was twenty years younger than Ghiberti, got his
nickname from his skill in painting birds. But one would rather
undertake to paint birds as well as Paolo than to carve them as well as
Ghiberti.

We may learn here how little the demand to "imitate Nature" expresses
what is intended. No accuracy, however demonstrable, will satisfy it. To
interest me in a picture, it is not enough that _something_ is as
visible there as it is elsewhere; it must be something that I was
already striving to see. It was not a greater circumstantiality of
statement than was demanded, but greater directness,--that it should be
relieved of what was unessential to its purpose, tending only to obscure
it. A painting, however rude, has at least this negative merit, that, by
the express substitution of the appearance for the actual image,
needless entanglement in the material is avoided. Weight and bulk are
not indeed annihilated, but they are no longer of primary importance,
and thus less obstructive. The work gains precisely in what it gives
up. By the flat omission of depth infinite depth is acquired,--by the
ignoring of size the expression of size becomes possible; a mountain,
for instance, which would be an absurdity in Sculpture is representable
in Painting. Thus, instead of being more abstract than Sculpture,
Painting is in truth less so, since what it omits is only negative to
the purpose of Art.

It seems to us easier to paint than to carve, and we might expect to
find Painting the older art. But the difficulty lies less in the
execution than in the conception. Painting is not a tinting of surfaces,
but the power to see a complex subject in unity. We may think we have no
difficulty in seeing the landscape, but most persons, if called upon to
state what they saw, pictorially, would show that they could not see the
wood for the trees. Beginners suppose it is some knack of the hand that
they are to acquire, when they learn to draw; but that is a small part
of the matter; the great difficulty is in the seeing. Ordinary vision is
piecemeal: we see the parts; but not the picture, or only vaguely. Even
the degree of facility that is implied in any enjoyment of scenery is
not so much a matter of course as it seems. Caesar occupied himself,
while crossing the Alps, with composing a grammatical treatise. There is
no evidence that there was anything odd in this. Perhaps Petrarch was
the first man that ever climbed a hill to enjoy the view. We are not