There are others, who have not altogether so much of this foolish bashfulness, and who ask every one’s opinion with prayers and earnestness; but if you freely and ingenuously give them notice of their faults, they never fail to make some pitiful excuse for them; or, which is worse, they take in ill part the service which you thought you did them, which they but seemingly desired of you, and out of an established custom amongst the greatest part of painters. If you desire to get yourself any honour, and acquire a reputation by your works, there is no surer way than to shew them to persons of good sense, and chiefly to those who are critics in the art; and to take their counsel with the same mildness, and the same sincerity, as you desired them to give it you. You must also be industrious to discover the opinion of your enemies, which is commonly the truest; for you may be assured, that they will give you no quarter, and allow nothing to complaisance.
“But if you have no knowing friend,” &c. Quinctilian gives the reason of this, when he says, “that the best means to correct our faults, is doubtless this, to remove our designs out of sight, for some space of time, and not to look upon our pictures: to the end, that after this interval we may look on them as it were with other eyes, and as a new work, which was of another hand, and not our own”. Our own productions do but too much flatter us; they are always too pleasing, and it is impossible not to be fond of them at the moment of their conception. They are children of a tender age, which are not capable of drawing our hatred on them. It is said, that apes, as soon as they have brought their young into the world, keep their eyes continually fastened on them, and are never weary of admiring their beauty; so amorous is nature of whatsoever she produces.
“To the end that he may cultivate those talents which make his genius,” &c.
“That we may undertake nothing beyond our forces, we must endeavour to know them.” On this prudence our reputation depends. Cicero calls it “a good grace,” because it makes a man seen in his greatest lustre. “It is,” says he,[170] “a becoming grace, which we shall easily make appear, if we are careful to cultivate that which nature has given us in propriety, and made our own; provided it be no vice, or imperfection. We ought to undertake nothing which is repugnant to nature in general; and when we have paid her this duty, we are bound so religiously to follow our own nature, that though many things which are more serious and more important, present themselves to us, yet we are always to conform our studies and our exercises to our natural inclinations. It avails nothing to dispute against nature, and think to obtain what she refuses; for then we eternally follow what we can never reach; for, as the proverb says, there is nothing can please, nothing can be graceful, which we enterprise in spite of Minerva; that is to say, in spite of nature. When we have considered all these things attentively, it will then be necessary that every man should regard that in particular which nature has made his portion, and that he should cultivate it with care. It is not his business to give himself the trouble of trying whether it will become him to put on the nature of another man, or, as one would say, to act the person of another; there is nothing which can more become us, than what is properly the gift of nature. Let every one therefore endeavour to understand his own talent, and, without flattering himself, let him make a true judgment of his own virtues, and his own defects and vices, that he may not appear to have less judgment than the comedians, who do not always chuse the best plays, but those which are best for them; that is, those which are most in the compass of their acting. Thus we are to fix on those things for which we have the strongest inclination. And if it sometimes happens, that we are forced, by necessity, to apply ourselves to such other things, to which we are no ways inclined, we must bring it so about, by our care and industry, that if we perform them not very well, at least we may not do them so very ill, as to be shamed by them: we are not so much to strain ourselves, to make those virtues appear in us, which really we have not, as to avoid those imperfections which may dishonour us.” These are the thoughts and the words of Cicero, which I have translated, retrenching only such things as were of no concernment to my subject: I was not of opinion to add any thing, and the reader, I doubt not, will find his satisfaction in them.
“While you meditate on these truths, and observe them diligently,” &c. There is a great connection betwixt this precept and that other, which tells you, “That you are to pass no day without a line.” It is impossible to become an able artist, without making your art habitual to you; and it is impossible to gain an exact habitude, without an infinite number of acts, and without perpetual practice. In all arts the rules of them are learned in little time; but the perfection is not acquired without a long practice, and a severe diligence. “We never saw, that laziness produced any thing which was excellent,” says Maximus Tyrius;[171] and Quinctilian tells us, “That the arts draw their beginning from nature;” the want we often have of them causes us to search the means of becoming able in them, and exercise makes us entirely masters of them.
