in boatmen, the muscles of the back and arms. But the bodies of the Grecian youth, by means of their constant exertion of them in all the gymnastic sports, were so thoroughly exercised, as to supply the statuary with much more perfect models than ours can pretend to be. It is not to be doubted, but that, for the same reason, the Greek painters attained the highest degree of perfection in the figures of those pieces of theirs so much cried up by ancient authors; and it is a great pity, that we have not even those copies of nature to direct our studies. For the faults observable in the ancient paintings, which have been dug up in great numbers, especially within these few years, do not so much tend to prove that the Greeks were any way deficient in this art, as the Anatomy, pieces themselves, taken all together, that they had carried it to the highest degree of perfection. For, if in pictures drawn upon walls, which it was therefore impossible to rescue from fire, and in little country towns, and at a time when the art was at its lowest ebb, there appears, in the opinion of the best judges, such excellence of design, colouring, and composition, that one would apt to attribute most of them to the school of Raphael; what must we think of the pictures, drawn at an earlier period, by their ablest masters and for their most flourishing cities and most powerful monarchs; of pictures admired in a country like Greece, where every art was brought to such a degree of perfection, that no passion could resist their music, no sentiment resist their mimic arts; of pictures cried up by Pliny*, the soundest of whose judgment in matters of Nat. Hist., lib. xxxvi. this kind displays itself in so many passages of his works; i.e. 25. collected at such expense by Julius Cæsar†, of whose fine‡ Suetonius, table, the works composed by him, and still extant, are in vit. Cæs. most incontestable proof? But what evinces still better the excellence of the ancients in painting, is that to which they arrived in statuary, her sister art. Both daughters of design, they both enjoyed in common the same models, which, more perfect in the happy climate of Greece than in any other part of the globe, must have been of as great service to the Apellefes and the Zeuxifes, in the drawing of their figures, as they were to the Apolloniofes, the Glycons, and the Agastes, in carving those statues which the world has still the happiness of possessing. These masters, being besides afflicted by a proper insight into anatomy, and thoroughly acquainted with the various play of the muscles according to the various attitudes of the body, and with the different degrees of strength with which each particular muscle was to be expressed in each particular attitude, were thereby enabled to give truth, motion, and life, to all their works.

There are a great many exercises, which a young painter should go through while engaged in the study of anatomy, in order to make himself more thoroughly master of that science. For example: The thighs of any figure, a Laocoön for instance, being given, he should add to them legs suitable to that state in which the muscles of the thighs are represented, that is, the muscles which serve to bend and extend the legs, and to effectuate in them such a precise position and no other. To the simple contour of an anatomy, or a statue, he should add the parts included by it, and give it a system of muscles conformable to the quality of that particular contour; for every contour denotes some one certain attitude, motion, exertion, and no other. Exercises of this kind would soon establish him in the most fundamental principles of painting, especially if he had an opportunity of comparing his drawings with the statue or cast from which the parts given him to work upon were taken, and thereby discovering and correcting his mistakes. This method is very like that used by those who teach the Latin tongue; when, having given their scholars a passage of Livy or Cæsar already translated into their mother-tongue, to translate back into Latin, they make them compare their work with the original next.

Sect. III. Of Perspective.

6. The study of perspective should go hand in hand with Perspective, with that of anatomy, as not less fundamental and necessary. In fact, the contour of an object drawn upon paper or canvas represents nothing more than such an intersection of the visual rays sent from the extremities of it to the eye, as would arise on a glass put in the place of the paper or canvas. Now, the situation of an object at the other side of a glass being given, the delineation of it on the glass itself depends entirely on the situation of the eye on this side of the glass; that is to say, on the rules of perspective: a science which, contrary to the opinion of most people, extends much farther than the painting of scenes, floors, and what generally goes under the name of quadratura. Perspective, according to that great master da Vinci, is to be considered as the reins and rudder of painting. It teaches in what proportion the parts fly from, and lessen upon, the eye; how figures are to be marshalled upon a plain surface, and fore-shortened. It contains, in short, the whole rationale of design.

Such are the terms which the masters best grounded in their profession have employed to define and commend perspective: so far were they from calling it a fallacious art, and an insidious guide; as some amongst the moderns have not blushed to do, insisting that it is to be followed no longer than it keeps the high road, or leads by easy and pleasant paths. But these writers plainly show, that they are equally ignorant of the nature of perspective, which, founded as it is on geometrical principles, can never lead its votaries astray; and of the nature of their art, which, without the assistance of perspective, cannot, in rigour, expect to make any progress, nay, not so much as delineate a simple contour.

Those, too, who would persuade us, that the ancient masters of Greece knew nothing of perspective, show, that they themselves know little or nothing of painting. They allege, as a proof of this their idle assertion, that the rules of perspective are violated in the most of the ancient pictures that have reached us; as though the mistakes and blunders of middling artists were a sufficient ground for calling in question the merit of others, who were allowed to excel in their profession. Now, not to insist on the absurdity of such a supposition, which we have already exposed, Pamphilus, the master of Apelles, and the founder of the noblest school of all Greece, has affirmed in the most express terms, that, without geometry, painting must fall to the ground. It is well known, besides, that the ancients practised the art of painting in perspective upon walls, in the same way that it is now done by the moderns; and that one of the walls of the theatre of Claudius Pulcher, representing a roof covered with tiles, was finished in so masterly a manner, that the rooks, a bird of no small sagacity, taking it for a real roof, often attempted to alight upon it. We are likewise told, that a dog was deceived to such a degree, by certain steps in a perspective of Denton's, that, expecting to find a free passage, he made up to them in full speed, and dashed out his brains; thus immortalizing by his death the pencil of the artist, which had been the occasion of it. But, what is still more, Vitruvius tells us in express terms, by whom, and at what time, this art was invented. It was first practised by Agatharcus, a contemporary of Aeschylus, in the theatre of Athens; and afterwards reduced to certain principles, and treated as a science, by Anaxagoras and Democritus; thus faring like all other arts, which existed in practice before they appeared in theory. The thing, perhaps, may be thus accounted for. Some painter, who happened to be a very accurate observer of nature, first exactly represented those effects which he saw constantly attend the images offered to our eyes by exterior objects; and these effects came afterwards to be demonstrated by geometricians as so many necessary consequences, and reduced to certain theorems: just as from those chief d'oeuvres of the human mind, the Iliad of Homer, and Oedipus of Sophocles, both built upon the most accurate observations of nature, Aristotle found means to extract the rules and precepts contained in his art of poetry. It is therefore clear, that, so early as the age of Pericles, perspective was reduced into a complete science; which no longer continued confined to the theatre, but made its way into the schools of painting, as an art not less necessary to painters in general, than it had been found to scene-painters in particular. Pamphilus, who founded in Scion the most flourishing school of design, taught it publicly; and from the time of Apelles, Protogenes, and the other bright luminaries of painting amongst the ancients, it was practised by the Greek painters, in the same manner that it was, so many ages after, by Bellini, Pietro Perugino, and others, down to the days of Titian, Raphael, and Corregi, who put the last hand to painting, and gave it all that perfection it was capable of receiving.

Now, a painter having formed a scene in his mind, and supposed, as it is customary, that the capital figures of this scene lie close, or almost close, to the back of his canvas, he is, in the next place, to fix upon some point on this side of the canvas, from which he would choose his piece should be seen. But in choosing this point, which is called the point of sight, regard should be had to its situation to the right or left of the middle of the canvas: but, above all things, to its distance and its height with respect to the lower edge of the canvas; which edge is called the base line, and is parallel with the horizontal line that passes through the eye. For by assuming the point of sight, and consequently the horizontal line, too low, the planes, upon which the figures stand, will appear a great deal too shallow; as, by assuming it too high, they will appear too steep, so as to render the piece far less light and airy than it ought to be. In like manner, if the point of sight is taken at too great a distance from the canvas, the figures will not admit of degradation enough to be seen with sufficient distinctness; and if taken too near it, the degradation will be too quick and precipitate to have an agreeable effect. Thus, then, it appears, that no small attention is requisite in the choice of this point.

When a picture is to be placed on high, the point of sight should be assumed low, and vice versa; in order that the horizontal line of the picture may be, as near as possible, in the same horizontal plane with that of the spectator; for this disposition has an amazing effect. When a picture is to be placed very high, as, amongst many others, that of the purification by Paolo Veronese, engraved by le Fevre, it will be proper Perspective, to assume the point of sight so low, that it may lie quite under the picture, no part of whose ground is, in that case, to be visible; for, were the point of sight to be taken above the picture, the horizontal ground of it would appear sloping to the eye, and both figures and buildings as ready to tumble head foremost.

It is true, indeed, that there is seldom any necessity for such extraordinary exactness; and that, unless in some particular cases, the point of sight had better be rather high than low: the reason of which is, that, as we are more accustomed to behold people on the same plane with ourselves, than either higher or lower, the figures of a piece must strike us most when standing on a plane nearly level with that upon which we ourselves stand. To this it may be added, that by placing the eye low, and greatly shortening the plane, the heels of the back figures will seem to bear against the heads of the foremost, so as to render the distance between them far less perceptible than otherwise it would be.

The point of sight being fixed upon, according to the situation in which the picture is to be placed, the point of distance is next to be determined. In doing this, a painter should carefully attend to three things: first, that the spectator may be able to take in, at one glance, the whole and every part of the composition; secondly, that he may see it distinctly; and thirdly, that the degradation of the figures and other objects of the picture be sufficiently sensible. It would take up too much time to lay down certain and precise rules for doing all this, considering the great variety in the sizes and shapes of pictures; for which reason we must leave a great deal to the discretion of the painter.

But there is a point still remaining, which will not admit of the least latitude. This is, the delineation of the picture, when once the point of sight has been fixed upon. The figures of a picture are to be considered as so many columns erected on different spots of the same plane; and the painter must not think of designing any thing, till he has laid down, in perspective, all those columns which are to enter his composition, with the most scrupulous exactness. By proceeding in this manner, he may not only be sure of not committing any mistake in the diminution of his figures according to their different distances, but may flatter himself with the thoughts of treading in the steps of the greatest masters, especially Raphael, in whose sketches (such was his respect to the laws of perspective) we frequently meet with a scale of degradation. It is to the punctual observance of these laws, that we are to attribute the grand effect of some paintings by Carpazio and Mantegna, so careless in other respects; whereas a single fault against them is often sufficient entirely to spoil the works of a Guido, in spite of the sublimity and beauty of his superior style.

Now, as the demonstration of the rules of perspective depends on the doctrine of proportions, on the properties of similar triangles, and on the intersection of planes, it will be proper to put an abridgment of Euclid into the hands of the young painter, that he may understand these rules fundamentally, and not be confined to a blind practice of them; but, then, there is nothing in this author, relative to the art of painting, which may not be easily acquired in a few months.

For, as it would be of no use to a painter to launch out into the anatomical depths of a Monro or an Albino, it would be equally superfluous to perplex himself with the intricacies of the higher geometry with a Taylor, who has handled perspective with that rich profundity, which we cannot help thinking does a great deal more honour to a mathematician, than it can possibly bring advantage to a simple artist.

But though a much longer time were requisite to become a perfect master of perspective, a painter, surely, ought not to grudge it; as no time can be too long to acquire that knowledge, without which he cannot possibly expect to succeed. Nay, we may boldly affirm, that the shortest road in every art is that which leads through theory to practice. It is from theory that arises that great facility, by means of which a man advances the quicker, in proportion as he is surer of not taking a wrong step: whilst those, who are not grounded in the science, labour on in perpetual doubt; obliged, as a certain author expresses it, to feel out their way with a pencil, just as the blind, with their sticks, feel for the streets and turnings, with which they are not acquainted.

As practice, therefore, ought in every thing to be built upon principle, the study of Optics, as far as it is requisite to determine the degree in which objects are to be illuminated or shaded, should proceed hand in hand with that of perspective: And this, in order that the shades, cast by figures upon the planes on which they stand, may fall properly, and be neither too strong nor too light; in a word, that those most beautiful effects of the chiar-oscuro may run no risk of ever receiving the lie from truth, which sooner or later discovers itself to every eye.

Sect. IV. Of Symmetry.

7. The study of symmetry, it is obvious, should immediately follow that of anatomy; for it would avail us little to be acquainted with the different parts of the human body, and their several offices, were we at the same time ignorant of the order and proportion of these parts in regard to the whole in general, and each other in particular. The Greek statuaries distinguished themselves above all others, as much by the just symmetry of their members, as by their skill in anatomy; but Polydectes surpassed them all by a statue, called the Rule, from which, as from a most accurate pattern, other artists might take measures for every part Nat. Hist. of the human body. These measures, to say nothing lib. xxxiv. of the books which treat professedly of them, may now c. 8. be derived from the Apollo of Belvedere, the Laocoön, the Venus of Medicis, the Faunus, and particularly the Antinous, which last was the rule of the learned Poussin.

Nature, which in the formation of every species seems to have aimed at the last degree of perfection, does not appear to have been equally solicitous in the production of individuals. She considers, one would think, those things as nothing, which have a beginning and an end, and whose existence is of so short a duration, that they may be said, in a manner, to come into the world merely to leave it. She seems, in some sort, to abandon individuals to second causes; and if Symmetry from them there now and then breaks forth a primitive ray of perfection, it is too soon eclipsed by the clouds of imperfection that constantly attend it. Now, Art soars up to the archetypes of Nature; collects the flowers of every beauty, which it here and there meets with; combines all the perfect models that come in its way; and proposes them to men for their imitation. Thus, the painter, who had before him a company of naked Calabrian girls, traced, as la Casa ingeniously expresses it, the respective beauties which they had as it were borrowed from one single body; that, by making each of them restore to this imaginary form what he had borrowed from it, he might be furnished with a complete pattern; rightly imagining, that from such an union, and of such beauties, must result the beauty of an Helen. This was likewise the practice of the ancient statuaries, when about to form in brass or marble the statues of their gods or heroes. And, thanks to the hardness of these materials, some of their works, containing united all that possible perfection which could be found scattered here and there in individuals, suffice to this day as patterns not only of exact symmetry, but of supereminent grandeur in the parts, gracefulness and contrast in the attitudes; in short, as paragons in every kind, and the very mirrors of beauty. In them we behold precept joined with example: in them we see where the great masters of antiquity deviated with a happy boldness from the common rules; or rather made them bend to the different characters they were to represent. In their Niobe, for instance, which was to breathe majesty like Juno, they have altered some parts that appear more delicate and slender in their Venus, the pattern of female beauty. The legs and thighs of the Apollo of Belvidere, by being made somewhat longer than the common proportion of these limbs to the rest of the body seems to admit, contribute not a little to give him that ease and freedom which correspond so well with the activity attributed to that deity; as, on the other hand, the extraordinary thickness of the neck adds strength to the Farnesian Hercules, and gives him something of a bull-like look and robustness.

It is the general opinion of painters, that the ancients were not as happy in representing the bodies of children, as they are allowed to have been in representing those of women and men; especially those of their gods; in which they excelled to such a degree, that with these gods were often worshipped the artists who had carved them. Yet the Venus of Gnidus by Praxiteles was not more famous than her Cupid, on whose account alone people flocked to Thebes. To children, say they, the ancients knew not how to impart that softness and effeminacy, which Fiammingo has since contrived to give them, by representing their cheeks, hands, and feet, swelled, their heads large, and with scarce any belly. But such critics seem to forget, that these first sketches of nature very seldom come in the painter's way, and that this puny and delicate state has not in its form even the least glimmering of perfection. The ancients never undertook to represent children less than four or five years old; at which age the superfluous humours of the body being in some measure digested, their members begin to assume such a contour and proportion, as may serve to point out what they are afterwards likely to be. This observation is confirmed by the children Symmetry, which we meet with in ancient bas-reliefs and paintings: for they are all doing one thing or another; like those most beautiful little Cupids in a picture at Venice, who are playing with the arms of Mars, and lifting up the ponderous sword of that deity; or that little urchin in the Danie of Caracci, who empties a quiver of its arrows, in order to fill it with the golden shower. Now, what can be a greater blunder in point of costume, than to attribute actions, which require some degree of strength and judgment, to infancy, to that raw and tender age so totally unable to govern and support itself?

Let a young painter consider the Greek statues ever so often, of whatever character or age they may be represented, it is impossible he should ever consider them without discovering new beauties in them. It is therefore impossible he should copy them too often, according to that judicious motto placed by Moratti on his print called The school. This truth was acknowledged by Rubens himself: for though, like one bred, as he was, in the foggy climate of the Low Countries, he generally painted from the life; in some of his works he copied the ancients; nay, he wrote a treatise on the excellency of the ancient statues, and on the duty of a painter to study and imitate them. As to the satirical print, or rather pasquinade, of the great Titian, in which he has represented a parcel of young monkeys aping the groupe of Laocoön and his sons; he intended nothing more by it than to lash the dulness and poverty of those artists, who cannot so much as draw a figure without having a statue before them as a model.

In fact, reason requires, that an artist should be so much matter of his art, as seldom to stand in need of a pattern. To what other purpose is he to sweat and toil from his infancy, and spend so many days and nights in studying and copying the best models; especially the finest faces of antiquity, which we are still possessed of; such as the two Niobes, mother and daughter; the Ariadne, the Alexander, the young Nero, the Silenus, the Nile; and likewise the finest figures; for instance, the Apollo, the Gladiator, the Venus, and others; all which (as was said of Pietro Felta), he should have, as it were, perfectly by heart? With a stock of excellencies like these, treasured up in his memory, he may one day hope to produce something of his own without a model; form a right judgment of those natural beauties which fall in his way; and, when occasion offers, avail himself properly of them.

It is very ill done to send boys to an academy to draw after naked figures, before they have imbibed a proper relish for beautiful proportions, and have been well-grounded in the true principles of symmetry. They should first learn, by studying the precious remains of antiquity, to improve upon life; and discern where a natural figure is faulty through stiffness in the members, or clumsiness in the trunk, or in any other respect; so as to be able to correct the faulty part, and reduce it to its proper bounds. Painting, in this branch, is, like medicine, the art of taking away and adding.

