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THE GRAMMAR 
 
 PAINTING AND ENGRAVING. 
 
m 
 
 YELLOW. 
 
 Saffron. 
 
 Sulphur. 
 
 Orange 
 
 Nasturtium, 
 
 RED. 
 
 Green- 
 
 Turquoise 
 
 BLUE. 
 
 Garnet. 
 
 Campanula. 
 
 Violet. 
 
THE GRAMMAR 
 
 PAINTING AND ENGRAVING 
 
 TRANSLATED 1-KiiM THE FRENCH OF 
 
 BLANC S GRAMMAIRE DES ARTS DU D ESS IN 
 
 BY 
 
 KATE NEWELL DOGGETT 
 
 WITH THE ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON 
 
 Cambridge : €fjc ftitocrtfibc $re££ 
 
 1874 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 
 
 Kate N. Doggett, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 RIVEKSIDE, CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
 
 H- O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 
 
 THE GE 
 
 lib-: 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Translator's Introduction 
 To the Reader . 
 
 xiu 
 xv 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Painting is the art of expressing all the conceptions of the soul, by- 
 means of all the realities of nature, represented upon a smooth 
 surface by their forms and colors 
 
 II. 
 
 Without aiming either at utility or morality, painting is capable of 
 elevating the soul of nations by the dignity of its representations, 
 and of reforming the manners of men by its visible lessons 
 
 III. 
 
 Painting has limits that literal imitation may restrict, that fiction 
 widens, but the mind alone can aggrandize ..... 
 
 IV. 
 Although painting is the expressive art, par excellence, it is not 
 limited in character, it can unite expression to beauty in idealiz- 
 ing its figures by style, by manifesting typical truth in living in- 
 dividualities 
 
 V. 
 Painting can elevate itself to the sublime, but by the invention 
 of the painter rather than by the appliances peculiar to his art . 
 
 VI. 
 The methods peculiar to painting force themselves upon the artist 
 as soon as he invents his subject and conceives the first image 
 of it 
 
 18 
 
 25 
 
VI 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 VII. 
 The first means the painter uses to express his thought is arrange- 
 ment ...;.. -33 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Although the painter who composes his picture ought certainly to 
 be acquainted with the laws of perspective and submit to them, 
 the observance of these laws allows sufficient play of senti- 
 ment ........... 
 
 48 
 
 IX. 
 
 Coloring his sketch or limiting himself to outline in his composi- 
 tion, the painter attains expression only in defining it by the 
 drawing, the attitude, the gesture, or the movement of each fig- 
 ure 68 
 
 X. 
 
 When the composition is once decided upon, when the gestures 
 and the movements are foreseen, the painter refers to the model 
 to give verisimilitude to his ideal, and naturalness to the forms 
 that must express it . . . . . . . . -97 
 
 XI. 
 After having verified the forms he has chosen, the artist finishes 
 by light and color the moral expression and the optical beauty of 
 his thought .......... 121 
 
 XII. 
 Chiaro 'scuro, whose object is not only to put forms in relief, but 
 to convey the sentiment the painter wishes to express, is subject 
 to the requirements of moral beauty as well as to the laws of 
 natural truth . . . . . . . . . .126 
 
 XIII. 
 Color being that which especially distinguishes painting from the 
 other arts, it is indispensable to the painter to know its laws, 
 so far as these are essential and absolute ..... 145 
 Law of complementary colors . . . . . . . 150 
 
 White and black 158 
 
 The optical mixture . . . . . . . . . 161 
 
 The vibration of colors . . 164 
 
 Color of the light 165 
 
 • 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Vll 
 
 XIV. 
 The character of touch, that is the quality of the material execu- 
 tion, is the painter's last means of expression . . . .170 
 
 XV. 
 Certain conventionalities of painting vary and must vary according 
 to the character of the work and the nature of the surface the 
 
 artist has to cover . 179 
 
 Fresco painting . . . . . . . . . .180 
 
 Wax painting 182 
 
 Painting in distemper 183 
 
 Ceilings and cupolas . . . . . . . . 184 
 
 Oil painting . . . . 187 
 
 Pastel painting 190 
 
 Enamel painting .......... 191 
 
 Guaches and aquarelles . 194 
 
 Miniature 196 
 
 Painting upon glass ......... 199 
 
 Encaustic painting 199 
 
 XVI. 
 Although the domain of the painter is co-extensive with Nature, 
 there exists in his art a hierarchy founded upon the significance, 
 relative or absolute, local or universal, of his works . . .201 
 
 XVII. 
 The different kinds of painting belong to the lower or higher 
 method, according as imitation or style plays in them the princi- 
 pal role ........... 207 
 
 Landscape .......... 209 
 
 Animals . . . . 218 
 
 Battles and hunting scenes ....... 225 
 
 Portrait 229 
 
 ENGRAVING. 
 
 I. 
 Engraving is the art of tracing in intaglio upon metal, or in relief 
 upon wood, a drawing from which impressions can be taken . 239 
 
Vlll 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 II. 
 
 The art of the engraver is bound by certain general laws, although 
 there exist particular conventionalities for each of the different 
 kinds of engraving ......... 245 
 
 III. 
 ENGRAVING ON COPPER. 
 
 However important in the copperplate the choice and the treatment 
 of the work may be, the engraver should strive above everything, 
 by correct and expressive drawing, to render the characteristics 
 of the model he wishes to engrave 247 
 
 IV. 
 
 AQUAFORTIS ENGRAVING. 
 
 Engraving with aquafortis, when it is not a preparation for copper, 
 ought generally to be executed without apparent regularity, with 
 free strokes rarely crossed, which, never covering the whole 
 plate, leave a role for the whiteness of the paper . . . 268 
 
 V. 
 
 MEZZOTINT, AQUATINT. 
 
 Mezzotints lacking firmness, the engraver must correct their soft- 
 ness, and unless a vaporous effect is to be given, must bring out 
 the lights with a firm, resolute hand ..... 279 
 
 Aquatint 283 
 
 Imitation of pencilling 284 
 
 VI. 
 WOOD ENGRAVING. 
 
 Engraving upon wood, incapable of producing the delicate shad- 
 ings of copper plate, suits serious works, which by the terseness 
 of their expression, lend grandeur even to works of small size . 286 
 
l^ABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 IX 
 
 VII. 
 
 ENGRAVING IN CAMEO. 
 
 Engraving in Cameo. Engraving in colors 
 
 302 
 
 LITHOGRAPHY. 
 
 Allied to engraving is Lithography ; the art of tracing upon stone 
 a drawing from which impressions can be printed . . . 309 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 3i3 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Chromatic Rose Frontispiece. 
 
 Pack 
 
 Figure d'expression Michael Angelo 20 
 
 Voltaire's Staircase Paul Chenavard. ... 27 
 
 Example of Symmetrical Composition. 
 
 Enthroned Virgin Giovanni Bellini 35 
 
 A Balanced Composition. 
 
 The School of Athens Raphael. ... 41 
 
 Example of Perspective 50 
 
 Example of Physical Perspective 56 
 
 Example of Foreshortening 67 
 
 Sketch for an Entombment Raphael 71 
 
 Attitude of Prophet Isaiah Michael Angelo. . . . 77 
 
 Attitude of Ahaz Michael Angelo 78 
 
 Gestures from " The Last Supper ". . .Leonardo da Vinci 81 
 
 The Sacrifice of Abraham Rembrandt. ... 87 
 
 Elymas struck with Blindness Raphael. ... 89 
 
 Movable Figures in Pieces 95 
 
 Study for the " Apollo of Parnassus " Raphael. . . . 108 
 
 Study for the "Virgin" of Francis the First. Raphael 115 
 
 The Virgin of Francis the First Raphael 116 
 
 St. Michael Filippino Lippi. ...118 
 
 The Supper at Emmaus Rembrandt. . . . 142 
 
 Diagram of Colors 154 
 
 Diagrams showing Complementary Colors 163 
 
 Neptune Giulio Romano 185 
 
 The Hut of the Big Tree Rembrandt. . . .211 
 
 Mercury and Argus Claude Lorraine. ... 21 5 
 
 Lion Barye. . . .219 
 
 Cow Paul Potter 223 
 
Xll 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Portrait of Bertin Ingres. . . .233 
 
 Portrait of Sir Thomas More Holbein 235 
 
 Vignette 239 
 
 Italian Niello 242 
 
 Vignette , 247 
 
 Triton Mantegna .... 250 
 
 St. George Martin Schoen ....251 
 
 The Nativity Albert Diirer 253 
 
 Cleopatra M arc- Anthony . . . .257 
 
 Frying Fish Rembrandt 271 
 
 A Peasant paying his Scot Ostade. . . . 274 
 
 Combat from the " Dance of Death " Holbein 286 
 
 From the Life of the Virgin Albert Diirer 289 
 
 Erasmus Holbein 293 
 
 Subjects from the " Dance of Death " Holbein. . . .297 
 
 Vignette 321 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The same motives that induced Charles Blanc to 
 write his " Grammar of Painting and Ensfravine " 
 led to its translation, — the wish to place in the 
 hands of those who are groping for reasons for the 
 love they feel for the beautiful, a book that should 
 teach them the principles that underlie all works of 
 art ; a book not voluminous enough to alarm, plain 
 and lucid enough to instruct, sufficiently elevated in 
 style to entertain. 
 
 " For what delights can equal those 
 That stir the spirit's inner deeps, 
 When one who loves but knows not, 
 
 Reaps a truth from one who loves and knows." 
 
 That Charles Blanc knows of what he writes, no 
 one will doubt who follows his eloquent pages in the 
 original. The translator hopes that faithful study and 
 an honest endeavor to preserve the " inexorable clear- 
 ness " of the French idiom, will not so far have failed 
 as to make him unwelcome in an English dress. 
 
 The complaint of M. Blanc that the art-education 
 of the young is so utterly neglected that later in life 
 they are incapable of judging the works of sculptor 
 or painter, is true here in a sense that cannot be 
 true in France, where, at least in the large towns, the 
 
XIV 
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 constant presence of the best creations of Grecian 
 and Roman genius, either originals or well-executed 
 copies, are helps to an education that is wholly want- 
 ing to us. 
 
 There is the greater need that we should learn 
 from books how to judge of works of art, that we 
 may intelligently enjoy them in other lands, and in- 
 telligently choose from among them statues, pictures, 
 prints, for the adorning of our houses, the pleasure 
 of our friends, or the higher purpose of placing in 
 galleries for the instruction and elevation of those 
 who cannot journey far for mental and spiritual food. 
 
 Histories of art, in all its varied forms of develop- 
 ment, histories of all the schools that have sprung 
 up in ancient and modern times, are numerous, as 
 are treatises upon the different branches of the plas- 
 tic arts, but what we especially need is the ABC 
 of Art, and that, it is believed, we must learn, not 
 from its history or its philosophy, but from its gram- 
 mar. 
 
 And so for this little book we would ask, as the 
 author does for the original, the reader's patient and 
 good-natured attention. 
 
 
TO THE READER. 
 
 This book aims to instruct. It was written for 
 those who have finished their scholastic studies, and 
 who, at the moment of entering upon active life, de- 
 sire to know its peaceful and poetic side. They are 
 ignorant of the Art of that antiquity whose language 
 they have learned, with whose heroic actions and 
 thoughts they are familiar. But it is in the creations 
 of the artist that the pure essence of the ancient 
 philosophy is deposited ; in them it assumed a tangi- 
 ble form ; in them breathe the gods of Virgil and of 
 Homer, rendered visible by metamorphoses more as- 
 tonishing and more charming than those of Ovid. 
 
 The art-education of the young is completely null. 
 The proud and brilliant laureate finishes his classical 
 studies without getting the least tincture of it. He 
 knows the history of the ancient Greeks, their cap- 
 tains, their orators, and their philosophers; has read 
 of their intestine quarrels and their grand Persian 
 wars, but he knows neither their sublime ideas upon 
 painting and statuary, nor their adorable marble 
 gods and their divine temples. 
 
 That public instruction is mute upon questions of 
 Art is, doubtless, because of the predominance of 
 
XVI 
 
 TO THE READER. 
 
 certain ill understood ideas. Many chaste divinities 
 whose presence elevates and purifies the soul, are re- 
 garded as images enveloping the spirit of evil, and 
 full of dangerous seductions. Hence the aversion 
 of clerical institutions to the pagan arts, a sentiment 
 that in our laic colleges is translated by silence. 
 
 France, formerly renowned for the excellence of 
 her judgment and the delicacy of her taste, and who 
 has at this moment in her capital the most skilful 
 artists in the world, is, in all that concerns a knowl- 
 edge of Art, one of the most backward nations in 
 Europe. In England, the books that treat of art and 
 the beautiful, are known to every well-educated per- 
 son. Ladies, old and young, have read, either in the 
 originals or in the innumerable reviews that treat of 
 them, the writings of Burke, Hume, Reid, Price, Ali- 
 son, the ingenious " Analyses " of Hogarth, and the 
 grave " Discourses " of Reynolds. In Germany, the 
 most abstract ideas of Art are familiar to an im- 
 mense number of students. This science of the 
 beautiful, or rather this philosophy of the sentiment 
 that Baumgarten called the aesthetic, is taught in all 
 the German universities. The lofty speculations of 
 Kant upon the sublime, the strophes of Schiller 
 upon the ideal, the spirited sketches and the humor- 
 ous paradoxes of Jean Paul, the ideas of Mendel- 
 ssohn, the polemic between Lessing and Winckel- 
 mann, the profound discourses of Schelling, the 
 grand lessons of Hegel, all are understood and dis- 
 cussed by innumerable adepts. At Geneva also, 
 
TO THE READER. 
 
 xvi i 
 
 where there are teachers of aesthetics, the " Reflec- 
 tions " of Toppfer and the " Studies " of Pictet are 
 much better known than the eloquent and luminous 
 pages of Lamennais and Cousin are in France. 
 
 Here, on the contrary, where Art is living, enters 
 everywhere, attracts and interests everybody, the 
 ability to judge the works of the sculptor or painter 
 seems completely foreign to our public. Official 
 salons and private expositions are crowded with 
 people without ideas, without information, and who, 
 for want of rudimentary instruction, fall headlong 
 into a sea of errors. Every day in the midst of this 
 Paris that believes herself a new Athens, we see per- 
 sons of distinction, naturalized Luculluses, million- 
 aires, and wits, rush to the Hotel Drouot, as if to 
 give a public spectacle of the most monstrous here- 
 sies ; to-day indulging a caprice that a thousand 
 boobies will imitate to-morrow, running up to scan- 
 dalous amounts the price of screens, chiffons, or 
 dolls by a seventh-rate painter, when the great mas- 
 ters, the august sovereigns of Art, are shamefully 
 cheapened, and finally go out of the country unable 
 to sustain competition with a pretty nothing of Wat- 
 teau. Thus the France of the nineteenth century 
 presents the incredible anomaly of an intellectual 
 nation professing to adore Art, but knowing not its 
 principles, its language, its history, its veritable dig- 
 nity, its true grace. 
 
 This comes from the education we receive at col- 
 lege. Most young people at the beginning of their 
 
XV111 
 
 TO THE READER. 
 
 career, attracted in manifold directions, neglect a 
 study whose first elements have not been taught 
 them. Some who might have had leisure for it hold 
 aloof, from distrust of themselves, for want of proper 
 initiation. The logic of things ought to fill this gap 
 in public instruction. We must either proscribe an- 
 tiquity altogether or remove the veil that covers the 
 most beautiful works of her genius, works that are 
 at the same time the noblest and most elevating. 
 Such a reform would be more profitable to France 
 than many battles, many conquests. We shall not 
 be at the head of the nations till we shall have an- 
 nexed to the domains of our intelligence the beauti- 
 ful province in which flourish the gardens of the 
 ideal. 
 
 Here let me tell how the idea of the present book 
 was suggested. At dinner one day with the digni- 
 taries of one of the largest cities of France, conver- 
 sation turned upon the Arts. All the guests spoke 
 of them and well, but each intrenched himself be- 
 hind his own personal views by virtue of the adage: 
 " On ne peut disputer des gouts." In vain I pro- 
 tested against this false principle, saying that, even at 
 table, it was inadmissible, and that a distinguished 
 magistrate, the classic par excellence of gastronomy — 
 Brillat Savarin, — would have been shocked at such 
 blasphemy. The authority of even his great name 
 was not respected, and the guests separated gayly, af- 
 ter uttering heresies to make one shiver. But among 
 the eminent men of the company, there was one 
 
TO THE READER. 
 
 xix 
 
 who, somewhat mortified that he had not the most 
 elementary notions of art, asked if there were not 
 some book in which those notions were presented in 
 a form simple, clear, and brief. I replied that no 
 such book existed, that upon leaving college I should 
 have been only too happy to find such an one; that 
 many works had been written upon the beautiful, 
 treatises without number upon architecture and 
 painting, and volumes upon sculpture, but a work 
 covering the whole subject, a lucid resume of all ac- 
 cepted ideas touching the arts of design, was yet to 
 be conceived. 
 
 Thus was suggested the thought of this book. 
 Embraced at first with enthusiasm, then abandoned, 
 resumed again with new courage, this thought has 
 long germinated in my mind. The difficulties to be 
 encountered were great, for not only must one ren- 
 der a severe account of one's impressions and senti- 
 ments, but he must express himself upon subjects 
 rebellious to all analysis, in a language whose clear- 
 ness is inexorable. It is possible to treat aesthetics 
 under the serviceable veil of the German language, 
 for a people whom the twilight enchants and which 
 is endowed with the faculty of seeing clearly in the 
 dark, but in France, in the midst of a nation of the 
 Latin race, whose indigenous good sense is a perpet- 
 ual irony against dreamers, how was one to speak of 
 the subjective and the non ego, of the sublime dynam- 
 ics, and of all those things which, already sufficiently 
 obscure, demand at least intelligible expressions, a 
 
XX 
 
 TO THE READER. 
 
 clear form despoiled of all pedantry, exempt from all 
 triviality. What would Voltaire think, what would 
 he say, could he open certain books upon aesthetics 
 published since his day ; if, for instance, he should 
 read in Burke that " the effect of the sublime is to 
 deobstruct the vessels, and that of the beautiful to 
 relax the fibres of the body." Imagine what treas- 
 ures of wit and good humor he would have added 
 to his immortal pleasantry. 
 
 To be clear, was the most difficult, as it was the 
 most imperative duty. The time has passed in which 
 writers can shut themselves up in a sort of Free- 
 masonry, interdicted to the vulgar. Nowadays one 
 must write and speak for the multitude, and if there 
 be a study that should be made easy, is it not the 
 study of beauty and grace ? 
 
 If I have not shrunk before the difficulties of the 
 task, it was because I was sustained by the love of 
 beautiful things, and the pleasure of making them 
 known, trusting to the good nature of the reader and 
 hoping for his interested attention. The sculptor 
 Puget was accustomed to say, " The marble trem- 
 bles before me." Animated by a very different sen- 
 timent, the author of this book would say, I trem- 
 ble before the marble. 
 
THE GRAMMAR 
 
 OF 
 
 PAINTING AND ENGRAVING. 
 
 fainting* 
 i. 
 
 Painting is the art of expressing all the 
 conceptions of the soul, by means of all the 
 realities of nature j represented upon a smooth 
 surface by their forms and colors. 
 
 The offspring of a common cradle, Architecture, 
 two arts issued one after the other from the maternal 
 bosom, Sculpture and Painting. The latter in the 
 beginning was nothing more than a coloration of the 
 surfaces of the temple and its reliefs, a coloration 
 symbolic rather than imitative. Later it detached 
 itself from the walls ; it became an independent art, 
 living its own life, mobile and free. But even when 
 completely emancipated it played only a secondary 
 role. The art, par excellence, of mythological an- 
 tiquity was not, could not be, painting ; this we learn 
 by induction, although time has spared us no ancient 
 paintings except those of Pompeii which, in genius 
 and culture, was a Grecian city. Under the empire 
 1 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 of mythology which referred all creation to man, 
 and recognized in the gods only perfect men, ren- 
 dered immortal by beauty, the favorite, the dominant 
 art, must have been sculpture. Those beautiful re- 
 alities, the rivers, the mountains, the trees and the 
 flowers, the infinite heaven, the immense sea, were 
 represented only by human forms. The Earth was 
 a woman crowned with towers; the Ocean and its 
 depths were figured by a boisterous god, followed by 
 tritons and nereids ; its roaring was only the sound 
 of marine shells blown by half-human monsters. 
 The bark of the oak concealed the modest Ham- 
 adryad, the green prairie was a couchant nymph, and 
 Spring herself bore the name and tunic of a young 
 girl. How could painting display its brilliancy and 
 eloquence when Nature, which contains in itself the 
 treasury of light, and in this treasury all the colors 
 of the palette, was wanting to its representations ? 
 
 What has happened ? By what evolution has 
 painting taken the first place ? It is Christianity 
 which has supplanted sculpture, by placing beauty 
 of soul above that of the body. When a religion 
 full of terror and impregnated with a melancholy 
 poetry succeeded to the serenity of Paganism, the 
 artist found above him only an invisible God ; before 
 him troubled and mortal beings. Dethroned from 
 his pedestal, man falls into the midst of the acci- 
 dents, trials, and griefs of life. He is plunged again 
 into the bosom of nature. He wears the costume 
 of the times in which he lives, and, subject to the 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 influences of the sky under which he is born, and the 
 landscape that surrounds him, he receives their im- 
 pressions, reflects their colors. The artist will neces- 
 sarily represent the human figure by it's peculiar, 
 even accidental characteristics, for this painting will 
 be the most fitting art, because it furnishes to ex- 
 pression immense resources, air, space, perspective, 
 landscape, light and shadow, color. 
 
 In the domain of Pagan sculpture man was naked, 
 tranquil, and beautiful. In the realm of Christian 
 painting he will be troubled, modest, and clothed. 
 Nakedness now makes him blush, the flesh is a 
 shame to him, and beauty causes fear. Henceforth 
 he will seek his pleasures in the moral world, he 
 will need an expressive art, an art which to touch or 
 charm him borrows all the images of creation. This 
 art is painting. Aiming to express internal senti- 
 ments, painting has not, like sculpture, need of the 
 three dimensions. Faithful to its primitive purpose, 
 which was to decorate walls, it uses only smooth sur- 
 faces, plane, concave, or convex ; for appearance suf- 
 fices and must suffice. Why ? Because if it were 
 palpable it would become sculpture. The cubic 
 reality would take from the image its essentially 
 spiritual character and shackle the flight of the soul. 
 Framed in real things, its expression would lack 
 unity, would be contradicted by the changing spec- 
 tacle of nature, by the ceaselessly varying light of 
 the sun, and its factitious colors would grow pale, 
 would fade out before those of the colorist, par ex- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 cellence. The statue, elevated sometimes upon a 
 pedestal, sometimes upon the capital of a column, or 
 isolated in its niche, which forms a foundation, an 
 abiding place for it, has an independent and separate 
 existence, is a world in itself. Monochrome, it forms 
 a contrast with all the natural colorations which, far 
 from injuring its unity, enhance it, render it more 
 striking. The painter, on the contrary, having to 
 represent not so much situations, like sculpture, but 
 actions, and all the infinitely varied scenes that pass 
 upon the stage of life, must choose suitable natural 
 objects to surround his figures, must find means to 
 characterize the landscape and to complete the ex- 
 pression of it, that is to say, the light and the color. 
 
 Color is in painting an essential, almost indispen- 
 sable element, since having all Nature to represent, 
 the painter cannot make her speak without borrow- 
 ing her language. But here a profound distinction 
 presents itself. 
 
 Intelligent beings have a language represented by 
 articulate sounds ; organized beings, like animals and 
 vegetables, express themselves by cries or forms, con- 
 tour, carriage. Inorganic nature has only the lan- 
 guage of color. It is by color alone that a certain 
 stone tells us it is a sapphire or an emerald. If the 
 painter can by means of some features give us a 
 clear idea of animals and vegetables, make us recog- 
 nize at once a lion, a horse, a poplar, a rose, it is 
 absolutely impossible, without the aid of color, to 
 show us an emerald or a sapphire. Color, then, is 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 the peculiar characteristic of the lower forms of 
 nature, while the drawing becomes the medium of ex- 
 pression, more and more dominant, the higher we 
 rise in the scale of being. Therefore painting can 
 sometimes dispense with color, if, for example, the 
 inorganic nature and the landscape are insignificant 
 or useless in the scene represented. 
 
 Thus we find verified, one by one, all the members 
 of our definition, the one being only the corollary of 
 the other. 
 
 Painting, so often and for so long a time defined 
 " the imitation of nature," had been misunderstood 
 in its essence, and reduced to the role filled by the 
 colored photograph. The end has been confounded 
 with the means. Such a definition could not be 
 maintained after the birth of that science of senti- 
 ment which we call aesthetics, after the day in which 
 it became almost an art. There is now not a single 
 critic, not a single artist, who does not see in nature, 
 not simply a model to imitate, but a theme for the 
 interpretations of his mind. One considers it as a 
 repertoire of pleasing or terrible objects, of graceful 
 or imposing forms which will serve him to commu- 
 nicate his emotions, his thoughts. Another com- 
 pares nature to a piano, upon which each painter 
 plays in turn the music that pleases him. But 
 nobody would define painting as imitation, and con- 
 found thus the means with the end, the dictionary 
 with eloquence. 
 
 If painting were simple imitation, its first duty 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 would be to paint objects in their true dimensions. 
 Colossal figures as well as miniatures would be 
 forbidden, for both are symbols rather than imita- 
 tions, commemorative rather than imitative images. 
 It would condemn the prophets of Michael Angelo 
 as well as the little figures of Terbur£ and the 
 diminutive pastures of Paul Potter, in which the 
 cattle are no larger than the hand. Dwarfed or en- 
 larged to this point such figures address themselves 
 only to the imagination, forming no part of the real 
 world. The mind alone renders them life-like. If 
 it is true, for instance, that a man or an animal may 
 appear as small as the hand when one perceives 
 them at a great distance, it is also true that the eye 
 sees them indistinctly, but the smaller the objects, 
 the more exactly must they be painted, since they 
 can only be seen near at hand, so that, while nature 
 indicates distance by vagueness of form, the artist 
 neutralizes distance by precision of form. One 
 readily accepts these agreeable fictions, persuaded 
 that painting is not the pleonasm of reality, but the 
 expression of souls by the imitation of things. Thus 
 it is no longer art which revolves around nature, but 
 nature that revolves around art as the earth around 
 the sun. 
 