“The morning is the best and most proper part of the day,” &c. Because then the imagination is not clouded with the vapours of meat, nor distracted by visits, which are not usually made in the morning. And the mind, by the sleep of the foregoing night, is refreshed and recreated from the toils of former studies. Malherbe says well to this purpose,
“Let no day pass over you, without a line,” &c. That is to say, without working, without giving some strokes of the pencil or the crayon. This was the precept of Apelles; and it is of so much the more necessity, because painting is an art of much length and time, and is not to be learned without great practice. Michael Angelo, at the age of fourscore years, said, “That he learned something every day.”
“Be ready to put into your table-book,” &c. As it was the custom of Titian and the Carraches. There are yet remaining in the hands of some who are curious in painting, many thoughts and observations, which those great men have made on paper, and in their table-books, which they carried continually about them.
“Wine and good cheer are no great friends to painting; they serve only to recreate the mind, when it is opprest and spent with labour,” &c. “During the time,” says Pliny,[172] “that Protogenes was drawing the picture of Jalysus, which was the best of all his works, he took no other nourishment than lupines, mixed with a little water, which served him both for meat and drink, for fear of clogging his imagination, by the luxury of his food;” Michael Angelo, while he was drawing his Day of Judgment, fed only on bread and wine at dinner; and Vasari observes in his life, that he was so sober, that he slept but little, and that he often rose in the night to work, as being not disturbed by the vapours of his thin repasts.
“But delights in the liberty which belongs to the bachelors estate,” &c. We never see large, beautiful, and well-tasted fruits, proceeding from a tree which is encompassed round, and choked with thorns and briars. Marriage draws a world of business on our hands, subjects us to law-suits, and loads us with multitudes of domestic cares, which are as so many thorns that encompass a painter, and hinder him from producing his works in that perfection of which otherwise he is capable. Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Hannibal Carrache, were never married: and amongst the ancient painters we find none recorded for being married, but only Apelles, to whom Alexander the Great made a present of his own mistress Campaspe; which yet I would have understood, without offence to the institution of marriage; for that calls down many blessings upon families, by the carefulness of a virtuous wife. If marriage be in general a remedy against concupiscence, it is doubly so in respect of painters, who are more frequently under the occasions of sin, than other men, because they are under a frequent necessity of seeing nature bare-faced. Let every one examine his own strength upon this point: but let him prefer the interest of his soul, to that of his art, and of his fortune.
“Painting naturally withdraws from noise and tumult,” &c. I have said at the end of the first remark, that both poetry and painting were upheld by the strength of imagination. Now there is nothing which warms it more than repose and solitude; because, in that estate, the mind being freed from all sorts of business, and in a kind of sanctuary, undisturbed by vexatious visits, is more capable of forming noble thoughts, and of application to its studies:
We may properly say the same of painting, by reason of its conformity with poetry, as I have shewn in the first remark.
“Let not the covetous design of growing rich,” &c. We read in Pliny, that Nicias refused sixty talents from king Attalus, and rather chose to make a free gift of his picture to his country. “I enquired of a prudent man,” says a grave author,[173] “in what times those noble pictures were made, which now we see; and desired him to explain to me some of their subjects, which I did not well understand. I asked him likewise the reason of that great negligence, which is now visible amongst painters; and from whence it proceeded, that the most beautiful arts were now buried in oblivion; and principally painting, a faint shadow of which is at present remaining to us? To which he thus replied, that the immoderate desire of riches had produced this change: for of old, when naked virtue had her charms, the noble arts then flourished in their vigour; and if there was any contest amongst men, it was only who should be the first discoverer of what might be of advantage to posterity. Lysippus and Myron, those renowned sculptors, who could give a soul to brass, left no heirs, no inheritance, behind them; because they were more careful of acquiring fame than riches. But as for us of this present age, it seems, by the manner of our conduct, that we upbraid antiquity for being as covetous of virtue as we are of vice; wonder not so much, therefore, if painting has lost its strength and vigour, because many are now of opinion, that a heap of gold is much more beautiful than all the pictures and statues of Apelles and Phidias, and all the noble performances of Greece.”