It must not, however, be dissembled, that the methods hitherto laid down are attended with some dan- Symmetry. ger: for by too lavish an attention to statues, the young painter may contract a hard and dry manner; and by studying anatomies too servilely, a habit of representing living bodies as stripped of their skin: for, after all, there is nothing but what is natural, that, besides a certain peculiar grace and liveliness, possesses that simplicity, ease, and softness, which is not to be expected in the works of art, or even in those of nature when deprived of life. Poussin himself has now and then given into one of these extremes, and Michael Angelo very often into the other: but from this we can only infer, that even the greatest men are not infallible. It is, in short, to be considered as one instance, among a thousand, of the ill use those are wont to make of the best things, who do not know how to temper and qualify them properly with their contraries.

But no such danger can arise to a young painter from confining himself for a long time to mere design, so as not to attempt colouring till he has made himself master of that branch. If, according to a great master, colours in painting are in regard to the eye what numbers in poetry are in regard to the ear, so many charms to allure and captivate that sense; may we not affirm, that design is in the same art what propriety of language is in writing, and a just utterance of sounds in music? Whatever some people may think, a picture designed according to the rules of perspective and the principles of anatomy, will ever be held in higher esteem by good judges, than a picture ill designed, let it be ever so well coloured. Annibal Caracci set so great a value upon the art of contour, that, according to some expressions of his which have reached us, he considered almost everything else as nothing in comparison with it. And this judgment may be justified, by considering, that nature, though she forms men of various colours and complections, never operates in their motions contrary to the mechanical principles of anatomy, nor, in exhibiting these motions to the eye, against the geometrical laws of perspective: a plain proof, that, in point of design, no mistake is to be deemed trifling. Hence we are enabled to feel all the weight of those words in which Michael Angelo, after he considered a picture drawn by a prince of the Venetian school, addressed Vasari: "What a pity it is," said he, "that this man did not set out by studying design!" As the energy of nature shines most in the smallest subjects, so the energy of art shines most in imitating them.

Sect. V. Of Colouring.

8. It must likewise be of great service to a painter desirous to excel in colouring, to be well acquainted with that part of Optics which has the nature of light and colours for its object. Light, however simple and uncompounded it may appear, is nevertheless made up, as it were, of several distinct substances; and the number, and even dose, of these ingredients, has been happily discovered by the moderns. Every undivided ray, let it be ever so fine, is a little bundle of red, orange, yellow, green, azure, indigo, and violet rays, which, while combined, are not to be distinguished one from another, and from that kind of light called white; so that white is not a colour per se, as the learned da Vinci (to far it seems, the precursor of Newton) expressly affirms, but an assemblage of colours. Now, these colours, which compose light, although immutable in themselves, and ended with various qualities, are continually, however, separating from each other in their reflection from and passage through other substances, and thus become manifest to the eye. Grains, for example, reflects only green rays, or rather reflects green rays in greater number than it does those of any other colour; and one kind of wine transmits red rays, and another yellowish rays: and from this kind of separation arises that variety of colours with which nature has diversified her various productions. Man, too, has contrived to separate the rays of light by making a portion of the sun's beams pass through a glass prism; for after passing through it, they appear divided into seven pure and primitive colours, placed in succession one by the other, like so many colours on a painter's pallet.

Now, though Titian, Correggio, and Van Dyke, have been excellent colourists, without knowing anything of these physical subtleties, that is no reason why others should neglect them. For it cannot but be of great service to a painter to be well acquainted with the nature of what he is to imitate, and of those colours with which he is to give life and perfection to his designs; not to speak of the pleasure there is in being able to account truly and solidly for the various effects and appearances of light. From a due tempering, for example, and degrading, of the tints in a picture; from making colours partake of each other, according to the reflection of light from one object to another; there arises, in some measure, that sublime harmony which may be considered as the true music of the eye. And this harmony has its foundation in the genuine principles of optics. Now this could not happen in the system of those philosophers, who held, that colours did not originally exist in light, but were, on the contrary, nothing else than so many modifications which it underwent in reflecting from or passing through other substances; thus subject to alterations without end, and every moment liable to perish. Were that the case, bodies could no more receive any hues one from another, nor this body partake of the colour of that, than scarlet, for example, because it has the power of changing into red all the rays of the sun or sky which immediately fall upon it, has the power of changing into red all the other rays reflected to it from a blue or any other colour in its neighbourhood. Whereas, allowing that colours are in their own nature immutable one into another, and that every body reflects more or less every sort of coloured rays, though those rays in the greatest number which are of the colour it exhibits, there must necessarily arise, in colours placed near one another, certain particular hues or temperaments of colour: nay, this influence of one colour upon another may be so far traced, that three or four bodies of different colours, and likewise the intenseness of the light falling upon each, being assigned, we may easily determine in what situations, and how much, they would tinge each other. We may thus, too, by the same principle of optics, account for several other things practised by painters; insomuch that a person, who has carefully observed natural effects with an eye directed by solid learning, shall be able to form general rules, where another can only distinguish particular cases.

But after all, the pictures of the best colourists are, Colouring, it is universally allowed, the books in which a young painter must chiefly look for the rules of colouring; that is, of that branch of painting which contributes so much to express the beauty of objects, and is so requisite to represent them as they really are. Giorgione and Titian seem to have discovered circumstances in nature which others have entirely overlooked; and the last in particular has been happy enough to express them with a pencil as delicate as his eye was quick and piercing. In his works we behold that sweetness of colouring which is produced by union; that beauty which is consistent with truth; and all the insensible transmutations, all the soft transitions, in a word, all the pleasing modulations, of tints and colours. When a young painter has, by close application, acquired from Titian, whom he can never sufficiently dwell upon, that art which, of all painters, he has best contrived to hide, he would do well to turn to Bassano and Paolo, on account of the beauty, boldness, and elegance of their touches. That richness, softness, and freshness of colouring, for which the Lombard school is so justly cried up, may likewise be of great service to him. Nor will he reap less benefit by studying the principles and practice of the Flemish school; which, chiefly by means of her varnishes, has contrived to give a most enchanting lustre and transparency to her colours.

But whatever pictures a young painter may choose to study the art of colouring upon, he must take great care that they are well preserved. There are very few pieces which have not suffered more or less by the length, not to say the injuries, of time; and perhaps that precious patina, which years alone can impart to paintings, is in some measure akin to that other kind which ages alone impart to medals; inasmuch as, by giving testimony to their antiquity, it renders them proportionally beautiful in the superstitious eyes of the learned. It must indeed be allowed, that if, on the one hand, this patina bestows, as it really does, an extraordinary degree of harmony upon the colours of a picture, and destroys, or at least greatly lessens, their original rawness, it, on the other hand, equally impairs the freshness and life of them. A piece seen many years after it has been painted, appears much as it would do, immediately after painting, behind a dull glass. It is no idle opinion, that Paolo Veronese, attentive above all things to the beauty of his colours, and what is called finissimo, left entirely to time the care of harmonizing them perfectly and (as we may say) mellowing them. But most of the old masters took that task upon themselves; and never exposed their works to the eyes of the public, until they had ripened and finished them with their own hands. And who can say whether the Christ of Moneta, or the Nativity of Bellano, have been more improved or injured (if we may so speak) by the touchings and retouchings of time, in the course of more than two centuries? It is indeed impossible to be determined. But the studious pupil may make himself ample amends for any injuries which his originals may have received from the hands of time, by turning to truth, and to Nature which never grows old, but constantly retains its primitive flower of youth, and was itself the model of the models before him. As soon, therefore, as a young painter has laid a proper foundation for good colouring, by studying the best matters, he should turn all his thoughts to truth and nature. And it would perhaps be well worth while to have, in the academies of painting, models for colouring as well as designing; that as from the one the pupils learn to give their due proportion to the several members and muscles, they may learn from the other to make their carnations rich and warm, and faithfully copy the different local hues which appear quite distinct in the different parts of a fine body. To illustrate still farther the use of such a model, let us suppose it placed in different lights; now in that of the sun, now in that of the sky, and now again in that of a lamp or candle; one time placed in the shade, and another in a reflected light. Hence the pupil may learn all the different effects of the complection in different circumstances, whether the livid, the lucid, or transparent; and, above all, that variety of tints and half-tints, occasioned in the colour of the skin by the epidermis having the bones immediately under it in some places, and in others a greater or less number of blood-vessels or quantity of fat. An artist who had long studied such a model, would run no risk of degrading the beauties of nature by any particularity of style, or of giving into that preposterous fulness and floridness of colour which is at present so much the taste. He would not feed his figures with roses, as an ancient painter of Greece shrewdly expressed it, but with good beef; a difference, which the learned eye of a modern writer Webb, could perceive between the colouring of Barocci and dial. s. that of Titian. To practise, in that manner, is, according to a great matter, no better than inuring one's self to the commission of blunders. What statues are in design, nature is in colouring; the fountain-head of that perfection to which every artist, ambitious to excel, should constantly aspire: and accordingly the Flemish painters, in consequence of their aiming solely to copy nature, are in colouring as excellent as they are wont to be awkward in designing.

Sect. VI. Of the Camera Obscura.

9. We may well imagine, that could a young painter but view a picture by the hand of nature herself, and study it at his leisure, he would profit more by it than by the most excellent performances by the hand of man. Now, nature is continually forming such pictures in our eye. The rays of light coming from exterior objects, after entering the pupil pass through the crystalline humour; and, being there refracted in consequence of the lenticular form of that part, proceed to the retina, which lies at the bottom of the eye, and stamp up it, by their union, the image of the object towards which the pupil is directed. The consequence of which is, that the soul, by means as yet unknown to us, receives immediate intelligence of these rays, and comes to see the objects that sent them. But this grand operation of nature, the discovery of which was reserved for our times, might have remained an idle amusement of physical curiosity, without being of the least service to the painter, had not means been happily found of imitating it. The machine contrived for this purpose, consists of a lens and mirror so situated, that the second throws the picture of any thing properly exposed to the first, and that too of a competent largeness, on a clean sheet of paper, where it may be seen and contemplated at leisure. As this artificial eye, usually called a camera optica or obscura, gives no admittance to any rays of light, but those coming from the thing whose representation is wanted, there results from them a picture of inexpressible force and brightness; and as nothing is more delightful to behold, so nothing can be more useful to study, than such a picture. For, not to speak of the justness of the contours, the exactness of the perspective and of the chiaroscuro, which exceeds conception; the colours are of a vivacity and richness that nothing can excel; the parts which stand out most, and are most exposed to the light, appear surprisingly loose and resplendent; and this looseness and refulgence declines gradually, as the parts themselves sink in, or retire from the light. The shades are strong without harshness, and the contours precise without being sharp. Wherever any reflected light falls, there appears, in consequence of it, an infinite variety of tints, which, without this contrivance, it would be impossible to discern. Yet there prevails such a harmony amongst all the colours of the piece, that scarce any one of them can be said to clash with another.

After all, it is no way surprising, that we should, by means of this contrivance, discover, what otherwise we might justly despair of ever being acquainted with. We cannot look directly at any object that is not surrounded by so many others, all darting their rays together into our eyes, that it is impossible we should distinguish all the different modulations of its light and colours. At least we can only see them in so dull and confused a manner, as not to be able to determine anything precisely about them. Whereas, in the camera obscura, the visual faculty is brought wholly to bear upon the object before it; and the light of every other object is, as it were, perfectly extinguished.

Another most astonishing perfection in pictures of this kind is, the diminution of the size, and of the intenseness of light and colour, of the objects and all their parts, in proportion to their distance from the eye. At a greater distance, the colours appear more faint, and the contours more obscure. The shades, likewise, are a great deal weaker in a less or more remote light. On the other hand, those objects, which are largest in themselves, or lie nearest to the eye, have the most exact contours, the strongest shades, and the brightest colours: all which qualities are requisite to form that kind of perspective which is called aerial; as though the air between the eye and external objects, not only veiled them a little, but in some part gnawed and preyed upon them. This kind of perspective constitutes a principal part of that branch of painting, which regards the shortening of figures, and likewise the bringing them forward, and throwing them back in such a manner as to make us lose sight of the ground upon which they are drawn. It is, in a word, this kind of perspective, from which, assisted by linear perspective, arise

"Dolce sese a vedere, e dolci ingannar."

"Things sweet to see, and sweet deceptions."

Nothing proves this better than the camera obscura, in which nature paints the objects which lie near the eye, as it were, with a hard and sharp pencil, and those at a distance with a soft and blunt one.

The best modern painters among the Italians have availed themselves greatly of this contrivance; nor is it possible they should have otherwise represented things so much to the life. It is probable, too, that several of the Transmontane masters, considering their success in expressing the minutest objects, have done the same. Every one knows of what service it has been to Spagnoletto of Bologna, some of whose pictures have a grand and most wonderful effect. We once happened to be present where a very able master was shewn this machine for the first time. It is impossible to express the pleasure he took in examining it. The more he considered it, the more he seemed to be charmed with it. In short, after trying it a thousand different ways, and with a thousand different models, he candidly confessed, that nothing could compare with the pictures of excellent and inimitable a master. Another, no less eminent, has given it as his opinion, that an academy, with no other furniture than the book of da Vinci, a critical account of the excellencies of the capital painters, the casts of the finest Greek statues, and the pictures of the camera obscura, would alone be sufficient to revive the art of painting. Let the young painter, therefore, begin as early as possible to study these divine pictures, and study them all the days of his life, for he never will be able sufficiently to contemplate them. In short, painters should make the same use of the camera obscura which naturalists and astronomers make of the microscope and telescope; for all these instruments equally contribute to make known and represent nature.

Sect. VII. Of Drapery.

10. Drapery is one of the most important branches of the whole art, and accordingly demands the greatest attention and study. It seldom happens that a painter has nothing but naked figures to represent; nay, his subjects generally consist of figures clothed from head to foot. Now the flowing of the folds in every garment depends chiefly upon the relief of the parts that lie under it. A certain author, we forget his name, observes, that as the inequalities of a surface are discoverable by the inequalities in the water that runs over it, so the posture and shape of the members must be discernible by the folds of the garment that covers them. Those idle windings and gatherings, with which some painters have affected to cover their figures, make the clothes made up of them look as if the body had fled from under them, and left nothing in its place but a heap of empty bubbles, fit emblems of the brain that conceived them. As from the trunk of a tree there issue here and there boughs of various forms, so from one mitre-fold there always flow many lesser ones: and as it is on the quality of the tree that the elegance, compactness, or openness of its branches chiefly depends; it is, in like manner, by the quality of the stuff of which a garment is made, that the number, order, and size of its folds must be determined. To sum up all in two words, the drapery ought to be natural and easy, so as to show what stuff it is, and what parts it covers. It ought, as a certain author expresses it, to cover the body, as it were merely to show it.

It was formerly the custom with some of our masters to draw all their figures naked, and then drape them; from the same principle that they first drew the skeletons of their figures, and afterwards covered them with muscles. And it was by proceeding in this manner that they attained to such a degree of truth in expres-

Sing the folds of their drapery, and the joints and direction of the principal members that lay under it, so as to exhibit in a most striking manner, the attitude of the person to whom they belonged. That the ancient sculptors clothed their statues with equal truth and grace, appears from many of them that are still in being; particularly a Flora lately dug up in Rome, whose drapery is executed with so much judgment, and in so grand and rich a style, that it may vie with the finest of their naked statues, even with the Venus of Medicis. The statues of the ancients had so much beauty when naked, that they retained a great deal when clothed. But here it must be considered, that it was usual with them to suppose their originals clothed with wet garments, and of an extreme fineness and delicacy, that, by lying close to the parts, and in a manner clinging to them, they might the better show what these parts were. For this reason a painter is not to confine himself to the study of the ancient statues, lest he should contract a dry style, and even fall into the same faults with some great masters who, accustomed to drape with such light stuffs as fit close to the body, have afterwards made the coarsest lie in the same manner, so as plainly to exhibit the muscles underneath them. It is therefore proper to study nature herself, and those modern masters who have come nearest to her in this branch; such as Paolo Veronese, Andrea del Sarto, Rubens, and above all, Guido Reni. The flow of their drapery is soft and gentle; and the gatherings and plaits are so contrived, as not only not to hide the body, but to add grace and dignity to it. Their gold, silk, and woollen stuffs, are so distinguishable one from another, by the quality of their several lustres, and the peculiar light and shade belonging to each, but above all by the form and flow of their folds, that the age and sex of their figures are hardly more discoverable by their faces. Albert Durer is another great master in this branch, insomuch that Guido himself was not ashamed to study him. There are still extant several drawings made with the pen by this great man, in which he has copied whole figures from Albert, and scrupulously retained the flow of his drapery as far as his own peculiar style, less harsh and sharp, but more easy and graceful, would allow. It may be said that he made the same use of Albert, that our modern writers ought to make of the best authors of the 13th century.

Sect. VIII. Of Landscape and Architecture.

11. When our young painter has made a sufficient progress in those principal branches of his art, the designing, perspective, colouring, and drapery of human figures, he should turn his thoughts to landscape and architecture: for, by studying them, he will render himself universal, and qualified to undertake any subject; so as not to resemble certain literati, who, tho' great masters in some articles, are mere children in every thing else.

The most eminent landscape painters are Poussin, Lorenese, and Titian.

Poussin was remarkable for his great diligence. His pieces are quite exotic and uncommon; being set off with buildings in a beautiful but singular style; and with learned episodes, such as poets reciting their verses to the woods, and youths exercising themselves in the several gymnastic games of antiquity; by which it plainly appears, that he was more indebted for his subjects to the descriptions of Pausanias, than to nature and truth.

Lorenese applied himself chiefly to express the various phenomena of light, especially those perceivable in the heavens. And, thanks to the happy climate of Rome, where he studied and exercised his talents, he has left us the brightest skies, and the richest and most gloriously cloud-tipt horizons that can be well conceived. Nay, the sun himself, which, like the Almighty, can be represented merely by his effects, has scarce escaped his daring and ambitious pencil.

