8th of June,
1513."

This is the way, then, the great workmen wish to be paid, and that is
the way wise men pay them for their work. The perfect simplicity of such
patronage leaves the painter free to do precisely what he thinks best:
and a good painter always produces his best, with such license.

227. And now I shall take the four conditions of change in succession,
and examine the distinctions between the two masters in their acceptance
of, or resistance to, them.

(I.) The change of good and permanent workmanship for bad and insecure
workmanship.

You have often heard quoted the saying of Michael Angelo, that
oil-painting was only fit for women and children.

He said so, simply because he had neither the skill to lay a single
touch of good oil-painting, nor the patience to overcome even its
elementary difficulties.

And it is one of my reasons for the choice of subject in this concluding
lecture on Sculpture, that I may, with direct reference to this much
quoted saying of Michael Angelo, make the positive statement to you,
that oil-painting is the Art of arts;[46] that it is sculpture, drawing,
and music, all in one, involving the technical dexterities of those
three several arts; that is to say--the decision and strength of the
stroke of the chisel;--the balanced distribution of appliance of that
force necessary for graduation in light and shade;--and the passionate
felicity of rightly multiplied actions, all unerring, which on an
instrument produce right sound, and on canvas, living color. There is
no other human skill so great or so wonderful as the skill of fine
oil-painting; and there is no other art whose results are so absolutely
permanent. Music is gone as soon as produced--marble discolors,--fresco
fades,--glass darkens or decomposes--painting alone, well guarded, is
practically everlasting.

Of this splendid art Michael Angelo understood nothing; he understood
even fresco, imperfectly. Tintoret understood both perfectly; but
he--when no one would pay for his colors (and sometimes nobody would
even give him space of wall to paint on)--used cheap blue for
ultramarine; and he worked so rapidly, and on such huge spaces of
canvas, that between damp and dry, his colors must go, for the most
part; but any complete oil-painting of his stands as well as one of
Bellini's own: while Michael Angelo's fresco is defaced already in every
part of it, and Lionardo's oil-painting is all either gone black, or