NOTES ON THE LOUVRE 467

The square creases of the table-cloth, where it has been folded, are elaborately and carefully drawn: they have value as dividing the broad white mass by a kind of masonry, and their formality is varied at the side by the crescent shape of the table. The square and oblong dividing of pavement in red (brownish) and white marble, is also very beautiful and careful ... [reference to a sketch]. The broadest of the small compartments, though all is thrown into sharp level perspective, are evidently intended to be square, and the long broad ones about four squares; the narrower are, I think, short, or about a third of the width; at ... [reference to another notebook] are their relations rudely taken by bringing edge of book against the picture. All the three narrow bands are of course equal in breadth.

Chiaroscuro.

§ 37. I am a little wrong above [p. 463], in denying all cast shadow. The statement about that of dwarf is true, but there are several sharper shadows where they can be ventured-one especially down the middle distance architecture, cast from the right, quite sharp; and from the statues in niches on their hollows; and in the effects at the proper distance, say the full length of the picture, all the shadows, which seem so faint when one is close, come out broad and clear; and as nearly as possible Turner’s pitch on the side of the white post-office¹-their faintness seems rather the result of the quantity of reflected and diffused light, than of the feebleness of the sun ray. There is, however, a decided conventionalism, as like Turner as can be-except that Turner makes his diffused light dusty and sunny; Veronese clear and quiet. The shadow of the wall on the right, tier above tier of silver and gold plate, giving lustrous grey, with a negro in profile-a brown mass of vigorous yet retired shade leaning over and brought against the white distant palace; while in the foreground the first column of the rotunda is brought in luminous rounded white and grey, one mass of light, out of the retiring shade of the silver wall, all most marvellous. The distant white palace, note, Ionic with Corinthian above, and the acanthus leaves of the near capitals, just turn their very tips, and no more-no feathering or bending about them. The more I looked at the architecture the better I liked it-excepting only the garland on distant rotunda.

Colour of Venetians.

§ 38. On the whole, my study this time has caused me to attach less importance to mere quality of colour. It seems to me that there is nothing very inimitable in particular spaces of it, and that much, even in the best pictures, is a little heavy; the pillars in the Magdalen have been painted entirely first; and the noble figures of the women ... [reference to sketch] and the rest, painted over them-the mouldings cause a projection in the colour plainly enough seen. (The white of the table-cloth is however painted up to and about the other figures: as, for instance, up to the dark brown negro hand of the dwarf on the right; and this entire painting of one distance of the picture first, and then another, must, I think, have been a fine aid, as well as discipline of the imagination.) In Annibale Caracci’s landscapes the dark hills and distances are all boldly painted first, and the trees struck over them in brown, or green:-in places this causes curious transparent effects when the picture ages: but consider what manly freedom of hand and thought and stroke,

¹ [i.e., the Casa Grimani in his picture of Venice above referred to.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]