I would not exact so great an act of abstinence from our modern painters; for I am not ignorant, that the hope of gain is a wonderful sharp spur in arts, and that it gives industry to the artist; from whence it was, that Juvenal said, even of the Greeks themselves, who were the inventors of painting, and who first understood all the graces of it, and its whole perfection,
But I could heartily wish, that the same hope which flatters them, did not also corrupt them; and did not snatch out of their hands a lame imperfect piece, rudely daubed over with too little reflection, and too much haste.
“The qualities requisite to form an excellent painter,” &c. It is to be confessed, that very few painters have those qualities which are required by our author, because there are very few who are able painters. There was a time, when only they who were of noble blood were permitted to exercise this art; because it is to be presumed, that all these ingredients of a good painter are not ordinarily found in men of vulgar birth. And, in all appearance, we may hope, that though there be no edict in France, which takes away the liberty of painting, from those to whom nature has refused the honour of being born gentlemen, yet at least that the Royal Academy will admit henceforward only such, who being endued with all the good qualities, and the talents which are required for painting, those endowments may be to them instead of an honourable birth. It is certain, that which debases painting, and makes it descend to the vilest and most despicable kind of trade, is the great multitude of painters, who have neither noble souls, nor any talent for the art, nor even so much as common sense. The origin of this great evil is, that there have always been admitted into the schools of painting, all sorts of children promiscuously, without examination of them, and without observing (for some convenient space of time) if they were conducted to this art by their inward disposition, and all necessary talents, rather than by a foolish inclination of their own, or by the avarice of their relations, who put them to painting, as a trade which they believe to be somewhat more gainful than another. The qualities properly required are these following:—
A good judgment, that they may do nothing against reason and verisimility.
A docile mind, that they may profit by instructions, and receive, without arrogance, the opinion of every one, and principally of knowing men.
A noble heart, that they may propose glory to themselves, and reputation rather than riches.
A sublimity and reach of thought, to conceive readily, to produce beautiful ideas, and to work on their subjects nobly, and after a lofty manner, wherein we may observe somewhat that is delicate, ingenious, and uncommon.
A warm and vigorous fancy, to arrive at least to some degree of perfection, without being tired with the pains and study which are required in painting.
Health, to resist the dissipation of spirits, which are apt to be consumed by pains-taking.
Youth, because painting requires a great experience, and a long practice.
Beauty, or handsomeness, because a painter paints himself in all his pictures; and nature loves to produce her own likeness.
A convenient fortune, that he may give his whole time to study, and may work cheerfully, without being haunted with the dreadful image of poverty, ever present to his mind.
Labour, because the speculation is nothing without the practice.
A love for his art, we suffer nothing in the labour which is pleasing to us; or if it happen that we suffer, we are pleased with the pain.
And to be under the discipline of a knowing master, &c. Because all depends on the beginnings; and because commonly they take the manner of their master, and are formed according to his gusto. See verse 422, and the remark upon it. All these good qualities are insignificant, and unprofitable to the painter, if some outward dispositions are wanting to him. By which I mean favourable times, such as are times of peace, which is the nurse of all noble arts: there must also some fair occasion offer to make their skill manifest, by the performance of some considerable work within their power; and a protector, who must be a person of authority, one who takes upon himself the care of their fortune, at least in some measure, and knows how to speak well of them in time and place convenient. “It is of much importance,” says the younger Pliny, “in what times virtue appears. And there is no wit, howsoever excellent it may be, which can make itself immediately known; time and opportunity are necessary to it, and a person who can assist us with his favour, and be a Mæcenas to us.”
