rs peruse but a small portion
of their works, owing to lack of time. But the works of the painter
are immediately understood by those who behold them.

18.

Painting manifests its essence to thee in an instant of time,--its
essence by the visual faculty, the very means by which the perception
apprehends natural objects, and in the same duration of time,--and in
this space of time the sense-satisfying harmony of the proportion of
the parts composing the whole is formed. And poetry apprehends the
same things, but by a sense inferior to that of the eyesight, which
bears the images of the objects named to the perception with greater
confusion and less speed. Not in such wise acts the eye (the true
intermediary between the object and the perception), for it immediately
communicates the true semblance and image of what is represented before
it with the greatest accuracy; whence that proportion arises called
harmony, which with sweet concord delights the sense in the same way as
the harmony of diverse voices delights the ear; and this harmony is
less worthy than that which delights the eye, because for every part of
it that is born a part dies, and it dies as fast as it is born. This
{74} cannot occur in the case of the eye; because if thou presentest a
beautiful living mortal to the eye, composed of a harmony of fair
limbs, its beauty is not so transient nor so quickly destroyed as that
of music; on the contrary it has permanent duration, and allows thee to
behold and consider it; and it is not reborn as in the case of music
which is played many times over, nor will it weary thee: on the
contrary, thou becomest enamoured with it, and the result it produces
is that all the senses, together with the eye, would wish to possess
it, and it seems that they would wish to compete with the eye: it
appears that the mouth desires it for itself, if the mouth can be
considered as a sense; the ear takes pleasure in hearing its beauty;
the sense of touch would like to penetrate into all its pores; the nose
also would like to receive the air it exhales.

Time in a few years destroys this harmony, but this does not occur in
the case of beauty depicted by the painter, because time preserves it
for long; and the eye, as far as its function is concerned, receives as
much pleasure from the depicted as from the living beauty; touch alone
is lacking to the painted beauty,--touch, which is the elder brother of
sight; which after it has atta