II. 
 
 Without aiming either at utility or morality, 
 painting is capable of elevating the soul of 
 nations by the dignity of its representations, 
 and of reforming the manners of men by its 
 visible lessons. 
 
 A Greek painter having represented, in one of his 
 pictures, Palamedes put to death by his friends upon 
 the perfidious denunciation of Ulysses, it is related 
 of Alexander the Great, that every time he cast his 
 eyes upon the picture, he trembled and turned pale, 
 because it reminded him that he had caused the 
 death of his friend Clitus. This story, which repeats 
 itself every day in life in a thousand ways, makes 
 comprehensible the force of the lessons that painting 
 may contain. Without being either a missionary of 
 religion, a teacher of ethics, or a means of govern- 
 ment, painting improves our morals, because it 
 touches us and can awake in us noble aspirations 
 or salutary remorse. Its figures, in their eternal 
 silence, speak more loudly and emphatically to us 
 than could the living philosopher or moralist — men 
 like ourselves. Their immobility sets our mind in 
 motion. More persuasive than the painter who has 
 created them, they lose the character of a human 
 
3 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 work because they seem to live a loftier life and to 
 belong to another, to an ideal world. The morality 
 that painting teaches us is so much the more capti- 
 vating because instead of being imposed upon us by 
 the artist it is accepted by ourselves. The spectator 
 respects and admires it, regarding it as his own 
 work. Believing he has discovered it, he willingly 
 submits to it, thinking to obey only his own thought. 
 
 Thus painting purifies people by its mute elo- 
 quence. Moreover, whatever may be the nature of 
 its images, they always benefit the mind, at first 
 because they address themselves to the mind and 
 excite it, afterwards because in representing to us 
 heroic actions or familiar things, they offer us a 
 choice in life. " In sculpture," says Joubert, " the 
 expression is all on the surface ; in painting it ought 
 to be within ; in this, beauty is in intaglio ; in relief 
 in that." The philosopher writes his thought for 
 those who can think as he does and who know how 
 to read. The painter shows his thought to all who 
 have eyes to see. That hidden and naked virgin 
 — Truth — the artist finds without seeking. He puts 
 a veil upon her, encourages her to please, proves to 
 her that she is beautiful, and when he has repro- 
 duced her image he makes us take her and he takes 
 her himself for Beauty. 
 
 In communicating to us what has been felt by 
 others, and what perhaps we should never have felt 
 ourselves, the painter gives new strength and com- 
 pass to the soul. Who knows of how many impres- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 sions, fugitive in appearance, the morality of a man 
 is composed, and upon what depend the gentleness 
 of his manners, the correctness of his habits, the 
 elevation of his thoughts ? If the painter represents 
 acts of cruelty or injustice, he inspires us with horror. 
 A certain scene in the Inquisition, in which Granet 
 saw only the sombre effect of a dim light, will teach 
 us toleration. A historical episode will tell us better 
 than a book can do what we should admire, what 
 hate. A painting in which one sees young negroes 
 garroted, insulted, whipped, crowded into the hold 
 of vessels, will bring about the abolition of slavery 
 as surely and as quickly as the severest formulas of 
 the law. " The Unhappy Family " of Prud'hon would 
 move all the fibres of charity better than the hom- 
 ilies of the preacher. In a picture, nay, in a simple 
 lithograph without color, Charlet has expressed by 
 the physiognomy and gestures of a child, better still 
 than by the legend written below the print, this sen- 
 timent of childish but exquisite delicacy : " Those to 
 whom we give, we must not waken." A Greuze, a 
 Chardin, without pedantry, counsel peace and hon- 
 esty. Again, let a Dutch painter, a Slingelandt, a 
 Metsu, represent to us, in a picture without figures, 
 the preparations for a modest breakfast which awaits 
 the master and mistress of the house, or only a cage 
 of birds at a window, a bouquet of flowers in a vase, 
 this simple subject has in painting not only a savor 
 that the reality itself would not possess, but an un- 
 expected signification, a moral value. Your thought 
 
io 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 is carried at once towards the delights of the house- 
 hold, of family life. This little spectacle, individual 
 though it be, answers to a general idea, and if it is 
 presented by an artist who has been secretly moved 
 or charmed by it, he will bring a whole world before 
 the eyes of the imagination. You will feel the grace 
 of private life, the naivete and tenderness of the 
 domestic hearth, the interchange of affectionate epi- 
 thets, all that the ancients understood by that touch- 
 ing and profound word, house, domus. 
 
 Retired within a dwelling that has ever some door 
 open towards the ideal, the true artist has generally 
 a morality quite superior to that of ordinary men. 
 We meet at the galleys, in the prisons, on the 
 benches of the assize court, individuals of all profes- 
 sions. One never sees there an artist. " Doubtless 
 the artist is the son of his epoch," says Schiller, in 
 "Letters upon /Esthetic Education," "but woe to 
 him if he be also the disciple, the favorite of it. Let 
 some beneficent divinity snatch the child early from 
 the bosom of its mother, feed him upon the milk of 
 a better age, and let him grow up and attain his ma- 
 jority under the far-off sky of Greece. Grown to 
 manhood, let him return, a foreigner, to the Present, 
 not to delight it by his appearance, but rather, terri- 
 ble as the son of Agamemnon, to purify it. It is 
 true he will receive his materials from the present, 
 but the form he will borrow from a nobler epoch, and 
 even, outside of time, from the absolute, immutable 
 unity of his own essence. Thence, issuing from the 
 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 1 1 
 
 pure ether of his celestial nature, flows the source of 
 beauty, that the corruption of generations and ages 
 never disturbs. His material, fancy may dishonor 
 as it has ennobled, but the form, always chaste, es- 
 capes its caprices. For long the Roman of the first 
 century had bent the knee before his emperors, but 
 the statues always stood upright, the temples re- 
 mained sacred in the eyes of those who jested at 
 the gods, and the noble style of the edifices that 
 sheltered a Nero or a Commodus protested against 
 their infamous practices. When the human race 
 loses its dignity, it is art which saves it. Truth con- 
 tinues to live in the illusion, and the copy will one 
 day serve to reestablish the model." 
 
 It is because painting is burdened with no official 
 instruction that she gently forms us anew, makes us 
 better. The law is less obeyed because it enforces 
 obedience, moral teachers less heeded because they 
 command. Art knows how to persuade, knowing 
 how to please. 
 
III. 
 
 Painting has limits that literal imitation 
 may restrict, that fiction widens, but the mind 
 alone can elevate. 
 
 Whatever may be the extent of its domain, and it 
 is immense, painting has limits. These are not 
 marked by a trenchant line, they insensibly melt 
 into each other and are lost in the other arts whose 
 frontiers begin before its are reached. More exact 
 than music, painting defines sentiments and thoughts 
 by visible forms and colors, but it cannot, like music, 
 transport us into the ethereal regions, the impene- 
 trable worlds. Less ponderous than sculpture and 
 less the slave of the material used, it addresses itself 
 to the mind by simple semblances, conquers space 
 by means of a fiction, but not having the three di- 
 mensions of extension, cannot render beauty palpable 
 to us, make it live in the midst of us, under the sun 
 that enlightens us, and in the air that we breathe. 
 Painting holds the middle place between sculpture 
 that we can see and touch, and music that we can 
 neither see nor touch. 
 
 Limited to the presentation of a single action of 
 life, and in that action to a single moment, the 
 painter has, it is true, the liberty of choosing ; but 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 13 
 
 this liberty is not without limits, his choice is not 
 unrestricted. If the limits of motion are infinitely 
 broader for the painter than for the sculptor, he 
 must avoid exaggerated, convulsive movements, as 
 these offend the beholder in a representation that 
 is to be lasting. The same is true of movements 
 whose duration is offensive. It is unseemly to paint 
 the portrait of a man bursting with laughter. The 
 reason is apparent. Laughter is accidental, and if 
 admissible in a composition that suggests it, where 
 it does not fill the entire picture, it is repugnant to 
 us to see a play of the muscles so fleeting, forever 
 characterize a face, and immortalize itself upon the 
 canvas, to impose upon us forever its stereotyped 
 and unvarying grimace. On the contrary, in the 
 portrait of a sad woman or a melancholy poet, there 
 is nothing to displease, because sadness is less trans- 
 itory in life than the burst of laughter, and the one, 
 more in harmony with the permanent state of the 
 soul, leads us back to it gently and without effort, 
 while the other draws us from it abruptly and often 
 with violence. There is after all nothing sadder 
 than to have ever present the image of extravagant 
 gayety, imprinted on the portraits of those who have 
 ceased to live or who will soon be among our an- 
 cestors. 
 
 Thus painting does not always express all it is 
 capable of expressing, does not pass to the limits of 
 its domain. Doubtless, paroxysms of passion are 
 not forbidden to it, but it shows greater skill to 
 
*4 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 suggest than to paint them. Diderot, the most im- 
 petuous and the boldest of critics, has shown that 
 painting becomes greater by imposing narrower 
 limits upon itself, and that, instead of representing 
 a tragic denouement, it is more fitting to announce it 
 by indicating in the present action the moment that 
 has preceded and that which is to follow. Suppose 
 the painter wishes to represent the sacrifice of Iphi- 
 genia, should he place before our eyes the gaping 
 and bloody wound which the knife of the priest has 
 just opened? No, horror would be changed to dis- 
 gust. But if he appeals to us at the moment the 
 tragedy is preparing, if he paints " the victimarius 
 who approaches with the wide basin that is to 
 receive the blood of Iphigenia," he will thrill us 
 with horror and delight, because the spectacle, as 
 yet not being horrible, the horror of it will be 
 imagined instead of seen. Each will conceive and 
 feel it according to the constitution of his own 
 mind. 
 
 A remarkable thing, which, however, I believe 
 has not been noticed, is that the domain of paint- 
 ing ends just where the illusion of the senses ought 
 to begin. It is certainly not unexampled that a 
 picture should deceive the eye, at least for a 
 moment. A Teniers, a Chardin, could paint a cake, 
 a loaf of bread, oysters on the shell, in a way to 
 excite the sensation of hunger. Velasquez has 
 proven in his famous picture of the " Wine Drink- 
 ers," and in that of the " Aguador," or water-carrier of 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 15 
 
 Seville, that he could imitate a glass of water or 
 one of wine in a way to excite thirst, and, for a 
 moment, deceive the eye. Nevertheless, if the 
 painter's ambition rested there, if he sought such 
 triumphs of deception, he would soon pass the 
 limits of his art. Admit that, to increase the illu- 
 sion, he may add a factitious light to the light of 
 day, let him light up his picture artificially from 
 before or behind by means of certain transparencies, 
 the illusion would be heightened, and the imitation 
 having reached its utmost limit, would perhaps for 
 the moment produce a greater impression than 
 the reality itself. But we are no longer in the 
 field of painting. Optical and physical phenomena, 
 mingled with the resources of art, have made of 
 the picture a diorama. 
 
 But what happens? This astonishing illusion 
 produces at last almost the effect of wax figures. 
 You see before you a real church, illuminated and 
 filled with people, but they are motionless, and the 
 church is silent as the desert. Or you are shown 
 a real landscape, a Swiss view, over which your 
 eye runs, which bristles with firs and rocks and is 
 washed by a lake full of freshness, but this land- 
 scape that passes through all the changes of light, 
 from dawn till sunset, contains only dead figures, 
 cattle that neither live nor move, and boats frozen 
 in a lake of lead. The greater the truth, the more 
 the falsehood betrays itself; the more deceitful the 
 painting, the less it deceives us. After a moment's 
 
i6 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 contemplation we comprehend nothing of this church 
 in which priest and people seem to have been struck 
 with paralysis ; this resplendent choir in which no 
 light shines, no shadow moves, we find unlifelike ; 
 impossible this Swiss landscape, in which, at ail 
 hours of the day, the figures are changed to statues, 
 the animals glued to the ground. By a singular 
 return of truth, the illusion which deceived us is 
 precisely that which undeceives us. So true it is 
 that man is powerless to imitate inimitable nature, 
 and that in the art of the painter natural objects 
 are introduced not to represent themselves but to 
 represent a conception of the artist. So true is it, 
 finally, that the semblance is a means of expression 
 agreed upon rather than an absolutely imitative 
 proceeding, since the last step in imitation is pre- 
 cisely that in which it no longer signifies anything. 
 The role, then, that fiction plays in art is im- 
 portant; but fortunately, fiction, instead of restricting 
 the limits of art, enlarges, extends them. As upon 
 the stage we have agreed to hear Cinna or Britan- 
 nicus express themselves in French, so we allow 
 the artist to paint upon his canvas a flying figure, 
 or draw upon a vase in imitation of the Greeks, 
 such or such figures incompatible with all illusion, 
 all verisimilitude, as, for example, fauns and bac- 
 chantes that walk on the air without support, whose 
 pure silhouettes, full of natural grace, move, flattened 
 on a monochrome background, without chiaro 'scuro 
 and without relief. 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 17 
 
 Everybody knows the story, that has been re- 
 peated to weariness, of the Greek painter who 
 imitated a basket of grapes skillfully enough to 
 deceive the birds. There is in this fable an es- 
 sential and significant feature, a feature unnoticed, 
 and that Lessing has recalled in the " Laocoon." 
 The basket in the picture of Zeuxis was carried 
 by a young boy. But the painter might have 
 said : " I have spoiled my master-piece ; if I had 
 executed the child as well as the grapes, the birds 
 would not have come near the basket for fear of 
 the boy." It was only a vain scruple of modesty ; 
 one might have consoled Zeuxis by saying to him : 
 Your figure painted with all possible truth would 
 not have frightened the birds, because the eyes of 
 animals see only what they see ; man, on the con- 
 trary, looking at a painting, fancies movement in 
 immobility, reality in appearance. What his eye 
 does not see, he perceives in the depths of that 
 dark chamber we call imagination. 
 
 Man alone has the privilege of being seduced, 
 deceived by a secret connivance of his thought 
 with that of the painter. Admirable illusion, 
 which, without cheating the eye, gives change to 
 the mind. Marvelous falsehood, which, by the 
 complicity of our soul, moves us more forcibly than 
 truth, like those dreams which are sometimes more 
 sorrowful, sometimes more charming than life itself. 
 
IV. 
 
 Although painting is the expressive art, par 
 excellence, it is not limited in character, it 
 can unite expression to beauty in idealizing its 
 figures by style, that is to say by manifesting 
 typical truth in living individualities. 
 
 There exists between expression and beauty an 
 immense interval and even an apparent contra- 
 diction. The interval is that which separates 
 Christianity from antiquity. The contradiction con- 
 sists in this, that pure beauty — I speak here of 
 plastic beauty — does not readily harmonize with 
 instantaneous changes of countenance, with the 
 infinite variety of individual physiognomy, and with 
 the endless mobility of the same phvsiopnomv un- 
 dergoing the innumerable impressions of life, and 
 passing from serenity to terror, from gayety to sad- 
 ness, from the grimaces of laughter to the con- 
 tortions of grief. 
 
 The stronger the expression, the more physical 
 beauty is sacrificed to moral beauty. That is why 
 pagan sculpture is so measured in its expression. 
 Instead of concentrating it upon the face which it 
 would have disfigured, the sculptor lets it per- 
 meate the whole figure ; he puts it in the gesture, 
 
FAINTING. 
 
 19 
 
 which is the expression of the soul in movement, 
 or in the attitude which is its expression in re- 
 pose. The frightful cries uttered by Laocoon in 
 the grasp of the serpents, the antique sculptor has 
 reduced to sighs, that he might not disfigure the 
 features of his hero ; but the poet has reproduced 
 these cries, clamores //orrendos, and the painter 
 can represent them, but he must restrain himself 
 within certain limits if he wishes to choose the 
 side of dignity and grandeur. He must idealize 
 his figure by style. 
 
 What do these words signify? For the painter 
 as for the sculptor, to give style to a figure, is to 
 impress a typical character upon that which would 
 only present an individual truth. Thus painting, 
 when it aims at style, has a tendency to draw near 
 to sculpture. But between the two arts there is a 
 sensible difference. An animated expression that 
 might be represented upon canvas would be shock- 
 ing in marble. 
 
 It is repugnant to the sculptor to express certain 
 vices which by their baseness would make the face 
 ugly ; but the painter can depict them. Yet, to 
 preserve the conditions of style, he must seek 
 generic accents. If, for example, he wishes to paint 
 a hypocrite, this hypocrite must have all the traits 
 of hypocrisy, must appear to us, not as a Tartuffe, 
 but as Tartuffe himself. 
 
 Vile instincts, gross sensuality, lechery, drunken- 
 ness, all that makes man like the brute, sculpture 
 
20 
 
 rAINTING. 
 
 dared not represent in the human face ; therefore 
 antique genius sought in the depths of the water 
 tritons and syrens, in the woods the goat-footed 
 satyr, the sylvan faun and the centaur. The great 
 artists of antiquity would not mar the beauty of 
 
 FIGURE ^'EXPRESSION. BY MICHAEL ANGEI.O. 
 
 man by the signs of degrading passions, they con- 
 tented themselves with sculpturing human vices 
 in the precursors of humanity, in those beings not 
 yet enfranchised from original bestiality, that were 
 nevertheless respected, as savage ancestors, as the 
 imperfect and mysterious gods of primitive nature. 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 21 
 
 But what sculpture refused to immortalize in 
 marble or bronze, what she would not render pal- 
 pable, the painter traces upon canvas, because 
 instead of presenting tangible bodies, the canvas 
 presents only impalpable images; instead of offer- 
 ing us the thickness of things she offers only the 
 mirage. Real, ugliness is forbidden to sculpture; 
 apparent, painting does not reject the ugly, be- 
 cause it has a thousand means of mitigating its 
 expression, of rendering it acceptable by the pres- 
 tige of light and the language of color, by accom- 
 panying circumstances, by the choice of accessories. 
 When Raphael introduced deformity into a work 
 of style, as in the famous cartoon, " The Cure of the 
 Lame Man " at the gate of the temple, he redeems 
 and elevates it by effacing the purely accidental 
 features, which would but impoverish the composi- 
 tion, to insist upon decisive, characteristic features. 
 Seen on a grand scale, the deformities of nature 
 lose their miserable aspect, and may appear in the 
 loftiest representations of painting, whether trans- 
 figured by the soul of the artist or used as a striking 
 contrast to beauty itself. 
 
 Style, then, in the art of the painter is not exactly 
 what it is in the art of the sculptor. One adores 
 beauty to such an extent as to fear expression, 
 which he lessens ; the other seeks expression, not 
 even rejecting ugliness, which he idealizes. 
 
V. 
 
 Painting can elevate itself to the sublime, 
 but by the invention of the artist rather than 
 by the appliances peculiar to his art. 
 
 If the sublime be, as it were, a view of the in- 
 finite, it would seem that the arts of design, which 
 are compelled to imprison every idea in a form, 
 cannot be sublime. It may happen nevertheless 
 that the painter, moved by thoughts to which he 
 has given no form, strikes the soul as a thunder- 
 bolt would the ear. It is then by virtue of the 
 thought perceived but not formulated that the pic- 
 ture becomes sublime. 
 
 Examples are rare. With regard to the sublime, 
 Rembrandt was the Shakespeare of painting. The 
 Gospel several times inspired him with ideas which 
 have been rendered by no contour and are indi- 
 cated only by the impalpable expression of light. 
 There is a hasty sketch by this great painter, in 
 bistre, of "The Supper at Emmaus." The artist 
 wished to translate the passage of Scripture, " Then 
 their eyes were opened and they recognized him, 
 but he disappeared from before them? In the 
 drawing of Rembrandt the figure of Christ is absent, 
 and upon the seat from which he has just vanished, 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 23 
 
 we see only a fantastic and mysterious light. Aston- 
 ished, frightened at the disappearance of their guest 
 and the appearance of this light, the two disciples 
 devour with their eyes the vacant and illuminated 
 seat where a moment before they touched the hand 
 of a friend, heard his voice, and broke bread with 
 him. Is not that a stroke of sublimity, that im- 
 palpable light expressing at once a vanished God, 
 an invisible God ? 
 
 Nicholas Poussin touched the sublime when he 
 conceived one of his most celebrated pictures, " The 
 Shepherds of Arcadia." In a wild, woody country, 
 the sojourn of the happiness sung by the poets, 
 shepherds walking with their loves have discovered 
 under a thicket of trees a tomb, with this half 
 effaced inscription, Et in Arcadia ego (I, too, lived 
 in Arcadia). These words issuing from the tomb 
 sadden their faces and the smiles die upon their 
 lips. A young woman, nonchalantly leaning upon 
 the shoulder of her lover, remains mute, pensive, 
 and seems to listen to this salutation from the dead. 
 The idea of death has also plunged into a reverie 
 a youth who leans over the tomb, with bowed head, 
 while the oldest shepherd points out with his finger 
 the inscription he has just discovered. The land- 
 scape that completes this quiet and silent picture 
 shows reddened leaves upon the arid rocks, hillocks 
 that are lost in the vague horizon, and afar off some- 
 thing ill-defined is perceived that resembles the sea. 
 The sublime in this picture is just that which one 
 
24 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 does not see ; it is the thought that hovers over it, the 
 unexpected emotion that fills the soul of the specta- 
 tor, transported suddenly beyond' the tomb, into the 
 infinite unknown. Some words engraved upon mar- 
 ble are here the only form, the only sign of the sub- 
 lime. The painter remains, as it were, a stranger to 
 the moral shock the philosopher has wished to im- 
 press upon us. A greater painter than Poussin, 
 Rembrandt was able, in some sort, to bring the sub- 
 lime within the appliances of his art in expressing 
 it by light. 
 
 It is moreover with poetry as with painting. The 
 touches of genius of a Shakespeare, a Corneille, as 
 well as the grand passages of Scripture, have no 
 form, or have one in which art plays no role ; hence 
 they can be translated into all the languages of the 
 world. Emanating from the sentiment of the infi- 
 nite, the sublime in painting could not be attached 
 to a form, girdled by a contour. Whether it burst 
 forth in the work of Rembrandt, or is divined in the 
 picture of Poussin, the sublime is intangible as light, 
 invisible as the soul. 
 
VI. 
 
 The methods peculiar to painting force them- 
 selves UPON THE ARTIST AS SOON AS HE INVENTS HIS 
 SUBJECT, AND CONCEIVES THE FIRST IMAGE OF IT. 
 
 The aim of the arts of design being to manifest 
 the beautiful, to render it visible and palpable, the 
 plastic or representative form is essential, peculiar to 
 them. For painting, especially, the means are optical, 
 because it translates sentiments and ideas upon a 
 smooth surface, and its images, merely appearances, 
 do not depend upon the touch, which is the sight of 
 the body, but upon sight, which is the touch of the 
 soul. 
 
 To invent, for the painter, is to imagifie, to bring 
 before his eyes the persons and things that he evokes 
 in his imagination, under the empire of a sentiment 
 that animates him, or a thought that besets him. 
 Here the grandeur of painting is at once attested by 
 the first of its laws, which is to choose the sentiments 
 or thoughts it will express, the figures it will repre- 
 resent, the theatre of action, the character of the 
 accompanying objects. The poet, the writer, know 
 of no monster so odious that art cannot make pleas- 
 ing to the eye, because the eyes to which poetry 
 
26 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 speaks are those of the mind ; but the painter of igno- 
 ble spectacles does not relate them ; he shows them, 
 and having but an instant in which to show them, his 
 images strike us without warning, without preface ; 
 they are not only ignoble, but coarse ; they disgust 
 us. The first law, then, of painting, is to avoid 
 hideous or repulsive subjects. 
 
 Many people, it is true, affect to think that all sub- 
 jects are good, and there is nothing ignoble in paint- 
 ing; that there are no gluttons, no baboons that the 
 wit of Teniers does not make pleasing, that there is 
 no dirty vagabond under the pencil of Brauwer, that 
 Ostade interests us in the deformed, or rather un- 
 formed peasants that dance in a cabaret with the 
 elegance of bears, — but, if we admit this, we must 
 add that painters are not ignoble when they do not 
 intend to be so, or when their representations are 
 redeemed by a stroke of satire. When Brauwer 
 seeks vagrants in their cellars to imitate their horri- 
 ble grimaces, and their red, drunken faces ; when he 
 so sympathetically paints them vomiting wine and 
 insults, he employs a talent full of warmth, delicacy, 
 and harmony, to make us pardon what he wishes to 
 make us admire. 
 
 As soon as he chooses a subject, the artist should 
 think of the picturesque and distrust the literary 
 beauties which may have charmed him in the books 
 or recitals that have inspired it. What a painter 
 should borrow from a poet, is not what he has read 
 in his poems, but what he has seen; the living, acting 
 idea, the sentiment when it becomes movement. 
 
AJi.-CADASSON.D.i 
 
 J.OulLLAuMC S 
 
 VCLTAIKIi b bTAlKCASE. 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 29 
 
 Suppose a painter wishes to express what he has 
 heard, or has thought himself, that Voltaire is the 
 personification of the eighteenth century, that all 
 proceeds from his genius and is to be absorbed in it 
 again, that he is the centre whence issue and to which 
 return all the rays of philosophy. How could he give 
 a picturesque form to an idea so metaphysical, so 
 abstract ? An artist who excels in invention has 
 solved this problem in the happiest, the most admir- 
 able manner, in one of those cartoons ordered by the 
 State, in 1848, for the monumental decoration of the 
 French Pantheon. This cartoon represents " The 
 Staircase of Voltaire." We see ascending and de- 
 scending all the philosophers of the times, all distin- 
 guished for intelligence, with the exception of Rous- 
 seau, who, in the eighteenth century, was the precursor 
 of ours. Placed at the top of the stair-way, Voltaire 
 is dismissing one of his visitors, d'Alembert, to whom 
 he gives an article for the " Encyclopaedia." Upon 
 a lower step Diderot awaits the termination of the 
 adieus to accompany d'Alembert. Thus are formu- 
 lated in vivid images, in speaking figures, speculations 
 of the mind that one might have thought foreign to 
 painting, and it is by methods peculiar to it, that 
 painting has expressed them, by making them visible, 
 giving them a body. 
 
