300 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

We believe that some consciousness of their true position already existed in the minds of many living artists; example had at least been given by two of our Academicians, Mr. Mulready and Mr. Etty, of a splendour based on the Flemish system, and consistent, certainly, in the first case, with a high degree of permanence;¹ while the main direction of artistic and public sympathy to works of a character altogether opposed to theirs, showed fatally how far more perceptible and appreciable to our present instincts is the mechanism of handling than the melody of hue. Indeed we firmly believe, that of all powers of enjoyment or of judgment, that which is concerned with nobility of colour is least communicable: it is also perhaps the most rare. The achievements of the draughtsman are met by the curiosity of all mankind; the appeals of the dramatist answered by their sympathy; the creatures of imagination acknowledged by their fear; but the voice of the colourist has but the adder’s listening, charm he never so wisely. Men vie with of each other, untaught, in pursuit of smoothness and smallness-of Carlo Dolci and Van Huysum;² their domestic hearts may range them in faithful armies round the throne of Raphael; meditation and labour may raise them to the level of the great mountain pedestal of Buonarotti-“vestito gia de’ raggi del pianeta, che mena dritto altrui per ogni calle;³ but neither time nor teaching will bestow the sense, when it is not innate, of that wherein consists the power of Titian and the great Venetians. There is proof of this in the various degrees of cost and care devoted to the preservation of their works. The glass, the curtain, and the cabinet guard the preciousness of what is petty, guide curiosity to what is popular, invoke worship to what is mighty;-Raphael has his palace-Michael his dome-respect

¹ [For other references to Mulready and his executive methods, see passages cited at Vol. IV. p. 336 n.; for Etty, see similarly Vol. III. p. 266 n.]

² [For other references to the same qualities in these painters, see-for Dolci-Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 91), and for Van Huysum, ibid. (p. 672 and n.).]

³ [Inferno, i. 17-18: “Already vested with that planet’s beam, who leads all wanderers safe through every way” (Cary).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]