Titian, the great confident of nature, is the Homer of landscape. His scenes have so much truth, so much variety, and such a bloom in them, that it is impossible to behold them, without wishing, as if they were real, to make an excursion into them. And perhaps the finest landscape that ever issued from mortal hands, is the background of his Martyrdom of St Peter; where by the difference between the bodies and the leaves of his trees, and the disposition of their branches, one immediately discovers the difference between the trees themselves; where the different soils are so well expressed, and so exquisitely clothed with their proper plants, that a botanist has much ado to keep his hands from them. See Part II. Sect. ii.

Paolo Veronese is in architecture, what Titian is in landscape. To excel in landscape, we must, above all things, study nature. To excel in architecture, we must chiefly regard the finest works of art; such as the fronts of ancient edifices, and the fabrics of those moderns who have best studied and best copied antiquity. Next to Brunelleschi and Alberti, who were the first revivers of architecture, came Bramante, Giulio Romano, Sanzovino, Sanmicheli, and lastly Palladio, whose works the young painter should above all the rest diligently study and imprint deeply on his mind. Nor is Vignola to be forgot; for some think he was a more scrupulous copier of antiquity, and more exact, than Palladio himself, insomuch that most people consider him as the first architect among the moderns. For our part, to speak of him, not as fame, but as truth seems to require, we cannot help thinking, that rather than break through the generality of the rules contrived by him to facilitate practice, he has in some instances deviated from the most beautiful proportions of the antique, and is rather barren in the distribution and disposition of certain members. Moreover, the extraordinary height of his pedestals and cornices hinders the column from showing in the orders designed and employed by him, as it does in those of Palladio. Amongst that great variety of proportions to be met with in ancient ruins, Palladio has been extremely happy in choosing the best. His profiles are well contrated, yet easy. All the parts of his buildings hang well together. Grandeur, elegance, and beauty, walk hand in hand in them. In short, the very blemishes of Palladio, who was no slave to conveniency, and sometimes perhaps was too profuse in his decorations, are picturesque. And we may reasonably believe, that it was by following so great a master, whose works he had continually before his eyes, that Paolo Veronese formed that fine and masterly taste which enabled him to embellish his compositions with such beautiful structures.

Sect. 12. The study of architecture cannot fail, in another respect, of being very useful to the young painter, inasmuch as it will bring him acquainted with the form of the temples, thermae, basilicas, theatres, and other buildings of the Greeks and Romans. Besides, from the bas-reliefs with which it was customary to adorn these buildings, he may gather, with equal delight and profit, the nature of their sacrifices, arms, military ensigns, and dyes. The study of landscape, too, will render familiar to him the form of the various plants peculiar to each soil and climate, and such other things as serve to characterize the different regions of the earth. Thus by degrees he will learn what we call costume, one of the chief requisites in a painter; since, by means of it, he may express with great precision the time and place in which his scenes are laid.

The Roman school has been exceedingly chaste in this branch. So was the French, as long as it continued under the influence and direction of Poussin, whom we may justly style the Learned Painter; whereas the Venetian school has been to the last degree careless, not to say licentious. Titian made no difficulty of introducing in an Ecce Homo of his, pages in a Spanish garb, and the Austrian Eagle on the shields of the Roman soldiers. It is true indeed, that once he placed in the back ground of a Crowning-with-Thorns, a bult carrying the name of the emperor Tiberius, under whom our Saviour suffered: but it is likewise true, that, as if he thought it unbecoming a painter to pay any regard to such minutiae of learning and the costume, he shewed himself perfectly indifferent about them in all his other works. Tintoret, in a Fall of Manna, has armed his figures with musquets. And Paolo Veronese, in a Last Supper, presents us with Swits, Levantine, and other strange figures. In short, he has been so careless in this way, that his pieces have been often considered as so many beautiful masquerades.

It is impossible to express how much a picture suffers by such looseness and fancy, and sinks as a bastard of the art in the esteem of good judges. Some people, indeed, are of opinion that so scrupulous an observance of the costume is apt to hurt pictures, by depriving them of a certain air of truth arising, they think, from those features and habits to which we are accustomed; and which are therefore apt to make a greater impression, than can be expected from things drawn from the remote sources of antiquity: adding withal, that a certain degree of licence has ever been allowed those artists who in their works must make fancy their chief guide. See, say they, the Greeks; that is, the masters of Raphael and Poussin themselves. Do they ever trouble their heads about such niceties? The Rhodian statuaries, for example, have not scrupled to represent Laocoon naked; that is, the Priest of Apollo naked in the very act of sacrificing to the gods, and that too in presence of a whole people, of the virgins and matrons of Ilium. Now, continue they, if it was allowable in the ancient statuaries to neglect probability and decency to such a degree, to have a better opportunity of displaying their skill in the anatomy of the human body; why may it not be allowable in modern painters, the better to attain the end of their art, which is deception, to depart now and then a little from the ancient manners and the too rigorous laws of invention, the costume? But these reasons, we beg leave to observe, are more absurd than they are ingenious. What! are we to draw conclusions from an example, which, far from deciding the dispute, gives occasion to another? The learned are of opinion, that those Rhodian masters would have done much better, had they looked out for a subject in which, without offending so much against truth, and even probability, they might have had an equal opportunity of displaying their knowledge of the naked. And certainly no authority or example whatever, should tempt us to do anything contrary to what both decency and the reason of things require, unless we intend, like Carponi, to represent Segni d'infirmiti, e fole di romanzo.

"The dreams of sick men, and the tales of fools."

No: a painter, the better to attain the end of his art, which is deception, ought carefully to avoid mixing the antique with the modern, the domestic with the foreign; things, in short, repugnant to each other, and therefore incapable of gaining credit. A spectator will never be brought to consider himself as actually present at the scene, the representation of which he has before him, unless the circumstances which enter it perfectly agree among themselves, and the field of action, if we may use the expression, in no shape belies the action itself. For instance, the circumstances, or, if you please, the accessories, in a Finding of Moses, are not, surely, to represent the borders of a canal planted with rows of poppies, and covered with country-houses in the European taste; but the banks of a great river shaded with clusters of palm-trees, with a Sphinx or an Anubis in the adjacent fields, and here and there in the back-ground a towering pyramid. And indeed the painter, before he takes either canvas or paper in hand, should on the wings of fancy transport himself to Egypt, to Thebes, or to Rome; and summoning to his imagination the physiognomy, the dyes, the plants, the buildings, suitable to his subject, with the particular spot he has chosen to lay his scene, so manage his pencil, as, by the magic of it, to make the enraptured spectators fancy themselves there along with him.

Sect. X. Of Invention.

13. As the operations of a general should, all, ultimately tend to battle and conquest; so should all the thoughts of a painter to perfect invention. Now, the studies which we have been hitherto recommending, will prove so many wings by which he may raise himself, as it were, from the ground, and soar on high, when desirous of trying his strength this way, and producing something from his own fund. Invention is the finding out probable things, not only such as are adapted to the subject in hand, but such, besides, as by their sublimity and beauty are most capable of exciting suitable sentiments in the spectator, and of making him, when they happen to be well executed, fancy that it is the subject itself in its greatest perfection, and not a mere representation of it; that he has before him. We do not say true things, but probable things; because probability or verisimilitude is, in fact, the truth of those arts which have the fancy for their object. It is, indeed, the business and duty of both naturalists and historians, to draw objects as they find them, and represent them with all those imperfections and blemishes, to which, as individuals, they are subject. But an ideal painter, and such alone is a true painter, resembles the poet: instead of copying, he imitates; that is, he works with his fancy, and represents objects endued with all that perfection which belongs to the species and may be conceived in the archetype.

"'Tis nature all, but nature methodized," says an eminent poet, speaking of poetry: And the same may be said of painting; but it is nature methodized, and made perfect. Insomuch, that the circumstances of the action, exalted and sublimed to the highest degree of beauty and boldness they are susceptible of, may, though possible, have never happened exactly such as the painter fancies and thinks proper to represent them. Thus, the piety of Æneas, and the anger of Achilles, are things so perfect in their kind, as to be merely probable. And it is for this reason that poetry, which is only another word for invention, is more philosophical, more instructive, and more entertaining, than history.

Here it is proper to observe, what great advantages the ancient had over the modern painters. The history of the times they lived in, fraught with great and glorious events, was to them a rich mine of the most noble subjects, which, besides, often derived no small sublimity and pathos from the mythology upon which their religion was founded. So far were their gods from being immaterial, and placed at an infinite distance above their worshippers; so far was their religion from recommending humility, penance, and self-denial, that, on the contrary, it appeared calculated merely to flatter the senses, inflame the passions, and poison the fancy. By making the gods partake of our nature, and subjecting them to the same passions, it gave man hopes of being able to mix with those who, though greatly above him, resembled him, notwithstanding, in so many respects. Besides, those deities of theirs were in a manner visible, and to be met at every step. The sea was crowded with Tritons and Nereids, the rivers with Naiads, and the mountains with Dryads. The woods swarmed with Fauns and Nymphs, who, in these obscure retreats, fought an asylum for their stolen embraces. The most potent empires, the most noble families, the most celebrated heroes, all derived their pedigree from the greater divinities. Nay, gods interested themselves in all the concerns of mankind. Apollo, the god of long arrows, stood by the side of Hector in the fields of Troy, and inspired him with new strength and courage to batter down the walls and burn the ships of the Greeks. These, on the other hand, were led on to the fight and animated by Minerva, preceded by Terror, and followed by Death. Jove nods, his divine locks shake on his immortal head; Olympus trembles. With that countenance, which allays the tempest, and restores serenity to the heavens, he gathers kisses from the mouth of Venus, the delight of gods and of men. Among the ancients, every thing sported with the fancy; and in those works which depend entirely on the imagination, some of our greatest masters have thought they could not do better than borrow from the Pagans, if we may be allowed to say it, their pictures of Tartarus, in order to render their own drawings of hell more striking.

After all, there have not been wanting able inventors in painting among the moderns. Michael Angelo, notwithstanding the depth and boldness of his own fancy, is not ashamed, in some of his compositions, to Dantize; as Phidias and Apelles may be said formerly to have Homerized. Raphael, too, tutored by the Greeks, has found means, like Virgil, to extract the quintessence of truth; has seasoned his works with grace and nobleness, and exalted nature, in a manner, above herself, by giving her an aspect more beautiful, more animating, and more sublime, than she is, in reality, accustomed to wear. In point of invention, Domenichino and Annibal Carracci come very near Raphael, especially in the pieces painted by them in Rome; nor does Poussin fall very short of him in some of his pictures, particularly in his Eftir before Abasfuerus, and his Death of Germanicus, the richest jewel belonging to the Barberine family. Of all the painters who have acquired any extraordinary degree of reputation, no one studied less to set off his pieces by bold and beautiful circumstances, or was more a stranger to what is called poetical perfection, than Jacopo Bassano. Among the numberless instances we could produce of his carelessnesses this way, let it suffice to mention a Preaching of St Paul painted by him in a place, near that of his birth, called Marofega. Instead of representing the apostle full of a divine enthusiasm, as Raphael has done, and thundering against the superstitions of the heathen in an assembly of Athenians; instead of exhibiting one of his auditors struck to the quick, another persuaded, a third inflamed; he makes him hold forth, in a village of the Venetian state, to a parcel of poor peasants and their wives, who take not the least notice of him; the women especially, who seem to mind nothing but the country labours in which he had found them employed. After all, this is an admirable piece; and would be a perfect one, had the painter not disgraced it so much by the poverty of his ideas.

With regard to invention, painting and poetry resemble each other so much in many other respects, besides that of combining in every action all the beauty and elegance it will admit, that they well deserve the name of sister arts. They differ, however, in one point, and that too of no small importance. It is this. The poet, in the representation of his story, relates what has already happened, prepares that which is still to come, and so proceeds, step by step, through all the circumstances of the action; and, to operate the greater effect on his hearers, avails himself of the succession of time and place. The painter, on the contrary, deprived of such helps, must be content to depend upon one single moment. But what a moment! A moment, in which he may conjure up, at once, to the eyes of the spectator, a thousand objects; a moment, teeming with the most beautiful circumstances that can attend the action; a moment, equivalent to the successive labours of the poet. This the works of the greatest masters, which are everywhere to be seen, sufficiently evince; among others, the St Paul at Lystra, by Raphael, whom it is impossible not to praise as often as this picture is mentioned. In order to give the spectator a thorough insight into the subject of this piece, the painter has placed, in the front of it, the cripple already restored to his limbs by the Apostle, fired with gratitude towards his benefactor, and exciting his countrymen to yield him all kinds of honour. Invention. honour. Round the cripple are some figures lifting up the skirts of his coat, in order to look at the legs reduced to their proper shape, and acknowledging by gestures full of astonishment the reality of the miracle; an invention, says a certain author, a professed admirer of antiquity, which might have been proposed as an example in the happiest age of Greece.

We have another shining instance of the power of painting to introduce a great variety of objects on the scene at the same time, and of the advantage it has in this respect over poetry, in a drawing by the celebrated la Fage, which, like many other pieces of his, has not as yet been engraved, though worthier, perhaps, of that honour than any other performance of the kind. This drawing represents the descent of Æneas into hell. The field is the dark caverns of Pluto's kingdom, through the middle of which creeps slowly the muddy and melancholy Acheron. Nearly in the centre of the piece appears Æneas with the golden bough in his hand, and with an air of astonishment at what he sees. The Sybil, who accompanies him, is answering the questions which he asks her. The personage there is the ferryman of the pitchy lake, by which even the gods themselves are afraid to swear. Those, who, crowding into the banks of the river, numberless as the leaves shaken off the trees by autumnal blasts, express, with outstretched hands, an impatience to be ferried to the opposite shore, are the unhappy mariners, who, for want of burial, are unqualified for that happiness. Charon, accordingly, is crying out to them, and with his lifted-up ear driving them from his boat, which has already taken in a number of those who had been honoured with the accustomed funeral rites. Behind Æneas and the Sybil we discover a confused group ofretched souls, lamenting bitterly their misfortune in being denied a passage; two of them wrapped up in their clothes; and, in a fit of despair, sunk upon a rock. Upon the first lines of the piece stands a third group of unhumbled shades, Leucaspes, Orontes, and, in the midst of them, the good old Palinurus, formerly master and pilot of the hero's own vessel, who with joined hands most earnestly desires to be taken along with him into the boat, that, after death, at least, he may find some repose, and his dead body no longer remain the sport of winds and waves. Thus, what we see scattered up and down in many verses by Virgil, is here, as it were, gathered into a focus, and concentrated by the ingenious pencil of the painter; so as to form a subject well worthy of being exposed, in more shapes than one, to the eyes of the public.

When a painter takes a subject in hand, be it historical, be it fabulous, he should carefully peruse the books which treat of it, imprint well on his mind all the circumstances that attend it, the persons concerned in it, and the passions with which they must have been feverishly animated; not omitting the particulars of time and place. His next business is to create it, as it were, anew, observing the rules already laid down for that purpose: From what is true, choosing that which is most striking; and clothing his subject with such accessory circumstances and actions, as may render it more conspicuous, pathetic, and noble, and best display the powers of the inventive faculty. But, in doing this, great discretion is requisite; for, let his imagination grow ever so warm, his hand is never to execute anything that is not fully approved by his judgment. Nothing low or vulgar should appear in a lofty and noble argument; a fault, of which some of the greatest masters, even Lampieri and Poussin, have been now and then guilty.

The action must be one, the place one, the time one. We need not say anything of those painters, who, like the writers of the Chinese and Spanish theatre, cram a variety of actions together, and so give us, at once, the whole life of a man. Such blunders, it is presumed, are too gross to be feared at present. The politeness and learning of the age seem to demand considerations of a more refined nature; such as, that the episodes introduced in the drama of a picture, the better to fill and adorn it, should be not only beautiful in themselves, but indispensible requisite. The games celebrated at the tomb of Anchises in Sicily, have a greater variety in them, and more sources of delight, than those that had been before celebrated at the tomb of Patroclus under the walls of Troy. The arms forged by Vulcan for Æneas, if not better tempered, are at least better engraved than those which the same god had forged several ages before for Achilles. Nevertheless, in the eyes of judges, both the games and the arms of Homer are more pleasing than those of Virgil, because the former are more necessary in the Iliad, than the latter in the Æneid. Every part should agree with, and have a relation to, the whole Unity should reign even in variety; for in this, beauty consists. This is a fundamental maxim in all the arts whose object it is to imitate the works of nature.

Pictures often borrow no small grace and beauty from the fictions of poetry. Albani has left us, in several of his works, sufficient proofs of the great share the belles lettres had in refining his taste. But Raphael, above all others, may, in this branch too, be considered as a guide and matter. To give but one instance out of many; what a beautiful thought was it to represent the river himself, in a Passage of Jordan, supporting his waters with his own hands, in order to open a way to the army of the Israelites! Nor has he displayed less judgment in reviving, in his designs engraved by Agostino of Venice, the little loves of Aëtius, playing with the arms of Alexander, conquered by the beauty of Roxana.

Among the ancients, Apelles and Parrhasius were those who distinguished themselves most in allegorical subjects, in which the inventive faculty shows itself to the greatest advantage; the first by his picture of Calumny†, the second by that of the Genius of the Athenians*. The ancient painter called Galaton, gave likewise a fine proof of his genius in this branch, by representing a great number of poets greedily quenching their thirst in the waters gushing from the mouth of the sublime Homer. And to this allegory, according to Guigni, Pliny† has an eye, when he calls it, xxxv., that prince of poets, the fountain of wits. But it is, c. ro., after all, no way surprising that we should often meet such fine flights of fancy in the ancient artists. They were not guided in their works by a blind practice: they were men of polite education; conversant with the letters of the age in which they lived; and the companions, rather than the servants, of the great men. men who employed them. The finest allegorical painter among the moderns was Rubens; and he was, accordingly, much celebrated for it. The best critics, however, find fault with his uniting in Luxembourg gallery, the queen-mother, in council, with two cardinals and Mercury. Nor is there less impropriety in his making Tritons and Nereids, in another piece of the same gallery, swim to the queen's vessel through the galleys of the knights of St Stephen. Such freedoms are equally disagreeable with the prophecies of Sannazaro's Proteus, concerning the mystery of the incarnation; or the Indian kings of Camoens, reasoning with the Portuguese on the adventures of Ulysses.