 In this same series of cartoons in which picturesque 
 invention abounds, and which were to form a univer- 
 sal history and palingenesis of the human race, the 
 author, Paul Chenavard, has consecrated one of the 
 
30 PAINTING. 
 
 grandest compositions to the obscure beginnings of 
 Christianity, when the new god was noiselessly sapping 
 the foundations of pagan Rome. This vast scene is 
 divided into two horizontal zones. In the upper, filled 
 with sunlight, passes the pompous and noisy cortege 
 of a triumphant Caesar, with his lictors, his generals, 
 his trophies, his conquered prisoners, his eagles, and 
 his elephants. The lower zone, silent and dark, rep- 
 resents the first Christians at prayer in the Catacombs, 
 which they have dug like a tomb under the steps of 
 the conqueror, and in which the Roman Empire will 
 soon be broken up. It is impossible to relate history 
 more clearly and vividly by the figurative language 
 of art, mute language that engraves itself upon the 
 memory of peoples in ineffaceable lines, like the elo- 
 quence of the Athenian orator which left its needles 
 in the heart. 
 
 Invention is a rare quality among painters, rare even 
 among the great masters. Leonardo da Vinci, that 
 investigating genius, profoundly inquisitive, a prey to 
 all the disquietudes of his art, advised his pupils to 
 look sometimes attentively at the accidental spots 
 upon old walls, the jaspered stones, the veins of 
 marble, the shadings, as things offering to an idle 
 imagination singular combinations of lines and forms 
 and unexpected motives. Generally when they invent, 
 painters only find, invenire, in fable, poetry, religion, 
 history, subjects already invented by the poets, 
 already illustrated and consecrated by tradition. As 
 if imagination were a faculty rather Northern and 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 31 
 
 Germanic, there have been few inventors more pow- 
 erful than Albert Diirer and Rembrandt. Moreover, 
 it has been agreed to regard as an invention of the 
 painter, every new manner of conceiving a known 
 subject. 
 
 Why are the men of the North more inventive ? 
 Perhaps because they are more habituated to interior 
 life, to meditation, reflection. Solitude is imperative 
 to facilitate that prolonged attention, that persistent 
 and profound meditation, which are the source of great 
 thoughts, because, little by little, warming the mind, 
 they end by enkindling enthusiasm. As a miser ever 
 finds opportunities for acquisition, because always 
 thinking of it, so the artist can find means of enrich- 
 ing his mind if his thoughts are ever thus directed. 
 Meditation is precisely what the painters of to-day 
 lack. Impatient to produce, urged on, eager to fol- 
 low the breathless march of a civilization driven by 
 steam, they do not give themselves time to meditate, 
 and that in an art for which all the men of genius 
 have worked as if they had no genius. " Painting," 
 said Michael Angelo, " is a jealous Muse ; she desires 
 lovers who give themselves up to her without reserve, 
 with undivided heart." 
 
 Again, whether he invent his motives, or discovers 
 them in a poet, or renews them from the ancients, the 
 painter ought to conceive them in vivid figures, and, 
 drawing them from the vague obscurity in which im- 
 agination perceives them, make them visible, pal- 
 pable. If he is not the first creator of his thought, 
 
32 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 he ought to recreate it by rendering that which was 
 poetical picturesque, by making a representation 
 what was only an idea, a sentiment or a dream. 
 
 Thus from the moment of the birth of invention 
 the art of the painter is distinguished from all other 
 arts. For the pleasure of citing a hemistich of Hor- 
 ace the resemblance of painting to poetry has too 
 often been affirmed. It is fitting, in this book, to 
 show, not only the bonds that unite them, but the 
 limits that separate them. 
 
VII. 
 
 The first means the painter uses to express 
 his thought is arrangement. 
 
 One day when Prud'hon was dining at the table 
 of M. Frochot, prefect of the Seine, that magistrate 
 expressed the desire that Prud'hon should paint a 
 picture to hang in the hall where the assizes of the 
 criminal court were held, and, in speaking of the 
 effect to be produced upon the accused, he quoted 
 these verses of Horace : — 
 
 " Raro antecedentem scelestum 
 Deseruit pede poena claudo." 
 
 " It is seldom that limping punishment does not overtake the criminal 
 it pursues." 
 
 At once Prud'hon rose and asked permission to 
 trace with a pen the desired picture, of which the 
 whole arrangement had presented itself to his im- 
 agination. With the eyes of his thought he saw the 
 flying criminal, antecedentem scelestum, and Justice 
 appeared to him, not limping as the poet represents 
 her, but cleaving the air in rapid flight and accom- 
 panied by another winged figure, divine Vengeance. 
 Prud'hon did not invent the subject, but he invented 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 the arrangement, and he invented it with the genius 
 of a painter, by transfiguring the written image, giv- 
 ing it wings, instead of crutches. In a moment he 
 had indicated the great lines, sketched the figures 
 and their drapery, represented their pantomime, bal- 
 anced the masses, arranged the picture. Such are 
 the operations that constitute what we mean by 
 arrangement, and what we also call composition ; but 
 this latter word, whose signification is more extended, 
 includes the invention of the painter and the econ- 
 omy of his picture, to such an extent that it is often 
 used as a synonym of the picture itself. In its 
 more restricted acceptation, the composition is only 
 the arrangement, that is to say, the art of putting 
 in order the elements of the picture, of disposing 
 them, combining them, or, if one pleases, of distrib- 
 uting the roles to the actors of the drama, for the 
 Greeks called the composition the drama of the 
 painter, that is the mise en scene, without which the 
 composition alone would be the whole painting. 
 
 Two things are to be observed and reconciled in 
 the arrangement, — its optical beauty, that which re- 
 sponds to the pleasure of the eyes, and its moral or 
 poetical beauty, that which touches the feelings. 
 The first of these would be the most important, and 
 might almost suffice if the composition were purely 
 decorative, as would be, for instance, a painting rep- 
 resenting the pleasures of the harvest or the vintage. 
 But if the picture appeals to the mind or heart, if it 
 aims to excite the passions, the moral character of the 
 
EXAMPLE OF SYMMETRICAL COMPOSITION. ENTHRONED VIRGIN, BY GIO. BELLINI 
 
 (Academy of Venice.) 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 37 
 
 arrangement should take precedence of the pictur- 
 esque, which ought pitilessly to be sacrificed to the 
 expression if it is impossible to obtain both, to 
 strengthen one by the other. " Touch me, astonish 
 me, rend me, make me tremble, weep, shiver, anger 
 me, you may gratify my eyes afterwards if you can." 
 So said Diderot. 
 
 In the Gothic ages, when art was still in its infancy, 
 painters scarcely knew of more than one arrange- 
 ment, — symmetry ; and there were several reasons 
 for this naive arrangement : first, the timid ignorance 
 of the early painters, who would have been embar- 
 rassed at a complicated composition, afterwards a 
 sort of pious ingenuousness and respect for sacred 
 subjects ; for there is in symmetry something sacra- 
 mental and religious, because it corresponds to a 
 sentiment of immobility, of meditation and silence. 
 Besides it was not by movement and life that the 
 arts began. The first pictures, as well as the first 
 statues, have a stiffness, a grave and quiet look that, 
 by means of symmetry, becomes solemn. 
 
 In the human body, which is perfectly symmetrical, 
 the symmetry is apparent only when it is rigid and 
 motionless. As soon as the human figure moves, the 
 symmetry is broken by the movement, and in the 
 foreshortenings of perspective it escapes notice. The 
 figure, however, does not lose its symmetry ; what was 
 a coldly rigid regularity is replaced by another kind 
 of symmetry, which is equilibrium. The same phe- 
 nomenon manifests itself in art. As soon as it has 
 
38 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 attained maturity, feels itself bold and strong, it aban- 
 dons symmetrical compositions and substitutes for 
 them equilibrium. Instead of arranging its figures in 
 equal number, to right and left of the centre, paint- 
 ing introduces a certain balancing of corresponding 
 masses, compensates for the similitude of lines and 
 figures by the opposition of equivalent groups, so that 
 under the appearance of a facile liberty the composi- 
 tion maintains its equilibrium, and the eye, secretly 
 charmed, takes pleasure in the variety of the arrange- 
 ment, without perceiving the artificial and concealed 
 symmetry of it. This happens at the moment of vi- 
 rility, when painting advances from Giovanni Bellini 
 to Titian, from Verocchio to Leonardo, from Ghirlan- 
 dajo to Michael Angelo, from Perugino to Raphael. 
 
 Of this transition from traditional and measured 
 art to free and vigorous painting we may see an illus- 
 trious example in one of the stanze of the Vatican. 
 Opposite the " Disputa," of which the upper part is 
 arranged according to the laws of the primitive regu- 
 larity, Raphael has painted " The School of Athens," 
 which is not only a chef (Tceuvre of invention, draw- 
 ing, style, and expression, but is an incomparable 
 masterpiece of composition, the last expression of 
 genius in arrangement. 
 
 At the first look it is a fine disorder of figures that 
 seem grouped by chance meetings or isolated by 
 chance. There is such perfect verisimilitude in the 
 manner in which the groups are separated from and 
 yet united with each other, the gaps are so naturally 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 39 
 
 filled or so happily managed, that one scarcely sus- 
 pects the intervention of art, in a combination nev- 
 ertheless so well meditated and so wise. Not hav- 
 ing put any apparent symmetry in the order of the 
 figures where it ought to be broken by life and 
 movement, Raphael has put it in the immovable 
 things, the architecture and the statues, to redeem by 
 the solidity of the foundation the simulated disorder 
 of the picturesque arrangement. 
 
 In addition, Raphael has supposed the spectator 
 placed in the axis of the vaulted edifice which shelters 
 this imaginary reunion of all the Greek philosophers. 
 But as no one personage should dominate in so august 
 an assemblage, presided over by the invisible spirit of 
 Philosophy itself, no figure is placed upon the median 
 line that passes between Plato and Aristotle, the two 
 geniuses who will forever dispute the empire of souls, 
 because one personifies sentiment, the other reason. 
 This is not the place to notice the exquisite propri- 
 ety with which all these heroes of the old world of in- 
 telligence are characterized ; Pythagoras writing his 
 harmonic tables, Epicurus crowned with vine leaves, 
 the grave Heraclitus, the cynical Diogenes, Socrates 
 arguing, Plato indoctrinating his own enthusiasm, 
 Aristotle explaining experiments, the Pyrrhonian 
 smiling at his doubts, the Eclectic gathering up his 
 notes, Archimedes tracing on the ground his geo- 
 metric problems, the astrologer Zoroaster, the geog- 
 rapher Ptolemy. If one considers onlv the beauty of 
 
40 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 the arrangement, " The School of Athens" is a model 
 forever admirable of the art that Raphael has inau- 
 gurated, of multiplying figures without confusion, of 
 peopling a canvas without overloading it, of securing 
 equilibrium without symmetry, and of diffusing unity, 
 without destroying it, in a charming variety. 
 
 Unity, that is the true secret of all composition. 
 But what is unity with respect to arrangement? It 
 signifies that in the choice of the great lines a certain 
 character should govern, that in the disposition of the 
 parts there should be a dominant. Why? Because 
 if man has two eyes he has only one sight, and he has 
 only one sight because he has but one soul. 
 
 Straight or curved, horizontal or vertical, parallel 
 or divergent, all the lines have a secret relation to the 
 sentiment. In the spectacles of the world as in the 
 human figure, in painting as in architecture, the 
 straight lines correspond to a sentiment of austerity 
 and force, and give to a composition in which they 
 are repeated a grave, imposing, rigid aspect. 
 
 The horizontals, which express, in nature, the calm- 
 ness of the sea, the majesty of far-off horizons, the 
 vegetal tranquillity of the strong, resisting trees, the 
 quietude of the globe, after the catastrophes that 
 have upheaved it, motionless, eternal duration — the 
 horizontals in painting express analagous sentiments, 
 the same character of eternal repose, of peace, of du- 
 ration. If such are the sentiments the painter wishes 
 to evoke in us, if such is the character he wishes to 
 stamp upon his work, the horizontal lines should 
 
II 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 43 
 
 dominate in it, and the contrast of the other lines, 
 instead of attenuating the accent of horizontality will 
 render it still more striking. Witness " The Testa- 
 ment of Eudamidas ; " in it Poussin has repeated the 
 horizontal lines. Lying upon his death-bed, the citi- 
 zen of Corinth forms the dominant line of the arrange- 
 ment. The lance of the hero repeats this line and, 
 prostrate like him, seems condemned to the repose of 
 its master and to affirm a second time his death. 
 The figures of the physician, the mother, and the 
 scribe are here opposed to the horizontal, but the 
 contrast has a little too much importance, and in 
 disputing the principal disposition enfeebles the 
 unity. 
 
 Look now at " The Life of Saint Bruno," by 
 Lesueur, in that admirable series of naive and touch- 
 ing pictures. The solemnity of the religious senti- 
 ment, which is an ascending aspiration, is expressed 
 in it by the dominant repetition and parallelism of 
 the verticals ; and this parallelism, which would be 
 only monotony if the painter had had other person- 
 ages to put upon the canvas, becomes an expressive 
 repetition, where it is necessary to render apparent 
 the respect and uniformity of the monastic rule, the 
 silence, meditation, renunciation of the cloister. 
 
 If it is necessary to represent a terrible idea, — for 
 instance, that of the last judgment ; if one wishes to 
 recall the memory of a violent action, like the rape of 
 the Sabines or Pyrrhus saved, such subjects demand 
 lines vehement, impetuous, and moving. Michael An- 
 
44 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 gelo covers the wall of the Sistine Chapel with con- 
 trasting and flamboyant lines. Poussin torments and 
 twists his in the pictures of " Pyrrhus Saved " and 
 the " Sabines," and the linear modes employed by 
 these masters are examples of the law to be followed, 
 that of bringing back with decision to their domi- 
 nant character the whole of the great lines, that is to 
 say, the first means of expression, arrangement. 
 
 Those were very futile and false ideas which pre- 
 vailed in the schools of painting from the end of the 
 sixteenth century, thanks to the imitators, without 
 genius, of the genius of Michael Angelo. According 
 to their notions there should always and everywhere 
 be contrast; the lines, the angles, the groups, the 
 movements, the attitudes, the limbs, all ought to 
 combat, contradict each other, for the sake of a bril- 
 liant variety, whose effect, while amusing the eye 
 by oppositions, was to corrupt the eternal principle 
 of unity. Monstrous abuse ! Even the impetuous 
 Diderot was shocked at it, and saw in this ill-under- 
 stood and continual contrast " one of the most fatal 
 causes of mannerism." 
 
 There was a time when the pyramidal arrangement 
 was set up as a principle by the rhetors of art, and it 
 was insisted upon for the groups as well as for the 
 entire picture. There is nothing more dangerous 
 than this pretended principle, for the pyramid con- 
 tains two contrary elements, the horizontal and the 
 perpendicular. But, from the moment that these 
 lines have a language that appeals to the sentiment, a 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 45 
 
 moral signification, it is not fitting to leave the look 
 uncertain between these two directions ; the one must 
 dominate the other so that the horizontal shall govern 
 if the pyramid is very obtuse, and the vertical if it is 
 very acute. In the " Piece of a Hundred Florins," a 
 celebrated print of Rembrandt, in which Jesus Christ 
 is represented healing the sick, the composition is 
 developed decidedly in width, and the horizontal di- 
 rection triumphs over the pyramid formed by the 
 figure of Christ with the groups of sick that implore 
 help. 
 
 The " Transfiguration " of Raphael, so often criti- 
 cised as containing two pictures in one frame, betrays 
 a second time this faulty arrangement, which is made 
 still more apparent, by opposing to the pyramidal 
 mass of the upper group the horizontal mass formed 
 by the possessed of the devil and the apostles. It 
 is evident that the want of unity, which for once 
 escaped the notice of the great master, becomes more 
 striking by the unfortunate choice of two contrary 
 arrangements, which add optical duality to moral 
 duality. 
 
 Suppose, however, the painter wishes to represent 
 an Assumption of the Virgin, an Ascension of Jesus 
 Christ, the transport of a saint, an apotheosis, or any 
 other subject that naturally demands the pyramidal 
 disposition, the unity would not be lost, if the whole 
 of the composition, drawn as a lengthened oval, should 
 be finished in the lower portion as a reversed pyramid. 
 Raphael, who in spite of the instances quotecj, is the 
 master par excellence, in arrangement, has thus com- 
 
4 6 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 posed the " Sistine Madonna," by opposing to the 
 pyramidal lines of the heavenly apparition the very 
 narrow base formed by the two cherubs grouped in 
 the middle of the lower plinth which forms the sup- 
 port of an open window upon the balcony. 
 
 Whether one considers the optical beauty of the 
 arrangement, or regards it as the rough draught of 
 the expression, unity is the one principle, the true 
 secret. As Montabert has judiciously written {Traite 
 complet de Peinture), we must not say to the painter : 
 " Compose pyramidally, stuff up the holes, do not leave 
 gaps, avoid angles and parallels, seek contrasts ; " we 
 should say : " Compose according to your feeling, but 
 whatever your combinations, bring back the lines, the 
 groups, the masses, the directions, the dimensions to 
 the unity you may have chosen, and have felt." 
 
 By unity, the artist can make all methods of arrang- 
 ing a picture successful : the convex that pleased 
 Rubens and Correggio, which brings the principal 
 figures into relief; the concave, employed by Raphael 
 in the " Disputa," which is another way of concentrat- 
 ing the looks ; the diagonal, as in the " Descent from 
 the Cross " of Rubens, which arrests the attention by 
 an unforeseen obliquity ; and the strange distributions 
 of Rembrandt, which, dictated by the emotion of 
 genius, seem to address themselves only to the eye of 
 the soul. 
 
 That the forms of the border ought to be indicated 
 by the dominant line of the picture, is a truth often 
 misunderstood and nevertheless so apparent that it 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 47 
 
 seems superfluous to insist upon it. A couchant 
 Cleopatra, a sleeping Ariadne, forming a horizontal, 
 would be badly placed in an upright frame. At Ver- 
 sailles there are piers, very long vertically, filled with 
 military subjects whose horizontality is in shocking 
 contradiction to the form of the panel. Everybody 
 knows, from the print of Pradier, the beautiful com- 
 position of Ingres, " Virgil reading the ^Eneid." The 
 painter intended to represent it horizontally, but 
 when it occurred to him to put in the background 
 the statue of Marcellus, lifting itself before the eyes 
 of Livy, as the spectre of remorse evoked by the 
 verse, " Tu Marcellus eris," the whole idea of the 
 composition was changed, and the height became 
 dominant, that the proportions of the picture might 
 conform to the new direction taken by the thought of 
 the painter, indicated by the poetic apparition of this 
 phantom of marble, vaguely repeated by its shadow 
 on the wall of the palace of Csesar. 
 
VIII. 
 
 Although the painter who composes his pic- 
 ture OUGHT CERTAINLY TO BE ACQUAINTED WITH 
 THE LAWS OF PERSPECTIVE AND SUBMIT TO THEM, 
 THE OBSERVANCE OF THESE LAWS ALLOWS SUFFICIENT 
 PLAY OF SENTIMENT. 
 
 The painter having to hollow fictitious depths 
 upon a smooth surface, and to give to these depths 
 the same appearance they would have in nature, 
 must of necessity know the laws of perspective, that 
 is, the science of apparent lines and colors. 
 
 In accordance with the manner in which the eye 
 is formed, the height and size of all objects diminish 
 in proportion to the distance whence they are seen, 
 and all lines parallel to the visual ray seem to con- 
 verge towards the point of the horizon to which 
 the looks are directed. Some are lowered, others 
 elevated, and all unite together at the point upon a 
 level with the eye, which is called the point of sight. 
 Again, in proportion to the distance of objects from 
 us, the contour becomes less marked, the form more 
 vague, and the color paler, less decided. What was 
 angular becomes rounded, what was brilliant loses 
 color, the layers of air interposed between the things 
 
FAINTING. 
 
 49 
 
 looked at and the eye that sees them, are like a 
 veil that renders them confused, and if the atmos- 
 phere is thick and loaded with vapor, the confusion 
 increases and the spectacle is lost. These two phe- 
 nomena — the convergence of sloping lines and the 
 gradation of colors — have given rise to the distinc- 
 tion of two kinds of perspective, in painting, linear 
 and aerial. The latter is imposed upon the painter 
 only when he finishes his picture ; when he puts in, 
 with the colors, the lights and shadows ; we shall 
 speak of it when we come to consider chiaro 'scuro, 
 coloring and touch. The artist, at the moment in 
 which he arranges his picture, that is to say, at the 
 moment in which he assigns to each figure and to 
 each object the place it is to occupy, takes into ac- 
 count only linear perspective. Now what is a pic- 
 ture, properly so called, in painting ? It is the rep- 
 resentation of 1 a scene of which the whole can be 
 embraced at one glance. Man having but one soul, 
 his two eyes give him but one view. Unity, then, is 
 essential to every spectacle that addresses itself to 
 the soul. If the wish be simply to amuse by optical 
 artifices and to excite the curiosity of the spectator 
 by procuring for him, in a series of varied scenes, 
 the pleasures of a momentary and material illusion, 
 unity is no longer necessary, because the artist, in- 
 stead of conceiving a picture, is arranging the ma- 
 chinery of a panorama. On the contrary, as soon as 
 the painter wishes to express a thought or awake a 
 sentiment, it is indispensable that the action should 
 
 4 
 
5° 
 
 rAlNTING. 
 
 be one, that is to say, that all parts of the picture 
 should concur in one dominant action. But unity of 
 action is inseparable from unity of place, and unity 
 
 C -= <"" 
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 « -5 Si 
 
 s. ts B 
 
 of place involves unity of the visual point, without 
 which the spectator, drawn in different directions, 
 would be as if transported to several places at the 
 same time. It seems, then, that unity is more neces- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 51 
 
 sary in a poem of images and colors than in a writ- 
 ten poem or tragedy, because in painting the place is 
 immovable, the time indivisible, and the action in- 
 stantaneous. 
 
 That determined, how shall the artist submit to 
 the unity of one point of sight the scene that his 
 imagination has invented, or that it evokes by mem- 
 ory ? Experience teaches us that our eyes can take 
 in an object at one look only at a distance equal to 
 about three times the greatest dimension of the ob- 
 ject. For instance, to see at one glance a stick a 
 yard long, we must, if endowed with ordinary sight, 
 place ourselves at a distance of three yards. Sup- 
 pose the painter looks at a landscape from the win- 
 dow of his room, the objects presented to his view 
 will be so numerous and will occupy so vast an ex- 
 tent that he will be obliged to turn his head and run 
 his eye over the landscape to see, one after another, 
 the different points. If he retires into the chamber 
 the extent will diminish, and if the window be a yard 
 wide and he withdraws to a distance of three yards, 
 this distance will furnish the measure of the space he 
 can take in at one look. The window will form the 
 frame of his picture ; and if we suppose that instead 
 of canvas or paper, it is a single square of glass that 
 fills the aperture, and that the artist with a long pen- 
 cil could sketch upon the glass the contour of the 
 objects as they present themselves, his sketch would 
 be the exact representation of the landscape which 
 
52 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 will be drawn according to the rules of perspective, 
 since the perspective will draw itself. 
 
 Hence, a draughtsman with a trained, a correct 
 eye, could put in perspective all that he draws, with- 
 out the aid of geometrical operations ; but for this it 
 would be necessary that the picture he traces should 
 be always beautiful enough and sufficiently con- 
 formed to his idea to remain invariable; for if the 
 artist wishes to displace a line, to change a figure, to 
 efface a rock or a tree, to add a building, or simply to 
 put at a distance what was near, and to draw near 
 what was far off, the correctness of his eye will no 
 longer suffice : the perspective no longer drawing it- 
 self upon the glass transformed into a canvas, the 
 painter must have recourse to the laws that observa- 
 tion has discovered and geometry formulated. 
 
 These laws of perspective are simple, and are in- 
 teresting and admirable from their very simplicity. 
 They were known to the ancients, and in the fifth 
 century before our era, the Athenians who heard the 
 tragedies of yEschylus could admire upon the stage a 
 fictitious architecture designed by Agatharcus. Two 
 pupils of this artist-geometrician, Democritus and 
 Anaxagoras, published the theory of perspective, and 
 later, Pamphylus publicly taught it at Sicyon. At 
 the epoch of the Renaissance, perspective was redis- 
 covered or reinvented by the Italian masters that 
 flourished in the fifteenth century, — Brunelleschi, 
 Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, and Pier) della Francesca. 
 The last wrote a treatise upon it. Uccello found 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 53 
 
 such delight in it that he devoted his life to it, study- 
 ing day and night, saying to his wife, who remon- 
 strated at his depriving himself of sleep, " Oh! what 
 a charming thing perspective is." " Oh ! che dolce 
 cosa e questa prospettivar In our day the illustrious 
 geometrician, Monge, upon the foundation of de- 
 scriptive geometry, of which he had made a body of 
 science, furnished a rigorous demonstration of per- 
 spective when the books of Albert Diirer, of Jean 
 Cousin, Peruzzi, Serlio, Vignole, Dubreuil, and Des- 
 argues, contained little more than affirmed results. 
 Now, perspective, clearly explained in the " Elements" 
 of Valenciennes, animated with spirit in the different 
 works of Adhemar, considered by M. de La Gour- 
 nerie in its effects and in its relations to theatrical 
 painting and decoration, simplified in the new Theory 
 of Sutter, perspective, we say, can be easily and 
 thoroughly learned. 
 
 In studying these authors the artist will learn that 
 — the picture being generally considered as a plane 
 placed vertically — he ought to preface the opera- 
 tions of perspective by establishing three lines. The 
 first is the fundamental or ground line which forms 
 the base of the picture, the second is the horizon 
 line, which is always on a level with the eye, and 
 determines the position, as above or below, of the ob- 
 jects looked at, the third is a vertical line that cuts 
 the first two at right angles, and which, ordinarily, 
 divides the picture into two equal parts. 
 
