heirs was at first a mainly Veneto-Lombardic eclecticism, dashed with
something absorbed from Giulio Romano and something from the later
Florentines. It must not however, be supposed that they confined their
attention to Italian painters. They contrived to collect casts from
antique marbles, coins, engravings of the best German and Italian
workmanship, books on architecture and perspective, original drawings,
and similar academical appliances. Nor were they neglectful of drawing
from the nude, or of anatomy. Indeed, their days and nights were spent
in one continuous round of study, which had for its main object the
comparison of dead and living nature with the best specimens of art in
all ages. It may seem strange that this assiduity and thoroughness of
method did not produce work of higher quality. Yet we must remember that
even enthusiastic devotion to art will not give inspiration, and that
the most thorough science cannot communicate charm. Though the Caracci
invented fresh attitudes and showed complete mastery of the human form,
their types remained commonplace. Though their chiaroscuro was
accurately based on that of Correggio, it lacked his aerial play of
semitones. Though they went straight to Titian for color, they never
approached Venetian lucidity and glow. There was something vulgar in
their imagination, prosaic in their feeling, leaden in their frigid
touch on legend. Who wants those countless gods and goddesses of the
Farnese Gallery, those beblubbered saints and colossal Sibyls of the
Bolognese Pinacoteca, those chubby cherubs and buxom nymphs, those
Satyrs and S. Sebastians, to come down from the walls and live with us?
The grace of Raphael's Galatea, the inspiration of Michelangelo's Genii
of the Sistine, the mystery of Lionardo's Faun-S. John, the wilding
grace of Correggio's Diana, the voluptuous fascination of Titian's
Venus, the mundane seductiveness of Veronese's Europa, the golden glory
of Tintoretto's Bacchus,--all have evanesced, and in their place are
hard mechanic figures, excellently drawn, correctly posed, but with no
touch of poetry. Where, indeed, shall we find 'the light that never was
on sea or land' throughout Bologna?[220]

[Footnote 220: Malvasia has preserved, in his _Life of Primaticcio_, a
sonnet written by Agostino Caracci, in which the aims of the Eclectics
are clearly indicated. The good painter must have at his command Roman
or classic design, Venetian movement and shadow, Lomba