“And life is so short, that it is not sufficient for so long an art,” &c. Not only painting but all other arts, considered in themselves, require almost an infinite time to possess them perfectly. It is in this sense, that Hippocrates begins his Aphorisms with this saying, “That art is long, and life is short.” But if we consider arts as they are in us, and according to a certain degree of perfection, sufficient enough to make it known, that we possess them above the common sort, and are comparatively better than most others, we shall not find that life is too short on that account, provided our time be well employed. It is true, that painting is an art which is difficult, and a great undertaking; but they who are endued with the qualities that are necessary to it, have no reason to be discouraged by that apprehension. “Labour always appears difficult before it is tried.”[174] The passages by sea, and the knowledge of the stars, have been thought impossible, which notwithstanding have been found and compassed, and that with ease, by those who endeavoured after them. “It is a shameful thing,” says Cicero,[175] “to be weary of enquiry, when what we search is excellent.” That which causes us to lose most of our time, is the repugnance which we naturally have to labour, and the ignorance, the malice, and the negligence of our masters: we waste much of our time in walking, and talking to no manner of purpose, in making and receiving idle visits; in play, and other pleasures which we indulge; without reckoning those hours which we lose in the too great care of our bodies; and in sleep, which we often lengthen out till the day is far advanced; and thus we pass that life which we reckon to be short, because we count by the years which we have lived rather than by those which we have employed in study. It is evident, that they who lived before us, have passed through all those difficulties, to arrive at that perfection which we discover in their works; though they wanted some of the advantages which we possess, and none had laboured for them as they have done for us. For it is certain, that those ancient masters, and those of the last preceding ages, have left such beautiful patterns to us, that a better and more happy age can never be than ours; and chiefly under the reign of our present king, who encourages all the noble arts, and spares nothing, to give them the share of that felicity, of which he is so bountiful to his kingdom; and to conduct them with all manner of advantages to that supreme degree of excellence, which may be worthy of such a master, and of that sovereign love which he has for them. Let us therefore put our hands to the work, without being discouraged by the length of time, which is requisite for our studies; but let us seriously contrive how to proceed with the best order, and to follow a ready, diligent, and well understood method.
“Take courage, therefore, O ye noble youths! ye legitimate offspring of Minerva, who are born under the influence of a happy planet,” &c. Our author intends not here to sow in a barren, ungrateful ground, where his precepts can bear no fruit: he speaks to young painters, but to such only who are born under the influence of a happy star; that is to say, those who have received from nature the necessary dispositions of becoming great in the art of painting; and not to those who follow that study through caprice, or by a sottish inclination; or for lucre, who are either incapable of receiving the precepts, or will make a bad use of them when received.
“You will do well,” &c. Our author speaks not here of the first rudiments of design; as, for example, the management of the pencil, the just relation which the copy ought to have to the original, &c. He supposes, that before he begins his studies, one ought to have a facility of hand, to imitate the best designs, and the noblest pictures and statues; that, in few words, he should have made himself a key, wherewith to open the closet of Minerva, and to enter into that sacred place, where those fair treasures are to be found in all abundance, and even offer themselves to us, to make our advantage of them, by our care and genius.
“To begin with geometry,” &c. Because that is the ground of perspective, without which nothing is to be done in painting. Besides, geometry is of great use in architecture, and in all things which are of its dependence; it is particularly necessary for sculptors.
“Set yourself on designing after the antient Greeks,” &c. Because they are the rule of beauty, and give us a good gusto; for which reason it is very proper to tie ourselves to them, I mean generally speaking; but the particular fruit which we gather from them, is what follows: To learn by heart four several airs of heads; of a man, a woman, a child, and an old man. I mean those which have the most general approbation; for example, those of the Apollo, of the Venus de Medecis, of the little Nero, (that is, when he was a child,) and of the god Tiber. It would be a good means of learning them, if when you have designed one after the statue itself, you design it immediately after from your own imagination, without seeing it; and afterwards examine, if your own work be conformable to the first design; thus exercising yourself on the same head, and turning it on ten or twelve sides. You must do the same to the feet, to the hands, to the whole figure. But to understand the beauty of these figures, and the justness of their outlines, it will be necessary to learn anatomy. When I speak of four heads, and four figures, I pretend not to hinder any one from designing many others, after this first study; but my meaning is, only to show by this, that a great variety of things undertaken at the same time, dissipates the imagination, and hinders all the profit; in the same manner, as too many sorts of meat are not easily digested, but corrupt in the stomach, instead of nourishing the parts.