 The point at which the visual ray perpendicular to 
 
54 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 the picture meets it, is called in perspective the point 
 of sight. It is found at the extremity of the ray 
 which passes from the eye of the spectator to the 
 horizon, and as the horizon rises in proportion to the 
 elevation of the eye, and descends as the eye is low- 
 ered, the visual ray terminates at the horizon, what- 
 ever its elevation upon the vertical line. The point 
 of sight and the horizon line being determined upon 
 the picture, measure the distance at which the spec- 
 tator should place himself, to see the picture as the 
 painter saw it ; in other words, measure the length of 
 the visual ray. This ray, being perpendicular to the 
 eye, is, so far as the eye is concerned, but a single 
 point. To see its true size, we suppose it lowered 
 upon the prolonged horizon line, and the point where 
 this lowered line ends is called the point of distance, 
 which ought to be as far from the point of sight as 
 the spectator is distant from the picture. These are 
 the two points and the three lines that serve to con- 
 struct all good perspective. He must also take ac- 
 count of the numerous exceptions certain objects 
 may present, which have no regular relation to the 
 picture — as, for instance, a chair overthrown by 
 chance in a room — and whose horizontal lines will 
 terminate at an accidental poiiit placed upon the 
 horizon. If we suppose the chair tipped over upon 
 another, in such a way as to rest upon the floor or to 
 have its four legs in the air, the accidental point 
 would be above or below the horizon. 
 
 To resume, the masters of perspective will teach 
 the artist : — 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 55 
 
 That all the lines perpendicular to the picture con- 
 verge at the point of sight ; 
 
 That all the lines parallel to the base of the pic- 
 ture have their apparent perspective parallel to this 
 base ; 
 
 That all the horizontal lines forming with the pic- 
 ture an angle of 45 degrees, converge at the point of 
 distance ; 
 
 That all the horizontal lines parallel with each 
 other, but not with the picture, converge at the same 
 point upon the horizon line ; 
 
 That all the parallel oblique lines converge at a 
 point that may be above or below the horizon, within 
 or without the picture, according to the situation of 
 the lines ; 
 
 That all the objects diminish in every way, in pro- 
 portion to their distance from the observer. 
 
 Thus, the point of sight being placed in the cen- 
 tre of the composition forms there a star, whose rays 
 are the sloping lines perpendicular to the picture, 
 and as some descend to the horizon and others as- 
 cend to it, the horizon line divides the picture into 
 two fans, opened in opposite directions, and cut by 
 the four sides of the frame and by the lines parallel 
 to its sides. 
 
 Remarkable union ! the sight of our eye resembles 
 perfectly the sight of our reason, and optics is in na- 
 ture what it is in philosophy. The difference in the 
 point of sight changes the moral perspective of ideas 
 as well as the linear perspective of things, and ac- 
 
mmt 
 
 56 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 cording to the point of distance at which our mind is 
 placed, it seizes only details the prominence of which 
 
 deceives or embraces the whole whose grandeur en- 
 lightens it. Moreover, physical perspective, however 
 rigorously the rule and compass of the geometrician 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 57 
 
 may be applied, rests submissively under the empire 
 of sentiment. Louis David used to say to his pu- 
 pils : " Other painters know the laws of perspective 
 better than I, but they don't feel them so well." This 
 signifies clearly enough that knowledge alone does 
 not suffice to the artist when he traces the perspec- 
 tive of his picture ; sentiment also should find its 
 place in it. We shall see, indeed, that sentiment 
 ought to direct, one by one, all the operations of the 
 painter ; determine the height of the horizon, the 
 choice of the visual point, the point of distance, and 
 the size of the optical angle. 
 
 The elevation of the horizon. Although the line of 
 the horizon is curved, owing to the spherical form of 
 the earth, this curvature is so microscopic and inap- 
 preciable that it may be replaced by a straight line. 
 But at what elevation should the horizon be 
 drawn ? If one wishes to paint a sea view, the hor- 
 izon will naturally be the line that separates the sea 
 from the sky, for the horizon is only the level of the 
 sea that we should perceive if the land and the 
 mountains that conceal it were transparent. Taste 
 teaches that the elevation of the horizon in the pic- 
 ture should depend upon the subject the painter has 
 chosen and the number of figures he wishes to place 
 upon the canvas. 
 
 If he desires to represent a public fete, like the 
 " Kermesse," of Rubens, or a magnificent festival, 
 like the " Marriage at Cana," of Paul Veronese, it is 
 evident he must elevate the horizon to show as large 
 
58 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 a number of persons as possible, and to unfold the 
 scene to the eye of the spectator as he would see it 
 if he were placed upon a terrace or behind a window, 
 which, for him, would be the frame of the picture. 
 
 David, wishing to paint the " Serment du jeu 
 de Paume," imagined himself standing upon a 
 table, whence he could see all the groups and all 
 the movements of the assembly. Gros, to bring out 
 the dark battle-field of Eylau, has placed the horizon 
 level with an eminence, whence he could have taken 
 in, in its whole extent, the entire spectacle of this 
 great disaster. " When the picture," says Adhemar 
 (" Supplement to the Treatise upon Perspective "), 
 " represents a room in which are several persons, 
 some seated, others standing, the horizon should be 
 on a level with a person standing. In this case, the 
 spectator will have the same impression as if he 
 were standing near those represented in the picture. 
 If the subject contains only two or three persons 
 seated, one will do well to place the horizon on a 
 level with their eyes. After some moments' atten- 
 tion, the spectator might believe he is himself seated 
 beside them, and taking part in their conversation. 
 But if one of them should appear to raise the head a 
 little, as if he were looking at some one standing, it 
 would be necessary, as in the preceding example, to 
 place the horizon on a level with the person stand- 
 ing." 
 
 Let us suppose, now, that the artist has to com- 
 pose a picture for a fixed place, or a wall painting at 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 59 
 
 a determined height; the horizon line will be chosen 
 in conformity therewith, but with a certain manage- 
 ment, or at need, with certain tricks favorable to the 
 view. The celebrated painter, Mantegna, having a 
 commission from the Marquis of Gonzaga to paint 
 the " Triumph of Julius Caesar," which was to adorn 
 the palace of Mantua, and to be placed higher than 
 the eye of the spectator, took care to place the first 
 figures upon the ground line forming the base of the 
 picture, then the feet and legs of the persons in the 
 middle distance gradually disappeared in accordance 
 with the given line of the horizon and geometric 
 laws. The litters, the vases, the eagles, and the 
 trophies borne in triumph, he drew so that the eye 
 perceived only the bottom. Vasari praises highly this 
 scrupulous observance of the laws of perspective. 
 But should truth be carried so far as to astonish the 
 eye by showing it singularities that confound it? It 
 may happen that the eye is justly offended by the 
 very precautions one takes not to offend it, and that 
 the spectator, not taking into account the horizon 
 line that the painter has chosen, finds bizarre wh&t is, 
 nevertheless, justified by geometric science. The es- 
 sential thing in painting is to move or captivate the 
 soul, even at the expense of the rigorous laws of sce- 
 nography, or at least by a slight infraction of these 
 laws. 
 
 The point of sight. The point of sight is always 
 upon the line of the horizon, but upon what point 
 of this line should it be placed ? In the middle 
 
6o 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 of the picture ? To right or left, more or less near 
 the frame ? Here also the artist takes counsel of the 
 sentiment. The great masters in their most famous 
 compositions, — Leonardo da Vinci in the " Last Sup- 
 per," Raphael in the " Disputa," the " Heliodorus " 
 and the "School of Athens," Poussin in the "Judg- 
 ment of Solomon," Lesueur in the " St. Paul at 
 Ephesus," — have fixed their point of sight either at 
 the centre of the picture, — that is at the intersection 
 of the diagonals, — or at equal distance from the lateral 
 lines of the frame. There results a symmetry which 
 has something grave, calm, majestic ; that is perfectly 
 in keeping with religious subjects and the imposing 
 scenes of history. The optical equilibrium produced 
 by the equality of the masses that correspond to each 
 other, produces in the mind a sort of moral equilibrium. 
 Wherever the architecture furnishes a perspective 
 clearly defined, the point of sight placed in the mid- 
 dle of the scene calls the attention of the spectator at 
 first to it, afterwards recalls it to the same point. If, 
 for instance, Jesus Christ is seated in the centre of 
 the picture in the Last Supper, the lines that con- 
 verge at the point of sight constantly bring back the 
 visual ray to the dominant figure, to the knot of the 
 drama, where emotion is concentrated, where, cease- 
 lessly, the eyes of the mind turn. Solomon, seated 
 on the throne from which he is to render judgment, 
 seems to me still more justly placed, in a composition 
 whose rigorous balancing seems an allusion to the 
 sovereign impartiality of the judge who occupies the 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 61 
 
 centre of it. And if we would borrow from contem- 
 poraneous art an illustrious example, w r e shall see the 
 author of the " Apotheosis of Homer " add to the 
 solemnity of his arrangement an august equilibrium, 
 by choosing the point of sight, indicated by symme- 
 try, to place in it the venerable figure of the poet 
 between the " Iliad " and the " Odyssey," in the very 
 axis of the temple where he is to be deified, and 
 which serves as a background to the spectacle of 
 his coronation. 
 
 There are excellent painters who have often placed 
 the point of sight at the side of the picture, not far 
 from the edge. Lesueur himself, in the twenty-two 
 admirable compositions that form the " Life of St. 
 Bruno," has almost invariably supposed the spectator 
 to be at the right or left of the middle line. Some- 
 times his point of sight is fixed upon one of the lat- 
 eral lines of the frame, so that one composition seems 
 to be the half of another; for instance, that which 
 represents St. Bruno distributing his goods to the 
 poor. One might believe that these quiet images of 
 the life of the cloister, these scenes of melancholy 
 austerity, would gain by presenting more perspective 
 equilibrium, less inequality in the masses separated 
 by the point of sight. But it is proper to observe 
 that, compositions forming a single history, a single 
 whole, may complete themselves to the look in such 
 a way that one picture may balance that which pre- 
 cedes or that which follows. One might say also 
 that Lesueur, in throwing the point of sight to the 
 
62 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 corner of the picture, has wished to express the dis- 
 tance of the profane eye, and to raise only a corner 
 of the veil that conceals from the cenobites the 
 things of the world. 
 
 Raphael, in the most animated scenes, keeps the 
 central position of the point of sight ; thus he puts 
 the movement of the figures in opposition to the im- 
 mobility of the architecture. In painting his sub- 
 lime fresco of " Heliodorus," in which we see the 
 sacrilegious robber overthrown by a miraculous 
 horseman, and whipped with rods by two angels that 
 cleave the air with rapid flight, Raphael doubtless 
 thought of the contrast the quietude of a symmet- 
 rical architecture would produce, with the impetuous 
 movements of the celestial cavalier who rides down 
 Heliodorus and the angels that strike him with rods ; 
 while the high-priest, Onias, in the depths of the 
 sanctuary, where all the sloping lines of the perspec- 
 tive converge, is still asking of Jehovah the miracle 
 already accomplished, overwhelming and swift as 
 lightning. 
 
 The equilibrium produced by placing the point of 
 sight in the middle of the horizon line, may serve, 
 sometimes, to strengthen the picture if it is calm, 
 sometimes to heighten the movement if it is dra- 
 matic. But the example of Raphael suggests to us 
 another observation ; it is that in mural painting the 
 real architecture dominates the fictitious, and it 
 would be shocking to place upon a wall a perspec- 
 tive which would suppose the spectator at an impos- 
 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 63 
 
 sible place, and which would be falsified by the sur- 
 rounding construction. 
 
 The role of sentiment is so great in painting, even 
 when geometry dominates, that a certain great 
 painter has allowed himself two horizon lines in one 
 picture, and we pardon this license. Paul Veronese, 
 in the " Marriage at Cana," considers the horizon 
 line, not as a line without breadth, but as a zone 
 which allows two points of convergence, the one 
 above the other. Veronese did this for two reasons : 
 first, because the lofty architecture of the picture 
 would have presented lines sloping too much, whose 
 direction towards a single point would have been too 
 precipitate and without grace ; then, because before 
 a picture so large, filled with episodes and without 
 rigorous unity, since he could only express the gen- 
 eral joy and the pleasing disorder of a feast, at which 
 Jesus himself plays merely the role of a guest, the 
 spectator is to be interested successively by the dif- 
 ferent groups, and to walk before the picture rather 
 than to fix his eye upon the point of sight. 
 
 The point of distance, that which marks the dis- 
 tance of the spectator from the picture, is also under 
 the empire of sentiment. Balthazar Peruzzi and 
 Raphael, according to Lomazzo (" Trattato della Pit- 
 tura "), thought " that the artist who wishes to paint 
 the facade of a house in a narrow street, is not 
 obliged to represent objects according to their dis- 
 tance from the opposite wall, but he ought to draw 
 them according to an imaginary distance, supposed 
 
6 4 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 greater, and which would be equal to three times the 
 height of the facade, else the figures painted would 
 seem to stumble and fall backward (trabbocare e ca- 
 dersi addosso). 
 
 At present it is a fixed rule fur designers who have 
 to put in perspective the interior of a chamber or 
 gallery, to draw it, not as they see it, but as they 
 would see it if they could withdraw to a distance 
 that supposes the overthrow of the wall against 
 which they lean. Although this distance is arbi- 
 trary, it must in all cases be so great that the 
 spectator may take in the whole of the picture at one 
 glance, without moving the head, else the objects 
 near the frame would undergo those monstrous 
 changes that in perspective are called anamorphoses. 
 A column, for instance, showing its base when seen 
 from above, and its capital seen from below, would 
 be an architectural member unrecognizable by the 
 abrupt diminution of the capital, which would seem 
 to fall inwards, and of the base, which would appar- 
 ently fall outwards. Every one has remarked the 
 angular deformity presented by the photographs of 
 the Bourse at Paris. To avoid such deformities and 
 have an agreeable view of the building, the photog- 
 rapher would be obliged to retire to a distance 
 rendered impossible by the surrounding buildings. 
 This withdrawal the painter secures fictitiously by 
 the methods of perspective, which allow him to rec- 
 tify what he sees by drawing it as he would see it at 
 a suitable distance. The photographer who wishes to 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 65 
 
 have a faithful portrait, without diminution of the 
 extremities, must, according to MM. Babinet and de 
 la Gournerie, place his instrument ten metres from 
 the model. Mathematical truth is not of the same 
 nature as picturesque truth. So it constantly hap- 
 pens that the geometrician says one thing and our 
 mind another. If I see a man five feet off, his appar- 
 ent diameter is double what it would be if I saw 
 him at a distance of ten feet ; science affirms it, and 
 does not deceive ; nevertheless, this man will always 
 appear to me of the same size, and the error of my 
 mind will be as infallible as the truth of the geom- 
 etrician. That is a mystery that mathematics cannot 
 explain, as Voltaire observes in the " Philosophy of 
 Newton." " Whatever supposition one makes," says 
 he, " the angle at which I see a man at the distance 
 of five feet, is always double the angle at which I see 
 him at ten, and neither geometry nor physics can 
 resolve the problem." We need, in truth, something 
 besides physics and geometry to explain how the tes- 
 timony of our eyes is contradicted by a decree of 
 sentiment, and how an incontestable truth may be 
 overcome by an irresistible falsehood. 
 
 The optical angle. The angle of which Voltaire 
 here speaks, is the optical angle. This is formed by 
 two visual rays which pass from the centre of the 
 eye to the extremities of the object seen. The 
 opening of the optical angle depends upon the dis- 
 tance of the spectator from the picture, for the nearer 
 an object is to the eye, the wider the eye opens to 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 see it. But this angle cannot be greater than a right 
 angle'; in other words, the greatest space that the eye 
 can take in is included in a quarter of the circumfer- 
 ence. In painting, every representation ought to be 
 seen at a single optical angle, or, as said Leonardo 
 da Vinci, "from a single window " (" la pitlura deve 
 esser vista da una sola jinestra "). Through this win- 
 dow of the eye the mind can embrace but one picture 
 at a time. But the visual rays that transmit it are 
 of very unequal strength. The only powerful ray 
 is that which is perpendicular to the retina ; all the 
 others grow feeble in proportion to their distance 
 from this normal ray, so that the more the angle is 
 opened by the nearness of the spectator, the more 
 weak rays it contains ; the more the angle is lessened 
 by the distance of the object, the more powerful rays 
 it contains. Thus, short-sighted persons partially 
 close the eyes to concentrate their vision by drawing 
 the extreme rays, which are weak, nearer to the nor- 
 mal ray. which is the only strong one. 
 
 But while the oblique rays become feebler, the ob- 
 jects are lessened by distance, the color fades out, 
 sharpness of contour is lost. Thus man can see in 
 their true size, that is geometrically, only the things 
 that are perpendicular to his retina, and at a certain 
 distance ; for the geometrical image of an object is 
 that seen in its real dimensions by an eye as large as 
 it; everything greater than the eye is seen in perspec- 
 tive, that is, in its apparent dimensions. 
 
 Strange and beneficent illusion, which testifies at 
 the same time to our littleness and our grandeur! 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 6 7 
 
 Only the eye of God can see the universe geometric- 
 ally ; man, in his infirmity, seizes only foreshortenings. 
 
 Yet as if all nature were subject to him he runs his 
 intelligent eye over it, and each of his movements 
 changing his point of sight, the lines come of them- 
 selves to converge there and form for him a specta- 
 cle always changing, always new. Perspective is, so 
 to say, the ideal of visible things, and it is not sur- 
 prising that the old Italian master vaunted its 
 charms. But this ideal, like the other, ceaselessly flies 
 and escapes us. Always within reach of the eye, we 
 can never seize it. As man advances towards his 
 horizon, his horizon retreats from him, and the lines 
 that seem to unite in the remote distance, remain 
 eternally separate in their eternal convergence. Man 
 bears within himself, as it were, a mobile poetry that 
 obeys the will of his movements, and that seems to 
 have been given him to veil the nakedness of the 
 true, to correct the rigor of the absolute, and to soften 
 in his eyes the inexorable laws of the divine geom- 
 etry. 
 
IX. 
 
 Coloring his sketch or limiting himself to 
 outline in his composition, the painter attains 
 expression only in defining it by the drawing, 
 the attitude, the gesture, or the movement of 
 each figure. 
 
 Composition is not improvised. The excited painter 
 may, in a moment of inspiration, see a composition 
 before the eyes of his thought, but he must study it, 
 prove its verisimilitude, submit it to the decision of 
 his judgment. 
 
 "What! improvise!" wrote Eugene Delacroix; 
 " sketch and finish at the same time, satisfy the imag- 
 ination and the judgment at one stroke, in the same 
 breath ! That would be speaking the language of 
 the gods with one's every-day tongue. Would one 
 know what resources talent has for concealing its 
 efforts ? Who can say what an admirable passage 
 may have cost ? At the most, what one might call 
 improvisation would be rapid execution without re- 
 touching or changing ; but without the sketch wisely 
 studied, in view of complete finishing, this sleight-of- 
 hand would be impossible, even to an artist like Tin- 
 toretto, who is called the most impassioned of painters, 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 69 
 
 or to Rubens himself. With Rubens especially, this 
 supreme labor, those last touches that complete the 
 thought of the artist, are not, as from their strength 
 and firmness one might believe, the labor that has 
 excited to the highest pitch the creative force of the 
 painter. It is in the conception of the whole, from the 
 first lineaments of the picture ; it is in the arrange- 
 ment of the parts, that the most powerful of his facul- 
 ties is exercised ; it is there he has truly labored." 
 
 Thus speaks an artist who had the fever of his art, 
 who was impassioned often even to delirium. Like 
 the orator who heard the murmurs of the people in 
 the dash of the waves, the painter must create his 
 picture, thinking of the spectators present or future 
 who will judge it ; he must prepare himself /o speak 
 the language of the gods. 
 
 But how shall the artist test his composition ? 
 Ought he at first to try colors, and, necessarily, light 
 and shadow, or shall he sketch the expression of his 
 thought by lines alone ? Very great masters — Mi- 
 chael Angelo, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Julio Ro- 
 mano — have drawn their sketches as if they planned 
 a bas-relief. Before thinking of coloring, of lighting 
 up their picture, they fixed the construction and the 
 form of it. Nevertheless, if painting be inseparable 
 from color and light, it seems as if the pencil and 
 charcoal are not enough for the artist who composes ; 
 that it is important to represent to himself, palette in 
 hand, the kind of effect that will aid the expression 
 to be produced. Rembrandt no sooner conceived a 
 
;o 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 picture than, in thought, he lighted it up. Rubens 
 foresaw the play of color, even in a sketch in which 
 he only indicated the masses of light and shadow. 
 Prud'hon also always invents in connection with 
 light ; as soon as he imagines his drama, he sees it 
 by the light of the sun, or the rays of the moon, or 
 the light of torches. How shall we decide between 
 methods so different and geniuses so diverse ? Must 
 we condemn the great Italians for having given so 
 decided a preference to drawing in the sketch of 
 their works ? No. These masters, par excellence, 
 were above all things preoccupied with the moral 
 element, — the expression. Color, which speaks to 
 the senses rather than to the mind, seemed to them 
 more external, hence, secondary. All composition 
 was good to them, so soon as its lines were appro- 
 priately disposed, balanced, and arranged ; they ren- 
 dered it expressive by the character of the forms, the 
 language of the drawing, the choice of the contour. 
 
 Let us imagine Michael Ane;elo tracing with the 
 pen the composition of the " Last Judgment," of 
 which the sketches have been preserved. With a 
 sovereign will, a master-hand, he draws figures and 
 groups whose movement and violence he foresees. 
 There exist upon the paper, as yet, only some manly 
 and rapid strokes, but already we seize the web of 
 this great tragedy: we see a troop of threatening 
 angels coining from the upper air bearing the instru- 
 ments of the Passion, as if to crush humanity with 
 them: we divine the Christ hurling down his thun- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 derbolts ; we perceive avalanches of the condemned 
 cast into the abyss ; we anticipate the terror that will 
 fill all souls, even those of the martyrs who display 
 the marks of their tortures, trembling lest they 
 may not have deserved celestial pardon. 
 
 Through these pen-scratches appear astonished 
 patriarchs, women filled with anguish, the Virgin, 
 who seems frightened at having given birth to a 
 God so terrible. The most hideous sins are rolled 
 pell-mell together, the dead awake, hell yawns, and 
 all this is expressed only by an entanglement of 
 heroic lines ; the groups unite, the composition 
 grows complicated, the arrangement perfects itself; 
 and all that the fresco will reveal is already foreseen 
 in this sublime confusion. Without having recourse 
 to the effects of color and light, the painter will at- 
 tain his supreme aim, he will have expressed the sen- 
 timent of inexpressible terror. 
 
 Let us suppose now that a genius of the North, a 
 Rembrandt, dreams of painting such a scene ; he 
 will take another road to reach the depths of our 
 soul ; this immense drama will begin to unravel itself 
 by spots of color as if through clouds. In the in- 
 finite depth of the shadows we shall see nations 
 emptying their tombs ; the joy of the blessed will be 
 indicated by the brilliancy of the coloring ; terror 
 will be expressed by dark tints rather than by dis- 
 torted or violent forms. The souls uncertain of their 
 fate will be enveloped in a mysterious half-light. 
 The radiant heaven, the sombre earth, will mark the 
 
74 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 contrast of eternal destinies, and hell will be enkin- 
 dled at the fires of color. 
 
 Thus great painters, varying their methods accord- 
 ing to their genius, may disconcert the philosophy of 
 art, and constrain her to change, or at least to modify 
 her laws. 
 
 Nevertheless, the art of the painter, having now 
 passed through the entire cycle of its developments, 
 can no longer neglect the effects of color and of 
 chiaro 'scuro, so far as they are expressive. The age 
 of painting is too far advanced to go back to the 
 epochs in which its youth allowed it to perform prod- 
 igies, without at the same time employing all its re- 
 sources. We may then regard as preferable the col- 
 oring of the sketch, above all when we wish to ob- 
 tain the expression that results from color and light, 
 an expression that harmonizes with nature, and is so 
 important in landscape. But the great painters who 
 make the woof of their work of human figures will 
 none the less continue to seek expression by the atti- 
 tude, the gesture, or the movement of these figures. 
 
 It is not with painting as with sculpture; the figures 
 of the painter having neither thickness nor weight, 
 being only pure appearances, may assume attitudes, 
 make gestures that it would be impossible to execute 
 in marble. Moderation of movement, sobriety of ges- 
 ture, are the inherent laws of sculpture ; they are de- 
 manded both by the solidity of the statue and its dig- 
 nity, for it is not only because his figures are heavy, 
 that an extravagant, outre gesture is forbidden to the 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 75 
 
 sculptor ; but because the divine forms of calm 
 beauty suit beings whose image is to last for ages, 
 and their movements, drawn not from beyond life, 
 but from above it, ought to manifest a soul serene as 
 that of the immortal gods, or of heroes that are to 
 become such. 
 
 Less restricted in his flight, bolder and freer, the 
 painter may represent attitudes that would be incom- 
 patible with the gravity of marble. He may hazard 
 movements that reveal the fire of passion, gestures 
 that betray the boiling of the blood in the heart. 
 But here, still, the imitation of nature does not alone 
 suffice to the painter more than to the sculptor ; there 
 must be choice, there must be style. 
 
 Listen to a passionate man; observe him; his words 
 like his gestures will reveal in a striking and true 
 manner the passion that animates him ; but it maybe 
 that his angry words are an ignoble truth, and the 
 excess of his gestures a repulsive one. It may be 
 also, for want of sufficient vitality, he manifests im- 
 perfectly the emotions his feeble soul experiences. 
 Hence, for the poet and the painter, the necessity of 
 softening what nature has marked too strongly, or of 
 accentuating with energy what she has expressed too 
 feebly. The observation of natural pantomime is an 
 excellent study, upon condition that the artist knows 
 how, sometimes, to render it more significant, some- 
 times to spy out the moment in which it is energetic, 
 without being mean. 
 
 But the gesture is not only individual, that is to 
 
7 6 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 say, modified by temperament; it varies also in char- 
 acter according to customs and ideas, according to 
 climate, and each nation stamps upon it the imprint 
 of its own genius. What a difference between the 
 reserve of an Englishman, and the grimacing mim- 
 icry of a Neapolitan ? How, then, can we discover 
 the principle of the gesture among such variations ? 
 Is it possible, among such slight differences, to un- 
 ravel the generic accents ? Yes. In spite of its va- 
 riations, the gesture has its roots in the human heart, 
 and it is possible to find them again there. What- 
 ever may be, for instance, the different signs of ven- 
 eration, it expresses itself, in all the countries of the 
 world, by a tendency to bow the head and bend the 
 body, as if to represent the inferiority of him who 
 venerates in presence of him who is venerated. 
 While the European of the North will indicate his 
 respect by a cold inclination of the head, the man of 
 Southern blood will bend himself double, and the 
 Oriental, concealing his face, will prostrate himself 
 to the earth. But all the degrees, marked or slight, 
 will be included between these two extremes, and the 
 artist will have a whole scale of differences from 
 which to choose his pantomime. 
 
