arble pillar, or the colors of a picture,
can only be properly seen in comparative shade.

Sec. 16. I will not entangle the reader in the very subtle and curious
variations of the laws in this matter. The simple fact which is
_necessary_ for him to observe is, that the paler and purer the color,
the more the great Venetian colorists will reinforce it in the shadow,
and allow it to fall or rise in sympathy with the light; and those
especially whose object it is to represent sunshine, nearly always
reinforce their local colors somewhat in the shadows, and keep them both
fainter and feebler in the light, so that they thus approach a condition
of universal glow, the full color being used for the shadow, and a
delicate and somewhat subdued hue of it for the light. And this to the
eye is the loveliest possible condition of color. Perhaps few people
have ever asked themselves why they admire a rose so much more than all
other flowers. If they consider, they will find, first, that red is, in
a delicately gradated state, the loveliest of all pure colors; and
secondly, that in the rose there is _no shadow_, except what is composed
of color. All its shadows are fuller in color than its lights, owing to
the translucency and reflective power of its leaves.

The second shaft, 6, in which the local color is paler towards the
light, and reinforced in the shadow, will therefore represent the
Venetian system with respect to paler colors, and the system, for the
most part, even with respect to darker colors, of painters who attempt
to render effects of strong sunlight. Generally, therefore, it
represents the practice of Turner. The first shaft, 5, exhibits the
disadvantage of the practice of Rembrandt and Leonardo, in that they
cannot show the local color on the dark side, since, however energetic,
it must at last sink into their exaggerated darkness.

Sec. 17. Now, from all the preceding inquiry, the reader must perceive more
and more distinctly the great truth, that all forms of right art consist
in a certain _choice_ made between various classes of truths, a few only
being represented, and others necessarily excluded; and that the
excellence of each style depends first on its consistency with
itself,--the perfect fidelity, as far as possible, to the truths it has
chosen; and secondly, on the breadth of its harmony, or number of truths
it has been able to reconcile, and the consciousness with which the
truths refused are acknowledged,