The best modern performances in picturesque allegory are, certainly, those of Poussin; who availed himself, with great discretion and judgment, of the vast treasures with which, by a close study of the ancients, he had enriched his memory. On the other hand, le Brun, his countryman, has been very unhappy this way. Ambitious to have everything his own, instead of allegories, he has filled the gallery of Versailles with enigmas and riddles, of which none but himself was qualified to be the Oedipus. Allegory must be ingenious, it is true; but then it must be equally perspicuous; for which reason, a painter should avoid all vague and indeterminate allusions, and likewise those of history and heathen mythology which are too abstruse to be understood by the generally of spectators. The best way, perhaps, to symbolize moral and abstract things, is to represent particular events: as Caracci did, by advice of Monsignore Agucchi, in the Farnese palace. For example, what can better express a hero's love towards his country, than the virtuous Decius consecrating himself boldly to the infernal gods, in order to secure victory to his countrymen over their enemies? What finer emblems can we desire, of emulation, and an insatiable thirst for glory, than Julius Caesar weeping before the statue of Alexander in the temple of Hercules at Gades? of the constancy of fortune, than Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage, and receiving, instead of the acclamations of an army joyfully saluting him imperator, orders from a victor of Sextilius to quit Africa? of indiscretion, than Candaules, who, by shewing the naked beauties of his wife to his friend Giges, kindled a passion that soon made him repent his folly? Such representations as these require no comment; they carry their explanation along with them. Besides, supposing, and it is the worst we can suppose, that the painter's aim in them should happen not to be understood, his piece would still give delight. It is thus that the fables of Ariosto prove so entertaining, even to those who understand nothing of the moral couched under them; and likewise the Aeneis, though all do not comprehend the allusions and double intent of the poet.

Sect. XI. Of Disposition.

14. So much for invention. Disposition, which may be considered as a branch of invention, consists in the proper stationing of what the inventive faculty has imagined, so as to express the subject in the most lively manner. The chief merit of disposition may be said to consist in that disorder, which, wearing the appearance of mere chance, is, in fact, the most studied effect of art. A painter, therefore, is equally to avoid the dryness of those ancients who always planted their figures like so many couples in a procession, and the affectation of those moderns who jumble them together as if they were met merely to fight and squabble. In this branch Raphael was happy enough to choose the just medium, and attain perfection. The disposition of his figures is always exactly such as the subject requires. In the Battle of Constantine, they are confusedly cluttered with as much art, as they are regularly marshalled in Christ's commitment of the keys to St Peter and constituting him prince of the apostles.

Let the inferior figures of a piece be placed as they will, the principal figure should strike the eye most, and stand out, as it were, from among the rest. This may be effected various ways, as by placing it on the foremost lines, or in some other conspicuous part of the piece; by exhibiting it, in a manner, by itself; by making the principal light fall upon it; by giving it the most resplendent drapery; or, indeed, by several of these methods, nay, by all of them together. For, being the hero of the picturesque fable, it is but just that it should draw the eye to itself, and lord it, as it were, over all the other objects.

According to Leon Batista Alberti, painters should follow the example of comic writers, who compose their fable of as few persons as possible. For, in fact, a crowded picture is apt to give as much pain to the spectator, as a crowded road to the traveller.

Some subjects, it must be granted, require a number, nay, a nation, as it were, of figures. On these occasions, it depends entirely on the skill of the painter to dispose of them in such a manner, that the principal ones may always make the principal appearance; and contrive matters so, that the piece be not overcrowded, or want convenient rests and pauses. He must, in a word, take care that his piece be full, but not charged. In this respect, the Battles of Alexander by Le Brun are master-pieces which can never be sufficiently studied; whereas nothing, on the other hand, can be more unhappy than the famous Paradise of Tintoret, which covers one entire side of the great council-chamber at Venice. It appears no better than a confused heap of figures, a swarm, a cloud, a chaos, which pains and fatigues the eye. What a pity it is that he did not dispose this subject after a model of his own, now in the gallery of Bevilacqua at Verona! In this last, the several choirs of martyrs, virgins, bishops, and other saints, are judiciously thrown into so many clutters, parted here and there by a fine fleecy of clouds; so as to exhibit the innumerable host of heaven drawn up in a way that makes a most agreeable and glorious appearance. There goes a story, to our purpose, of a celebrated master, who in a drawing of the Universal Deluge, the better to express the immensity of the waters that covered the earth, left a corner of his paper without figures. Being asked, if he did not intend to fill it up: No, said he; do not you see that my leaving it empty is what precisely constitutes the picture?

The reason for breaking a composition into several groups is, that the eye, passing freely from one object to another, may the better comprehend the whole. But the painter is not to stop here; for these groups are, Disposition are, besides, to be so artfully put together, as to form rich clusters, give the whole composition a singular air of grandeur, and afford the spectator an opportunity of discerning the piece at a distance, and taking the whole in, as it were, at a single glance. These effects are greatly promoted by a due regard to the nature of colours, so as not to place together those which are apt to pain by their opposition, or distract by their variety. They should be so judiciously disposed as to temper and qualify each other.

A proper use of the chiaroscuro is likewise of great service on this occasion. The groupes are easily parted, and the whole picture acquires a grand effect, by introducing some strong falls of shade, and, above all, one principal beam of light. This method has been followed with great success by Rembrandt in a famous picture of his, representing the Virgin at the foot of the cross on mount Calvary; the principal light darting upon her through a break of the clouds, while the rest of the figures about her stand more or less in the shade. Tintoret, too, acquired great reputation, as well by that briskness with which he enlivened his figures, as by his masterly manner of shading them; and Polidoro de Caravaggio, though he scarce painted any thing but basso-relievos, was particularly famous for introducing with great skill the effects of the chiaroscuro, a thing first attempted by Mantegna in his Triumph of Julius Cæsar. It is by this means that his compositions appear so strikingly divided into different groupes, and, among their other perfections, afford so much delight thro' the beautiful disposition that reigns in them.

In like manner, a painter, by the help of perspective, especially that called aerial, the opposition of local colours, and other contrivances which he may expect to hit upon by studying nature, and those who have best studied her before him, will be able not only to part his groupes, but make them appear at different distances, so as to leave sufficient passages between them.

But the greatest caution is to be used in the pursuit of the methods here laid down; especially in the management of the chiaroscuro, that the effects attributed to light and shade, and to their various concomitants, may not run counter to truth and experience. This is a capital point. For this purpose, a painter would do well to make, in little figures, as Tintoret and Poussin used to do, a model of the subject that he intends to represent, and then illuminate it by lamp or candle light. By this means he may come to know with certainty, if the chiaroscuro, which he has formed in his mind, does not clash with the reason of things. By varying the height and direction of his light, he may easily discover such accidental effects as are most likely to recommend his performance, and so establish a proper system for the illuminating it. Nor will he afterwards find it a difficult matter to modify the quality of his shades, by softening or strengthening them, according to the situation of his scene, and the quality of the light falling upon it. If it should happen to be a candle or lamp light scene, he would then have nothing to do but consider his model well, and faithfully copy it.

In the next place, to turn a groupe elegantly, the best pattern is that of a bunch of grapes adopted by Titian. As, of the many grains that compose a bunch of grapes, some are struck directly by the light, and those opposite to them are in the shade, whilst the intermediate ones partake of both light and shade in a greater or lesser degree; so, according to Titian, the figures of a groupe should be so disposed, that, by the union of the chiaroscuro, several things may appear as it were but one thing. And in fact it is only from his having pursued this method, that we can account for the very grand effect of his pieces this way, in which it is impossible to study him too much.

The mannerists, who do not follow nature in the track of the masters just mentioned, are apt to commit many faults. The reason of their figures calling their shades in this or that manner seldom appears in the picture, or at least does not appear sufficiently probable. They are, besides, wont to trespass all bounds in splashing their pieces with light, that is, in enlivening those parts which we usually term the deals of a picture. This method, no doubt, has sometimes a very fine effect; but it is, however, to be used with no small discretion, as otherwise the whole loses that union, that pause, that majestic silence, as Caracci used to call it, which affords so much pleasure. The eye is not let hurt by many lights scattered here and there over a picture, than the ear is by the confused noise of different persons speaking all together in an assembly.

Guido Reni, who has imparted to his paintings that gaiety and splendour in which he lived, seems enamoured with a bright and open light; whereas Michael Angelo da Caravaggio, who was of a fullen and savage disposition, appears fond of a gloomy and clouded sky; so that neither of them were qualified to handle indifferently all subjects. The chiaroscuro may likewise prove of great service to a painter in giving his composition a grand effect; but, nevertheless, the light he chooses must be adapted to the situation of the scene where the action is laid: nor would he be less faulty, who in a grotto or cavern, where the light entered by a chink, should make his shades soft and tender, than him who should represent them strong and bold in an open sky-light.

But this is not, by many, the only fault which mannerists are apt to be guilty of in historical pieces, and particularly in the disposition of their figures. To say nothing of their favourite groupe of a woman lying on the ground with one child at her breast, and another playing about her, and the like, which they generally place on the first lines of their pieces; nor of those half-figures in the back ground peeping out from the hollows contrived for them: they make a common practice of mixing naked with clothed figures; old men with young; placing one figure with its face towards you, and another with its back; they contrast violent motions with languid attitudes, and seem to aim at opposition in every thing; whereas oppositions never please, but when they arise naturally from the subject, like antitheses in a discourse.

As to foreshortened figures, too much affectation in using or avoiding them is equally blamable. The attitudes had better be composed than otherwise. It very seldom happens that there is any occasion for making them so impetuous as to be in danger of losing their equilibrium; a thing too much practised by some painters. In regard to drapery, equal care should be taken to avoid that poverty, which makes some matters look as if, through mere penury, they grudged clothes to their figures; and that profusion which Albani imputed to Guido, saying, that he was rather a tailor than a painter. The ornaments of drefs should be used with great sobriety; and it will not be amiss to remember what was once said to an ancient painter: "I pity you greatly; unable to make Helen handsome, you have taken care to make her fine."

Let the whole, in a word, and all the different parts of the disposition, possess probability, grace, costume, and the particular character of what is to be represented. Let nothing look like uniformity of manner; which does not appear less in the composition than it does in colouring, drapery, and design; and is, as it were, that kind of accent, by which painters may be as readily distinguished as foreigners are, by pronouncing in the same manner all the different languages they happen to be acquainted with.

Sect. XII. Of the Expression of the Passions.

15. That language which above all others a painter should carefully endeavour to learn, and from nature herself, is the language of the passions. Without it the finest works must appear lifeless and inanimate. It is not enough for a painter to be able to delineate the most exquisite forms, give them the most graceful attitudes, and compose them well together; it is not enough to dress them out with propriety, and in the most beautiful colours; it is not enough, in fine, by the powerful magic of light and shade to make the canvas vanish. No; he must likewise know how to clothe his figures with grief, with joy, with fear, with anger; he must, in some sort, write on their faces what they think and what they feel; he must give them life and speech. It is indeed in this branch that painting truly soars, and in a manner rises superior to itself; it is in this branch she makes the spectator apprehend much more than what she expresses.

The means employed in her imitations by painting, are the circumscription of terms, the chiaroscuro, and colours; all which appear solely calculated to strike the visual faculty. Notwithstanding which, she contrives to represent hard and soft, rough and smooth surfaces, which are objects of the touch; and this by means of certain tints, and a certain chiaroscuro, which has a different look in marble, in the bark of trees, in downy and delicate substances. Nay, she contrives to express sound and motion, by means of light and shade, and certain particular configurations. In some landscapes of Diderich, we almost hear the water murmur, and see it tremble along the sides of the river, and of the boats upon it. In the Battle of Burgogne we are really apt to fancy that the trumpet sounds; and we see the horse, who has thrown his rider, scamper along the plain. But what is still more wonderful, painting, in virtue of her various colours and certain particular gestures, expresses even the sentiments and most hidden affections of the soul, and renders her visible, so as to make the eye not only touch and hear, but even kindle into passion, and reason.

Many have written, and amongst the rest the famous le Brun, on the various changes, that, according to the various passions, happen in the muscles of the face, which is, as it were, the dumb tongue of the soul. They observe, for example, that in fits of anger, the face reddens, the muscles of the lips puff out, the eyes sparkle; and that, on the contrary, in fits of melancholy, the eyes grow motionless and dead, the face pale, and the lips sink in. It may be of service to a painter to read these and such other remarks; but it will be of infinitely more service to study them in nature itself, from which they have been borrowed, and which exhibits them in that lively manner which neither tongue nor pen can express.

But if a painter is to have immediate recourse to nature in any thing, it is particularly in treating those very minute and almost imperceptible differences, by which, however, things very different from each other are often expressed. This is particularly the case with regard to the passions of laughing and crying; as in these, however contrary, the muscles of the face operate nearly in the same manner. As the famous Pietro de Cortona was one day finishing the face of a crying child in a representation of the Iron Age, with which he was adorning the floor, called the Hot bath, in the royal palace of Pitti, Ferdinand II. who happened to be looking over him for his amusement, could not forbear expressing his approbation, by crying out, "Oh how well that child cries!" To whom the artist,—"Has your majesty a mind to see how easily it is to make children laugh? Behold, I'll prove it in an instant:" And taking up his pencil, by giving the contour of the mouth a concave turn downwards, instead of the convex upwards which it before had, and with little or no alteration in any other part of the face, he made the child, who a little before seemed ready to burst its heart with crying, appear in equal danger of bursting its sides with immoderate laughter; and then, by restoring the altered features to their former position, he soon set the child a-crying again. [Lectures of Philip Baldinucci, in the academy of la Crusca Lytrato, &c.]

According to Leonardo da Vinci, the best masters that a painter can have recourse to in this branch, are those dumb men, who have found out the method of expressing their sentiments by the motion of their hands, eyes, eyebrows, and in short every other part of the body. This advice, no doubt, is very good; but then such gestures must be imitated with great sobriety and moderation; lest they should appear too strong and exaggerated, and the piece should show nothing but pantomimes, when speaking figures alone are to be exhibited; and so become theatrical and second-hand, or, at best, look like the copy of a theatrical and second-hand nature.

We are told strange things of the ancient painters of Greece in regard to expression; especially of Ariades; who, in a picture of his, representing a woman wounded to death at a siege, with a child crawling to her breast, makes her appear afraid, lest the child, when she was dead, should, for want of milk, suck her blood. A Medea murdering her children, by Timonachus, was likewise much cried up, as the ingenious artist contrived to express, at once, in her countenance, both the fury that hurried her on to the commission of so great a crime, and the tenderness of a mother that seemed to withhold her from it. Rubens attempted to express such a double effect in the face of Mary of Medicis, Expression dics, still in pain from her past labour, and at the same time full of joy at the birth of a Dauphin. And in the countenance of Sancta Polonia, painted by Tiepolo for St Anthony's church at Padua, one may clearly read a mixture of pain from the wound given her by the executioner, and of pleasure from the prospect of paradise opened to her by it.

Few, to say the truth, are the examples of strong expression afforded by the Venetian, Flemish, or Lombard schools. Deprived of that great happiness, the happiness of being able to contemplate, at leisure, the works of the ancients, the purest sources of perfection in point of design, expression, and character; and having nothing but nature constantly before their eyes; they made strength of colouring, blooming complections, and the grand effects of the chiaroscuro, their principal study; they aimed more at charming the senses than at captivating the understanding. The Venetians, in particular, seem to have placed their whole glory in setting off their pieces with all that rich variety of personages and drapery, which their capital is continually receiving by means of its extensive commerce, and which attracts so much the eyes of all those who visit it. It is much to be doubted, if, in all the pictures of Paolo Veronese, there is to be found a bold and judicious expression, or one of those attitudes which, as Petrarch expresses it, speak without words; unless, perhaps, it be that remarkable one in his Marriage Feast of Cana of Galilee. At one end of the table, and directly opposite to the bridegroom, whose eyes are fixed upon her, there appears a woman in red, holding up to him the skirt of her garment; as much as to say, we may suppose, that the wine miraculously produced was exactly of the colour with the stuff on her back. And in fact it is red wine we see in the cups and pitchers. But all this while the faces and attitudes of most of the company betray not the least sign of wonder at so extraordinary a miracle. They all, in a manner, appear intent upon nothing but eating, drinking, and making merry. Such, in general, is the style of the Venetian school. The Florentine, over which Michael Angelo presided, above all things curious of design, was most minutely and scrupulously exact in point of anatomy. On this she set her heart, and took singular pleasure in displaying it. Not only elegance of form, and nobleness of invention, but likewise strength of expression, triumph in the Roman school, nursed as it were amongst the works of the Greeks, and in the bosom of a city which had once been the seminary of learning and politeness. Here it was that Domenichino and Poussin, both great masters of expression, refined themselves, as appears more particularly by the St Jerome of the one, and the Death of Germanicus, or the Slaughter of the Innocents, by the other. Here it was that arose Raphael, the sovereign master of them all. One would imagine, that pictures, which are generally considered as the books of the ignorant, and of the ignorant only, he had undertaken to make the instructors even of the learned. One would imagine, that he intended, in some measure, to justify Quintilian, who affirms, that painting has more power over us than all the arts of rhetoric. There is not, indeed, a single picture of Raphael's, from the study of which those who are curious in point of expression may not reap great benefit; particularly his Martyrdom of St Felicitas, his Transfigurations, his Joseph explaining to Pharaoh his dream, a piece so highly rated by Poussin. His School of Athens, in the Vatican, is to all intents and purposes, a school of expression. Among the many miracles of art with which this piece abounds, we shall single out that of the four boys attending on a mathematician, who, stooping to the ground, his compasses in his hand, is giving them the demonstration of a theorem. One of the boys, recollecting within himself, keeps back, with all the appearance of profound attention to the reasoning of the master; another, by the briskness of his attitude, discovers a greater quickness of apprehension; while the third, who has already seized the conclusion, is endeavouring to beat it into the fourth, who, standing motionless, with open arms, a staring countenance, and an unpleasable air of stupidity in his looks, will never perhaps be able to make anything of the matter. And it is probably from this very group that Albani, who studied Raphael so closely, drew the following precept of his: "That it behoves a painter to express more circumstances than one by every attitude; and so to employ his figures, that, by barely seeing what they are actually about, one may be able to guess, both what they have been already doing, and are next going to do." This is indeed a difficult precept; but it is only by a due observance of it that the eye and the mind can be made to hang in suspense on a painted piece of canvas. It is expression that a painter, ambitious to soar in his profession, must, above all things, labour to perfect himself in. It is the last goal of his art, as Xenophon proves to Parrhasius. It is in expression that dumb poetry consists, and what the prince of our poets calls a visible language.