 If the gestures and the movements of man were all 
 dictated by the organism, there would be more re- 
 semblance between them, because the arrangement of 
 the human machine would produce them in a fixed 
 manner, without other diversities than those of tem- 
 perament, weak or energetic, generous or cold. But 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 77 
 
 there are movements, gestures, and attitudes, that 
 have their source in the depths of the soul, and 
 whose external manifestation is only a feeble echo, a 
 symbol of that which agitates the world of imagina- 
 
 ATTITUDE OF i'ROPHET iSAlAH, BV MICHAEL ANGELO. 
 
 (Sistine Chapel) 
 
 tion, that inner world in which pass the dreams of 
 the sleeper and the reveries of the waking man. Ges- 
 ture, like speech, has its metaphors. We reject an 
 ill-sounding proposition almost as we would repulse 
 a dangerous beast ; we shrink from the recital of a 
 
78 
 
 rAINTING. 
 
 horror as we would from the reality of a frightful 
 spectacle. The orator who is meditating his ha- 
 rangues, and who wishes to electrify his imaginary 
 audience, needs to move, to keep step with his 
 speech, as Rousseau did when along the highway he 
 declaimed his impassioned prosopopoeias. It is not 
 by a cursory look at Nature that the artist will find 
 the expression of those pantomimes which reveal 
 the secret evolutions of thought. When Michael 
 
 ATTITUDE OF AHAZ, BY MICHAEL ANGELO. 
 
 (Sistine Chapel.) 
 
 Angelo, decorating the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, 
 wished to paint " Preoccupation," in the figure of 
 Isaiah, it was in the depths of his own spirit he 
 found the lines to express the attention of a thinker 
 whom nothing can distract from his meditations. 
 An angel calls Isaiah at the moment in which, hav- 
 ing placed his hand in the book of the Law, to mark 
 the place where he had ceased reading, the prophet 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 79 
 
 was following the course of his own thoughts. 
 Scarcely moving his body, he slowly turns his head 
 as if even an angel's voice could not snatch him from 
 the abyss of reflection into which he is plunged. 
 
 The Prophets and Sibyls of Michael Angelo are 
 the finest examples of the higher truth of gestures or 
 attitudes of which Nature contains only the germ, and 
 which it is the province of genius to discover, in 
 order to create from it immortal types. The sublime 
 figures of Jeremiah and Daniel, of Joel and Zech- 
 ariah, the Erythraean, Cumaean, and Delphic Sibyls, 
 are true creations of this kind. Without falsifying 
 Nature, they are, nevertheless, supernatural. Each 
 of their attributes, each of their movements, relates 
 the drama of thought. The Sibyl of Delphi is the 
 proud image of the intelligence that commands ; the 
 Cumaean seems absorbed by undecipherable enig- 
 mas. The Persian pores over a writing full of mys- 
 tery that she seems to devour. She of Lybia, hold- 
 ing high her book and casting down a disdainful 
 look, expresses contempt for the vulgar, to whom the 
 sibylline books were forever interdicted. 
 
 And what ideal power in the figure of Jeremiah ! 
 The Prophet of the Lamentations is overwhelmed 
 with the weight of his sad presentiments ; his elbow 
 upon his knee, he supports with one hand his bowed 
 head, and closes the mouth ready to utter a groan, 
 while he drops the other hand with unutterable mel- 
 ancholy. Even his coarse and neglected drapery adds 
 to the expression by the simple, grand play, which 
 
8o 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 is, as it were, the gesture of the vestments. Would 
 one paint, instead of the woes the prophet sees in the 
 future, the woes that humanity suffers in the present, 
 it is still in the frescoes of Michael Angelo he will 
 seek an example of that grand style which, far from 
 enfeebling attitude by generalizing it, renders it still 
 more striking by imprinting upon it a typical signifi- 
 cation. Never were consciousness of misfortune, 
 excess of physical dejection, and moral lassitude ex- 
 pressed in a more memorable manner than in the 
 attitude of Ahaz. 
 
 The point expression can attain in painting by 
 means of gesture, we see and marvel at in the " Last 
 Supper" of Leonardo da Vinci. There we recognize 
 what style is, and how the observation of real life, 
 after having germinated in the mind of a great 
 painter, leads him to a higher truth. He was obliged 
 to repeat eleven times the grievous surprise that the 
 announcement of betrayal was to produce in faithful 
 friends. He must paint astonishment, indignation, 
 grief, tenderness, simple loyalty, unchangeable can- 
 dor, all the sentiments, or rather all the variations of 
 sentiment, that must necessarily be evoked among 
 the Apostles by these words of Christ : " One of you 
 shall betray me." Leonardo, with that penetration 
 that led him to discover souls in the movements of 
 the body, knew how to express the individual shades 
 of feeling common to all the Apostles. One, aston- 
 ished, is already threatening the traitor; another is 
 cast down at the mere suggestion of such a crime ; 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 83 
 
 this one begins to exculpate himself, that seeks the 
 culprit. Indignant honesty takes the form of con- 
 tempt or vents itself in anger. The irritable Peter 
 would avenge his master; John thinks only of dying 
 with his God. 
 
 The gestures of the " Last Supper" have been an- 
 alyzed with much feeling and sagacity by Stend- 
 hal : " St. James the Less passing his arm over the 
 shoulder of St. Andrew, indicates to St. Peter that 
 the traitor is beside him. St. Andrew looks at Judas 
 with horror. St. Bartholomew, who is at the end of 
 the table, has risen, the better to see the traitor. To 
 the left of Christ, St. James protests his innocence 
 by the gesture common to all nations — opening 
 his arms and offering his defenceless breast. St. 
 Thomas leaves his place, approaches Jesus, and, rais- 
 ing a finger of the right hand seems to say to the 
 Saviour, " One of us ? " This is one of the necessi- 
 ties which remind us that painting is a terrestrial 
 art. This gesture was imperative to mark to the 
 eye the moment, to make understood the words just 
 spoken. St. Philip, the youngest of the Apostles, 
 by a movement full of naivete and frankness, rises 
 to protest his fidelity. St. Matthew repeats the 
 terrible words to St. Simon, who refuses to believe. 
 St. Thaddeus, who has first repeated them to him, 
 points to St. Matthew, who has heard them as well 
 as himself. St. Simon, the last of the Apostles, to 
 the right of the spectators seems to cry out, " How 
 dare you tell us such a horrible thing? " 
 
8 4 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Let us pass now to another order of ideas ; let us 
 suppose the artist occupied in painting genre pic- 
 tures, delineations of customs, scenes of manners, or 
 village fetes, as Callot delighted to represent them in 
 his etchings, Teniers in his paintings ; the genius of 
 observation will suffice, because the comic does not 
 exclude the ugly ; on the contrary, and among popu- 
 lar and familiar gestures, the painter has only to 
 choose the most impressive. Style would here be a 
 perversion, for the value of the pantomime is pre- 
 cisely in the individual turn, in the strangeness of the 
 incident. Generalized, the grotesque would be cold ; 
 it has no savor, but when it is individualized to the 
 last point, seized by a photographic spirit, taken in 
 the act. A bohemian of Callot, a peasant of Teniers, 
 even an invalid of Charlet, are the more interesting 
 the less they resemble others. But the originals are 
 found only in Nature. We must have run through 
 the fairs with Callot or haunted the Kermesses like 
 Teniers, to paint, for instance, the gestures and move- 
 ments of a player at bowls, when, having thrown his 
 ball, he runs after it, follows it with his eye, encour- 
 ages it with voice and hand, trembles at every stone 
 that may hit it, and leads it to the end with a pan- 
 tomime that hesitates between fear and triumph. 
 See in one of the inimitable lithographs of Charlet, 
 the " Call for the Contingent of the Commune," with 
 what skill he characterizes the gait of the young 
 soldier whom the discipline of the regiment has not 
 yet fashioned. We distinguish in the band, at the 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 85 
 
 first glance, the skulker who is already ducking his 
 head to let the bullets pass by, the mourner for his 
 dear Falaise, the farm-boy advancing with resigna- 
 tion, and the scapegrace apprentice with love-lock on 
 his forehead, his hat over one eye, who comes whist- 
 ling and promising himself to get at once a bullet in 
 his head or win his chevrons. 
 
 Thus, the role of Nature is the more important 
 the lower art descends, the more familiar it grows. 
 Naivete is then the happiest gift ; it is even precious 
 in grave subjects where some features of common 
 life are introduced. The picture of Lesueur, in which 
 St. Bruno receives a letter from the Pope, shows us 
 a charming example of naivete in the embarrassed 
 countenance of the rustic envoy, who, with hand on 
 his cap, not knowing if it be admissible to remain 
 covered during the reading, seeks to read the effect 
 of the letter upon the countenance of the monk. 
 
 There is a great painter who has excelled in ges- 
 ture — Rembrandt. He did not attain the beautiful, 
 but he often touched the sublime. Drawing his 
 inspiration from the heart, he was great because he 
 was human, and he has thus touched the permanent 
 and invariable in Nature. Under the costume of the 
 Jews of Holland he has painted the men of all coun- 
 tries and all times. He understood perfectly that 
 gesture is optical language, the language peculiar to 
 painting, which ought to render the thought visible. 
 When Rembrandt represents a drama of the Scrip- 
 tures, "The Sacrifice of Abraham," for instance, with 
 
86 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 what genius he renders the words from Genesis, 
 " The Angel of the Lord called unto him out of 
 heaven : Abraham ! Abraham ! lay not thine hand 
 upon the lad." Translated in painting, the cry of the 
 angel becomes a decisive gesture. The messenger 
 of God, seizing with both hands the arms of the pa- 
 triarch, shows us at the same moment the beginning 
 and the end of the tragedy. And, since we are 
 speaking of gestures and attitudes, how touching is 
 the resignation of Isaac, who stretches out his neck 
 with the confidence and gentleness of the lamb about 
 to be slain. Before plunging the knife into the blood 
 of his son, the old man covers his eyes with his hand 
 to spare him, at least, the sight of death. All this 
 pantomime is admirable, more pathetic even than 
 the recital of the Bible, conforming to the letter of 
 which so many other painters, even celebrated ones, 
 have drawn an angel pointing coldly and vaguely to 
 heaven. 
 
 The last word of art is to reconcile force of ges- 
 ture with beauty of movement, warmth of truth with 
 dignity of style. Here, Leonardo da Vinci and Ra- 
 phael are inimitable. Raphael, especially, had the se- 
 cret of intimating, by the mimicry of his figures, 
 more than he shows. He knows how, by the move- 
 ment, to indicate a part of the action that has pre- 
 ceded and a little of that which is to follow. What 
 speaking truth in the figure of Elymas struck with 
 blindness. The gesture seems simple, nevertheless 
 it is studied. Nature furnished the motive, but style 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 87 
 
 has revised the expression of it : " And immediately 
 there fell on him a mist and a darkness, and he went 
 about seeking some to lead him by the hand." This 
 
 ' ! r- 
 
 .jiwm&^j mm 
 
 \w 
 
 TIIK SACRIFICE OF ABRAHAM. HY RFMBKANPT. 
 
 instant Raphael has seized in a way to show us the 
 sudden and irresistible power of the Apostle. The 
 sorcerer, deprived of sight, seeks a guide, not like 
 
88 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 one born blind, but like a man who just now saw and 
 suddenly has passed from light to night. To feel 
 thoroughly this shade of difference, let us compare 
 the Elymas of Raphael with the etching of Rem- 
 brandt, in which the aged Tobias so well represents 
 the instinctive timidity and the gropings of the blind 
 man, accustomed to the darkness, dragging his feet 
 and tremblingly stretching out his hand. 
 
 Look, now, at the " School of Athens ; " in it an 
 attitude, a gesture, characterizes each of the philoso- 
 phers of antiquity. The cynicism of Diogenes is 
 manifested by the abandon of his posture ; the ob- 
 scure and discouraging doctrine of Heraclitus by his 
 saddened countenance ; the indifference of the Pyr- 
 rhonian by his quiet and ironical way of looking over 
 his shoulder at the young aspirant who is eagerly 
 writing the words he hears. The divine Plato points 
 with his finger to the land of the ideal, the positive 
 Aristotle seems, by his gesture, to moderate the enthu- 
 siasm of his master. Socrates, who, while reasoning, 
 holds with his right hand the forefinger of his left, has 
 the air of counting upon his fingers the deductions he 
 draws, one by one, from his interlocutor, Alcibiades. 
 In the group of pupils of Archimedes, we recognize 
 by their different bearing the attentive disciple who 
 follows the theorem of the geometrician ; the scholar, 
 more penetrating, who has outstripped the demon- 
 stration, and one who, wishing to explain it to a 
 fourth, finds in him only a slow intelligence, marked 
 by the vacuity of the countenance and the open hand 
 that has been able to seize nothing. 
 
ELVMAS STRUCK WITH BLINDNESS PY RAPHAEL. 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 91 
 
 In the fifteenth chapter of his treatise, Leonardo 
 da Vinci recommends the imitation of mutes in 
 their pantomime, because mutes, for want of one sign, 
 have learned the art of supplying it by all others ; 
 but the fear of not being understood drives them to 
 excess of gesticulation, and might lead the painter to 
 grimaces, or, at least, to strongly marked, overloaded 
 mimicry. Pantomime is not only a means of making 
 the intention of the figures understood, it is a means 
 of representing them beautiful and interesting even 
 in their passions. The principal figure of a picture 
 ought rather to allow his soul to be seen than to dis- 
 play it. His gesture is not to demonstrate his pas- 
 sion but to betray it. 
 
 The painter of " Marcus Sextus " and " Clytem- 
 nestra," Pierre Guerin, went often to the theatre to 
 study his art. Thence his poetically solemn but 
 somewhat stilted manner. At first thought it would 
 seem as if the study of the tragic scene ought to 
 profit the painter, who aims at style, but it is not so. 
 The pantomime of the actor, explained by speech, 
 cannot be the same as that of the painter, which 
 speaks only to the eyes. The spectator whom the 
 preceding scenes have prepared, whom the dec- 
 lamation warms and fascinates, permits, in the hero 
 of the stage, exaggerated movements, whose exagger 
 ation he does not even see. It is with scenic ges- 
 ture almost as with decoration ; both address them- 
 selves to the masses, for whom it is fitting to 
 heighten the colors and the action, because they do 
 
9 2 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 not and cannot look closely enough to appreciate the 
 delicacies and shadings that taste demands. On the 
 contrary, having before him only a cool spectator, 
 the painter could not make him accept anything fac- 
 titious or exaggerated. It is then true, that it is not 
 in the conventionalities of the theatre, but in the 
 truth of passion and of life that he must seek his first 
 inspiration. Why refer to the interpretations of 
 poetry, instead of going back to the sources of poetry 
 itself? 
 
 The actor and the painter have this in common — 
 they study individual truth the nearer they draw to 
 the comic. When Moliere writes the " Misan- 
 thrope " or " Tartufe," he generalizes, it is true, but 
 he produces a comedy so high it touches the tragic. 
 So the painter, in proportion as he elevates himself, 
 abandons the small truth for the great one, remem- 
 bering that painting, like the stage, has its sock and 
 buskin. 
 
 The celebrated Garrick said one day to a come- 
 dian who was playing the role of a drunkard, " My 
 friend, your head is really drunk, but your feet and 
 legs are perfectly sober." That is equivalent to say- 
 ing that unity in gesture is the law of the master and 
 the secret of Nature. Gratiolet has very well said 
 (" Conferences sur la physionomie,") : " The society 
 of the organs of the living body is a perfect republic ; 
 all the organs groan at the suffering of one, all re- 
 joice at the joy of one — and this contagion of sen- 
 timent, this concert of the organs, is marvellously ex- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 93 
 
 pressed by the word sympathy." Nature, indeed, has 
 localized our organs to perfect their solidarity. 
 Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, divide the labor of 
 life, and make the analysis of the sensations whose 
 synthesis is in the soul. We cannot touch colors 
 nor see perfumes ; sound does not affect our eyes, nor 
 light our taste, and the smell does not tell us if the 
 rose is lighter than the pink; but the sensation, once 
 received, is generalized, is felt through the whole 
 organism. Look at the figure of Laocoon ; it suffers 
 from head to foot — it shudders even to the toes. 
 
 Descartes observes that the soul, which always has 
 some influence over the muscles, has none over the 
 blood ; thus, pallor, or the sudden blush, do not de- 
 pend upon the will. This admirable remark may be 
 extended to certain gestures which are as involun- 
 tary as the movements of the blood, and escape the 
 empire of the soul. The painter should take note of 
 them, seize them in their rapid flight. 
 
 But models are not always under the eye of the 
 painter ; besides how fugitive are the movements that 
 Nature offers us. How can one imitate them if he 
 does not know their mechanical conditions, their 
 wheel-work ? The artists of antiquity, according to 
 all appearance, in studying gestures made use of arti- 
 ficial skeletons, whose limbs were put together with 
 screws. These jointed statuettes are described with 
 precision in a satire of Petronius : " While we were 
 drinking and admiring the magnificence of the re- 
 past, a slave brought a silver skeleton, made in such 
 
94 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 a way that its joints and vertebrae could turn in every 
 direction. After placing this skeleton several times 
 upon the table, and giving it the different postures 
 that the movable joints permitted, Trimalcion cried 
 out : ' Poor creatures ! See what we all are ! ' 
 
 This passage of Petronius recalls to us the learned 
 and judicious Paillot de Montabert. Become blind, 
 he loved to talk of an art that had absorbed all his 
 thoughts. One day, when we were talking of man- 
 ikins, he begged me to read him a chapter of his 
 " Traite de Peinture," in which he describes the 
 jointed and moving figures that the ancient painters 
 must have used, not only to compose expressive pan- 
 tomimes, but to represent flying or falling figures for 
 which no model could pose. It was in studying the 
 monochrome figures upon Greek vases, that the pro- 
 found theorist had dreamed of the manikins of cut 
 cards, of which he has given a drawing in his book. 
 We see, indeed, upon ancient pottery, bold and free 
 gestures, movements sometimes exasperated even 
 to caricature, but always lively, resolute, speaking, 
 which seem to have been invented by means of 
 movable pieces. Is it not the imagination of the 
 artist, rather than Nature, which has inspired the 
 pantomimes of these astonishing silhouettes, and the 
 expressiveness of these figures of priestesses, bacchan- 
 tes, youths, and satyrs, that seem sometimes to be 
 celebrating mysteries, sometimes executing sacred 
 dances, or deliriously pursuing each other around 
 the amphora? Moreover, is it possible that a model 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 95 
 
 by his attitude or his gesture, could faithfuly obey 
 the thought, the dream of another ? How, then, sup- 
 ply that which Nature does not furnish more surely 
 than by these moving figures, which, presenting as it 
 
 MOVAPLF. FIGURES IN PIECES. PAILI.OT DE MONTABERT. 
 
 were the algebra of the human body, are the more 
 suitable to formulate its postures and movements, in 
 the measure of the possible, and which, passing 
 
9 6 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 under the hand of the painter, from the feeblest sig- 
 nification to the strongest, tell him the exact moment 
 at which the gesture is energetic without being vio- 
 lent. 
 
 After all, whatever means the artist may have pre- 
 ferred, he must, if he wishes to become great, build 
 upon real truth in order to elevate himself to a 
 higher truth, so that that which in Nature was only 
 language, in Art may become eloquence. 
 
X. 
 
 When the composition is once decided upon 
 ■ — when the gestures and the movements are 
 foreseen, the painter refers to the model to 
 give verisimilitude to his ideal, and natural- 
 ness to the forms that must express it. 
 
 Nature is a poem, but a poem obscure, of un- 
 fathomable depth, and of a complexity that seems to 
 us sublime disorder. All the germs of beauty are 
 contained in it, but only the human mind can dis- 
 cover them, set them free, and create them a second 
 time, by bringing them into order, proportion, and 
 harmony, — that is to say, unity. Nature gives us all 
 sounds, but man alone has invented music. She 
 possesses all woods and marbles ; man alone has 
 drawn from them architecture. She unrolls before 
 our eyes countries bristling with mountains and 
 forests, bathed by rivers, cut by torrents ; he alone 
 has found in them the grace of gardens. Every day 
 she gives birth to innumerable individuals and forms 
 of endless variety ; man, alone, capable of recogniz- 
 ing himself in this labyrinth, draws thence the ele- 
 ments of the ideal he has conceived, and in submit- 
 ting these forms to the laws of unity, he, sculptor or 
 painter, makes of it a work of art. 
 
98 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 When the lines of his composition have been con- 
 structed, when the gestures and movements of his 
 figures have been anticipated, the painter has drawn 
 his picture, that is, has sought expression by the char- 
 acter of the drawing. He must choose, in the im- 
 mense repertory of human forms, those best suited to 
 translate his emotion or his thought. 
 
 What is drawing ? Is it a pure imitation of form ? 
 If so, the most faithful of all drawings should be the 
 best ; then no copy would be preferable to the image 
 fixed upon the daguerreotype plate, or traced me- 
 chanically, or drawn by the diagraph. But neither 
 of these instruments gives us a drawing comparable 
 to that which Leonardo da Vinci or Michael Angelo 
 would have made. The most exact imitation, then, 
 after all, is not the most faithful, and the machine in 
 seizing the real does not always catch the true. 
 Why ? Because drawing is not a simple imitation, a 
 copy corresponding mathematically to the original 
 an inert reproduction, a pleonasm. Drawing is a 
 work of the mind, as is indicated by the orthography 
 of our fathers, who wrote it dessein — design. Every 
 drawing is the expression of a thought or a senti- 
 ment, and is charged to show us something superior 
 to the apparent truth, when that reveals no senti- 
 ment, no thought. But what is this superior truth ? 
 It is sometimes the character of the object drawn, 
 sometimes the character of the designer, and in high 
 art, is what we call style. 
 
 What do these words signify : the character of an 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 99 
 
 object? They signify the permanent side of its phys- 
 iognomy, the dominant of the impressions it can 
 produce. But the whole of the features that give to 
 objects their character, the eye alone does not seize; 
 it is the thought. It may be that these characters do 
 not appear clearly on the surface ; the painter then 
 makes them apparent. It may be they are changed 
 by some alloy ; the painter then discriminates between 
 inherent and foreign qualities. He unravels the 
 primitive truth among the accidents that have cor- 
 rupted it, he brings it back to harmony, unity. It is 
 in this sense we must interpret a phrase that Taddeo 
 Zuccaro attributes to Raphael: "We must paint 
 Nature not as she is but as she should be. 
 
 See that rock ; it is abrupt, sharp ; nevertheless if 
 we look at it closely, we shall notice, perhaps, smooth 
 parts, fissures softened and rounded ; but these ex- 
 ceptional features do not hinder the rock's being 
 rough and savage, and to render it still more rough 
 and savage the designer will neglect or attenuate, 
 voluntarily or in spite of himself, such accidental 
 forms, while he will amplify, if it is necessary, and 
 insist upon the significant forms. Thus the drawing 
 will have put in relief the character of the object 
 drawn, and far superior to the work of a machine, it 
 will be a work of art. 
 
 That the character of the forms should be, in the 
 drawing, the dominant quality, greatly superior to 
 mathematical exactness, is so true, that there is 
 nothing more interesting than the sketch of a mas- 
 
IOO 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 ter. I do not speak of those trifles in which the 
 pencil only touches a half perceived image, because 
 the artist is only, as Fenelon says, humming his 
 thought. I speak of those abridged, rapid drawings, 
 in which the painter, not having had leisure to be 
 correct, has seized only the most striking aspect of 
 the object and has thrown upon the paper a senti- 
 ment rather than an imitation, an impression rather 
 than a copy. How many features are wanting or are 
 but just indicated! How many details are omitted ! 
 Nevertheless this concentrated, condensed sketch has 
 said everything if it has made us touch with the 
 finger the character, veiled or prominent, that all the 
 forms, even the inanimate ones present, and which is 
 then, so to say, the spirit of things. 
 
 Again, in presence of the creations of Nature, 
 the artist has the privilege of seeing in them what he 
 himself carries in the depths of his soul, of tinting 
 them with the colors of his imagination, of lend- 
 ing them the witcherv of his o-enius. A woman in 
 whom Correggio would find all the graces of volup- 
 tuousness, Michael Angelo would see chaste and 
 haughty. A landscape that to Van de Velde would 
 have a sweet and familiar aspect, would seem savage 
 to Hobbema. Claude and Poussin have both painted 
 the same fields, but the one discovered in them the 
 poetry of Virgil, the other heard more manly accents, 
 followed a severer muse. Thus, the temperament 
 of the painter modifies the character of things, and 
 even that of living figures ; and Nature, for him, is 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 IOI 
 
 what he wills her to be. But this taking possession 
 is the appanage of great hearts, of great artists, those 
 whom we call masters ; precisely because instead of 
 being the slaves of reality they govern it ; instead of 
 obeying Nature, or rather by reason of having known 
 how to obey her, they know how to command her. 
 These have a style; those that imitate them have 
 only a manner. 
 
 But aside from the style peculiar to every great 
 master, there is something still superior and imper- 
 sonal ; it is style. What we mean by this word we 
 have already said in the course of this work. It 
 is truth aggrandized, simplified, freed from all insig- 
 nificant details, restored to its original essence, its 
 typical aspect. This style, par excellence, in which, 
 instead of recognizing the soul of an artist, we feel 
 the breath of the universal soul, has been realized in 
 the Greek sculpture of the time of Pericles, and now 
 we have to examine if it be realizable in painting. 
 We have proven that drawing is not a mere imita- 
 tion of form, a literal imitation. Not that at least, for 
 a master. 
 
 For a master, I say, for we must distinguish be- 
 tween him who learns and him who knows, and turn 
 our attention to the teaching of drawing. 
 
