278 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

avocation and thought, and at once set out for Flanders,” assiduously to cultivate the friendship of Giovanni, presenting to him many drawings and other things, until Giovanni, finding himself already old, was content that Antonello should see the method of his colouring in oil, nor then to quit Flanders until he had “thoroughly learned that process.” It was this process, separate, mysterious, and admirable, whose communication the Venetian, Domenico, thought the most acceptable kindness which could repay his hospitality; and whose solitary possession Castagno thought cheaply purchased by the guilt of the betrayer and murderer;¹ it was in this process, the deduction of watchful intelligence, not by fortuitous discovery, that the first impulse was given to European art. Many a plank had yawned in the sun before Van Eyck’s; but he alone saw through the rent, as through an opening portal, the lofty perspective of triumph widening its rapid wedge;-many a spot of opaque colour had clouded the transparent amber of earlier times; but the little cloud that rose over Van Eyck’s horizon was “like unto a man’s hand.”²

What this process was, and how far it differed from preceding practice, has hardly, perhaps, been pronounced by Mr. Eastlake with sufficient distinctness. One or two conclusions which he has not marked are, we think, deducible from his evidence. In one point, and that not an unimportant one, we believe that many careful students of colouring will be disposed to differ with him: our own intermediate opinion we will therefore venture to state, though with all diffidence.

24. We must not, however, pass entirely without notice the two chapters on the preparation of oils, and on the oleoresinous vehicles, though to the general reader the recipes contained in them are of little interest; and in the absence

¹ [Vasari’s story (Bohn’s ed., 1855, ii. 102) of the murder of Domenico Veneziano, by Andrea del Castagno, is now disproved by documentary evidence, showing that Domenico survived his alleged murderer by five years.]

² [1 Kings xviii. 44.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]