“And cease not day or night from labour, till by your continual practice,” &c. In the first principles, the students have not so much need of precepts as of practice; and the antique statues being the rule of beauty, you may exercise yourselves in imitating them, without apprehending any consequence of ill habits and bad ideas, which can be formed in the soul of a young beginner. It is not as in the school of a master, whose manner and whose gusto are ill, and under whose discipline the scholar spoils himself the more he exercises.
“And when afterwards your judgment shall grow stronger,” &c. It is necessary to have the soul well formed, and to have a right judgment to make the application of his rules upon good pictures, and to take nothing but the good. For there are some who imagine, that whatsoever they find in the picture of a master who has acquired reputation, must of necessity be excellent: and these kind of people never fail, when they copy, to follow the bad, as well as the good things, and to observe them so much the more, because they seem to be extraordinary, and out of the common road of others, so that at last they come to make a law and precept of them. You ought not also to imitate what is truly good in a crude and gross manner, so that it may be found out in your works, that whatsoever beauties there are in them, come from such or such a master. But, in this, imitate the bees, who pick from every flower that which they find most proper in it to make honey. In the same manner, a young painter should collect from many pictures what he finds to be the most beautiful; and from his several collections form that manner which thereby he makes his own.
“A certain grace, which was wholly natural and peculiar to him,” &c. Raphael in this may be compared to Apelles, who, in praising the works of other painters, said, “That gracefulness was wanting to them;” and that, without vanity, he might say, it was his own peculiar portion. See the Remark on the 218th verse.
“Julio Romano, educated from his childhood in the country of the Muses,” &c. He means in the studies of the belle lettre, and above all in poesy, which he infinitely loved. It appears, that he formed his ideas, and made his gusto, from reading Homer; and in that imitated Zeuxis and Polygnotus, who, as Maximus Tyrius relates, treated their subjects in their pictures as Homer did in his poetry.
To these remarks I have annexed the opinions of our author, upon the best and chiefest painters of the two foregoing ages. He tells you candidly, and briefly, what were their excellencies, and what their failings.
“I pass in silence many things which will be more amply treated in the ensuing Commentary.” It is evident by this, how much we lose, and what damage we have sustained by our author’s death, since those commentaries had undoubtedly contained things of high value and of great instruction.
“To intrust with the Muses,” &c. That is to say, to write in verse; poetry being under their protection, and consecrated to them.
Painting was in its perfection amongst the Greeks. The principal schools were at Sycion, afterwards at Rhodes, at Athens, and at Corinth, and at last in Rome. Wars and luxury having overthrown the Roman empire, it was totally extinguished, together with all the noble arts, the studies of humanity, and the other sciences.
It began to appear again, in the year 1450, amongst some painters of Florence, of which Domenico Chirlandaio was one, who was master to Michael Angelo, and had some kind of reputation, though his manner was Gothic, and very dry.
Michael Angelo, his disciple, flourished in the times of Julius the Second, Leo the Tenth, and of seven successive popes. He was a painter, a sculptor, and an architect, both civil and military. The choice which he made of his attitudes was not always beautiful or pleasing; his gusto of design was not the finest, nor his outlines the most elegant; the folds of his draperies, and the ornaments of his habits, were neither noble nor graceful. He was not a little fantastical and extravagant in his compositions; he was bold, even to rashness, in taking liberties against the rules of perspective. His colouring is not over true, or very pleasant. He knew not the artifice of the lights and shadows; but he designed more learnedly, and better understood all the knittings of the bones, with the office and situation of the muscles, than any of the modern painters. There appears a certain air of greatness and severity in his figures; in both which he has oftentimes succeeded. But above the rest of his excellencies, was his wonderful skill in architecture, wherein he has not only surpassed all the moderns, but even the ancients also. The St Peters of Rome, the St Johns of Florence, the Capitol, the Palazzo Farnese, and his own house, are sufficient testimonies of it. His disciples were Marcello Venusti, Il Rosso, Georgio Vasari, Fra. Bastiano, who commonly painted for him, and many other Florentines.
