_Dives agris, dives positis in fœnore nummis_
Hor.
may, without the least compunction for offending the rules of
perspective, place figures of the smallest size above the vast doors
of his apartments and salloons. I speak here of those ornaments which
make part of the furniture; not of figures which are often, and for good
reasons, set up promiscuously in collections.
The decorations of architecture are often as ill-chosen. Arms and
trophies deck a hunting-house as nonsensically, as Ganymede and the
eagle, Jupiter and Leda, figure it among the reliefs of the brazen gates
of St. Peter’s church at Rome.
Arts have a double aim: to delight and to instruct. Hence the greatest
landscape-painters think, they have fulfilled but half their task in
drawing their pieces without figures.
Let the artist’s pencil, like the pen of Aristotle, be impregnated with
reason; that, after having satiated the eye, he may nourish the mind: and
this he may obtain by Allegory; investing, not hiding his ideas. Then,
whether he chuse some poetical object himself, or follow the dictates of
others, he shall be inspired by his art, shall be fired with the flame
brought down from heaven by Prometheus, shall entertain the votary of
art, and instruct the mere lover of it.
A
LETTER,
CONTAINING
OBJECTIONS
AGAINST
The foregoing REFLEXIONS.