Sect. XI. Of proper Books for a Painter.

From what has been already said, it may be easily gathered, that a painter should be neither illiterate, nor unprovided with books. Many are apt to imagine, that the Iconologia of Ripa, or some such collection, is alone sufficient for this purpose; and that all the apparatus he stands in need of, may be reduced to a few casts of the remains of antiquity, or rather to what remnants used to call his antiquities, being nothing more than coats of mail, turbans, sherds of stuff, and all manner of old household trumpery and wearing apparel. Such things, no doubt, are necessary to a painter, and, perhaps, enough for one who wants only to paint half-lengths, or is willing to confine himself to a few low subjects. But they are by no means sufficient for him who would soar higher; for a painter who would attempt the Universe, and represent it in all its parts, such as it would appear, had not matter proved refractory to the intentions of the sovereign Artist. Such a painter alone is a true, an universal, a perfect painter.—No mortal, indeed, must ever expect to rise to that sublimity; yet all should aspire to it, on pain of ever continuing at a very mortifying distance from it: as the orator, who wishes to make a figure in his profession, should propose to himself no less a pattern than that perfect orator described by Tully; nor the courtier, than that perfect courtier delineated by Catiglione. It cannot, therefore, appear surprising if we insist on the propriety of reckoning a good collection... Books for a selection of books as part of such a painter's implements.

Painter. The Bible, the Greek and Roman historians, the works of Homer, that prince of painters, and of Virgil, are the most classical. To these let him add the Metamorphoses of Ovid, some of our best poets, the voyage of Paulusias, Vinci, Vasari, and others upon painting.

It will also be of considerable advantage to him to have a well-chosen collection of drawings by the best masters, in order to trace the progress and history of his art, and make himself acquainted with the various styles of painting, which have been, and now are, in the greatest vogue. The prince of the Roman school was not ashamed to hang up in his study the drawings of Albert Durer; and spared no pains or expense to acquire all the drawings he could meet with, that were taken from baso relievos; things, which the art of engraving has since rendered so common as to be in every one's hands. This art of multiplying drawings by means of the graver is of the same date, and boasts the same advantages, with the art of printing, by means of which the works of the mind are multiplied, as it were, at one stroke, and dispersed over the whole world.

The sight of fine subjects treated by able masters, and the different forms which the same subjects assume in different hands, cannot fail both of enlightening and enflaming the mind of the young painter. The same may be said of the perusal of good poets and historians, with the particulars and proofs of what they advance; not to mention those ideas and flights of invention, with which the former are wont to clothe, beautify, and exalt every thing they take in hand. Bouchardon, after reading Homer, conceived, to use his own words, that men were three times taller than before, and that the world was enlarged in every respect. It is very probable, that the beautiful thought of covering Agamemnon's face with the skirt of his mantle, at the sacrifice of Iphigenia, was suggested to Timantes by the tragedy of Euripides. And the sublime conceit of Raphael, who, in a Creation of his, represents God in the immense space, with one hand reaching to the sun and the other to the moon, may be considered as the child of the following words of the Psalmist:

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy-work."

This thought of Raphael has been, indeed, praised by Mr Webb. "A God," says this gentleman, "extending one hand to the sun, and another to the moon, destroys that idea of immensity, which should accompany the work of creation, by reducing it to a world of a few inches." But the opinion of Count Algarotti is very different. "For my part," says that elegant critic, "I cannot discover, in this painting, a world of a few inches, but a world on a much greater scale; a world of millions and millions of miles; and yet this so immense a world, by means of that act of the Godhead, in which with one hand he reaches to the sun, and with the other to the moon, shrinks, in my imagination, to a mere nothing, in respect to the immensity of God himself; which is all that the powers of painting can pretend to. This invention is, though in a contrary sense, of the same kind with that of Timantes, who, to express the enormous size of a sleeping Polyphemus, placed round him some satires measuring the monster's thumb with a thyrsus. Hence Pliny, who relates the fact, takes occasion to tell us, that his works always imply more than they express; and that how great forever he may be in execution, he is still greater in invention:

"Atque in omnibus ejus operibus intelligitur plus semper quam pingitur; et cum ars summa fit, ingenium tamen ultra artem est." Nat. Hist. lib. xxxv. c. x.

The perusal of good authors cannot but be very serviceable to a painter in another respect; as, among the great number of subjects afforded by history and poetry, he may expect to meet with many on which his talents may display themselves to the greatest advantage. A painter can never be too nice in the choice of his arguments; for on the beauty of them, that of his piece will greatly depend. How much to be pitied, therefore, were our first masters, in being so often obliged to receive their subjects from the hands of simple and illiterate persons! and what is worse, to spend all the riches of their art upon barren or unworthy subjects! Such are the representations of those saints, who, though they never had the least intercourse with each other, and perhaps even lived in different ages, are, notwithstanding, to be introduced, tête à tête, as it were, in the same picture. The mechanic of the art, may, indeed, display itself on these occasions; but by no means the ideal. The disposition may be good and praiseworthy, as in the works of Cortona and Lanfranc; but we are not to expect in them either invention or expression, which require for their basis the representation of some fact capable of producing such effects. Who does not, on the bare mention of this abuse, immediately recollect many sad instances of it? such as the famous St Cecilia of Raphael, surrounded by St Paul, St Mary Magdalen, St John, and St Augustin; and the picture of Paolo Veronese, in the vestry of the Nuns of St Zachary at Venice, in which St Frances of Assisi, Saint Catherine, and St Jerome richly habited in his cardinal's robes, form a ring round the Virgin seated on a throne with the child Jesus in her arms; perhaps the most beautiful and picturesque of all the insipid and insignificant pieces with which Italy abounds. It is very shocking to think, that young painters should be obliged to study their art from such wretched compositions.

The subjects in which the pencil triumphs most, and with which a judicious painter may stock himself by the perusal of good books, are, no doubt, those which are most universally known, which afford the largest field for a display of the passions, and contain the greatest variety of incidents, all concurring, in the same point of time, to form one principal action. Of this the story of Coriolanus besieging Rome, as related by Livy, is a shining example. Nothing can be imagined more beautiful than the scene of action itself, which ought to take in the pretorium in the camp of the Volscians, the Tiber behind it, and the seven hills, among which the towering Capitol is, as it were, to lord it over the rest. It is impossible to conceive a greater variety, than what must appear in that crowd of soldiers, women, and children, all which are to enter the composition; unless, perhaps, it be that of the different passions with which they are feverishly agitated; some wishing that Coriolanus may raise the siege, others fearing it, others again suspecting it. But the principal group forms the picturesque part of the piece. Coriolanus, hastily descending from his tribunal, and hurried on by love, to embrace his mother, stops short through shame, on her crying out to him.

Liv. Dec.l. Hold! let me first know, if it is a son, or an enemy, I am going to embrace? Thus a painter may impart novelty to the most hackneyed subject by taking, for his guides those authors who possess the happy talent of adding grace and dignity, by their beautiful and sublime descriptions, even to the most common and trifling transactions.

Sect. XV. Of the Painter's Balance.

18. The celebrated de Piles, who by his writings, has thrown so much light upon painting, in order to assist young painters in forming a right judgment of those matters who hold the first rank in the profession, and to reduce such judgment to the greater precision, bethought himself of a pictorial balance, by means of which a painter's merit may be weighed with the greatest exactness. This merit he divides into Composition, Design, Colouring, and Expression; and in each of these branches he has assigned every painter that share he thought him entitled to, according as he approached more or less the highest degree of excellence and summit of perfection; so that, by summing up the numbers which, standing against each matter's name, express his share of merit in each of these branches, we have his total merit or value in the art, and may hence gather what rank one painter holds in regard to another. Several objections, it is true, have been started to this method of calculation, by a famous mathematician of our days, who, among other things, infers, that it is the product of the above numbers multiplied by each other, and not the sum of them, that gives the merit of the artist. But this is not a place to enter into such niceties, nor indeed would the doing it be of any service to the art. The only thing worth our notice is, whether the original numbers, standing for the painter's merit in the several branches of his art, are such as he is really intitled to, without suffering ourselves to be baffled by any partiality, as de Piles has been, in favour of the prince of the Flemish school; the consequence of which, strange as it may appear, is, that in his balance Raphael and Rubens turn out exactly of the same weight.

Raphael is now universally allowed to have attained that degree of perfection, beyond which it is scarce lawful for mortals to aspire. Painting, in some measure, revived among us by the diligence of Cimabue, towards the decline of the 13th century, received no small improvements from the genius of Giotto, Masaccio, and others; insomuch that, in less than 200 years, it began to blaze forth with great lustre in the works of Ghirlandai, Gian Bellino, Mantegna, Pietro Perugino, and Leonardo da Vinci, the best grounded of them all, a man of great learning, and the first who contrived to give relief to pictures. But whatever improvement the art might have received from these different matters in different parts of Italy, they still, to a man almost, fervently followed the same manner, and all partook more or less of that hardness and dryness, which, in an age still Gothic, painting received from the hands of its restorer Cimabue; till Raphael, at length, issuing from the Peruginian school, and studying the works of the Greeks, without ever losing sight of nature, brought the art, in a manner, to the highest pitch of perfection. This great man has, if not entirely, at least in a great measure, attained those ends which a painter should always propose to himself, to deceive the eye, satisfy the understanding, and touch the heart. So excellent are his pieces, that the spectator, far from praising his pencil, seems sometimes entirely to forget that they are the feats of it which he has before him; solely intent upon, and as it were transported to, the scene of action, in which he almost fancies himself a party. Well, indeed, has he deserved the title of divine, by the beauty and comprehensiveness of his expression, the justness and nobleness of his compositions, the chastity of his designs, and the elegance of his forms, which always carry a natural ingenuity along with them; but above all, by that inexpressible gracefulness, more beautiful than beauty itself, with which he has contrived to season all his pieces. Carlo Marrati having engraved a piece, called the School, placed at the top of it the three Graces, with this verse under them,

*Seneza di noi ogni fatiga è vano.*

"Without our aid, all labour is in vain."

Without their aid, in fact, the light of a picture is no better than darkness, every attitude is insipid, every motion awkward. It is they who impart to every thing that *fene* *fai* *guoi*, that charm, which is as sure to conquer, as impossible to be defined. Maratti has placed the Graces on high, and, as it were, descending from heaven, in order to show that they really are a celestial gift. Happy the artist on whose cradle they have smiled, whose vows and offerings they have not disdained! Maratti was not to be informed, that gracefulness, that jewel which adds such value to every thing, tho' not originally obtainable by all the gold of diligence and study, may yet be greatly heightened and polished by them.

Though Raphael might boast, like Apelles *of old,* whom he resembled in so many other respects, that in *Infini.* l. xii., gracefulness he had no equal; yet Parmigiano and c. 10. Correggio must be allowed to have come very near him. One of them has, however, often trespassed the just bounds of symmetry; and the other is not always chaste in his designs: both, besides, were too apt to be guilty of affectation. We ought perhaps to forgive Correggio everything, for the sake of that uncommon greatness of manner, that life and soul, which he has infused into all his figures; for the sake of that inimitable ease and delicacy of pencil, which makes his pieces appear as if finished in a day, and seen in a glass. Of this we have a sufficient proof in the Ancona of St Jerome and the Magdalen on their knees before the child Jesus, which is in Parma; the finest picture, perhaps, that ever issued from mortal hands.

There are some glimpses of Correggio's style in the works of Barocci, though he studied at Rome. He never drew a figure that he did not borrow from nature; and, for fear of losing the masses, used to drape his models with very large folds. His pencil was exceedingly sweet, and his colouring equally harmonious. He indeed spoiled a little the natural tints by too free an use of reds and blues; and has now and then robbed things of their body, by shading them too much, and melting them, as it were, into one another. ther. In point of design, he was far more diligent than successful; and, in the air of his heads, affected the gracefulness of the Lombard school, rather than the elegance of the Greeks and his countryman Raphael.

Julio Romano, full of spirit, and of learning and uncommon conceits, seems to come nearer the manner of Michael Angelo than the elegantly natural one of Raphael, under whom he studied.

The Germans, by fervently following Michael Angelo, gave into those strange attitudes and clumsy forms which appear in the works of their greatest men, Spranger and Golzio.

The Florentines copied him with greater judgment and discretion. We must, however, except Andrea del Sarto, who, though an observer of truth, is somewhat clumsy in his figures. But then he is easy in his draperies; sweet in his colours; and would have carried the palm among the Tuscans, had it not been ravished from him by Fra Bartolomeo; to immortalise whom, his St Mark in the palace of Pitti would alone be sufficient; for there is not wanting in that piece any of the perfections necessary to constitute an excellent matter.

Titian, whom Giorgione first imitated in the art, is an universal matter. Upon every thing he took in hand, he has contrived to stamp its own proper nature. His pencil flows with juices that are truly vital. His figures breathe; and the blood circulates in their faces. And though some perhaps have surpassed him in design; not but that he is generally correct enough in the bodies of his women; and his children, on account of their form, have been studied by the greatest masters; he never had his equal in colouring, or in portrait and landscape painting. He most indefatigably studied truth, and never lost sight of her. He most indefatigably laboured to convert, if we may be allowed the expression, the colours of his pallet into flesh and blood. But what cost him most was, as he himself confesses, to cover and hide his fatigue; and in this he has succeeded so well, that his works seem rather born than made. His fortune equalled his merit. He was greatly honoured by Charles V., as the great Raphael had been, a few years before, by the Popes Julius II. and Leo X.

Jacopo Bassano distinguished himself, at the same time, by the strength of his colouring. Few have equalled him in the just dispensation of light reflected from one object to another, and in those happy contrasts by means of which painted objects become really transparent. He may boast his having deceived an Annibal Caracci, as Pharhafo formerly deceived Zecus; and had the glory of Paolo Veronese's not being willing that his son Carlotto should learn the principles of colouring from any other master.

Paolo Veronese was the creator, as it were, of a new manner. Though careless in point of design, and in point of costume extremely licentious, he was noble of fancy, and most fruitful of invention. One would imagine, that those who behold his magnificent pictures longed to be of the action represented by them; and it may be said of him with great justice, that even his faults are pleasing. He has had very great admirers in every age; and among them a Guido Reni, whose praise, no doubt, would have flattered him most.

Tintoret is no way inferior to any of the Venetians in those pieces which he drew by way of displaying his talents, and not improving them. This he has particularly shown in his Martyrdom, now in the school of St Mark; in which there is design, colouring, composition, effects of light, life, expression, and all carried to the highest pitch of perfection. Scarce had this picture made its appearance, when all mankind seemed to fall in love with it. Arete himself, tho' so warm a friend to Titian, that, through mere jealousy he turned Tintoret out of his school, could not forbear crying it up to excess. He wrote himself to Tintoret, that this piece had extorted the applause of Lettere sulla Pittura, Scultura, e Architettura, Raccolta di let. 65.

Next to these great artists, who had no guide but nature, or the most perfect copies of nature, the Greek statues, started up those other artists, whom we are not to consider as the disciples of nature, so much as of those masters who a little before had revived the art of painting, and restored it to its ancient honour and dignity. Such were the Caraccis, who undertook to unite in their manner the beauties of all the most famous Italian schools, and founded a new one, which did not yield to the Roman in elegance of forms, to the Florentine in correctness of design, nor to the Venetian or Lombard in beauty of colouring. These schools, if we may be allowed the expression, are the primitive metals of painting; and the Caraccis, by melting them down together, composed a Corinthian metal, noble indeed and beautiful to look at, but wanting the strength, ductility, and weight, polished singly by the different metals which compose it. And indeed the greatest praise that can be bestowed on the works of the Caraccis, is not owing to any air of originality in them, or any perfect imitation of nature, but to the striking likenesses in them to the manner of Titian, Raphael, Parmigianino and Correggio. As to the rest, the Caraccis did not neglect to provide their school with all those helps which learning could afford; from a conviction that the arts never succeed through mere good fortune or boldness of fancy, but are rather so many habits working according to the dictates of learning and right reason. In their school, the pupils were taught perspective, anatomy, in a word everything necessary to lead them by the shortest and safest road. And it is to this that we are chiefly to attribute the school of Bologna's having produced a greater number of able masters than any other.

At the head of these masters stand Domenichino and Guido; one a most curious observer of nature, and most profound painter; the other the inventor of a certain noble and beautiful manner peculiar to himself, which shines especially in that sweetness and beauty he has contrived to give the faces of his women. Both these artists have been preferred to the Caraccis; and it must be owned, that the last did really excel them.

Francesco Barbieri, called il Guercino, studied first in this school; but he afterwards formed to himself a certain peculiar manner, entirely founded upon nature and truth. Quite careless in the choice of his forms, he produced a chiaroscuro that gives the greatest relief to objects, and renders them palpable. Caravaggio, the Rembrants of Italy, was the real author of this manner; which, in these our days, has been again brought to light by Piazzetta and Crespi. He abused the saying of that Greek, who being asked, who was his master, pointed to the populace; and such, indeed, was the magic of his chiaroscuro, that, as often as he undertook to copy nature in low and trivial subjects, he had the power of deceiving even a Domenichino and a Guido. The style of Caravaggio was followed by two famous Spaniards; Valezquez, the founder of a school among his countrymen; and il Ribera, who settled in Italy, and from whom afterwards the whimsical Salvator Rosa, and that most fertile genius Lucas Giordano, the Proteus and thunderbolt of painting, studied the first principles of the art.