Pietro Perugino designed with sufficient knowledge of nature; but he is dry, and his manner little. His disciple was,
Raphael Santio, who was born on Good Friday, in the year 1483, and died on Good Friday, in the year 1520, so that he lived only thirty-seven years complete. He surpassed all modern painters, because he possessed more of the excellent parts of painting than any other: and it is believed that he equalled the ancients, excepting only that he designed not naked bodies with so much learning as Michael Angelo; but his gusto of design is purer, and much better. He painted not with so good, so full, and so graceful a manner as Correggio; nor has he any thing of the contrast of the lights and shadows, or so strong and free a colouring as Titian; but he had a better disposition in his pieces, without comparison, than either Titian, Correggio, Michael Angelo, or all the rest of the succeeding painters to our days. His choice of attitudes, of heads, of ornaments; the suitableness of his drapery, his manner of designing, his varieties, his contrasts, his expressions, were beautiful in perfection; but above all, he possessed the graces in so advantageous a manner, that he has never since been equalled by any other. There are portraits, or single figures, of his, which are finished pieces. He was an admirable architect. He was handsome, well made, and tall of stature, civil and well-natured, never refusing to teach another what he knew himself. He had many scholars, amongst others, Julio Romano, Polydore, Gaudenzio, Giovanni d’Udine, and Michael Coxis. His graver was Marc Antonio, whose prints are admirable for the correctness of their outlines.
Julio Romano was the most excellent of all Raphael’s disciples. He had conceptions which were more extraordinary, more profound, and more elevated, than even his master himself. He was also a great architect; his gusto was pure and exquisite. He was a great imitator of the ancients; giving a clear testimony in all his productions, that he was desirous to restore to practice the same forms and fabrics which were ancient. He had the good fortune to find great persons, who committed to him the care of edifices, vestibules, and porticos, all tetrastyles, xistes, theatres, and such other places as are not now in use. He was wonderful in his choice of attitudes. His manner was drier and harder than any of Raphael’s school. He did not exactly understand the lights and shadows, or the colours. He is frequently harsh and ungraceful. The folds of his draperies are neither beautiful nor great, easy nor natural; but all extravagant, and too like the habits of fantastical comedians. He was very knowing in human learning. His disciples were Pirro Ligorio, (who was admirable for ancient buildings, as for towns, temples, tombs, and trophies, and the situation of ancient edifices,) Æneas Vico, Bonasone, Georgio Mantuano, and others.
Polydore, a disciple of Raphael, designed admirably well, as to the practical part, having a particular genius for freezes, as we may see by those of white and black which he has painted at Rome. He imitated the ancients; but his manner was greater than that of Julio Romano; nevertheless, Julio seems to be the truer. Some admirable groupes are seen in his works, and such as are not elsewhere to be found. He coloured very seldom, and made landscapes of a reasonable good gusto.
Gio. Bellino, one of the first who was of any consideration at Venice, painted very drily, according to the manner of his time. He was very knowing, both in architecture and perspective. He was Titian’s first master, which may easily be observed in the first painting of that noble disciple; in which we may remark, that propriety of colours which his master has observed.
About this time, Georgione, the contemporary of Titian, came to excel in portraits, or face-painting, and also in great works. He first began to make choice of glowing and agreeable colours, the perfection and entire harmony of which were afterwards to be found in Titian’s pictures. He dressed his figures wonderfully well; and it may be truly said, that, but for him, Titian had never arrived to that height of perfection, which proceeded from the rivalship and jealousy of honour betwixt those two.
