r author to some artists, for which we are at a loss to account. That
Salvator should "hide by boldness of hand his inability of exhibiting
her (Nature) impassioned," is a sentence that will scarcely meet with an
assenting critic. The wealth and luxury of Venice soon demanded of art,
to sacrifice the modesty of nature to ostentation. The principle of
Titian was, however, followed by Tintoretto, Bassan, Paul Veronese, and
then passed to Velasquez the Spaniard, in Italy. From him "Rubens and
Vandyck attempted to transplant it to Flanders, France, and England,
with unequal success." The style of Correggio scarcely survived him, for
he had more imitators of parts than followers of the whole. His grace
became elegance under the hand of Parmegiano. "That disengaged play of
delicate forms, the 'saltezza' of the Italians, is the prerogative of
Parmegiano, though nearly always obtained at the expense of proportion."
We cannot agree with the lecturer, that the Moses of Parmegiano--if he
speaks of _the_ Moses referred to in the Discourses of Sir Joshua, of
which Mr Burnet, in his second edition, has given a plate--loses "the
dignity of the lawgiver in the savage." Such was the state of art to the
foundation of the Eclectic School by the Caracci--an attempt to unite
the excellences of all schools. The principles are perpetuated in a
sonnet by Agostino Caracci. The Caracci were, however, in their practice
above their precepts. Theirs, too, was the school of the "Naturalists."
Ludovico is particularly praised for his solemnity of hue, most suited
to his religious subjects--"that sober twilight, the air of cloistered
meditation, which you have so often heard recommended as the proper tone
of historic colour." If the recommendation has at our Academy been often
heard, it has entirely lost its influence; our English school is--with
an ignorance of the real object of colour, or with a very bad taste as
to its harmony--running into an opposite extravagance, destructive of
real power, glaring and distracting where it ought to concentrate
through vision the ideas of the mind. Annibal Caracci had more power of
execution, but not the taste of Agostino. In their immediate scholars,
the lecturer seems little disposed to see fairly their several
excellences. They are out of the view of his bias. They are not Michael
Angelesque. His judgment of Domenichino--a painter who greatly restored
the simplicity and severity of the elder schools, and greatly