Between the masters of the Bolognian and those of the other schools of Italy, we are to place Rubens, the prince of the Flemish school, and a man of the most elevated genius, who appeared, at once, as painter and ambassador in a country, which, in a few years after, saw one of its greatest poets secretary of state. Nature endowed him with great vivacity, and great ease is working; and he added learning to these natural gifts. He, too, studied our masters, Titian, Tintoret, Caravaggio and Paulo; and borrowed a little from every one of them, so sparingly, however, that his own peculiar manner predominates. He was in his movements more moderate than Tintoret, more soft in his chiaroscuro than Caravaggio; but not so rich in his compositions, or light in his touches, as Paolo; and, in his carnations, always less true than Titian, and less delicate than his own scholar Vandycke. He contrived to give his colours the greatest transparency, and no less harmony, notwithstanding the extraordinary deepness of them; and he had a strength and grandeur of style entirely his own. He would have soared still higher, had nature afforded him finer objects in Flanders, or had he known how to create them anew, or correct them after the patterns left us by the Greek masters.

Poussin, the prince of French painters, had a particular fondness for the works of Rubens, at the same time that he fought for the art of design among the ancient marbles, in which, as an ingenious author expresses it, she sits as Queen to give law to the moderns. He spared no pains in the choice and composition of his subjects; and gave them life, learning, and dignity. He would have equalled Raphael himself, whose style he imitated; were gracefulness, ease, and vivacity, to be acquired by study. For, in fact, it was by mere dint of labour and fatigue, that he produced what in a manner cost Raphael nothing; insomuch, that his figures may be said to mimic the natural actions of that great master.

PART II. Of the Different Classes of Painting.

Sect. I. General Enumeration.

All the objects in nature are susceptible of imitation by the pencil, the masters of this art have applied themselves to different subjects, each one as his talents, his taste, or inclination, may have led him. From whence have arisen the following classes.

I. History-painting: which represents the principal events in history sacred and profane, real or fabulous; and to this class belongs allegorical expression. These are the most sublime productions of the art; and in which Raphael, Guido, Rubens, Le Brun, &c. have excelled.

II. Rural II. Rural history; or the representation of a country life, of villages and hamlets, and their inhabitants. This is an inferior class; and in which Teniers, Breughel, Watteau, &c. have great reputation, by rendering it at once pleasing and graceful.

III. Portrait-painting; which is an admirable branch of this art, and has engaged the attention of the greatest masters in all ages, as Apelles, Guido, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, Regauds, Pefne, Kneller, La Tour, &c.

IV. Grotesque histories: as the nocturnal meetings of witches; sorceries, and incantations; the operations of mountebanks, &c. A sort of painting in which the younger Breughel, Teniers, and others, have exercised their talents with success.

V. Battle-pieces; by which Huchtemberg, Wouverman, &c. have rendered themselves famous.

VI. Landscapes; a charming species of painting, that has been treated by masters of the greatest genius in every nation.

VII. Landscapes diversified with waters, as rivers, lakes, cataracts, &c.; which require a peculiar talent, to express the water sometimes smooth and transparent, and at others foaming and rushing furiously along.

VIII. Sea-pieces; in which are represented the ocean, harbours, and great rivers; and the vessels, boats, barges, &c. with which they are covered; sometimes in a calm, sometimes with a fresh breeze, and at others in a storm. In this class Backhuyzen, Vandervelde, Blome, and many others, have acquired great reputation.

IX. Night-pieces; which represent all sorts of objects, either as illuminated by torches, by the flames of a conflagration, or by the light of the moon. Schalck, Vandermeer, Vanderpool, &c. have here excelled.

X. Living Animals: A more difficult branch of painting than is commonly imagined; and in which Rola, Carté, Vandervelde, and many others, have succeeded marvellously well.

XI. Birds of all kinds; a very laborious species, and which requires extreme patience minutely to express the infinite variety and delicacy of their plumage.

XII. Culinary pieces; which represent all sorts of provisions, and animals without life, &c. A species much inferior to the rest, in which nature never appears to advantage, and which requires only a servile imitation of objects that are but little pleasing. The painting of fishes is naturally referred to this class.

XIII. Fruit-pieces, of every kind, imitated from nature.

XIV. Flower-pieces; a charming class of painting, where Art in the hands of Huyzum, P. Segerts, Merian, &c. becomes the rival of Nature. Plants and insects are usually referred to the painters of flowers, who with them ornament their works.

XV. Pieces of architecture; a kind of painting in which the Italians excel all others. Under this class may be comprehended the representations of ruins, seaports, streets, and public places; such as are seen in the works of Caneletti, and other able masters.

XVI. Instruments of music, pieces of furniture, and other inanimate objects; a trifling species, and in which able painters only accidentally employ their talents.

XVII. Imitations of bas-reliefs; a very pleasing kind of painting, and which may be carried by an able hand to a high degree of excellence.

XVIII. Hunting pieces; these also require a peculiar talent, as they unite the painting of men, horses, dogs, and game, to that of landscapes.

It will not be expected that we should here give the rules that the painter is to observe in handling each particular subject. What has been said on historical painting (Part I.*) may throw some light on the rest,* and the particular rules must be learned from the study of the art itself. Good masters, academies of reputation, and a rational practice, are the sources from whence the young painter must derive the detail of his art. We shall however insert some rules and observations relative to Landscape and Portrait; these, with History-painting (already pretty fully treated), forming the principal branches of the art.

Sect. II. Of Landscape.

22. Landscape-painting includes every object that the country presents: And is distinguished into the heroic, and the pastoral or rural; of which indeed all other styles are but mixtures.

The heroic style is a composition of objects, which in their kinds draw both from art and nature every thing that is great and extraordinary in either. The situations are perfectly agreeable and surprising. The only buildings are temples, pyramids, ancient places of burial, altars consecrated to the divinities, pleasure-houses of regular architecture; and if nature appear not there as we every day casually see her, she is at least represented as we think she ought to be. This style is an agreeable illusion, and a sort of enchantment, when handled by a man of fine genius and a good understanding, as Poussin was, who has so happily expressed it. But if, in the course of this style, the painter has not talent enough to maintain the sublime, he is often in danger of falling into the childish manner.

The rural style is a representation of countries, rather abandoned to the caprice of nature, than cultivated: we there see nature simple, without ornament, and without artifice; but with all those graces wherewith she adorns herself much more when left to herself than when constrained by art.

In this style, situations bear all sorts of varieties: sometimes they are very extensive and open, to contain the flocks of the shepherds; at others very wild, for the retreat of solitary persons, and a cover for wild beasts.

It rarely happens that a painter has a genius extensive enough to embrace all the parts of painting: there is commonly some one part that pre-engages our choice, and so fills our mind, that we forget the pains that are due to the other parts; and we seldom fail to see, that those whose inclination leads them to the heroic style, think they have done all, when they have introduced into their compositions such noble objects as will raise the imagination, without ever giving themselves the trouble to study the effects of good colouring. Those, on the other hand, who practise the pastoral, apply closely to colouring, in order to represent truth more lively. Both these styles have their sectaries and partisans. Those who follow the heroic, supply by their imagination what it wants of truth, and they look no farther.

As a counterbalance to heroic landscape, it would be proper to put into the pastoral, besides a great character... There is an infinity of pieces wherein both these styles happily meet; and which of the two has the ascendant, will appear from what we have been just observing of their respective properties. The chief parts of landscape are, their openings or situations, accidents, skies and clouds, off-skips and mountains, verdure or turfing, rocks, grounds or lands, terraces, fabrics, waters, fore-grounds, plants, figures and trees; of all which in their places.

23. Of Openings or Situations. The word site, or situation, signifies the "view, prospect, or opening of a country." It is derived from the Italian word sito; and our painters have brought it into use, either because they were used to it in Italy, or because, as we think, they found it to be very expressive.

Situations ought to be well put together; and so disengaged in their make, that the conjunction of grounds may not seem to be obstructed though we should see but a part of them.

Situations are various, and represented according to the country the painter is thinking of: as either open or clofe, mountainous or watery, tilled and inhabited, or wild and lonely; or, in fine, variegated by a prudent mixture of some of these. But if the painter be obliged to imitate nature in a flat and regular country, he must make it agreeable by a good disposition of the claro-obfuro, and such pleasing colouring as may make one foil unite with another.

It is certain, that extraordinary situations are very pleasing, and cheer the imagination by the novelty and beauty of their makes, even when the local colouring is but moderately performed; because, at worst, such pictures are only looked on as unfinished, and wanting to be completed by some skilful hand in colouring; whereas common situations and objects require good colouring and absolute finishing, in order to please. It was only by these properties that Claud Lorrain has made amends for his insipid choice in most of his situations. But in whatever manner that part be executed, one of the best ways to make it valuable, and even to multiply and vary it without altering its form, is properly to imagine some ingenious accident in it.

24. Of Accidents. An accident in painting is an obstruction of the sun's light by the interposition of clouds, in such manner, that some parts of the earth shall be in light and others in shade, which, according to the notion of the clouds, succeed each other, and produce such wonderful effects and changes of the claro-obfuro, as seem to create so many new situations. This is daily observed in nature. And as this newness of situations is grounded only on the shapes of the clouds, and their motions, which are very inconstant and unequal, it follows, that these accidents are arbitrary; and a painter of genius may dispose them to his own advantage when he thinks fit to use them: For he is not absolutely obliged to do it; and there have been some able landscape-painters who have never practised it, either through fear or custom, as Claude Lorrain and some others.

25. Of the Sky and Clouds. The sky, in painters terms, is the ethereal part over our heads; but more particularly the air in which we breathe, and that where clouds and storms are engendered. Its colour is blue, growing clearer as it approaches the earth, because of the interposition of vapours arising between the eye and the horizon; which, being penetrated by the light, communicates it to objects in a greater or lesser degree, as they are more or less remote.

But we must observe, that this light being either yellow or reddish in the evening, at sun-set, these same objects partake not only of the light, but of the colour: thus the yellow light mixing with the blue, which is the natural colour of the sky, alters it, and gives it a tint more or less greenish, as the yellowness of the light is more or less deep.

This observation is general and infallible: but there is an infinity of particular ones, which the painter must make upon the natural, with his pencil in his hand, when occasion offers; for there are very fine and singular effects appearing in the sky, which it is difficult to make one conceive by physical reasons. Who can tell, for example, why we see, in the bright part of some clouds, a fine red, when the source of the light which plays upon them is a most lively and distinguishing yellow? Who can account for the different reds seen in different clouds, at the very moment that these reds receive the light but in one place? for these colours and surprising appearances seem to have no relation to the rainbow, a phenomenon for which the philosophers pretend to give solid reasons.

These effects are all seen in the evening, when the weather is inclining to change, either before a storm, or after it, when it is not quite gone, but has left some remains of it to draw our attention.

The property of clouds is to be thin and airy, both in shape and colour: their shapes, though infinite, must be studied and chosen after nature, at such times as they appear fine. To make them look thin, we ought to make their grounds unite thinly with them, especially near their extremities, as if they were transparent: And if we would have them thick, their reflections must be so managed, as, without destroying their thinness, they may seem to wind and unite, if necessary, with the clouds that are next to them. Little clouds often discover a little manner, and seldom have a good effect, unless when, being near each other, they seem all together to make but one object.

In short, the character of the sky is to be luminous; and, as it is even the source of light, every thing that is upon the earth must yield to it in brightness: If however there is any thing that comes near it in light, it must be waters, and polished bodies which are susceptible of luminous reflections.

But, whilst the painter makes the sky luminous, he must not represent it always shining throughout.

On the contrary, he must contrive his light so, that the greatest part of it may fall only upon one place; and, to make it more apparent, he must take as much care as possible to put it in opposition to some terrestrial object, that may render it more lively by its dark colour; as a tree, tower, or some other building that is a little high.

This principal light might also be heightened, by a certain disposition of clouds having a supposed light, or a light ingeniously inclosed between clouds, whose sweet obscurity spreads itself by little and little on all hands. We have a great many examples of this in the Flemish school, which best understood landscape;

26. Of Offskips and Mountains. Offskips have a near affinity with the sky; it is the sky which determines either the force or saintness of them. They are darkest when the sky is most loaded, and brightest when it is most clear. They sometimes intermix their shapes and lights; and there are times, and countries, where the clouds pass between the mountains, whose tops rise and appear above them. Mountains that are high, and covered with snow, are very proper to produce extraordinary effects in the offskip, which are advantageous to the painter, and pleasing to the spectator.

The disposition of offskips is arbitrary; let them only agree with the whole together of the picture, and the nature of the country we would represent. They are usually blue, because of the interposition of air between them and the eye; but they lose this colour by degrees, as they come nearer the eye, and so take that which is natural to the objects.

In distancing mountains, we must observe to join them insensibly by the roundings off, which the reflections make probable; and must, among other things, avoid a certain edginess in their extremities, which makes them appear in slices, as if cut with scissors, and stuck upon the cloth.

We must further observe, that the air, at the feet of mountains, being charged with vapours, is more susceptible of light than at their tops. In this case, we suppose the main light to be set reasonably high, and to enlighten the mountains equally, or that the clouds deprive them of the light of the sun. But if we suppose the main light to be very low, and to strike the mountains; then their tops will be strongly enlightened, as well as every thing else in the same degree of light.

Though the forms of things diminish in bigness, and colours lose their strength, in proportion as they recede from the first plan of the picture, to the most remote offskip, as we observe in nature and common practice; yet this does not exclude the use of the accidents. These contribute greatly to the wonderful in landscape, when they are properly introduced, and when the artist has a just idea of their good effects.

27. Of Verdure, or Turfing. By turfing is meant the greenness with which the herbs colour the ground: "This is done several ways; and the diversity proceeds not only from the nature of plants, which, for the most part, have their particular verdures, but also from the change of seasons, and the colour of the earth, when the herbs are but thin sown. By this variety, a painter may choose or unite, in the same tract of land, several sorts of greens, intermixed and blended together, which are often of great service to those who know how to use them; because this diversity of greens, as it is often found in nature, gives a character of truth to those parts, where it is properly used. There is a wonderful example of this part of landscape, in the view of Mechlin, by Rubens.

28. Of Rocks. Though rocks have all sorts of shapes, and participate of all colours, yet there are, in their diversity, certain characters which cannot be well expressed without having recourse to nature. Some are in banks, and set off with beds of shrubs; others in huge blocks, either projecting or falling back; others consist of large broken parts, contiguous to each other; and others, in short, of an enormous size, all in one stone, either naturally, as free-stone, or else through the injuries of time, which in the course of many ages has worn away their marks of separation. But, whatever their form be, they are usually set out with clefts, breaks, hollows, bushes, moss, and the stains of time; and these particulars, well managed, create a certain idea of truth.

Rocks are of themselves gloomy, and only proper for solitudes; but where accompanied with bushes, they inspire a fresh air; and, when they have waters, either proceeding from, or washing them, they give an infinite pleasure, and seem to have a foul which animates them, and makes them sociable.

29. Of Grounds or Lands. A ground or land, in painters terms, is a certain distinct piece of land, which is neither too woody nor hilly. Grounds contribute, more than any thing, to the gradation and distancing of landscape; because they follow one another, either in shape, or in the claro-scuro, or in their variety of colouring, or by some insensible conjunction of one with another.

Multiplicity of grounds, though it be often contrary to grand manner, does not quite destroy it; for, besides the extent of country which it exhibits, it is susceptible of the accidents we have mentioned, and which, with good management, have a fine effect.

There is one nicety to be observed in grounds, which is, that in order to characterize them well, care must be taken, that the trees in them have a different verdure and different colours from those grounds; though this difference, withal, must not be too apparent.

30. Of Terraces. A terrace, in painting, is a piece of ground, either quite naked, or having very little herbage, like great roads and places often frequented. They are of use chiefly in the foregrounds of a picture, where they ought to be very spacious and open, and accompanied, if we think fit, with some accidental verdure, and also with some stones, which, if placed with judgment, give a terrace a greater air of probability.

31. Of Buildings. Painters mean by buildings any structures they generally represent, but chiefly such as are of a regular architecture, or at least are most conspicuous. Thus building is not so proper a name for the houses of country-people, or the cottages of shepherds, which are introduced into the rural taste, as for regular and showy edifices, which are always brought into the heroic.

Buildings in general are a great ornament in landscapes, even when they are Gothic, or appear partly inhabited and partly ruinous; they raise the imagination by the use they are thought to be designed for; as appears from ancient towers, which seem to have been the habitations of fairies, and are now retreats for shepherds and owls.

Poussin has very elegantly handled the Roman manner of architecture in his works, as Bourbon has done the Gothic; which, however Gothic, fails not to give a sublime air to his landscapes. Little Bernard has intro- Landscape introduced into his sacred history what may be called a Babylonian manner; which, extraordinary as it is, has its grandeur and magnificence. Nor ought such pieces of architecture to be quite rejected: they raise the imagination; and perhaps would succeed in the heroic style, if they were placed among half-distant objects, and if we knew how to use them properly.

32. Of Waters. Much of the spirit of landscape is owing to the waters which are introduced in it. They appear in divers manners; sometimes impetuous, as when a storm makes them overflow their banks; at other times rebounding, as by the fall of a rock; at other times, through unusual pressure, gushing out and dividing into an infinity of silver streams, whose motion and murmuring agreeably deceive both the eye and ear; at other times calm and purling in a sandy bed; at other times so still and standing, as to become a faithful looking-glass, which doubles all the objects that are opposite to it; and in this state they have more life than in the most violent agitation. Consult Bourbon's works, or at least his prints, on this subject: he is one of those who have treated of waters with the greatest spirit and best genius.

Waters are not proper for every situation; but to express them well, the artist ought to be perfect master of the exactness of watery reflections; because they only make painted water appear as real: for practice alone, without exactness, destroys the effect, and abates the pleasure of the eye. The rule for these reflections is very easy, and therefore the painter is the less pardonable for neglecting it.

