286 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

and tranquil majesty; where the mind of the painter was irregularly or frivolously imaginative, its temptations to accumulative detail were too great to be resisted-the spectator was by the German masters overwhelmed with the copious inconsistency of a dream, or compelled to traverse the picture from corner to corner like a museum of curiosities.

29. The chalk or pen preparation being completed, and the oil-priming laid, we have seen that the shadows were laid in with a transparent brown in considerable body. The question next arises-What influence is this part of the process likely to have had upon the colouring of the school? It is to be remembered that the practice was continued to the latest times, and that when the thin light had been long abandoned, and a loaded body of colour had taken its place, the brown transparent shadow was still retained, and is retained often to this day, when asphaltum is used as its base, at the risk of the destruction of the picture. The utter loss of many of Reynolds’ noblest works has been caused by the lavish use of this pigment. What the pigment actually was in older times is left by Mr. Eastlake undecided:-

“A rich brown, which, whether an earth or mineral alone, or a substance of the kind enriched by the addition of a transparent yellow or orange, is not an unimportant element of the glowing colouring which is remarkable in examples of the school. Such a colour, by artificial combinations at least, is easily supplied; and it is repeated, that, in general, the materials now in use are quite as good as those which the Flemish masters had at their command.”-Ib., p. 488.

At p. 446 it is also asserted that the peculiar glow of the brown of Rubens is hardly to be accounted for by any accidental variety in the Cassel earths, but was obtained by the mixture of a transparent yellow. Evidence, however,

picture Francia’s finest here, or anywhere. Two angels, one on each side of the Madonna, in the sky, in adoration, are as unequalled as the rest; their passionateness and intensity of action, bending forward with hands lifted, altogether surpasses everything of the kind, except some of the finest things of Angelico’s; and it is so utterly free from all attitudinising, so enthusiastic-yet so quiet and full of repose that it may be opposed alike to the artificialness of Perugino’s in the Academy here, and yet more to all Raphael’s.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]