imited taste of the
Dutch people. There are 60 pieces of the latter of these masters in the
Louvre, and, combined with the celebrated Gallery in the Luxembourg
Palace, they form the finest assemblage of them which is to be met with
in the world. The character of his works differs essentially from that
both of the French and the Dutch schools; he was employed, not in
painting cabinet pictures for wealthy merchants, but in designing great
altar pieces for splendid churches, or commemorating the glory of
sovereigns in imperial galleries. The greatness of his genius rendered
him fit to attempt the representation of the most complicated and
difficult objects; but in the confidence of this genius, he seems to
have lost sight of the genuine object of composition in his art. He
attempts what it is impossible for painting to accomplish--he aims at
telling a whole story by the expression of a single picture; and seems
to pour forth the profusion of his fancy, by crowding his canvas with a
multiplicity of figures, which serve no other purpose than that of
shewing the endless power of creation which the author possessed. In
each figure there is great vigour of conception, and admirable power of
execution; but the whole possesses no general character, and produces no
permanent emotion. There is a mixture of allegory and truth in many of
his greatest works, which is always painful; a grossness in his
conception of the female form, which destroys the symmetry of female
beauty; and a wildness of imagination in his general design, which
violates the feelings of ordinary taste. You survey his pictures with
astonishment--at the power of thought and brilliancy of colouring which
they display; but they produce no lasting impression on the mind; they
have struck no chord of feeling or emotion, and you leave them with no
other feeling, than that of regret, that the confusion of objects
destroys the effect which each in itself might be fitted to produce. And
if one has made a deeper impression; if you dwell on it with that
delight which it should ever be the object of painting to produce, you
find that your pleasure proceeds from a single figure, or the expression
of a detached part of the picture; and that, in the contemplation of it,
you have, without being conscious of it, detached your mind from the
observation of all that might interfere with its characteristic
expression, and thus preserved that unity of emotion which is essential
to the