 The saying of Raphael, that we have quoted, " We 
 must paint Nature not as she is but as she should be," 
 is not addressed to pupils ; it is perfectly intelligible 
 only at the last degree of initiation ; and I am sure, if 
 it were spoken, it was only before such men as Julio 
 
102 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Romano, Perino del Vaga, or Polydorus. For a be- 
 ginner nothing would be more misunderstood than 
 to counsel the ideal and to say to him, " Correct 
 Nature." The artist who is beginning ought to copy 
 naively, religiously what he sees ; but to copy Nature 
 it is not enough to have eyes, he must know how to 
 look, he must learn to see : and how shall he learn ? 
 
 Several methods may be good. There is one, 
 however, that Philosophy recommends; it is that 
 which consists in passing from the simple to the 
 complex, from the permanent to the accidental, from 
 that which is to that which seems to be. 
 
 All bodies having three dimensions, length, 
 breadth, and thickness, have a form. Yet there are 
 those that, to the eye, have no thickness; these have 
 only contour. A leaf of paper, for instance, has a 
 configuration determined by its exterior lines. The 
 figures whose fantastic silhouettes decorate Greek 
 vases, offer no appearance of thickness ; thus they 
 are not human forms but only the shadows of them. 
 That which we understand in painting by the word 
 form, is an object that has salient and reentering 
 parts. Hence it is impossible to draw any form 
 whatever without more or less of perspective ; that 
 is why Leonardo da Vinci saw in perspective, " the 
 universal reason of drawing." But what is perspec- 
 tive ? The science of apparent forms. To repre- 
 sent well objects as they appear, it is of consequence 
 to know them as they are. One cannot see truly 
 but with the eyes of the mind ; and a form that one 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 lO' 
 
 should draw without comprehending it himself, he 
 could not make comprehensible to others : the igno- 
 rant looks, the intelligent sees. 
 
 Then, before teaching perspective, which is the 
 side continually accidental, it is useful to teach the 
 geometrical, which is for everything its real and per- 
 manent manner of being ; for the visual change of an 
 object seen foreshortened, of a capital, for instance, 
 is independent of the capital itself, which none the 
 less preserves its positive proportions, its height, its 
 breadth, its volume ; in other terms, its geometric con- 
 struction. What does the architect do before draw- 
 ing a building ? He traces at first the plan that 
 measures the depth, then the profile that determines 
 the height, afterwards the face that gives the breadth, 
 and it is when it possesses all these measures that he 
 draws the edifice geometrically, that is to say, as it is 
 in reality ; later he draws it in perspective, such as it 
 will be in appearance ; thus should the beginner pro- 
 ceed. Does he wish to give the idea of a pyramid 
 with unequal faces? Let him decompose the super- 
 ficies of it, let him know just what is the polygon 
 that is the base of it ; then let him draw the triangles 
 of which each side of the plan will be the base : let 
 him take account of the relations between them ; 
 when he shall know that the pyramid is only the 
 assemblage of these surfaces, he will draw it intel- 
 ligently. 
 
 If, on the contrary, the pupil is allowed to get in 
 the habit of drawing objects by approximation, with- 
 
io4 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 out measure and rule, he will fare like a traveller 
 who wished to learn English, and who, scarcely 
 landed in Dover, hastened to repeat everything he 
 heard. From speaking badly in the beginning he 
 contracted the habit of it ; he taught himself a bad 
 pronunciation, which became incorrigible. If he 
 had for a while kept silent, he would have accus- 
 tomed his ear to the true pronunciation, which 
 would have penetrated into his mind, his memory. 
 But in order that it should penetrate there perfectly, 
 it is essential that our traveller should have seen the 
 language printed ; that he should know how the 
 words are written, of what consonants and vowels 
 they are formed. That is, as it were, the geometry 
 of the tongue, the change it undergoes in the mouth 
 of the people is the perspective. So to pronounce a 
 form well by drawing, we must first know how it is 
 written in the vocabulary of Nature. 
 
 To be acquainted with forms before drawing them 
 is a necessary condition for the beginner.. He will 
 not know how to pencil a head correctly if he does 
 not know the divisions of it; still less a whole figure 
 if he has not learned the proportions of the skeleton 
 and its generic measures. And as all the lines are 
 straight or curved, and geometry is the principle of 
 all forms, it is by the elements of geometry that the 
 teaching of drawing should commence. 
 
 The artist, in proceeding thus, will follow the path 
 traced by him whom Plato calls the eternal geom- 
 etrician. Long before life manifested itself by that 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 105 
 
 which is the highest expression of it, sentiment and 
 thought, crystallization produced a mysteriously sym- 
 metrical geometry, the triangular or polyhcdric forms 
 that bodies take in passing from a liquid to a solid 
 state ; and the rigid lines of the prisms of minerals 
 preceded the reign in which the elegance of vegeta- 
 bles, the curves of flowers displayed themselves, and 
 that other reign, far higher, in which a new sym- 
 metry is announced, no longer rigorous, frozen, but 
 broken by liberty of movement, animated by life, 
 redeemed by grace, or replaced by equilibrium. 
 The geometry that marked the beginning of this di- 
 vine creation of which life was the coronation, ought 
 also to occupy the first rank in that human creation 
 — art, whose last word is beauty. 
 
 All the knowledge of the designer consisting in 
 hollowing fictitious depths upon smooth surfaces, 
 and in arranging distances, the child who shall have 
 succeeded in putting a cube in perspective, and in 
 representing the convexity of a sphere, will possess, 
 in abridgment, the whole science of design, because 
 he will know how to imitate the projecting and re- 
 treating, and manage all that gives to forms their 
 modelling; that is, light, half light, shade, reflection, 
 projected shadow. But a precaution is to be taken 
 with the young pupil ; one must not ask him to solve 
 two problems at once, — to catch the form he must 
 imitate, and at the same time to find out the manner 
 by which he shall translate his imitation upon paper. 
 To know how to read the model is not easy; to know 
 
io6 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 how to write what one has read, with the pencil 
 or stump, is a second difficulty added to the first. 
 Why should the pupil painfully invent proceedings 
 that others have invented before him. It seems to 
 us that the drawing of objects already drawn or en- 
 graved ought to precede drawing directly from a 
 model, geometrical or not ; and that before putting 
 one's self face to face with reality, it is well to learn 
 the conventional proceedings by which it is inter- 
 preted. For finally the contour that imprisons a 
 figure is made up of lines agreed upon, necessary to 
 fix the image upon a smooth surface. The fashion of 
 expressing the shadows and indicating the degrees 
 of distance by cuttings on the pencil or tints laid on 
 with the stump, are equally agreed upon. It is use- 
 less to complicate the embarrassments of the begin- 
 ner by making him study at the same time the art 
 of seeing and the art of interpreting. As to placing 
 the pupil at once in presence of the living model, it 
 would precipitate him into a deluge of errors and 
 prepare for him the bitterest discouragements, with 
 as little prudence and reason as to ask an aspiring 
 musician to decipher a symphony. 
 
 After geometry and perspective, the designer who 
 feels in himself the high vocation of the painter will 
 do well to learn the elements of architecture. Not 
 long since an eminent sculptor, in a very remarkable 
 lecture upon the teaching of drawing, said : " There 
 are still in the field of creation exact notions and a 
 sovereign art ; for if, at the beginning of our studies 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 IO/ 
 
 we find architecture the arsenal, as it were, of prac- 
 tical means, at the beginning of higher education we 
 shall find it contains all the principles of composi- 
 tion. It gives a foundation and a frame to all works 
 of art. It fixes picturesque ideas in stable lines ; of 
 necessity it fixes masses, movements, life, even senti- 
 ment, that it may present all in a representation that 
 shall be animated without causing fear, lest it should 
 tumble to pieces or fade away." 
 
 Is there a principle of correct drawing ? Yes, and 
 now we are to find ourselves with the great masters. 
 They will teach us that art, like science, rests upon 
 axioms so simple as, at first thought, to excite a 
 smile. " The whole is more important than a part," 
 is one of the truths that serves as a rule to the de- 
 signer, as it is the starting point of the geometrician. 
 When a model poses before us, we must study the 
 whole, closing our eyes to details, till the general 
 movement of the figure has been seized. Raphael 
 makes us feel this predominance of synthesis even in 
 the parts; that is, after taking the whole of the 
 whole he takes the whole of each part. And this 
 manner of seeing which seems so natural, so simple, 
 we find in perfection only in the Greek sculptures of 
 the golden age, and in the drawings of some of the 
 great masters. Some illustrious artists have pro- 
 ceeded differently. Michael Angelo, for instance, 
 who, instead of blending the parts into one whole, 
 gives them an exaggerated relief, a strongly marked 
 contour. Instead of enveloping the muscles, he de- 
 
io8 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 velops them ; but Michael Angelo is a man whom 
 we must admire without following, because his 
 genius, absolutely inimitable, inevitably leads copyists 
 astray. The true masters for the beginner are 
 Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael : the first because, in 
 
 STUDY OF RAPHAEL FOR THE APOLLO OF PARNASSUS. 
 
 spite of his love of detail, he is great by reason of 
 the repose and breadth of his shadows ; the second, 
 because he teaches grandeur without effort, and even 
 in a feeble copy of his drawing there is grace and 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 109 
 
 charm, — so difficult is it to destroy the beauty of 
 the original. 
 
 To enable us to understand better, let us suppose 
 Albert Durer drawing in the atelier of Raphael and 
 with him, from the model that posed for the " Apollo 
 of Parnassus." While the Roman artist, after hav- 
 ing with a few strokes seized the movement of the 
 model, looks at the broad surfaces and firmly indi- 
 cates the principal insertions of the muscles, Albert 
 Durer devours with his eyes successively all parts of 
 the figure ; he analyzes it, copies it bit by bit. He 
 sees a world in each morsel, and stops to contemplate 
 it according to the degree of curiosity that it inspires 
 in him. Coming to the hand, he discovers in it an 
 infinity of details. He counts the veins and the 
 folds of the skin, and the edges of flesh around the 
 nails ; meanwhile, he forgets the whole, or, as a Ger- 
 man proverb says, the trees prevent his seeing the 
 forest; so that if the figure stands well upon its feet, 
 if the general movement is correct or seems to be, 
 it will be through a miracle, or because the Teutonic 
 genius with infinite patience will several times have 
 corrected its work. From this search for detail 
 there will result something unequal, disagreeable, 
 and stiff in the drawing and in the entire figure ; an 
 individuality not consonant with grandeur and style. 
 Finally, the model we have supposed posing before 
 Raphael and Albert Diirer will remain, in the work 
 of one, a peasant of the Campagna, while the painter 
 of Urbino will only have to suppress some peculiar- 
 
I IO 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 ities to ennoble his subject, and soon mounting to 
 Parnassus, the fiddler of the Sabine hills will lead 
 the choir of the Muses, as the god of Poesy. 
 
 But a question presents itself now which is per- 
 haps the most delicate, most difficult, and important 
 that we have to examine. Is style in painting of the 
 same quality as in sculpture ? 
 
 Sculpture, as we have already said, demands 
 beauty above everything. It seeks, among the 
 countless examples of human and animal life, those 
 that represent a collective variety, a whole family of 
 beings. Its mission is to fix types. It does not 
 imitate the features of a certain strong and generous 
 man; it sculptures the generous strength we call 
 Hercules. It does not model the image of such or 
 such a handsome young man ; it models the accom- 
 plished gymnast, the elegant and supple, the robust 
 and light-footed adolescent — Mercury, the embodi- 
 ment of manly youth and grace. To the sculptor 
 we may apply the verses of an unknown poet upon 
 an ancient painter : — 
 
 " En rassemblant ces traits, le sculpteur transporte, 
 Ne forme aucune belle j il forme la beautd," 
 
 It is not precisely the same thing for the painter 
 Doubtless he can sometimes lift himself to the 
 majesty of symbolic art, and thus draw near to 
 sculpture by the purity of forms, choice of attitude, 
 and significance of drapery ; but he runs the risk of 
 having the apparent coldness of marble, without its 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 1 1 1 
 
 grand fullness, its imposing relief. There is, be- 
 sides, in painting, an essential element which does 
 not readily lend itself to emblematic expressions, — 
 that is, color. Unless he keep to the severity of 
 monochrome, and put unity in place of harmony, 
 the artist using color will particularize what he 
 wishes to generalize, and will contradict his own 
 grandeur. Color can be an allusion to the idea only 
 upon condition of being one. In its variety, charm- 
 ing or pathetic, gay or sombre, it expresses only the 
 variable shades of sentiment or sensation. 
 
 The painter then is more closely bound to real life 
 than the sculptor, that is to say, to movement and to 
 change. He is nearer nature, his figures are charac- 
 ters rather than symbols, men than gods, and gener- 
 ally his mission is to represent them to us in the 
 medium in which they move, in the atmosphere they 
 breathe, interesting through chosen individuality, col- 
 ored by light, framed in by the landscape, clothed in 
 a costume that indicates their nationality, surrounded 
 by circumstances that determine their action. The 
 painter contents himself with being expressive where 
 the sculptor would be beautiful ; he so subordinates 
 physical beauty to moral physiognomy that he does 
 not even reject ugliness. 
 
 This conception of art distinguished the great 
 Florentines of the fifteenth century, — Masaccio, 
 Filippino Lippi, Donatello, and above all, Leonardo 
 da Vinci. Persuaded that style in painting has its 
 roots in the depths of nature, and that every human 
 
I 12 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 figure holds a hidden fire from which a spark may 
 burst under the eye of the artist, this great man 
 sought out living caricatures and copied them with 
 an inexorable fidelity, hoping to discover, in the 
 excess of ugliness, the exaggeration of a character 
 that he could afterwards bring back to human con- 
 ditions, by suppressing the deformity, and preserv- 
 ing the expressiveness. When he was painting that 
 sublime picture, the " Last Supper," he was daily seen 
 going through the markets and faubourgs of Milan, 
 to catch those grotesque or frightful visages which in 
 his eyes denoted only a want of equilibrium between 
 the conception and the birth, between the idea and 
 the form, as if blind Nature, in the obscurity of a 
 dream, had lost the measure of her creations and 
 produced only nightmares. But these caricatures 
 aided him to find the germ of a character. He 
 purified, he polished the monster, till he had suc- 
 ceeded in seizing, in spite of the deviations produced 
 by mysterious accidents, the germ of a physiognomy 
 profoundly characteristic, and again made beautiful 
 while remaining energetic. The admirable heads of 
 the Apostles in the "Last Supper" have been thus 
 disengaged from certain uglinesses observed in the 
 lowest walks of life. In the hands of the artist, 
 guided by such a master, a bit of coal becomes a 
 diamond. 
 
 We are no longer in the age in which the painter, 
 making of every figure an idea, as in ancient Egypt, 
 suppressed individuals by giving them only the 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 H3 
 
 physiognomy of their caste. Warriors, heroes, Pha- 
 raohs, gods, priests, slaves, all were there to indicate 
 their species, not to assert their individuality. Each 
 figure is an emblem, each slave represents thousands 
 of slaves, each priest the entire class of priests, so 
 that there is not a figure in this strange painting 
 that is not multiplied to the eyes of the mind by all 
 its similars, and which does not appear like a number. 
 On the walls of the temple defile processions of ideas 
 represented by phantoms always the same, always 
 regulated by a sacerdotal rhythm. Individual vari- 
 eties disappear under the uniformity of the symbol ; 
 all personality is effaced, and men are only the letters 
 of a written enigma. Yes, we are far, very far from 
 that solemn art in which the artist, commanded by 
 religion, immolated Nature to the secret ideal of the 
 sanctuary. Neither can we rejuvenate the painting 
 of the Greeks, so similar, apparently, to their sculp- 
 ture. Enfranchised henceforth from hieratic forms, 
 we demand of our painters living children. We in- 
 sist that they shall separate what antiquity con- 
 founded ; that they shall put in relief personal char- 
 acteristics, which the ancients disdained. 
 
 Study the model ! who dare dispense with it 
 when we know that Raphael restricted himself to 
 it all his life. What a priceless lesson we have 
 in his drawings from Nature. There is so much 
 naivete they seem the result of intuitive knowledge. 
 We are in the atelier of the master. There is a girl 
 of the people, a young woman from Trastevere, to 
 
ii 4 
 
 FAINTING. 
 
 serve as a model for the " Holy Family," that be- 
 came so famous, — the Virgin of Francis First, now 
 in the Louvre. Dressed in a simple tunic, her hair 
 negligently arranged, the young woman, the knee 
 bent, the leg naked, bends forward as if to lift up a 
 child that, as yet, exists only in the thought of the 
 painter. In this attitude she poses under the eye 
 of Raphael, who, desiring truth more than beauty, 
 arrests the movement of the figure, assures himself 
 of the proportions, seizes the play of the muscles, 
 and verifies the grace of his thought. But he has 
 only gone over a third of his road. The same 
 woman will pose again, clothed and draped, except 
 the left arm that will remain naked, and will after- 
 wards be drawn by itself covered with a sleeve. 
 What precautions, what scruples, what religious love 
 of Art ! At the age of thirty-five, and at the apogee 
 of his genius, Raphael studies twice a figure for 
 the Virgin, draws at first nude that which was to be 
 enveloped in drapery, and afterwards the drapery 
 that was to envelop the nude. But he knew them 
 by heart, these Virgins with the child Jesus, who 
 drew themselves under his facile pen, sketching a 
 smile and from the first lines letting us divine their 
 future grace. But it was necessary the painter 
 should see them first upon earth, when they were 
 simple girls of the people, who had not yet been 
 visited by the angel and divinized by style. Thus 
 when this transfigured model shall be a Madonna, 
 when the child shall spring into the arms of his 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 115 
 
 mother, and seraphs shall come to throw flowers 
 upon his cradle, the painting of Raphael will pre- 
 serve something natural and secretly familiar that 
 will render it more touching, because before being 
 
 STUDY OF RAPHAEL, FOR THE VIKGIN OF FRANCIS FIRST. 
 
 the picture of a divine family it was the image of a 
 human family. We see now what the role of the 
 draughtsman is. I mean one who is no longer a 
 
1 16 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 pupil, who has become a master. The model must 
 serve, not subjugate him. When a woman, a man, 
 
 THE VIRGIN OF FRANCIS FIRST. LOl'VRK. 
 
 a graybeard, a child, poses before him, he has an 
 idea, an aim. He wishes to express a drama, an 
 action, a poetry, as the great Titian said (vi mando 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 Il 7 
 
 la pocsia di Venere). Let us suppose the heroine 
 of his future picture, antique or modern, is a be- 
 loved Stratonice or a loving Marguerite, is it pos- 
 sible to imagine that the first comer will know how 
 to take suitable attitudes, above all, that she will 
 possess the enchanting beauty that explains the love 
 of an Antiochus, or the naive graces that justify the 
 celebrity of the Germanic poem and the tenderness 
 of all Germany for the beloved of Faust ? That if 
 the artist proposes to paint a blind Homer who, fol- 
 lowing his guide upon the highway, sings his im- 
 mortal rhapsodies, it will suffice to copy the old 
 beggar who just asked alms of him? Look at this 
 drawing of Filippino Lippi, made from nature for a 
 Saint Michael : how many things he will modify, how 
 many ignore altogether, in order to transfigure this 
 man picked up in the street into an archangel. It 
 is 'clear that here the living model is only a neces- 
 sary instruction, a reference. But if all the words 
 of the language are in the dictionary, eloquence is 
 only in the soul of the writer; and if all truths are in 
 nature, it is that the painter may draw thence the 
 elements of expression, not by composing his figures 
 of bits and morsels, but by bringing them back to 
 the unity of the character he has conceived, by in- 
 suring the triumph of the sentiment that animates 
 him, imitating the musician who hastens or retards 
 the time according to his own heart-beats. 
 
 Nothing is rarer than fine models, especially in 
 France, where the mingling of races has effaced the 
 
n8 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 primordial accent of creation. The fresh beauty or 
 the integrity of primitive characters is scarcely 
 found except among people that have not mixed 
 their blood with that of others, like the mountaineers 
 
 STUDY OF FILIPPINO LIPP1 l r "R A ST. MICHAEL. 
 
 of Savoy and Albania, the Circassians, Ethiopians, 
 Ncsroes. One who has visited the ateliers of our 
 painters knows how defective are the models. Ordi- 
 narily they are degenerate beings, without the least 
 culture, who have been induced by poverty to exhibit 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 119 
 
 their hirsute or s\Vollen forms, their pitiful gait, their 
 unfortunate proportions void of unity. How many 
 times, in the atelier of Paul Delaroche, have we seen 
 models of men and women, selected for certain par- 
 tial beauties, present nevertheless the grossest faults, 
 huge excrescences, thin muscles, unwholesome flesh, 
 vague and insignificant features. 
 
 It is noticeable that all the schools of the deca- 
 dence have introduced into painting the common- 
 place features of the model, that is, those uglinesses 
 that can neither be redeemed by character nor 
 transfigured by sentiment. Pietro da Cartona, Gior- 
 dano, Solimena, Vanloo, Restout, Natoire, Boucher, 
 have reproduced and overloaded similar vulgarities. 
 Hence those common heads, misshapen arms, de- 
 formed feet, which recall what we have seen in the 
 streets or among the bathers at the sea-shore. The 
 characters of Nature never reappear in their original 
 purity, their striking unity. For them a Diana, a 
 Juno, are courtesans with flabby flesh, whose nudity 
 displays ugly folds, dimples that seem strangled in 
 wadding, and if in their pictures we recognize the 
 presence of Nature it is only by her errors, — her 
 
 We may then say without paradox that nothing 
 is farther from truth than such realism, for, instead 
 of being natural, every deformity is contrary to Na- 
 ture, since it is a falsification of eternal laws, and a 
 corruption of divine exemplars. On the contrary, 
 there are no figures in the world truer than the Ilissus 
 
120 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 and the Theseus. Can we believe they were taken 
 from life ? Has Nature ever brought forth individ- 
 uals as beautiful as those statues ? Why, then, in 
 their incomparable perfection, are they apparently so 
 true a truth, — so naive ? It is because Phidias caught 
 the spirit of creation, found again the essence of 
 forms, and that nothing can be truer than the essence 
 of truth. Great artists take Nature for their model, 
 but they do not take a model for Nature. 
 
XI. 
 
 After having verified the forms he has cho- 
 sen, THE ARTIST FINISHES, BY LIGHT AND COLOR, THE 
 MORAL EXPRESSION AND THE OPTICAL BEAUTY OF HIS 
 THOUGHT. 
 
 Now we reach painting properly so called, we 
 enter its true domain. Till now the thought of the 
 artist has remained, as it were, covered with a veil. 
 We can imagine his composition, if it is but a sketch, 
 like a bas-relief, which would hardly be visible in the 
 darkness of the atelier. But let an open window ad- 
 mit the sunlight, and at once the relief transforms 
 itself into a picture, in which distances may be infi- 
 nitely multiplied, and that the perspective will hol- 
 low by causing the disappearance of the level surface 
 that served as a foundation to the relief, which will 
 be replaced by a sky, a landscape, the walls of a 
 magnificent palace, or the interior of a cabin. 
 
 Daughter of light, Painting creates in its turn a 
 light of her own, and in imitating the luminous ef- 
 fects she has observed in Nature, she carries in her- 
 self the elements of her clearness and her obscurity. 
 It is not with the painter as with the architect or the 
 sculptor, whose palpable creations are subjected to 
 
122 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 the mobile and changing power of natural life. A 
 monument that appears simple and grand by moon- 
 light may lose these qualities in the light of day, if 
 it is loaded with details and dwarfed by superfluous 
 ornaments which were lost sight of in the uncertain 
 light of the moon. A piece of sculpture expressive, 
 almost tragic, like the " Pensieroso " of Michael 
 Angelo, might change its character if its place were 
 changed, and if, instead of being lighted from above, 
 it received its light from below, which would disperse 
 the profoundly melancholy shadows that envelop the 
 face of the hero. On the contrary, the painter draws 
 his light from his color-box, and even if it should 
 please him to use only different shades of the same 
 color, he is free to distribute upon his work light and 
 shadow with this color alone, provided he conform 
 to optical law. It is the sun, it is true, that lights 
 up the canvas of the painter, but it is the painter 
 himself who lights up his picture. In representing 
 in it, according to his pleasure, the appearances of 
 light and shadow he has chosen, he throws upon it a 
 ray of his own spirit. 
 
 Free thus to illuminate his drama in a way that 
 shall be invariable, he need not fear lest the external 
 light should ever come to contradict the sentiment 
 which has inspired him, and this liberty is precisely 
 that which allows him to heighten the expression by 
 the management of lights and shadows, the chiaro 
 'scuro. Although this expression is sometimes em- 
 ployed by painters to designate a crepuscular tone, 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 12 
 
 which holds the middle place between light and dark- 
 ness, we must understand by chiaro-'scuro the essen- 
 tial part of painting — the art of illuminating it. 
 
 We have compared the drawn sketch of the 
 painter to a monochrome bas-relief. Let us sup- 
 pose now that this bas-relief has ceased to be 
 one of marble; that it is composed of divers sub- 
 stances ; that certain personages in it are clothed 
 in light drapery in the shadow, and in the light in 
 sombre drapery; that among the figures some are 
 sunburned or black ; that there are mingled in 
 the composition some trees with brown foliage and 
 others with pale leaves ; see how the chiaro 'scuro is 
 modified by the amount of black and white which 
 the divers elements of the picture bring into it. The 
 light, in meeting surfaces that absorb it, and those 
 that reflect it, has changed the effect of the drawing 
 and varied its aspect, without, however, destroying, 
 in its mass, the great part of chiaro 'scuro that the 
 painter had at first taken. These variations, intro- 
 duced into the fine harmony of the drawing, by notes 
 higher or lower, are what we call values ; that is the 
 degree of elevation, the effect of tone relatively to 
 neighboring tones. The value of an object then, in 
 painting, is the degree of force with which it reflects 
 light. In the chiaro 'scuro of a picture, represent- 
 ing, for instance, a group of fruits, an orange would 
 have less value than a lemon, because orange -color is 
 less luminous than yellow. Thus, all the visible ob- 
 
124 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 jects of Nature possess a degree of light which as- 
 signs them a place in the gamut of chiaro 'scuro, and 
 gives them a value that is called their tone. This 
 word, derived from the Greek rovog signifies tension, 
 vigor, expresses the sum of the luminous intensity, is 
 synonymous with value. 
 
