studies are guesses and experiments, all are equally wrong, and so
far felt to be wrong by himself, that he will not work by any of
them, but will always endeavor to improve upon them in the picture,
and so lose the use of them). These three vices of execution are
then--first, feebleness of handling, owing to uncertainty of
intention; secondly, intentional carelessness of handling, in the
hope of getting by accident something more than was meant; and
lastly, violence and haste of handling, in the effort to secure as
much as possible of the obscure image of which the mind feels itself
losing hold. (I am throughout, it will be observed, attributing
right feeling to the unimaginative painter; if he lack this, his
execution may be cool and determined, as he will set down falsehood
without blushing, and ugliness without suffering.) Added to these
various evidences of weakness, will be the various vices assumed for
the sake of concealment; morbid refinements disguising
feebleness--or insolence and coarseness to cover desperation. When
the imagination is powerful, the resulting execution is of course
the contrary of all this: its first steps will commonly be
impetuous, in clearing its ground and getting at its first
conception--as we know of Michael Angelo in his smiting his blocks
into shape, (see the passage quoted by Sir Charles Clarke in the
Essay on Expression, from Blaise de Vigenere,) and as it is visible
in the handling of Tintoret always: as the work approaches
completion, the stroke, while it remains certain and firm, because
its end is always known, may frequently become slow and careful,
both on account of the difficulty of following the pure lines of the
conception, and because there is no fear felt of the conception's
vanishing before it can be realized; but generally there is a
certain degree of impetuosity visible in the works of all the men of
high imagination, when they are not working from a study, showing
itself in Michael Angelo by the number of blocks he left unfinished,
and by some slight evidences in those he completed of his having
worked painfully towards the close; so that, except the Duke
Lorenzo, the Bacchus of the Florentine gallery, and the Pieta of
Genoa, I know not any of his finished works in which his mind is as
mightily expressed as in his marble sketches