But it must be observed, that though water be as a looking-glass, yet it does not faithfully represent objects but when it is still; for if it be in any motion, either in a natural course, or by the driving of the wind, its surface, becoming uneven, receives on its surges such lights and shades, as, mixing with the appearance of the objects, confound both their shapes and colours.

33. Of the Foreground of a Picture. As it is the part of the foreground to usher the eye into the piece, great care must be taken that the eye meet with good reception; sometimes by the opening of a fine terrace, whose design and workmanship may be equally curious; sometimes by a variety of well-distinguished plants, and those sometimes flowered; and at other times, by figures in a lively taste, or other objects, either admirable for their novelty, or introduced as by chance.

In a word, the artist cannot too much study his foreground objects, since they attract the eye, impress the first character of truth, and greatly contribute to make the artifice of a picture successful, and to anticipate our esteem for the whole work.

34. Of Plants. Plants are not always necessary in foregrounds, because, as we have observed, there are several ways of making those grounds agreeable. But if we resolve to draw plants there, we ought to paint them exactly after the life; or at least, among such as we paint practically, there ought to be some more finished than the rest, and whose kinds may be distinguished by the difference of design and colouring, to the end that, by a probable supposition, they may give the others a character of truth. What has been said here of plants, may be applied to the branches and barks of trees.

35. Of Figures. In composing landscape, the artist may have intended to give it a character agreeable to the subject he has chosen, and which his figures ought to represent. He may also, and it commonly happens, have only thought of his figures, after finishing his landscape. The truth is, the figures in most landscapes are made rather to accompany than to suit them.

It is true, there are landscapes so disposed and situated, as to require only passing figures; which several good masters, each in his style, have introduced, as Poussin in the heroic, and Fouquier in the rural, with all probability and grace. It is true also, that reflecting figures have been made to appear inwardly active. And these two different ways of treating figures are not to be blamed, because they act equally, tho' in a different manner. It is rather inaction that ought to be blamed in figures; for in this condition, which robs them of all connection with the landscape, they appear to be passed over. But without obstructing the painter's liberty in this respect, undoubtedly the best way to make figures valuable is, to make them so to agree with the character of the landscape, that it may seem to have been made purely for the figures. We would not have them either insipid or indifferent, but to represent some little subject to awaken the spectator's attention, or else to give the picture a name of distinction among the curious.

Great care must be taken to proportion the size of the figures to the bigness of the trees, and other objects of the landscape. If they be too large, the picture will discover a little manner; and if too small, they will have the air of pigmies: which will destroy the worth of them, and make the landscape look enormous. There is, however, a greater inconvenience in making figures too large than too small; because the latter at least gives an air of greatness to all the rest. But as landscape figures are generally small, they must be touched with spirit, and such lively figures as will attract, and yet preserve probability and a general union. The artist must, in fine, remember, that as the figures chiefly give life to a landscape, they must be dispersed as conveniently as possible.

36. Of Trees. The beauty of trees is perhaps one of the greatest ornaments of landscape; in account of the variety of their kinds, and their freshness, but chiefly their lightness, which makes them seem, as being exposed to the air, to be always in motion.

Though diversity be pleasing in all the objects of landscape, it is chiefly in trees that it shews its greatest beauty. Landscape considers both their kinds and their forms. Their kinds require the painter's particular study and attention, in order to distinguish them from each other; for we must be able at first sight to discover which are oaks, elms, firs, sycamores, poplars, willows, pines, and other such trees, which, by a specific colour, or touching, are distinguishable from all other kinds. This study is too large to be acquired in all its extent; and, indeed, few painters have attained such a competent exactness in it as their art requires. But it is evident, that those who come nearest to perfection in it, will make their works infinitely pleasing, and gain a great name.

Besides the variety which is found in each kind of tree, there is in all trees a general variety. This is observed in the different manners in which their branches are... are disposed by a sport of nature; which takes delight in making some very vigorous and thick, others more dry and thin; some more green, others more red or yellow. The excellence of practice lies in the mixture of these varieties: but if the artist can distinguish the sorts but indifferently, he ought at least to vary their makes and colours; because repetition in landscape is as tiresome to the eye, as monotony in discourse is to the ear.

The variety of their makes is so great, that the painter would be inexcusable not to put it in practice upon occasion, especially when he finds it necessary to awaken the spectator's attention; for, among trees, we discover the young and the old, the open and close, tapering, and squat, bending upwards and downwards, flopping and shooting: in short, the variety is rather to be conceived than expressed. For instance, the character of young trees is, to have long slender branches, few in number, but well set out; boughs well divided, and the foliage vigorous and well shaped: whereas, in old trees, the branches are short, stocky, thick, and numerous; the tufts blunt, and the foliage unequal and ill shaped: but a little observation and genius will make us perfectly sensible of these particulars.

In the various makes of trees, there must also be a distribution of branches, that has a just relation to, and probable connection with, the boughs or tufts, so as mutually to assist each other in giving the tree an appearance of thickness and of truth. But, whatever their natures or manners of branching be, let it be remembered, that the handling must be lively and thin, in order to preserve the spirit of their characters.

Trees likewise vary in their barks, which are commonly grey; but this grey, which in thick air, and low and marshy places, looks blackish, appears lighter in a clear air: and it often happens, in dry places, that the bark gathers a thin moss, which makes it look quite yellow; so that, to make the bark of a tree appear, the painter may suppose it to be light upon a dark ground, and dark on a light one.

The observation of the different barks merits a particular attention; for it will appear, that, in hard woods, age chaps them, and thereby gives them a sort of embroidery; and that, in proportion as they grow old, these chaps grow more deep. And other accidents in barks may arise either from moisture, or dryness, or green moles, or white stains of several trees.

The barks of white woods will also afford much matter for practice, if their diversity be duly studied: and this consideration leads us to say something of the study of landscape.

37. Of the study of Landscape. The study of landscape may be considered either with respect to beginners, or to those who have made some advances in it.

Beginners will find, in practice, that the chief trouble of landscape lies in handling trees; and it is not only in practice, but also in speculation, that trees are the most difficult part of landscape, as they are its greatest ornament. But it is only proposed here, to give beginners an idea of trees in general, and to show them how to express them well. It would be needless to point out to them the common effects of trees and plants, because they are obvious to every one; yet there are some things, which, though not unknown, deserve our reflection. We know, for instance, that all trees require air, some more, some less, as the chief cause of their vegetation and production; and for this reason, all trees (except the cypresses, and some others of the same kind) separate in their growth from one another and from other strange bodies as much as possible, and their branches and foliage do the same: wherefore, to give them that air and thinness, which is their principal character, the branches, boughs, and foliage, must appear to fly from each other, to proceed from opposite parts, and be well divided. And all this without order; as if chance aided nature in the fanciful diversity. But to say particularly how these trunks, branches, and foliages, ought to be distributed, would be needless, and only a description of the works of great masters: a little reflection on nature will be of more service than all that can be said on this head. By great masters, we mean, such as have published prints; for those will give better ideas to young copyists, than even the paintings themselves.

Among the many great masters of all schools, Da Pile prefers Titian's wooden prints, where the trees are well-shaped; and those which Cornelius Cort, and Agostino Carracci, have engraved. And he asserts, that beginners can do no better than contract, above all things, an habit of imitating the touches of these great masters, and of considering, at the same time, the perspective of the branches and foliages, and observing how they appear, either when rising and seen from below, or when sinking and seen from above, or when fronting and viewed from a point, or when they appear in profile; and, in a word, when set in the various views in which nature presents them, without altering their characters.

After having studied and copied, with the pen or crayon, first the prints, and then the designs of Titian and Carracci, the student should imitate with the pencil those touches which they have most distinctly specified, if their paintings can be procured; but since they are scarce, others should be got which have a good character for their touching; as those of Fouquier, who is a most excellent model: Paul Bril, Breugel, and Bourbon, are also very good; their touching is neat, lively, and thin.

After having duly weighed the nature of trees, their spread and order, and the disposition of their branches, the artist must get a lively idea of them, in order to keep up the spirit of them throughout, either by making them apparent and distinct in the foregrounds, or obscure and confused in proportion to their distance.

After having thus gained some knowledge in good manner, it will next be proper to study after nature, and to choose and rectify it according to the idea which the aforesaid great masters had of it. As to perfection, it can only be expected from long practice and perseverance. This, we think, is what concerns those, who, having an inclination for landscape, would take the proper methods for beginning it well.

As for those who have made some advances in this part of painting, it is proper they should collect the necessary materials for their further improvement, and study Part II.

Landscape. Study those objects at least, which they shall have most frequent occasion to represent.

Painters usually comprise, under the word study, anything whatever, which they either design or paint separately, after the life; whether figures, heads, feet, hands, draperies, animals, mountains, trees, plants, flowers, fruits, or whatever may confirm them in the just imitation of nature: the drawing of these things is what they call study; whether they be for instruction in design, or only to assure them of the truth, and to perfect their work. In fact, this word study is the more properly used by painters, as in the diversity of nature they are daily making new discoveries, and confirming themselves in what they already know.

As the landscape-painter need only study such objects as are to be met with in the country, we would recommend to him some order, that his drawings may be always at hand when he wants them. For instance, he should copy after nature, on separate papers, the different effects of trees in general, and the different effects of each kind in particular, with their trunks, foliage, and colours. He should also take the same method with some sorts of plants; because their variety is a great ornament to terraces on fore-grounds. He ought likewise to study the effects of the sky in the several times of the day, and seasons of the year, in the various dispositions of clouds, both in serene, thundering, and stormy weather; and in the off-shoot, the several sorts of rocks, waters, and other principal objects.

These drawings, which may be made at times, should be collected together; and all that relate to one matter be put into a book, to which the artist may have recourse at any time for what he wants.

Now, if the fine effects of nature, whether in shape or colour, whether for an entire picture or a part of one, be the artist's study; and if the difficulty lies in choosing those effects well, he must for this purpose be born with good sense, good taste, and a fine genius; and this genius must be cultivated by the observations which ought to be made on the works of the best masters, how they choose nature, and how, while they corrected her, according to their art, they preserved her character. With these advantages, derived from nature, and perfected by art, the painter cannot fail to make a good choice; and, by distinguishing between the good and the bad, must needs find great instruction, even from the most common things.

To improve themselves in this kind of studies, painters have taken several methods.

There are some artists who have designed after nature, and in the open fields; and have there quite finished those parts which they had chosen, but without adding any colour to them.

Others have drawn, in oil-colours, in a middle-tint, on strong paper; and found this method convenient, because, the colours sinking, they could put colour on colour, though different from each other. For this purpose they took with them a flat box, which commodiously held their pallet, pencils, oil, and colours. This method, which indeed requires several implements, is doubtless the best for drawing nature more particularly, and with greater exactness, especially if, after the work be dry and varnished, the artist return to the place where he drew, and retouch the principal Landscape, things after nature.

Others have only drawn the out-lines of objects, and slightly washed them in colours near the life, for the ease of their memory. Others have attentively observed such parts as they had a mind to retain, and contented themselves with committing them to their memory, which upon occasion gave them a faithful account of them. Others have made drawings in pastil and wash together. Others, with more curiosity and patience, have gone several times to the places which were to their taste: the first time they only made choice of the parts, and drew them correctly; and the other times were spent in observing the variety of colouring, and its alterations through change of light.

Now these several methods are very good, and each may be practised as best suits the student and his temper: but they require the necessaries of painting, as colours, pencils, pastils, and leisure. Nature, however, at certain times, presents extraordinary, but transient beauties, and such as can be of no service to the artist who has not, as much time as is necessary to imitate what he admires. The best way, perhaps, to make advantage of such momentary occasions, is this:

The painter being provided with a quire of paper, and a black-lead pencil, let him quickly, but slightly, design what he sees extraordinary; and, to remember the colouring, let him mark the principal parts with characters, which he may explain at the bottom of the paper, as far as is necessary for himself to understand them: a cloud, for instance, may be marked A, another cloud B, a light C, a mountain D, a terrace E, and so on. And having repeated these letters at the bottom of the paper, let him write against each, that it is of such or such a colour; or for greater brevity, only blue, red, violet, grey, &c. or any other shorter abbreviation. After this, he must go to painting as soon as possible; otherwise most of what he has observed will, in a little time, slip out of his memory. This method is the more useful, as it not only prevents our losing an infinity of sudden and transitory beauties, but also helps, by means of the aforesaid marks and characters, to perfect the other methods we have mentioned.

If it be asked, Which is the properest time for these studies? the answer is, That nature should be studied at all times, because she is to be represented at all seasons; but autumn yields the most plentiful harvest for her fine effects: the mildness of that season, the beauty of the sky, the richness of the earth, and the variety of objects, are powerful inducements with the painter to make the proper inquiries for improving his genius and perfecting his art.

But as we cannot see or observe every thing, it is very commendable to make use of other men's studies, and to look upon them as if they were our own. Raphael sent some young men into Greece to design such things as he thought would be of service to him, and accordingly made use of them as to good purpose as if he himself had designed them on the spot: for this, Raphael is so far from deserving censure, that he ought, on the contrary, to be commended; as an example, that painters ought to leave no way untried for improving in their professions. The landscape painter may, may, accordingly, make use of the works of all those who have excelled in any kind, in order to acquire a good manner; like the bees, which gather their variety of honey from different flowers.

38. General remarks on Landscapes. As the general rules of painting are the basis of all the several kinds of it, we must refer the landscape painter to them, or rather suppose him to be well acquainted with them. We shall here only make some general remarks on this kind of painting.

I. Landscape supposes the knowledge and practice of the principal rules in perspective, in order to maintain probability.

II. The higher the leaves of trees are to the earth, the larger they are, and the greener; as being aptest to receive, in abundance, the sap which nourishes them; and the upper branches begin first to take the redness or yellowness which colours them in autumn. But it is otherwise in plants; for their stocks renew all the year round, and their leaves succeed one another, at a considerable distance of time, insomuch that nature, employed in producing new leaves to adorn the stock as it rises, does by degrees desert the under ones; which, having first performed their office, are the first that die: but this effect is more visible in some than in others.

III. The under parts of all leaves are of a brighter green than the upper, and almost always incline to the silverish; and those which are wind-thrashed are known from others by that colour: but if we view them from beneath, when penetrated by the sun's rays, they discover such a fine and lively green as is far beyond all comparison.

IV. There are five principal things which give spirit to landscape, viz. figures, animals, waters, wind-shaken trees, and thinness of pencilling; to which add smoke, when there is occasion to introduce it.

V. When one colour predominates throughout a landscape, as one green in spring, or one red in autumn, the piece will look either as of one colour, or else as unfinished. We have seen many of Bourdon's landscapes, which, by handling the corn one way throughout, have lost much of their beauty, though the situations and waters were very pleasant. The ingenious painter must endeavour to correct, and, as they say, redeem the harsh unsightly colouring of winter and spring by means of figures, waters, and buildings; for summer and autumn subjects are of themselves capable of great variety.

VI. Titian and Carrache are the best models for inspiring good taste, and leading the painter into a good track, with regard to forms and colours. He must use all his efforts to gain a just idea of the principles which those great men have left us in their works; and to have his imagination filled with them, if he would advance by degrees towards that perfection which the artist should always have in view.

VII. The landscapes of these two masters teach us a great many things, of which discourse can give us no exact idea, nor any general principle. Which way, for example, can the measures of trees in general be determined, as we determine those of the human body? The tree has no settled proportions; most of its beauty lies in the contrast of its branches, an unequal distribution of boughs, and, in short, a kind of whimsical variety, which nature delights in, and of which the painter becomes a judge when he has thoroughly relished the works of the two masters aforesaid. But we must say, in Titian's praise, that the path he struck out is the surest; because he has exactly imitated nature in its variety with an exquisite taste, and fine colouring: whereas Carrache, though an able artist, has not, more than others, been free from manner in his landscapes.

VIII. One of the greatest perfections of landscape, in the variety it represents, is a faithful imitation of each particular character: as its greatest fault is, a licentious practice, which brings us to do things by rote.

IX. Among those things which are painted practically, we ought to intermix some done after nature, to induce the spectator to believe that all are so.

X. As there are styles of thought, so there are also styles of execution. We have handled the two relating to thought, viz. the heroic and pastoral; and find that there are two also with regard to execution, viz. the firm style, and the polished; these two concern the pencil, and the more or less ingenious way of conducting it. The firm style gives life to work, and excuse for bad choice: and the polished finishes and brightens every thing; it leaves no employment for the spectator's imagination, which pleases itself in discovering and finishing things which it ascribes to the artist, though, in fact, they proceed only from itself. The polished style degenerates into the soft and dull, if not supported by a good opening or situation; but when those two characters meet, the picture is fine.

Sect. III. Of Portraiture.

39. If painting be an imitation of nature, it is doubly so in a portrait; which not only represents a man in general, but such an one as may be distinguished from all others. And as the greatest perfection of a portrait is extreme likeness, so the greatest of its faults is to resemble a person for whom it was not made; since there are not in the world two persons quite like one another. But before we proceed to the particulars which let us into the knowledge of this imitation, it is necessary, for shortening this part of our subject, to attend to some general propositions.

I. Imitation is the essence of painting: and good choice is to this essence what the virtues are to a man; they raise the value of it. For this reason, it is extremely the painter's interest to choose none but good heads, or favourable moments for drawing them, and such positions as may supply the want of a fine natural.

II. There are views of the natural, more or less advantageous; all depends upon turning it well, and taking it in the favourable moment.

III. There is not a single person in the world who has not a peculiar character, both in body and face.

IV. Simple and genuine nature is more proper for imitation; and is a better choice than nature much formed, and embellished too artificially.

V. To adorn nature too much, is doing it a violence; and the action which attends it can never be free, when its ornaments are not easy. In short, in proportion as we adorn nature, we make it degenerate from itself, and. VI. Some means are more advantageous than others, to come at the same end.