Titian was one of the greatest colourists who was ever known. He designed with much more ease and practice than Georgione. There are to be seen women and children of his hand, which are admirable, both for the design and colouring. The gusto of them is delicate, charming, and noble, with a certain pleasing negligence of the head dresses, the draperies, and ornaments of habits, which are wholly peculiar to him. As for the figures of men, he has designed them but moderately well. There are even some of his draperies which are mean, and savour of a little gusto. His painting is wonderfully glowing, sweet, and delicate. He made portraits, which were extremely noble; the attitudes of them being very graceful, grave, diversified, and adorned after a very becoming fashion. No man ever painted landscape with so great a manner, so good a colouring, and with such a resemblance of nature. For eight or ten years space, he copied with great labour and exactness whatsoever he undertook; thereby to make himself an easy way, and to establish some general maxims for his future conduct. Besides the excellent gusto which he had of colours, in which he excelled all mortal men, he perfectly understood how to give every thing the touches which were most suitable and proper to them; such as distinguished them from each other, and which gave the greatest spirit, and the most of truth. The pictures, which he made in his beginning and in the declension of his age, are of a dry and mean manner. He lived ninety-nine years. His disciples were Paulo Veronese, Giacomo Tintoret, Giacomo da Ponte Bassano, and his sons.
Paulo Veronese was wonderfully graceful in his airs of women, with great variety of shining draperies, and incredible vivacity and ease. Nevertheless, his composition is sometimes improper, and his design is incorrect; but his colouring, and whatsoever depends on it, is so very charming in his pictures, that it surprises at the first sight, and makes us totally forget those other qualities which are wanting in him.
Tintoret was the disciple of Titian, great in the practical part of design, but sometimes also sufficiently extravagant. He had an admirable genius for painting, if he had had as great an affection to his art, and as much patience in undergoing the difficulties of it, as he had fire and vivacity of nature. He has made pictures not inferior in beauty to those of Titian. His composition, and his dresses, are, for the most part, improper, and his outlines are not correct; but his colouring, and the dependencies of it, like that of his master, are most admirable.
The Bassans had a more mean and poor gusto in painting than Tintoret, and their designs were also less correct than his: they had, indeed, an excellent gusto of colours, and have touched all kinds of animals with an admirable manner, but were notoriously imperfect in the composition and design.
Correggio painted at Parma two large cupolas in fresco, and some altar-pieces. This artist found out certain natural and unaffected graces, for his Madonnas, his Saints, and Little Children, which were peculiar to him. His manner is exceeding great, both for the design and for the work, but withal is very incorrect. His pencil was both easy and delightful; and, it is to be acknowledged, that he painted with great strength, great heightning, great sweetness, and liveliness of colours, in which none surpassed him.
He understood how to distribute his lights in such a manner as was wholly peculiar to himself; which gave a great force and great roundness to his figures. This manner consists in extending a large light, and then making it lose itself insensibly in the dark shadowings which he placed out of the masses; and those give them this great roundness, without our being able to perceive from whence proceeds so much of force, and so vast a pleasure to the sight. It is probable, that, in this part, the rest of the Lombard school copied him. He had no great choice of graceful attitudes, nor of distribution for beautiful groupes; his design oftentimes appears lame, and the positions are not much observed in them. The aspects of his figures are many times unpleasing; but his manner of designing heads, hands, feet, and other parts, is very great, and well deserves our imitation. In the conduct and finishing of a picture, he has done wonders; for he painted with so much union, that his greatest works seemed to have been finished in the compass of one day, and appear as if we saw them from a looking-glass. His landscape is equally beautiful with his figures.
At the same time with Correggio, lived and flourished Parmegiano; who, besides his great manner of well colouring, excelled also both in invention and design, with a genius full of gentleness and of spirit, having nothing that was ungraceful in his choice of attitudes, and in the dresses of his figures, which we cannot say of Correggio. There are pieces of his to be seen, which are both beautiful and correct.
These two painters last mentioned had very good disciples, but they are known only to those of their own province; and besides, there is little to be credited of what his countrymen say; for painting is wholly extinguished amongst them.
I say nothing of Leonardo da Vinci, because I have seen but little of his, though he restored the arts at Milan, and had many disciples there.
Ludovico Carrache, cousin of Hannibal and Augustine, studied at Parma after Correggio; and excelled in design and colouring with such a gracefulness, and so much candour, that Guido, the scholar of Hannibal, did afterwards imitate him with great success. There are some of his pictures to be seen, which are very beautiful and well understood. He made his ordinary residence at Bologna; and it was he who put the pencil into the hands of Hannibal his cousin.
