122. There is not a bauble thrown by the sportive hand of fashion, which
may not be caught with advantage by the hand of art.
_Coroll._--Shakspeare has been excused for seeking in the Roman senate
what he knew all senates could furnish--a buffoon. Paulo of Verona, with
equal strength of argument, may be excused for cramming on the
foreground of an assembly or a feast, what he knew a feast or assembly
could furnish--a dog, an ape, a scullion, a parrot, or a dwarf.
123. He has done much in art who raises your curiosity--he has done all
who has raised it and keeps it up restless and uniform; prostrate
yourself before the genius of Homer.
124. Difficulties surmounted to obtain what in itself is of no real
value, deserve pity or contempt: the painted catalogue of wrinkles by
Denner are not offsprings of art, but fac-similes of natural history.
125. Love for what is called deception in painting, marks either the
infancy or decrepitude of a nation's taste.
126. Indiscriminate execution, like the monkey's rasor, cuts shear
asunder the parts it meant to polish.
_Coroll._--Francesco Barbieri broke like a torrent over the academic
rules of his masters. As the desire of disseminating character over
every part of his composition made Raphael less attentive to its general
effect, so an ungovernable itch of copying all that lay in his way made
this man sacrifice order, costume, mind, to mere effects of colour: a
map of flesh, a pile of wood, a sleeve, a hilt, a feathered hat, a
table-cloth, or a gold-tissued robe, were for Guercino what a quibble
was for Shakspeare. The countenance of his Dido has that sublimity of
woe which affects us in the Æneis, but she is pierced with a toledo and
wrapped in brocade; Anna is an Italian Duenna; the scene, the Mole of
Ancona or of Naples, the spectators a brace of whiskered Spaniards, and
a deserting Amorino winds up the farce. In his St. Petronilla the rags
and brawny limbs of two gigantic porters crush the effect which the
saint ought to have, and all the rest is frittered into spots. Yet is
that picture a tremendous instance of mechanic powers and intrepidity of
hand. As a firm base supports, pervades, unites the tones of harmony, so
a certain stern virility inspires, invigorates and gives a zest to all
Guercino's colour. The gayer tints of Guido vanish before his as
insipid,[26] Domenichino appears laboured, and the Carracci dim. Nor was
Guercino a stranger to the genuine expressions of untaught nature, and
there is more of pathos in the dog which he introduced caressing the
returned prodigal, than in all the Farnese gallery; as the Argus of
Ulysses, looking up at his old master, then dropping his head and dying,
moves more than all the metamorphoses of Ovid. If his male figures be
brought to the test of style, it may be said, that he never made a man;
their virility is tumour or knotty labour; to youth he gave emaciated
lankness, and to old age little besides decrepitude and beards--meanness
to all: and though he was more cautious in female forms, they owe the
best part of their charms to chiaroscuro.