VII. We must not only imitate what we do see in nature, but also what we may possibly see that is advantageous in art.

VIII. Things are valuable by comparison; and it is only by this we are enabled to make a right judgment of them.

IX. Painters easily accustom themselves to their own tints, and the manner of their masters: and after this habit is rooted in them, they view nature, not as she really is, but as they are used to paint her.

X. It is very difficult to make a picture, the figures of which are as big as the life, to have its effect near, as at a distance. A learned picture pleases the ignorant only when it is at some distance; but judges will admire its artifice near, and its effect at a distance.

XI. Knowledge makes work pleasant and easy. The traveller who knows his road, comes to his journey's end with more speed and certainty than he who inquires and gropes it out.

XII. It is proper, before we begin a work, to meditate upon it, and to make a nice coloured sketch of it, for our own satisfaction, and an help to the memory.

We cannot too much reflect on these propositions; and it is necessary to be well acquainted with them, that they may present themselves to our mind, of their own accord, without our being at the trouble to recall them to our memory, when we are at work.

There are four things necessary to make a portrait perfect; air, colouring, attitude, and dress.

40. Of Air. The air respects the lines of the face, the head-attire, and the size.

The lines of the face depend upon exactness of draught, and agreement of the parts; which all together must represent the physiognomy of the person painted in such a manner, that the picture of his body may seem to be also that of his mind.

It is not exactness of design in portraits that gives spirit and true air, so much as the agreement of the parts at the very moment when the disposition and temperament of the sitter are to be hit off. We see several portraits which, though correctly designed, have a cold, languishing, and stupid air; whilst others, less correct in design, strike us however, at first sight, with the sitter's character.

Few painters have been careful enough to put the parts well together: Sometimes the mouth is smiling, and the eyes are sad; at other times, the eyes are cheerful, and the cheeks lank: by which means their work has a false air, and looks unnatural. We ought therefore to mind, that, when the sitter puts on a smiling air, the eyes close, the corners of the mouth draw up towards the nostrils, the cheeks swell, and the eyebrows widen: but in a melancholy air, these parts have a contrary effect.

The eye-brows, being raised, give a grave and noble air; but if arched, an air of astonishment.

Of all the parts of the face, that which contributes most to likeness is the nose; it is therefore of great moment to set and draw it well.

Though the hair of the head seems to be part of the dress, which is capable of various forms, without altering the air of the face; yet the head-attire which one has been most accustomed to creates such a likeness, that we scarce know a familiar acquaintance on his putting on a periwig somewhat different from that which he used to wear. It is necessary therefore, as far as possible, to take the air of the head-ornament, and make it accompany and set off that of the face, if there be no reason to the contrary.

As to the stature, it contributes so much to likeness, that we very often know people without seeing their face: It is therefore extremely proper to draw the size after the sitter himself, and in such an attitude as we think fit; which was Vandyke's method. Here let us remark, that, in sitting, the person appears to be of a less free make, through the heaving of his shoulders; wherefore, to adjust his size, it is proper to make him stand for a small time, swaying in the posture we would give him, and then make our observation. But here occurs a difficulty, which we shall endeavour to examine: "Whether it is proper, in portraiture, to correct the defects of nature?"

Likeness being the essence of portraiture, it would seem that we ought to imitate defects as well as beauties, since by this means the imitation will be more complete: It would be even hard to prove the contrary to one who would undertake the defence of this position. But ladies and gentlemen do not much approve of those painters who entertain such sentiments, and put them in practice. It is certain that some complaisance in this respect is due to them; and there is little doubt but their pictures may be made to resemble, without displeasing them: for the effectual likeness is a just agreement of the parts that are painted with those of nature; so that we may be at no loss to know the air of the face, and the temper of the person, whose picture is before us. All deformities, therefore, when the air and temper may be discovered without them, ought to be either corrected or omitted in women's and young men's portraits. A nose somewhat awry may be helped, or a shrivelled neck, or high shoulders, adapted to good air, without going from one extreme to another. But this must be done with great discretion: for, by endeavouring to correct nature too much, we insensibly fall into a method of giving a general air to all our portraits; just as, by confining ourselves too much to the defects and littlenesses of nature, we are in danger of falling into the low and tattleless manner.

But in the faces of heroes and men of rank, distinguished either by dignities, virtues, or great qualities, we cannot be too exact, whether the parts be beautiful or not: for portraits of such persons are to be standing monuments to posterity; in which case, every thing in a picture is precious that is faithful. But after whatever manner the painter acquires himself in this point, let him never forget good air nor grace; and that there are, in the natural, advantageous moments for hitting them off.

41. Of Colouring.—Colouring, in portraiture, is an effusion of nature, discovering the true temper of persons; and the temper being essential to likeness, it ought to be handled as exactly as the design. This part is the more valuable, as it is rare and difficult to hit. A great many painters have come to a likeness by strokes and outlines; Portraiture: outlines; but certainly they are few who have shewn in colours the tempers of persons.

Two points are necessary in colouring; exactness of tints, and the art of setting them off. The former is acquired by practice, in examining and comparing the colours we see in life with those by which we would imitate it: and the art of those tints consists in knowing what one colour will produce when set by another, and in making good what either distance or time may abate of the glow and freshness of the colours.

A painter who does nothing more than what he sees, will never arrive at a perfect imitation; for though his work may seem, on the easel, to be good to him, it may not appear so to others, and perhaps even to himself, at a distance. A tint which, near, appears disjointed, and of one colour, may look of another at a distance, and be confounded in the mass it belongs to. If you would have your work, therefore, to produce a good effect in the place where it is to hang, both the colours and lights must be a little loaded; but learnedly, and with discretion. In this point consult Titian, Rubens, Vandyke, and Rembrandt's methods; for indeed their art is wonderful.

The tints usually require three times of observation. The first is at the person's first sitting down, when he has more spirit and colour than ordinary; and this is to be noted in the first hour of his sitting. The second is when, being composed, his look is as usual; which is to be observed in the second hour. And the third is when, through tiredomeness by sitting in one posture, his colour alters to what weariness usually creates. On which account, it is best to keep to the sitter's usual tint, a little improved. He may also rise, and take some turns about the room, to gain fresh spirits, and shake off or prevent tiredomeness.

In draperies, all sorts of colours do not suit all sorts of persons. In men's portraits, we need only observe great truth, and great force: but in women's there must also be charms; whatever beauty they have must appear in a fine light, and their blemishes must by some means or other be softened. For this reason, a white, lively, and bright tint, ought never to be let off by a fine yellow, which would make it look like plaster; but rather by colours inclining to green, blue, or grey, or such others as, by their opposition, may make the tint appear more flecky than usual in fair women. Vandyke often made a fillet-motif coloured curtain for his ground; but that colour is soft and brown. Brown women, on the other hand, who have yellow enough in their tints to support the character of fleshiness, may very well have yellowish draperies, in order to bring down the yellow of their tints, and make them look the fresher; and, near very high-coloured and lively carnations, linen does wonders.

In grounds, two things are observable; the tone and the colour. The colour is to be considered in the same manner as those of draperies, with respect to the head. The tone must be always different from the mass it supports, and of which it is the ground, that the objects coming upon it may not seem transparent, but solid and raised. The colour of the hair of the head usually determines the tone of the ground; and when the former is a bright chestnut, we are often embarrassed, unless helped by means of a curtain, or some accident of the claro obscuro, supposed to be behind, or unless the ground is a sky.

We must further observe, that where a ground is neither curtain nor landscape, or such like, but is plain and like a wall, it ought to very much party-coloured, with almost imperceptible patches or stains; for, besides its being so in nature, the picture will look the more grand.

42. Of Attitude, or Posture. Attitudes ought to suit the ages and qualities of persons and their tempers. In old men and women, they should be grave, majestic, and sometimes bold: and generally, in women, they ought to have a noble simplicity, and modest cheerfulness; for modesty ought to be the character of women; a charm infinitely beyond coquetry! and indeed coquettes themselves care not to be painted such.

Attitudes are of two kinds; one in motion, the other at rest. Those at rest may suit every person: but those in motion are proper for young people only, and are hard to be expressed; because a great part of the hair and drapery must be moved by the air; motion, in painting, being never better expressed than by such agitations. The attitudes at rest must not appear so much at rest as to seem to represent an inactive person, and one who sits for no other purpose but to be a copy. And though the figure that is represented be at rest, yet the painter, if he thinks fit, may give it a flying drapery, provided the scene or ground be not a chamber or close place.

It is above all things necessary that the figures which are not employed should appear to satisfy the spectator's curiosity; and for this purpose show themselves in such an action as suits their tempers and conditions, as if they would inform him what they really were: and as most people pretend to sincerity, honesty, and greatness of mind, we must avoid, in attitudes, all manner of affectation; every thing there must appear easy and natural, and discover more or less spirit, nobleness, and majesty, in proportion to the person's character and dignity. In a word, the attitudes are the language of portraits; and the skilful painter ought to give great attention to them.

But the best attitudes are such as induce the spectator to think that the sitter took a favourable opportunity of being seen to advantage, and without affectation. There is only one thing to be observed with regard to women's portraits, in whatever attitude they are placed; which is, that they sway in such a manner as to give their face but little shade; and that we carefully examine whether the lady appear most beautiful in a smiling or in a serious air, and conduct ourselves accordingly. Let us now proceed to the next article.

43. Of Practice in Portraiture. According to De Piles, portraiture requires three different fittings and operations; to wit, dead-colouring, second-colouring, and retouching or finishing. Before the painter dead-colours, he must attentively consider what aspect will best suit the sitter, by putting him in different positions, if we have not any settled design before us: and when we have determined this, it is of the last consequence to put the parts well together, by comparing always one part with another; for not only the portrait acquires a greater likeness when well designed, but it is troublesome to make alterations at the second fitting, when the artist must only think of painting, that Portraiture, that is, of disposing and uniting his colours.

Experience tells us, that the dead-colouring ought to be clean, because of the slope and transparency of the colours, especially in the shades: and when the parts are well put together, and become clammy, they must be judiciously sweetened and melted into each other; yet without taking away the air of the picture, that the painter may have the pleasure of finishing it, in proportion as he draws. But if fiery geniuses do not like this method of scumbling, let them only mark the parts slightly, and so far as is necessary, for giving an air.

In dead-colouring, it is proper to put in rather too little than too much hair about the forehead; that, in finishing, we may be at liberty to place it where we please, and to paint it with all possible softness and delicacy. If, on the contrary, you sketch upon the forehead a lock which may appear to be of a good taste, and becoming the work, you may be puzzled in finishing it, and not find the life exactly in the same position as you would paint it. But this observation is not meant for men of skill and consummate experience, who have nature in their heads, and make her submit to their ideas.

The business of the second fitting is, to put the colours well in their places, and to paint them in a manner that is suitable to the fitter and to the effect we propose: But before they are made clammy, we ought to examine afresh whether the parts are rightly placed, and here and there to give some touches towards likeness, that, when we are assured of it, the work may go on with greater satisfaction. If the painter understands what he is about, and the portrait be justly designed, he ought as much as possible to work quick; the fitter will be better pleased, and the work will by this means have the more spirit and life. But this readiness is only the effect of long study and experience; for we may well be allowed a considerable time to find out a road that is easy, and such as we must often travel in.

Before we retouch or finish, it is proper to terminate the hair, that, on finishing the carnations, we may be able to judge of the effect of the whole head.

If, at the second fitting, we cannot do all we intended, which often happens, the third makes up the loss, and gives both spirit, physiognomy, and character.

If we would paint a portrait at once, we must load the colouring; but neither sweeten, nor drive, nor very much oil it: and if we dip the pencil in varnish as the work advances, this will readily enable us to put colour on colour, and to mix them without driving.

The use and sight of good pictures give greater light into things than words can express: What hits one artist's understanding and temper may be disagreeable to another's; and almost all painters have taken different ways, though their principles were often the same.

We are told that a friend of Vandyke's having observed to him how little time he bestowed on his portraits, Vandyke answered, "That at first he worked hard, and took great pains, to acquire a reputation, and also to get a swift hand, against the time he should work for his kitchen." Vandyke's custom is said to have been this: He appointed both the day and hour for the person's sitting, and worked not above an hour on any portrait, either in rubbing in or finishing; so that as soon as his clock informed him that the hour was out, he rose up, and made a bow to the fitter, to signify, that he had done enough for that day, and then appointed another hour for some other day; whereupon his servant came to clean his pencils, and brought a fresh pallet, whilst he was receiving another fitter, whose day and hour he had before appointed. By this method he worked on several pictures the same day, with extraordinary expedition.

After having lightly dead-coloured the face, he put the fitter into some attitude which he had before contrived; and on a grey paper, with white and black crayons, he designed, in a quarter of an hour, his shape and drapery, which he disposed in a grand manner and an exquisite taste. After this, he gave the drawing to the skilful people he had about him, to paint after the fitter's own cloaths, which, at Vandyke's request, were sent to him for that purpose. When his disciples had done what they could to these draperies, he lightly went over them again; and so, in a little time, by his great knowledge, displayed the art and truth which we at this day admire in them. As for hands, he had in his house people of both sexes, whom he paid, and who served as models.

This conduct of Vandyke, however, is mentioned rather to gratify the reader's curiosity, than to excite his imitation; he may choose as much of it as he pleases and as suits his own genius, and leave the rest.

We must observe by the way, that there is nothing so rare as fine hands, either in the design or colouring. It is therefore convenient to cultivate, if we can, a friendship with some women who will take pleasure in serving for a copy: The way to win them is, to praise their beauty exceedingly. But if an opportunity serves of copying hands after Vandyke, it must not be let slip; for he drew them with a surprising delicacy, and an admirable colouring.

It is of great service to copy after the manners which come nearest to nature; as are those of Titian and Vandyke. We must, at such times, believe them to be nature itself; and, at some distance, consider them as such, and say to ourselves—What colour and tint shall I use for such a part? And then, coming near the picture, we ought to examine, whether we are right, or not; and to make a fixed rule of what we have discovered, and did not practise before without uncertainty.

It is recommended, before we begin colouring, to catch the very first moments, which are commonly the most agreeable and most advantageous, and to keep them in our memory for use when we are finishing; for the fitter, growing tired with being long in the same place, loses those spirits, which, at his first sitting down, gave beauty to the parts, and conveyed to the tint more lively blood, and a fresher colour. In short, we must join to truth a probable and advantageous possibility, which, far from abating likeness, serves rather to set it off. For this end, we ought to begin with observing the ground of a tint, as well what it is in lights as in shades; for the shades are only beautiful as they are proportioned to the light. We must observe if the tint be very lively; whether it partake of yellowness, and where that yellowness is placed; Decorations placed; because usually, towards the end of the sitting, fatigue diffuses a general yellowness, which makes us forget what parts were of this colour, and what were not, unless we had taken due notice of it before. For this reason, at the second sitting, the colours must be everywhere readily clapped in, and such as appear at the first sitting down; for these are always the finest.

The surest way to judge of colours is by comparison; and to know a tint, nothing is better than to compare it with linen placed next it, or else placed next to the natural object, if there is occasion. We say this only to those who have little practised nature.

The portrait being now supposed to be as much finished as you are able, nothing remains, but, at some reasonable distance, to view both the picture and sitter together, in order to determine with certainty, whether there is anything still wanting to perfect the work.

Sect. IV. Of Theatric Decorations: the Designs for Furniture, Embroidery, Carriages, &c.

46. Of Theatrical Decorations. This is a particular art which unites several of the general parts of painting with the knowledge of architecture, perspective, &c. They who apply themselves to it, would do well to design their decorations by day, and to colour them by candle-light, as they will be much better able to judge of the effect of a painting intended to be viewed by that light. It is proper also to caution the young painter to avoid, as much as possible, the uniting the imitations of nature with nature itself; that is, he should not introduce with his decorations living horses, or other animals, real fountains or caledes, trees, or statues, &c. For such combinations are the effect of ignorance and a bad taste; they are the resource of painters of little ability; they discover a sterility of invention, and produce great inconvenience in the representation. Those pieces which they call moving pictures, where the painted landscape remains immovable, and the figures move by means of springs, form a part of these decorations; and there are some of them, as those of Antwerp and Ghent, that have a pleasing effect.

47. The designs for furniture, carriages, porcelain, and other branches of manufacture, form also a very important article of painting in general, and of academy painting in particular. This is a distinct branch of the art; and without doubt not the least useful of its parts, as it concurs so essentially to the success of manufactures, and consequently to the prosperity of a state; and it is an art, to which it were much to be wished that youth of ability and invention would apply themselves. See the articles Japanning and Porcelain.

Sect. V. Enumeration of the different Methods of Painting, or the different Means and Materials that painters make use of to imitate all visible objects on a plane superficies.

48. Those now in practice are,

1. Painting in oil; which is preferable to all other other methods, as it is more susceptible of all sorts of expressions, of more perfect gradations of colours, and is at the same time more durable.

2. Mosaic painting; an invention truly wonderful; it is composed of a great number of small pieces of marble of different colours, joined together with stucco. The works of this kind are made principally at Rome, where this art has been carried so far as to resemble the paintings of the greatest masters; and of these are made monuments for the latest posterity.

Paintings in fresco; which is by drawing, with colours diluted with water, on a wall newly plastered, and with which they so incorporate, that they perish only with the stucco itself. This is principally used on ceilings.

4. Painting in water-colours; that is, with colours mixed with water and gum, or paste, &c.

5. Miniature painting; which differs from the preceding only as it represents objects in the least discernible magnitudes; and is consequently vastly more delicate, seeing it is performed by the smallest strokes possible; whereas the others have the full scope of the pencil.

6. Painting in crayons; for which purpose colours, either simple or compound, are mixed with gum, and made into a kind of hard paste like chalk, and with which they draw on paper or parchment.

7. Painting in enamel; which is done on copper or gold, with mineral colours that are dried by fire, and become very durable. The paintings on the porcelain of China and Europe, on Delft ware, &c., are so many sorts of enamel.

8. Painting in wax, or encaustic painting: This is a new invention, and in which there are in France performances highly pleasing. It is done with wax-mixed with varnish and colours.

9. Painting on glass; of which there are various kinds.

See all the articles here enumerated, explained in the order of the alphabet.