Hannibal, in a little time, excelled his master in all parts of painting. He imitated Correggio, Titian, and Raphael, in their different manners as he pleased; excepting only, that you see not in his pictures the nobleness, the graces, and the charms of Raphael; and his outlines are neither so pure nor so elegant as his. In all other things he is wonderfully accomplished, and of an universal genius.
Augustine, brother to Hannibal, was also a very good painter, and an admirable graver. He had a natural son, called Antonio, who died at the age of thirty-five, and who (according to the general opinion) would have surpassed his uncle Hannibal; for by what he left behind him, it appears that he was of a more lofty genius.
Guido chiefly imitated Ludovico Carrache, yet retained always somewhat of the manner which his master, Denis Calvert, the Fleming, taught him. This Calvert lived at Bologna, and was competitor and rival to Ludovico Carrache. Guido made the same use of Albert Durer as Virgil did of old Ennius; borrowed what pleased him, and made it afterwards his own; that is, he accommodated what was good in Albert to his own manner; which he executed with so much gracefulness and beauty, that he alone got more money and more reputation in his time than his own masters and all the scholars of the Carraches, though they were of greater capacity than himself. His heads yield no manner of precedence to those of Raphael.
Sisto Badolocchi designed the best of all his disciples, but he died young.
Domenichino was a very knowing painter, and very laborious, but otherwise of no great natural endowments. It is true, he was profoundly skilled in all the parts of painting, but wanting genius, (as I said,) he had less of nobleness in his works than all the rest who studied in the school of the Carraches.
Albani was excellent in all that belonged to painting, and adorned with variety of learning.
Lanfranc, a man of a great and sprightly wit, supported his reputation for a long time with an extraordinary gusto of design and colouring. But his foundation being only on the practical part, he at length lost ground in point of correctness; so that many of his pieces appear extravagant and fantastical. And after his decease the school of the Carraches went daily to decay in all the parts of painting.
Gio. Viola was very old before he learned landscape; the knowledge of which was imparted to him by Hannibal Carrache, who took pleasure to instruct him, so that he painted many of that kind, which are wonderfully fine, and well coloured.
If we cast our eyes towards Germany and the Low Countries, we may there behold Albert Durer, Lucas Van Leyden, Holbein, Aldegrave, &c. who were all contemporaries. Amongst these, Albert Durer and Holbein were both of them wonderfully knowing, and had certainly been of the first form of painters, had they travelled into Italy; for nothing can be laid to their charge, but only that they had a Gothic gusto. As for Holbein, he performed yet better than Raphael; and I have seen a portrait of his painting, with which one of Titian’s could not come in competition.
Amongst the Flemings, we had Rubens, who derived from his birth, a lively, free, noble, and universal genius: a genius which was capable not only of raising him to the rank of the ancient painters, but also to the highest employment in the service of his country; so that he was chosen for one of the most important embassies of our age. His gusto of design savours somewhat more of the Fleming than of the beauty of the antique, because he staid not long at Rome. And though we cannot but observe in all his paintings somewhat of great and noble, yet, it must be confessed, that, generally speaking, he designed not correctly; but, for all the other parts of painting, he was as absolute a master of them, and possessed them all as thoroughly as any of his predecessors in that noble art. His principal studies were made in Lombardy, after the works of Titian, Paul Veronese, and Tintoret; whose cream he has skimmed, (if you will allow the phrase,) and extracted from their several beauties many general maxims and infallible rules, which he always followed, and by which he has acquired in his works a greater facility than that of Titian; more of purity, truth, and science, than Paul Veronese; and more of majesty, repose, and moderation, than Tintoret. To conclude: his manner is so solid, so knowing, and so ready, that it may seem this rare accomplished genius was sent from heaven to instruct mankind in the art of painting.
His school was full of admirable disciples, amongst whom, Van Dyck was he who best comprehended all the rules and general maxims of his master; and who has even excelled him in the delicacy of his colouring, and in his cabinet-pieces; but his gusto, in the designing part, was nothing better than that of Rubens.