 We must then distinguish the tone from the tint, 
 that is to say, from the color, although these two 
 terms, tone and tint, because of their close relation- 
 ship, are often employed the one for the other. 
 Strictly speaking, the tone is independent of the tint 
 and may be separated from it. The engraver, when 
 he translates upon copper the colors of a picture, does 
 nothing but separate the tone from the tint. Nature 
 herself shows us every instant substances that have 
 not the same tone although they have the same 
 color. Lilac, for instance, which resembles violet 
 in color, differs from it in tone, since lilac is a light 
 violet, violet a dark lilac. Reciprocally, two objects 
 may present the same tones and different tints. 
 Thus, when the sky is darkened at the horizon and 
 becomes of a bluish gray, it often happens that the 
 foliage of a tree still lighted up by the sun, and 
 which just now stood out boldly upon the horizon, 
 becomes almost of the same tone as the sky, so that 
 the painter can scarcely discern if the sky has more 
 value than the tree, or if it is the light green of the 
 tree which has more than the blue gray of the sky. 
 
 This distinction between tone and tint, between 
 value and color, leads us to distinguish between 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 125 
 
 chiaro 'scuro and coloring ; the first individualizes 
 objects by relief, the second individualizes them by 
 color. So long as the picture remains monochrome, 
 it is far from having uttered its last word. It must 
 still translate values into colors,, clothe with countless 
 shades of color forms which, in the economy of light 
 and shade, play similar roles ; finally must replace the 
 white light which detaches figures from one another, 
 by the colored light, which, enriching them with its 
 tints, will render its illusion more lively, its mirage 
 more charming. 
 
XII. 
 
 Chiaro 'scuro, whose object is not only to put 
 forms in relief, but to convey the sentiment 
 the painter wishes to express, is subject to the 
 requirements of moral beauty as well as the 
 laws of natural truth. 
 
 
 From the little we know of ancient painting, and 
 the little that remains to us of it, we may believe that 
 light and shadow became a means of expression only 
 in modern times. Under the influence of sculpture, 
 which among the Greeks was the dominant art, their 
 painting employed light and shade only for the im- 
 itation of projecting and reentering parts of the 
 figure. Philostratus, describing a figure of Venus, 
 said the goddess was going out of the picture as 
 if she wished to be pursued, and Pliny relates that 
 in the picture of Alexander as "Jupiter Tonans," 
 painted by Apelles, the fingers holding the thunder- 
 bolt seemed beyond the canvas. But it is not prob- 
 able that Greek painting used the poetry of light 
 and shadow to enhance the interest of the action 
 represented. Modeled one by one in the open air, 
 the figures of the Greek picture were, according to 
 all appearance, placed together like those of a bas- 
 relief; they did not form a whole having a significa- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 127 
 
 tion through the charm of mystery or the triumph of 
 brilliancy. It seems as if no trouble obscured the 
 serene souls of the ancient painters and that they 
 never suspected the expression of shadow. But after 
 the long sadnesses of Christianity, humanity would 
 one day awake with sentiments that antiquity never 
 knew, or at least that it has not manifested in its art; 
 melancholy, vague disquietude, the torments of su- 
 perstition, all the shadows of the heart. When 
 Greece rose again in Italy, when Athens called her- 
 self Florence, the ancient light reappeared, but 
 through the veil of the sombre Middle Ages ; then the 
 first of the great modern geniuses, Leonardo da 
 Vinci, brought into painting a new light, and, finding 
 the eloquence of the shadow, made it apparent that 
 chiaro 'scuro could express the depths of reverie as 
 well as those of space, and, with all the reliefs of the 
 body, all the emotions of the soul. 
 
 The moderns, not content with modeling sepa- 
 rately each figure, have invented the modeling of the 
 picture, that is to say, the treating it in its turn as a 
 single figure, as a single whole, having its broad 
 parts of clear, of brown, and of half-tints. Titian 
 justly, and like the master he was, compared the 
 chiaro 'scuro of a picture well lighted up by the 
 painter, to the effect of a bunch of grapes, of which 
 each particular grape offers on the side of the light, 
 its light, its shadow, and its reflection, while all 
 the grapes taken together present only a single large 
 mass of light sustained by a broad mass of shadow. 
 
128 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 This comparison leads us to the principle that governs 
 the theory of light and shadow. This principle is 
 unity ; that is the harmony of the representation to 
 the eye, and the harmony of the expression to the 
 thought, and in addition, the accord demanded by 
 sentiment between these two harmonies. 
 
 How much higher art is than nature when it 
 moves in its own domain — the beautiful. A tem- 
 pest may burst upon the ocean in full daylight, even 
 when the sun is shining brightly ; what artist would 
 paint it without making the sky overcast, without 
 adding the horror of the darkest clouds and the 
 menaces of night? Is it not an expressive role that 
 chiaro 'scuro plays in the " Shipwreck of the Med- 
 usa," traversed by that cold, pale light which glides 
 over the dying and the dead, while on the far-off hor- 
 izon a ray of hope furrows the sea ? Oftentimes it 
 happens that the sun shines upon catastrophes of 
 which it is ignorant. Should the painter imitate this 
 sublime indifference when he needs all the accumu- 
 lated resources of his art to move the soul ? "You 
 are far behind your age," said a philosopher to an 
 artist, " if you think it is without interest to know 
 what the weather was in Rome the day Cassar was 
 assassinated." The opposite of nature, which dis- 
 tributes by chance her poesies in the infinite of time 
 and space, painting has only a very limited space, 
 only a brief moment in which to move us. Hence 
 the laws of unity are imposed upon her, not as a 
 shackle, but as a sure means of redoubling her en- 
 ergy, her power. 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 129 
 
 The choice of his light must be left to the will of 
 the painter, but what treasures are contained in this 
 liberty, what variety it promises. Let us run through 
 the history of painters, or rather let us wander 
 through the Gallery of the Louvre : we shall see 
 that each of the great masters of painting has his 
 chosen light, his favorite hour, his torch. Leonardo 
 da Vinci preferred for his picture, as women do for 
 their beauty, the tempered light of the lamp, or the 
 twilight. It pleases him to play the music of chiaro 
 'scuro in a minor key and to let the sweet mystery of 
 a veil fall over his most brilliant conceptions, as in 
 that head of Mona Lisa, whose look fascinates us 
 behind the wealth of poetry that seems interposed 
 between her and us. " The face," he says, " acquires 
 a singular grace and beauty by the blending of light 
 and shadow. We see examples of it in persons 
 seated at the doorway of a dark house and lighted up 
 by a ray of the setting sun." 
 
 Rubens, the painter of external magnificence and 
 show, opening wide all his windows to the sun, will 
 dare to imitate its splendors. Rembrandt, on the 
 contrary, a dreamy soul, an interior man, chooses a 
 dark atelier into which he allows only a veiled light 
 to penetrate. The commonplace light of day dis- 
 pleases, vexes him, he lives at ease only in the inner 
 world of his thoughts, in the infinite melancholy and 
 depth of his half-tints, produced by fantastic rather 
 than natural light. He is lavish of shadows, he rep- 
 resents the stage of life as a half-obscure retreat, and 
 
13° 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 if the sun lights it up for an instant it will soon grow 
 pale and lose itself in the harmonious silence in 
 which it espouses the night. 
 
 An amorous and sad poet, Prud'hon, betrays his 
 preference for' softened shadows and pale lights. 
 By the light of the moon he shows the grace of his 
 elegy and the bitter pleasures of his grief; by her 
 rays he paints his most horrible tragedies, the death 
 of Abel and the death of Christ. 
 
 Others, like Elsheimer, Leonard Bramer, Hon- 
 thorst devote themselves to the imitation of artificial 
 light ; they look at nature only by the light of 
 torches, they love black night and they seek, in tra- 
 dition, all subjects, all dramas whose terror may be 
 redoubled by obscurity, for there is something pa- 
 thetic in the shadows when they weigh down grief. 
 Finally, there are found even in the bosom of our 
 bright and well-balanced French school, fantastic 
 geniuses, smitten with a love of extraordinary things, 
 who have illumined their pictures, or rather their vis- 
 ions, with phosphorescent lights, and in our own days, 
 Girodet, inspired by the poetry of Ossian, has evoked 
 the shades of French soldiers in the palaces inhab- 
 ited by the phantoms of Fingal and his followers, 
 and has presented there the great generals of the 
 Republic, Marceau, Kleber, Hoche, Desaix, Jour- 
 dan, and Dugommier, who, borne upon meteors, tear 
 with their spurs the shining fogs of the Scandina- 
 vian Olympus. 
 
 But the liberty of the painter is still more extended, 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 131 
 
 for, when he has chosen his medium of lighting, he 
 can suppose it narrow or wide, diffuse or concen- 
 trated, animated or cold. He can also direct the 
 lines of light so as to heighten visible beauty, and in 
 accordance with the sentiment his painting ought to 
 express. 
 
 If he wishes to produce a startling effect and give 
 the spectator the idea of an energetic relief, he will 
 narrow the opening by which the light enters, and 
 let it fall upon certain sides of the picture whose pro- 
 jection is then enhanced by well-defined shadows. 
 He thus obtains positive distances, plainly marked 
 after the manner of Caravaggio, Ribera, Valentin, at 
 the risk of falling, like these masters, into the opaque- 
 ness of black, and of taking from the flesh-tints their 
 natural aspect by giving them the appearance of 
 plaster, or of leather yellow and hard, that does not 
 allow either the color or the circulation of the blood 
 to appear. 
 
 If he wishes to represent scenes that must 
 have passed in the open air, he will, like Veronese 
 and Rubens, choose a broad abundant light, of a 
 nature to procure bright, gay masses sufficiently 
 sustained by half-obscure backgrounds. It is not 
 only to brilliant and pompous spectacles, like 
 the " Marriage at Cana " or the " Coronation of 
 Marie de Medicis," that a diffused and generous 
 light is befitting, it suits any vast composition, 
 whether destined to decorate a wall or to form a pic- 
 ture by itself, which would be intolerable if sad, 
 
132 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 stifled by the extent of its shadows, especially if these 
 were strongly marked. It is not probable that large 
 spaces would be illuminated by a prison light. Leo- 
 nardo da Vinci says :" Universal light gives more 
 grace to figures than a particular and small light, 
 because broad and powerful lights surround and 
 embrace the relief of bodies, so that the works they 
 light up unfold themselves from a distance and with 
 grace, while those that have been painted under a 
 narrow luminary take, an immense amount of shad- 
 ow, and at a distance seem like a flat painting." 
 
 From this apt observation it results that easel pic- 
 tures are the only ones in which one can be sparing 
 of light, because the spectator, before looking at them 
 near at hand, discovers in them depths which at a 
 distance would resolve themselves into a mass of 
 black. Those who have visited the Museum of the 
 Louvre have noticed two small pictures of Rem- 
 brandt — the " Philosophers." Each represents an 
 old man meditating, in a subterranean chamber that 
 receives, by a sort of air hole, a little light, which 
 with difficulty traverses the dust-covered glass, oozes 
 along the walls, crawls on the ground, vaguely indi- 
 cates the form of the old man and loses itself in the 
 night of the cavern. It is impossible to express bet- 
 ter by the magic alone of light and shadow the tran- 
 quil melancholy and the silence of a solitary reverie. 
 If we suppose Rembrandt to have painted his " Phi- 
 losophers " life size, upon a canvas five or six yards 
 long, we shall feel at once that these shadowy masses 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 133 
 
 would have lost all poetry and we should have two 
 monstrous, almost ridiculous pictures, instead of the 
 two diamonds of sombre painting. Rembrandt, it is 
 true, in his famous " Night Watch," which is a large 
 canvas, has given much extent and importance to his 
 shadows ; but he has taken care not to fall into the 
 ink-tones of Caravaggio and Ribera, and his shadows, 
 although embrowned by time, still preserve a beauti- 
 ful transparency ; they are, as it were, steeped in a 
 light that slumbers in mystery like a secret and far- 
 off reminiscence of the sun. 
 
 What shall be the angle of incidence of the chosen 
 light? Shall it come from above, from below, or 
 from the side ? Shall we suppose it placed opposite 
 the picture or behind it ? 
 
 Winckelmann, in his " Remarks upon the Architec- 
 ture of the Ancients," relates that the young girls of 
 Rome, after they have been promised in marriage, are 
 seen by their lovers for the first time in public, in the 
 Rotunda of the Pantheon, because the light enters 
 there by a single opening in the roof, and the light 
 from above is most favorable to beauty. Women 
 here are the best judges and from their decision 
 there is no appeal. Man being the only one among 
 living beings, to whom the upright attitude is natu- 
 ral, it is fitting he should receive the light from 
 above, as this enhances all the graces of the human 
 figure, of which height is the dominant dimension. 
 The contrary is true of the scenes of nature. The 
 mountains, the hills, the trees, the rivers, the ravines 
 
134 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 and the other accidents of the landscape, lose a pari 
 of their character and their form when lighted per- 
 pendicularly. Thus, a field is never more interest- 
 ing for a landscapist than when it is traversed ob- 
 liquely, almost horizontally, by the rays of the rising 
 or the setting sun. 
 
 In a gallery whose openings are made on the slope 
 of the roof, statues produce the most agreeable effect 
 and have the most dignity. A sheet of light extend- 
 ing itself over the breast enlarges it visibly, effaces the 
 lower part of the ribs, lessens the projection of the 
 abdomen, but it is the human head above all which 
 under the light from above reveals all its beauties. 
 The eyebrows become more prominent, the eyes 
 more brilliant under the dark cavity hollowed by the 
 arch of the brows, the cheek-bones slightly raised, the 
 nose simplified and lengthened, marked by a lumi- 
 nous line that supports the shadow thrown where 
 the black of the nostrils is softened and lost. Finally, 
 unless it is absolutely perpendicular, the ray lights 
 up the lower lip, models the chin, and leaving in 
 shadow the setting of the neck, forms of it a dark 
 column that supports the clear mass of the face. 
 
 Let the light come from below, all this beautiful 
 order is overthrown. Who is not vexed to see the 
 actresses of our theatres disfigure themselves by the 
 glare of the foot-lights ? How often is the play of 
 the features falsified by this unnatural lighting, which 
 casting a shadow upward from the cheek-bones, lends 
 the face an equivocal expression of sorrow or malice. 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 135 
 
 It is noticeable that the monuments of antiquity 
 cease to have all their significance when lighted hor- 
 izontally, still more if from below, because the pro- 
 files of the capitals, the window-casings, the cornices, 
 have been constructed with reference to the falling 
 of water from the sky and the perpendicularity of the 
 light, and the architect foresaw their shadow below, 
 not above. Upon the monuments, as upon the hu- 
 man face, if the light strike full in front and in a way 
 to swallow up the shadows, it flattens what it ought 
 to put in relief. But if it come from the side or from 
 behind, so that objects are more or less interposed be- 
 tween the light and the spectator, it may furnish 
 piquant and unexpected effects, whose employment is 
 not forbidden by good taste, if it is not by verisimil- 
 itude. Unfortunately these singularities always excite 
 a mania for imitation. We remember a time in which 
 certain romanticists, running after a facile originality, 
 multiplied pictures lighted from below, and encircling 
 with a luminous band figures sometimes transparent, 
 sometimes dark, made them resemble living lanterns 
 or mulattoes with snow on their shoulders. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci says we should place a light 
 background in contrast to a shadow and a dark 
 background to a mass of light, and it is a general 
 principle, a precept not to be attacked. There are 
 colorists, however, who have thought to enhance the 
 harmony of their pictures by uniting the brown of 
 their figures to those of the background, and by 
 accompanying the half-lights of the background with 
 
12,6 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 the full light of the figures. But those are secrets 
 beyond elementary instruction. He who possessed 
 them in fullest measure was Correggio. He has 
 drawn from them a voluptuous sweetness, which 
 caresses the eye, softens the air, amplifies nature, un- 
 bends the mind, and adds a sentiment of happiness 
 to the spectacles of life. When he has placed in his 
 picture a broad, dominant light, he takes care to fol- 
 low it by a half-tint ; and if he wishes to return to a 
 brilliant light in a smaller space, he does not pass at 
 once to the degree of tone he had left, but leads our 
 eyes to it by insensible steps, so that the sight of the 
 spectator, according to the observation of Mengs, is 
 awakened as a sleeper is drawn from slumber by the 
 sound of an agreeable instrument, an awakening that 
 resembles enchantment rather than interrupted repose. 
 " During my sojourn in Venice," said Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds, " I employed the following method to util- 
 ize the principles of the Venetian masters. When I 
 noticed an extraordinary effect of light and shadow in 
 one of their pictures, I took a leaf from my note-book, 
 covered all parts of it with black pencil marks, ob- 
 serving the same order and the same shading as in 
 the picture, letting the white paper represent the 
 light. After a few trials I found the paper was al- 
 ways covered with nearly similar masses. It seemed 
 to me, finally, that the general practice of these mas- 
 ters was to give no more than a quarter of the pic- 
 ture to the light, including the principal and second- 
 ary lights, another quarter to shadow, and to reserve 
 the rest for the half-tints. 
 
FAINTING. 
 
 137 
 
 Holding a paper thus pencilled in masses at some 
 distance from the eye one will be surprised at the 
 manner in which it will strike him ; he will expe- 
 rience the pleasure that an excellent distribution of 
 light and shadow causes, although he may not dis- 
 cern if what he sees be a historical subject, a land- 
 scape, a portrait, or a representation of still-life, for 
 the same principles cover all branches of art." 
 
 That the mass of half-tints should occupy half the 
 space to be covered, that the light and shadow should 
 divide the other half is a happy solution and desirable 
 as a satisfaction to the eye. Following the example 
 of the Venetians, and upon the faith of an eminent 
 painter, who was also a man of superior intelligence, 
 we may adopt it. It needed nothing less than the 
 genius of Rembrandt to change these relations and to 
 limit the field of light to an eighth of the space. He 
 who thinks only of pleasing the eye could not in- 
 dulge in such economy of light, he must pay too 
 dearly for the piquancy of the effect. But Rem- 
 brandt, who always addressed the eyes of the soul, 
 could darken his picture to enhance its moral ex- 
 pression and sacrifice the external gaiety of the spec- 
 tacle to the profounder poetry of the thought. In 
 the absence of such poetry the abundance of black 
 would only sadden and discourage the beholder. 
 
 Bolder than the Venetians, and animated by a 
 genius the opposite of that of Rembrandt, Rubens, 
 in his pictures, has assigned to the light about a 
 third of the surface to be covered. Hence that mag- 
 
138 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 nificence, that seductive pomp, bright and facile, 
 which so enchants us we desire to see the scenes he 
 has represented, to plunge in the waters in which his 
 Nereids bathe, to walk in the palaces he has built for 
 his heroes, and which arc open to his gods. But in 
 pictures so generously illuminated, the effect must be 
 sustained by the variety and quality of the colors. 
 The brilliancy Rubens has attained does not depend 
 upon the vigor of dark masses, but upon this, he has 
 exalted his light without giving more energy to his 
 shadows. It was of Rubens Montabert was thinking: 
 when in his " Traite de Peinture" he says: "Every 
 day we admire the dazzling flesh-tints of certain chil- 
 dren upon whom the light falls in a striking manner 
 in the streets, in the open air, in full sunlight; this 
 brilliant light does not throw on their fresh heads 
 any dark, heavy shadow; all is clear, rounded, and in 
 strong relief, all is tender and fresh, yet nothing too 
 soft, too undecided. To imitate such effects the 
 painter must double the brilliancy of his light and 
 not increase the depth of his shadows." 
 
 Whatever may be the division of light and 
 shade, its optical beauty is under the sovereign 
 law of unity. That is to say, the picture must not 
 offer two light masses of equal intensity, nor two 
 dark masses of equal vigor. The sure means of 
 destroying the effect of a light or the value of a 
 shade, is to assimilate to it a second luminous or 
 dark mass. It is moreover evident that to interest, 
 every picturesque spectacle ought to present one 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 1 39 
 
 dominant point of light in the mass of light, and 
 one dominant dark point in the mass of shade, 
 without which the attention is divided, the uncertain 
 look is wearied, the interest lost. Look, for instance, 
 at a bust portrait of Rubens or Van Dyck, if the 
 figure is dressed in black and wears a hat, the dark 
 mass of the hat will be less in volume than that of 
 the coat, if the two browns should balance each other 
 in size, the portrait would be intolerable, the equi- 
 librium of the whole destroyed by the equilibrium of 
 the blacks. If the model wears his own hair, his 
 head will form the dominant light, and if a hand is 
 visible, it will not be so light as the face ; if the hand 
 hold a glove, that hand and glove may not form a 
 mass equal to the head in size, the glove should be 
 represented of chamois leather, of a neutral tint, like 
 those of Titian and Velasquez ; or should be soiled 
 that the second light may not be so prominent as the 
 first. 
 
 By " the unity of chiaro 'scuro " we must under- 
 stand, there will be one principal mass of light, one 
 dominant mass of brown, because all rivalry would 
 produce a conflict of equivalent forces that would 
 disconcert the eyes and hold in suspense the desired 
 impression. In the picture, as in nature, the light 
 ought to be one, but not tcnzque. When the sun illu- 
 minates creation, its rays mirrored by the waters, re- 
 flected by the clouds, themselves call forth secondary 
 lights which enhance the brilliancy of the orb and 
 form a cortege for his triumph. So, after sunset, the 
 
140 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 planets, at the infinite distance at which we perceive 
 them in the firmament, shine like luminous points 
 that modestly accompany the torch of night, and 
 augment its lustre by their far-off scintillations. 
 
 For the moral expression of the picture two foci of 
 light, of which one is subordinate to the other, some- 
 times produce a touching and marvelous effect. A 
 proof that light and shade have as much affinity with 
 the soul as with the sight, is that the French, guided 
 by the mind rather than by temperament, are of all 
 painters, Rembrandt excepted, those who have best 
 understood the eloquence of chiaro 'scuro. How 
 beautiful we should think the " Clytemnestre " of 
 Guerin, were it the work of a foreign artist ! What 
 fascination in the light of the lamp that falls upon 
 the sleeping Agamemnon, and which, intercepted by 
 a purple curtain, has already taken the hue of blood! 
 What a touching contrast between the two figures of 
 Esnstheus and Clvtemnestra, the fever of their crime 
 in that sinister half-tint, and the profound peace of 
 the sleeping hero, represented to the eye by the quiet 
 moonlight shining upon an inner court of the palace 
 of Argos. ... It is remarkable that a School that is 
 thought to disdain the resources of chiaro 'scuro and 
 of color, has produced the sleeping " Endymion," ca- 
 ressed by the rays of an invisible goddess, that Prud- 
 'hon never wearied of admiring, and the " Virgil 
 reading the yEneid," in which Granet has found an 
 effect so tragic in the image of Marcellus rising like a 
 spectre evoked by the poet and projecting upon the 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 141 
 
 wall a shadow, colossal and indistinct, the shadow of 
 a phantom. 
 
 But we must confess it was reserved for Rembrandt 
 to fathom the mysteries of chiaro-'scuro. "He is 
 the clair-obscuriste par excellence" said David to his 
 pupil, Auguste Couder. In truth, how many things 
 he has expressed by the play of light and shadow, 
 this great painter of foggy Holland, whether he rep- 
 resents Christ resuscitating Lazarus, by causing the 
 light of life to shine in the tomb, or appearing to the 
 Magdalen as a luminous body about to melt and 
 vanish in the divine essence, or the angel flying in a 
 miraculous light from the family of Tobias, or in the 
 humble home of a carpenter, where a mother is suck- 
 ling her child, letting fall a ray from heaven which 
 suddenly announces to us that this mother is a Vir- 
 gin, and her child promises us a God ! 
 
 There is a composition by Rembrandt in which 
 light plays a sublime role. It is a thought rapidly 
 written, a sketch washed in with bistre for the pic- 
 ture of the "Supper at Emmaus." The two dis- 
 ciples, at table with Jesus Christ, have seen him sud- 
 denly disappear from before them and are seized 
 with religious terror, for in the place where they had 
 just heard his voice and broken bread with him, they 
 see a supernatural light that has replaced the van- 
 ished God. 
 
 The painter who has imitated the conflict of day 
 and night has still to imitate the presence of air and 
 the depths of space. The perspective that changes 
 
142 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 the lines, changes also the tones, and as a noise 
 grows feebler by distance and ends in silence, so 
 shadows and lights, in proportion to their distance 
 
 THE SUPPER AT KMMAUS. BY RKMBRANnT. 
 
 from the eye, undergo a perceptible diminution, and 
 at a great distance are neither light nor shadow, they 
 vanish in the tone of the air. Leonardo da Vinci has 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 H3 
 
 proved, by a geometrical figure, that this diminution 
 can be measured. We may, moreover, observe the 
 phenomenon at the entrance of a long gallery, equally 
 lighted in its whole extent, and sustained by columns 
 or ornamented with statues at equal distances from 
 each other. If the spectator places himself so as to 
 see all the statues detached from each other, he will 
 perceive that the second is less brilliant than the 
 first, and the third than the second, and so on. On 
 the other hand the shadows that were strong on the 
 first are softened upon the second, and are less and 
 less strongly marked from one to another to the last 
 statue, which is, at the same time, the least luminous 
 and the least shaded, consequently the most indis- 
 tinctly seen. It is needless to add that at equal 
 distances this weakening of tone becomes more ap- 
 parent in a thick and vaporous than in a pure atmos- 
 phere. But such a diminution in painting is not the 
 result solely of the lessening of the lights and the 
 softening of the shadows ; it is obtained by the char- 
 acter of the execution, the touch. Objects advance 
 or retreat not only on account of their light or their 
 darkness, but also, and above all, through the pre- 
 cision or vagueness with which the painter shows 
 them to us, that is to say, through the strength or 
 the weakness of the touch, for it may chance that a 
 distance is light and yet remains distant, as it also 
 may happen that the darkest objects are nearest the 
 frame. These vigorous masses that painters some- 
 times put in the foreground, — they would be better 
 in the middle-distance, — are called repoussoirs, be- 
 
144 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 cause their aim is to make the far-off objects seem 
 farther. To render the distances of his landscape 
 more luminous. Claude Lorraine took care to place 
 in the foreground tufted trees with dark foliage, or 
 ruins of vigorous tone, which, in his picture, serve the 
 same purpose that side-scenes do for the stage of a 
 theatre. Provided they are not awkwardly employed, 
 and the painter knows how to give them an appear- 
 ance of reality, these masses may be a useful re- 
 source and even a necessary artifice when the wish 
 is to heighten the distance and to simulate a vast 
 horizon. In the portrait at the Louvre of the 
 " Young man dressed in black," that so long bore 
 the name of Raphael, but is now attributed to Fran- 
 cia, in this portrait with an expression so grave, so 
 penetrating, and so sad, I was about to say poignant, 
 the whole bust forms, by the depth of its shadows, an 
 admirable repoussoir, behind which, vanishing out of 
 sight, is a landscape that fascinates the look and the 
 thought of the spectator, when, after contemplating 
 the sad reverie of this young man he turns to the 
 calmness of nature. 
 
