is martyrdom was suffered, the
picture would not have been as it is, and must ever be, the admiration
of the world and a monument of the genius of Titian. There was wanted
a sky in which angels might come and go, and hover with the promise of
the crown and glory of martyrdom, and there must be an under and more
terrestrial sky, still grand and solemn, such as might take up the
tale of horror, and tell it among the congenial mountains; and such
there is in the voluminous clouds about the distant cliffs. And it is
very observable that, in this picture, Titian, the colourist, is most
sparing of what we are too fond of calling colour.[10] Colour, indeed,
there is, and of the greatest variety, but it is all of the subdued
hues, with which the very ground and trees are clothed, that nothing
shall presume to shine out of itself in the presence of the announcing
angels, and to be unshrouded before such a deed.

I remember, I think it was about three years ago, a picture which well
exemplifies this ideal colouring. It was exhibited at the Institution;
it was of a female saint to whom the infant Saviour appears, by P.
Veronese. The very excellence of the colouring was in its _natural_
unnaturalness; I say natural, because it was perfectly true to the
mystic dream, the saintly vision; a more common natural would have
ruined it. No one ever, it is true, saw such a sky--but in a gifted
trance it is such as would alone be seen, acknowledged, and remembered
as of a heavenly vision. All the colouring was like it, rich and
glorifying and unearthly, and imitative of the sanctifying light in
old cathedrals. The sky was of very mixed tones and hues of green. The
entire scene of the vision was thus hemmed in with the light and glory
of holiness, apart from the world's ideas and employments. Why should
modern painters be afraid of thus venturing into the ideal of
colouring? Never was there a greater mistake, than that the common
natural can represent the ideal. Wilkie with all his acuteness and
good sense was bewildered with a notion of their union, and thought
his sketches from the Holy Land would assist him in painting sacred
subjects; whereas the truth is, that the very realities before his
eyes would unpoeticise his whole mind; instead of trusting to his
feeling, to his visionary dream, he would begin to doubt, as he did,
what should be the exact costume, if his figures should stand or sit
as Asiatics. As we are removed from events by ti