Before giving a lengthy catalogue of the faults of these pictures Ruskin commented in his 1845 note-book:
It is no wonder that the energy of the superficial master obtains so many admirers, as it had very nearly carried me away myself. But on sitting down for a moment and recovering from the first effect, the truth came upon me gradually and fast. Every time I looked, the colour seemed more false, and the eye detected some erring or disagreeable form. Repetition after repetition, mannerism after mannerism, was unveiled, and I did not leave the pictures before it had become painful to look at them.... One passage only affords an exception, and its beauty is a test of the wrong in the rest. In the Baptism of Christ, on the opposite side of the river, on the right hand, a glade runs up among scattered trunks of trees behind the rocks, and this part of the picture is refreshing and full of nature: one can walk through it, and breathe in it... ( Works, 4.265 and Works, 4.266).