 Thus chiaro 'scuro contains a beauty that alone 
 might almost suffice to painting, for it suffices to the 
 relief of the body and expresses the poetry of the 
 soul. But what marvels this great art will produce, 
 when the painter, decomposing the light, shall have 
 drawn from it an infinite variety of tints, to clothe 
 with them the unity of his chiaro 'scuro, when, 
 filially, he shall have found his color-box in a sun- 
 beam ! 
 
XIII. 
 
 Color being that which especially distin- 
 guishes PAINTING FROM THE OTHER ARTS, IT IS IN- 
 DISPENSABLE TO THE PAINTER TO KNOW ITS LAWS, SO 
 FAR AS THESE ARE ESSENTIAL AND ABSOLUTE. 
 
 If there is affinity between chiaro scuro and sen- 
 timent, much more is there between sentiment and 
 color, since color is only the different shades of 
 chiaro 'scuro. 
 
 Supposing the painter had only ideas to express, 
 he would perhaps need only drawing and the mono- 
 chrome of chiaro 'scuro, for with them he can repre- 
 sent the only figure that thinks, — the human figure, 
 which is the chef cCceuvre of a designer rather than 
 the work of a colorist. With drawing and chiaro 
 'scuro he can also put in relief all that depends upon 
 intelligent life, that is life in its relation to other 
 lives, but there are features of organic, of interior 
 and individual life that could not be manifested with- 
 out color. How for instance without color give, 
 in the expression of a young girl, that shade of 
 trouble or sadness so well expressed by the pallor of 
 the brow, or the emotion of modesty that makes her 
 blush ? Here we recognize the power of color, and 
 
146 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 that its role is to tell us what agitates the heart, 
 while drawing shows us what passes in the mind, a 
 new proof of what we affirmed at the beginning of 
 this work, that drawing is the masculine side of art, 
 color the feminine. 
 
 As sentiment is multiple, while reason is one, so 
 color is a mobile, vague, intangible element, while 
 form, on the contrary, is precise, limited, palpable 
 and constant. But in the material creation there 
 are substances of which drawing can give no idea ; 
 there are bodies whose distinctive characteristic is in 
 color, like precious stones. If the pencil can put a 
 rose under the eye, it is powerless to make us rec- 
 ognize a turquoise or a ruby, the color of the sky 
 or the tint of a cloud. Color is par excellence, the 
 means of expression, when we would paint the sen- 
 sations given us by inorganic matter and the senti- 
 ments awakened in the mind thereby. We must, 
 then, add to chiaro 'scuro, which is only the external 
 effect of white light, the effect of color, which is, as it 
 were, the interior of this light. 
 
 We hear it repeated every day, and we read in 
 books that color is a gift of heaven ; that it is an im- 
 penetrable arcanum to him who has not received its 
 secret influence ; that one learns to be a draughtsman 
 but one is born a colorist, — nothing is falser than 
 these adages ; for not only can color, which is under 
 fixed laws, be taught like music, but it is easier to 
 learn than drawing, whose absolute principles can- 
 not be taught. Thus we see that great designers are 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 H7 
 
 as rare, even rarer than great colorists. From time 
 immemorial the Chinese have known and fixed the 
 laws of color, and the tradition of those laws, trans- 
 mitted from generation to generation down to our 
 own days, spread throughout Asia, and perpetuated 
 itself so well that all oriental artists are infallible col- 
 orists, since we never find a false note in the web of 
 their colors. But would this infallibility be possible 
 if it were not engendered by certain and invariable 
 principles ? 
 
 What, then, is color ? 
 
 Before replying, let us take a look at creation. Be- 
 holding the infinite variety of human and animal 
 forms, man conceives an ideal perfection of each 
 form ; he seeks to seize the primitive exemplar, or at 
 least, to approach it nearer and nearer, but this con- 
 ception is a sublime effort of his intelligence, and if, 
 at times, the soul believes it has an obscure souvenir 
 of original beauty, this fugitive memory passes like a 
 dream, and the perfect form that issued from the 
 hand of God is unknown to us ; remains always 
 veiled from our eyes. It is not so with color, and it 
 would seem as if the eternal colorist had been less 
 jealous of his secret than the eternal designer, for he 
 has shown us the ideal of color in the rainbow, in 
 which we see, in sympathetic gradation, but also in 
 mysterious promiscuity, the mother-tints that engen- 
 der the universal harmony of colors. 
 
 Whether we observe the iris, or look at the soap- 
 bubbles with which children amuse themselves, or, 
 
148 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 renewing the experiment of Newton, use a triangular 
 prism of crystal to analyze a ray of light, we see a 
 luminous spectrum composed of six rays differently 
 colored, violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red. 
 How do these colors strike the eye? As sounds do 
 the ear. As each sound echoes in modulating itself 
 upon itself and passes, by vibrations of equal length, 
 from fullness to a murmur, and from a murmur to 
 silence, so each color seen in the solar spectrum has 
 its maximum and minimum of intensity ; it begins 
 with its lightest shade and ends with its darkest. 
 
 Newton saw seven colors in the prism, doubtless 
 to find a poetical analogy with the seven notes of 
 music ; he has arbitrarily introduced, under the 
 name of indigo, a seventh color which is only a 
 shade of blue. It is a license that even the greatness 
 of his genius cannot excuse. These seven colors 
 he called primitive; but in reality there are only 
 three primitive colors. We cannot put in the same 
 rank yellow, red, and blue, which are simple colors, 
 and violet, green, and orange, which are composite 
 colors, because we can produce them by combining 
 two by two the first three, the orange, by mixing yel- 
 low and red, the green, from yellow and blue, the 
 violet, from blue and red. 
 
 Antiquity, which did not wait till Newton's day, to 
 observe the colored light of the iris, admitted only 
 three as truly mother-colors, and the evidence of 
 truth forces us to-day to return to the principle of 
 the ancients, and to say, there are three primary 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 149 
 
 colors, yellow, reel, blue, and three composite or bi- 
 nary colors, — orange, green, violet. In the intervals 
 that separate them, are placed the intermediate 
 shades whose variety is infinite, and which are like 
 the sharps of color which precede, and the flats 
 which follow them. 
 
 Separated, these colors and these shades enable us 
 to distinguish and recognize all the objects of cre- 
 ation. Reunited they give us the idea of white. 
 White light is the union of all colors, all are con- 
 tained and latent in it. 
 
 This composition of white light once known, we 
 can define color. It is the property all bodies have 
 of reflecting certain rays of light, and absorbing all 
 others. The jonquil is yellow, because it reflects the 
 yellow rays and absorbs the red and blue. The ori- 
 ental poppy is scarlet, because it reflects only the red 
 rays and absorbs the blue and yellow. If the lily is 
 white, it is because, absorbing no ray, it reflects all, 
 and a body is black because absorbing all rays, it re- 
 flects none. White and black, properly speaking, 
 are not colors, but may be considered as the extreme 
 terms of the chromatic scale. 
 
 W T hite light containing the three elementary and 
 generative colors, yellow, red, and blue, each of these 
 colors serves as a complement to the other two to 
 form the equivalent of white light. We call comple- 
 mentary each of the three primitive colors, with ref- 
 erence to the binary color that corresponds to it. 
 Thus blue is the complement of orange, because 
 
i5o 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 orange being composed of yellow and red, contains 
 the necessary elements to constitute white light. 
 For the same reason yellow is the complement of 
 violet, and red of green, Reciprocally each of the 
 mixed colors, produced by the union of two primitive 
 colors, is the complement of the primitive color not 
 employed in the mixture ; thus orange is the comple- 
 ment of blue, because blue does not enter into the 
 mixture that produces it. 
 
 Law of complementary colors. If we combine 
 two of the primary colors, yellow and blue, for in- 
 stance, to compose a binary color, green, this binary 
 color will reach its maximum of intensity if we place 
 it near its complement — red. So, if we combine 
 yellow and red to form orange, this binary color will be 
 heightened by the neighborhood of blue. Finally, if 
 we combine red and blue to form violet, this color 
 will be heightened by the immediate neighborhood 
 of yellow. Reciprocally, the red placed beside the 
 green will seem redder ; the orange will heighten the 
 blue, and the violet the yellow. It is the reciprocal 
 heightening of complementary colors in juxtaposi- 
 tion that M. Chevreul called " The law of simulta- 
 neous contrast of colors? 
 
 But these same colors that heighten each other by 
 juxtaposition, destroy each other by mixture. If you 
 place red and green in equal quantities and of equal 
 intensity upon each other, there will remain only a 
 colorless grey. The same effect will be produced if 
 you mingle, in a state of equilibrium, blue and 
 
YELLOW. 
 
 Orange. 
 
 Nasturtium. 
 
 RED 
 
 Saffron 
 
 Sulphur. 
 
 Crf.en. 
 
 Turquoise. 
 
 BLUE. 
 
 Campanula. 
 
 Violet. 
 
 See Frontispiece for colored diagram. 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 153 
 
 orange, or violet and yellow. This annihilation of 
 colors is called achromatism. 
 
 Achromatism is also produced if we mingle in 
 equal quantities, the three primitive colors, yellow, 
 red, blue. If we pass a ray of light across three cells 
 of glass filled with three liquids, yellow, red, blue, the 
 ray that has traversed them will pass out perfectly 
 achromatic, that is colorless. This second phenom- 
 enon does not differ from the first, for if the blue 
 destroys the orange, it is because the orange con- 
 tains the two other primary colors, yellow and red ; 
 ' and if the yellow annihilates the violet, it is because 
 the violet contains the two other primary colors, red 
 and blue. Thus we see how just is the expression, 
 friendly and hostile colors, since the complementaries 
 triumphantly sustain or utterly destroy each other. 
 
 To enable one to recall this phenomenon it is in- 
 dispensable to the reader to form a chromatic rose 
 or to have present to the mind that of which we 
 give a drawing accompanied by a colored engrav- 
 ing. 1 
 
 At the angles of the upright triangle are the three 
 primary colors, yellow, red, blue ; at the angles of 
 the reversed triangle, the binary colors, orange, 
 green, and violet ; between these six colors combined 
 
 1 This rose of colors is a mnemonic image. It in some sort renders 
 visible the law of complementaries, and expresses its truths. If we 
 divide the circumference into 360 we see clearly that each of the per- 
 fect binary colors is equally distant from the two primaries that com- 
 pose it. Thus orange is 6o° from the yellow and 6o° from the red. 
 We see also where the domain of the six colors be<rins and ends. 
 
154 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 two by two are placed the intermediate shades ; sul- 
 phur, turquoise, campanula, garnet, nasturtium, saf- 
 fron. 
 
 YELLOW. 
 Sulphur. A\ Saffron. 
 
 Green. / ■■ .^ W V ■ ■-■■\ Oraxce. 
 
 Turquoise. 
 
 BLUE. 
 
 Nasturtium. 
 
 RED. 
 
 Campanula 
 
 Garnet. 
 
 Violet. 
 
 Observe ; if we choose in this rose three colored 
 points, that form an equilateral triangle, the colors 
 situated at these three points will have all the prop- 
 erties of the complementaries. Let us take, for in- 
 stance, the sulphur, nasturtium, and campanula; these 
 three tints, being placed at the angles of an equilate- 
 ral triangle, will be perfectly achromatic, that is, 
 united in equilibrium, they will absolutely destroy 
 each other, while if we place together the sulphur 
 and the garnet which is exactly opposite it, they will 
 reciprocally heighten each other, because they are 
 complements each of the other. 
 
 But the complementary colors have other virtues 
 not less marvellous than those of mutually heighten- 
 ing and destroying each other. " To put a color 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 !55 
 
 upon canvas," says Chevreul, " is not merely to 
 tint with this color all that the pencil has touched, it 
 is also to color with its complement the surrounding 
 space ; thus a red circle is surrounded by a light 
 green aureole, less and less strongly marked accord- 
 ing to its distance from the red ; an orange circle is 
 surrounded by a blue aureole, a yellow circle by a 
 violet, and reciprocally." 
 
 This had already been noticed by Goethe and by 
 Eugene Delacroix. Eckermann relates (" Conversa- 
 tions de Goethe"), " that walking in a garden with 
 the philosopher, upon an April day, as they were 
 looking at the yellow crocuses which were in full 
 flower, they noticed that turning their eyes to the 
 ground, they saw violet spots." At the same epoch, 
 Eugene Delacroix., occupied one day in painting yel- 
 low drapery, tried in vain to give it the desired bril- 
 liancy and said to himself: " How did Rubens and 
 Veronese find such brilliant and beautiful yellows ? " 
 He resolved to go to the Louvre, and ordered a car- 
 riage. It was in 1830, when there were in Paris 
 many cabs painted canary color; one of these was 
 brought to him. About to step into it, Delacroix 
 stopped short, observing to his great surprise that the 
 yellow of the carriage produced violet in the shadows. 
 He dismissed the coachman, entered his studio full 
 of emotion, and applied at once the law he had just 
 discovered, that is, that the shadow is always slightly 
 tinged with the complement of the color, a phenom- 
 enon that becomes apparent when the light of the 
 
156 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 sun is not too strong, and " our eyes," as Goethe 
 says " rest upon a fitting background to bring out 
 the complementary color." 
 
 Is this color produced by the eye ? It is not for 
 us to decide ; but it is certain that in going out of a 
 chamber hung with blue, for instance, for some mo- 
 ments we see objects tinted with orange. " Let us 
 suppose," says Monge (" Geometrie Descriptive"), that 
 we are in an apartment exposed to the sun, whose win- 
 dows are covered with red curtains ; if in the curtain 
 there is a hole three or four lines in diameter, and a 
 white paper be held at a little distance to receive the 
 rays of light that pass through this hole, these rays 
 will make a green spot upon the paper; if the cur- 
 tains were green the spot would be red." 
 
 Monge does not give the reason of the phenome- 
 non. I believe it is, that our eye being made for white 
 light, needs to complete it when it receives only a 
 part. To a man who perceives only red rays, what 
 is necessary to complete the white light? Yellow 
 and blue; but these are both contained in green. It 
 is green then that will reestablish the equilibrium 
 of the light in an eye wearied by red rays. 
 
 From having known these laws, studied them pro- 
 foundly, after having intuitively divined them, Eu- 
 gene Delacroix became one of the greatest colorists 
 of modern times, one might even say the greatest, for 
 he surpassed all others, not only in the aesthetic lan- 
 guage of his coloring, but in the prodigious variety 
 of his motives and the orchestration of his colors. 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 ^57 
 
 Like a singer endowed with the whole register of the 
 human voice, he has widened the limits of painting 
 by adding new expressions to the language of art. 
 
 Again, if we mix two complementary colors in un- 
 equal proportions, they will partially destroy each 
 other, and we shall have a broken tone that will be a 
 shade of grey. Make, for instance, a mixture in 
 which there shall be ten parts yellow and eight vio- 
 let; there will be destruction of color or achromat- 
 ism for eight tenths, but the other two tenths will 
 form a grey shaded with yellow, because there was 
 excess of yellow in the mixture. Thus are formed 
 all the innumerable varieties of color that we call 
 lowered tones, as if nature employed for her ternary 
 colorations the destruction of color, as she uses death 
 to maintain life. 
 
 The law of complementary colors once known, 
 with what certainty the painter will proceed whether 
 he wishes to attain brilliancy of color, to temper his 
 harmony or to make it striking by abruptly bringing 
 together tints that suit the expression of a warlike or 
 tragic scene. Suppose it is necessary to lower a 
 vivid vermilion, the artist learned in the laws of color, 
 instead of softening by soiling it at hazard, will lower 
 it by the addition of blue, and thus will follow the 
 path of nature. 
 
 But without even touching a color, one can 
 strengthen, sustain, lower, almost neutralize it, by 
 working upon its neighbor. If we place in juxtapo- 
 sition two similars in a pure state, but of different de- 
 
i.sB 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 grees of energ)', as dark red and light red, we shall 
 obtain a contrast by the difference of intensity and 
 a harmony by the similitude of tints. If we bring 
 together two similars, one pure, the other broken, for 
 instance, pure blue and grey blue, there will result 
 another kind of contrast that will be moderated by 
 resemblance. The moment colors are not to be em- 
 ployed in equal quantities, nor of equal intensity, the 
 artist is free, but within the limits of infallible laws. 
 He must try his doses, must distribute to his tints 
 their places and roles, calculate the extent he will give 
 them, and make, as it were, a secret rehearsal of the 
 drama his coloring will form. He must employ the 
 resources of white and black, foresee the optical mix- 
 ture, know the vibration of the colors, and finally 
 take care of the effect the diversely colored light is 
 to produce, according as it is of the morning or the 
 evening, from the North or the South. 
 
 White and Black. Two centuries before Newton, 
 Leonardo da Vinci wrote, " White is not a color by 
 itself, it contains all colors." White, in truth, is never 
 whiter, that is more perfect, than when it reflects the 
 most light and is absolutely colorless. Of black 
 there are several kinds : negative black, that pro- 
 duced by the thickest shades of night; black by in- 
 tensity, that produced by a primary color at its high- 
 est degree of concentration. Suppose three cylin- 
 ders of glass filled with the most concentrated yellow, 
 the darkest blue, the most intense red ; each of these 
 three primary colors will give the notion of black. 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 159 
 
 But if you mix white with this black, the quality yel- 
 low, red, or blue of the color in the cylinder will re- 
 appear, and the coloration will become more brilliant 
 in proportion as you increase the quantity of white, 
 in other terms, the quantity of light, — normal black 
 is formed by the mingling of the three primary col- 
 ors, in a state of equilibrium, and at their maximum 
 of intensity, a mixture that produces, as we have seen, 
 achromatism. " The richer the colors are in color- 
 ing principles," says Charles Bourgeois (" Manuel d' 
 Optique experimental "), " the more obscure is the 
 achromatism." As the least excess of yellow, red, or 
 blue suffices to shade the achromatism, the painter in 
 composing his black may leave in it an impercept- 
 ible coloration, in view of the effect he wishes to ob- 
 tain. But freed from all shade, in a pure state, black 
 is no more a color than white. 
 
 What, then, will be the effect of black and white 
 in painting ? 
 
 If the coloring of the picture is of extreme magnif- 
 icence and of great variety, the white and black — 
 whether in pure state or as grey — acting as non 
 colors will serve to rest the eye, to refresh it, by 
 moderating the dazzling brilliancy of the whole rep- 
 resentation. But applied against a particular color 
 the white heightens, the black lowers it. Why ? 
 Because a red, for instance, is less luminous the red- 
 der it is, if we place white near it becomes compara- 
 tively less light, consequently redder. On the con- 
 trary, if you place black beside the red, the latter will 
 
i6o 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 seem less red ; for all that a color gains in light it 
 loses in energy. The proof is that by force of light it 
 would vanish in white, as by force of vigor and con- 
 centration it would resolve itself into black. One 
 more example. Let us take cinnabar, a substance 
 composed of sulphur and mercury, from which we 
 obtain the brilliant red used in glass painting. The 
 ore is a dull red, but as it is broken it acquires 
 more surface, and penetrated by the white of the 
 light loses the dull, dark color, and when reduced 
 to an impalpable powder, becomes of a brilliant 
 scarlet — vermilion. 
 
 Independent of these actions and reactions, — I 
 say reaction because every color put beside white or 
 black tints them slightly with its complement, — 
 black and white have an' aesthetic value, a value of 
 sentiment. Thus the spot of white upon the mantle 
 of Virgil in Delacroix' " Barque du Dante," is a ter- 
 rible lighting up in the midst of the darkness ; it 
 shines like the lightning that furrows the tempest. 
 At other times this powerful colorist uses white to 
 correct the contiguity of two colors like red and blue. 
 In one of the pendentives that so magnificently dec- 
 orate the Library of the Corps Legislatif, the execu- 
 tioner who has cut off the head of John the Baptist 
 is dressed in red and blue, two colors whose j uxtapo- 
 sition is softened by a little white which unites them 
 without sacrificing the energy suitable to the figure 
 of an executioner. Thus we realize a rare harmony, 
 that of the tricolor-flag. Zicgler has observed that 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 161 
 
 this flag spread out horizontally presents a discordant 
 whole, but through the effects of the folds, the quan- 
 tities become unequal and one color dominating 
 another harmony is produced. " The wind that agi- 
 tates the stuff in varied undulations makes the three 
 colors pass through all the attempts at proportion 
 that an intelligent artist can do ; sometimes the effect 
 is admirable." 
 
 White and black should appear in the picture only 
 in small doses, black especially, which, instead of be- 
 ing extended over a great space, should be divided 
 and repeated upon narrow spaces as a sordine to the 
 color in a lugubrious picture. Black and white thus 
 dispersed produce a tragic effect in the " Shipwreck 
 of Don Juan," in which, upon a dark emerald sea, 
 they detach themselves li'ke funeral notes that ex- 
 press to the eye the anguish of these shipwrecked 
 ones whom hunger has maddened and who are tossed 
 between the hope of life and the grasp of death. 
 
 The Optical Mixture. One day in the library of 
 the Luxembourg we were struck with the marvel- 
 lously rich effect produced by Delacroix, the painter 
 of the central cupola, where the artist had to combat 
 the obscurity of the concave surface he had to paint, 
 and to create an artificial light by the play of his 
 colors. Among the mythological or heroic figures 
 that made up the decoration, and which were walk- 
 ing in a sort of enchanted garden, we distinguished 
 a half-nude woman, seated in the shadows of this 
 Elysium, whose flesh preserved the most delicate, the 
 
l62 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 most transparent tints. As we were admiring the 
 admirable freshness of this rose-tone, an artist friend 
 of Delacroix, who had seen him at work, said smiling, 
 " You would be surprised if you knew what colors 
 had produced the rosy flesh that charms you. They 
 are tones that seen separately would seem as dull as 
 the mud of the street." How was this miracle 
 wrought ? By the boldness with which Delacroix 
 had slashed the naked back of this figure with a de- 
 cided green, which partly neutralized by its comple- 
 ment rose, forms with the rose in which it is absorbed 
 a mixed and fresh tone apparent only at a distance, 
 in a word a resultant color which is what is called 
 the optical mixture. 
 
 If at a distance of some steps, we look at a cash- 
 mere shawl, we generally perceive tones that are not 
 in the fabric, but which compose themselves at the 
 back of our eye by the effect of reciprocal reactions 
 of one tone upon another. Two colors in juxtaposi- 
 tion or superposed in such or such proportions, that 
 is to say according to the extent each shall occupy, 
 will form a third color that our eye will perceive at a 
 distance, without having been written by weaver or 
 painter. This third color is a resultant that the 
 artist foresaw and which is born of optical mixture. 
 
 But how to obtain these mixtures without making 
 the form bend to the intentions of the colorist? 
 That is the feeble side of all painting in which color 
 dominates. When our eye perceives simultaneously 
 several colors, the resultant effect depends upon the 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 163 
 
 form of the objects colored, their proportions, their 
 manner of being, their dependence, their grouping. 
 To understand this let us suppose two complemen- 
 tary colors, red and green, placed in juxtaposition 
 
 1. 1. 1.1 i. 5 
 
 upon a rectangular panel divided into two bands R. 
 G. the two colors will reciprocally heighten each 
 other, especially along the frontier that separates them. 
 If now we cut another panel in very narrow paral- 
 lel bands, and paint these bands alternately red and 
 green, the eye no longer perceiving distinctly the red 
 and green bands, the individuality of the color will 
 disappear with the individuality of the form, and it 
 will happen that the red and the green mingling with 
 and destroying each other by this apparent mixture, 
 optical mixture, the second panel will appear grey 
 and colorless. 
 
 B E 
 
 If the line of junction be broken so as to permit 
 the mutual penetration of the contraries, it will pro- 
 duce upon the lines A B a perfectly colorless tint, 
 upon condition that the indentations shall be small 
 
164 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 enough to be confounded to the eye. But if the 
 proportion changes and the indentations are unequal 
 there will appear a reddish grey or a greenish grey 
 of charming delicacy. 
 
 00°° O o"o 
 o ° Q o o° t 
 o o o o o o ° 
 
 o o o o c o C 
 
 A similar phenomenon will be produced upon a 
 yellow stuff starred with violet and upon a blue stuff 
 sown with orange spots. 
 
 The Vibration of Colors. " The parallel between 
 sound and light is so perfect it is sustained even in 
 the least particulars." Thus said a savant of genius, 
 Eulcr (" Lettres a une princesse d' Allemagne "). As 
 the grave or sharp sounds depend upon the number 
 of vibrations of the stretched cord in a given time ; 
 so we may say that each color is restricted to a cer- 
 tain number of vibrations which act upon the organ 
 of sight as sounds do upon the organ of hearing. 
 Not only is vibration a quality inherent in colors, 
 but it is extremely probable that colors themselves 
 are nothing but the different vibrations of light. 
 Why does the flower, so fresh and brilliant, lose its 
 color if we detach it from the stem ? Because for 
 want of the nourishing juice it will lose all vigor, all 
 spring, and the tissue, like a relaxed cord, will not 
 render the same number of vibrations. 
 
 The Orientals, who are excellent colorists, when 
 they have to tint a surface smooth in appearance, 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 I6 5 
 
 make the color vibrate by putting tone upon tone in 
 a pure state, blue upon blue, yellow upon yellow, red 
 upon red ; thus they obtain harmony in their stuffs, 
 carpets, or vases, even when they have employed but 
 a single tint, because they have varied its values from 
 light to dark. A man who possessed marvellous 
 knowledge of the laws of color and of decoration 
 from having studied them in the Orient, Adalbert 
 de Beaumont, was the first among us to react against 
 that equality of color we sought in our fabrics as a 
 perfection, and which the Chinese properly regard as 
 a fault. " The more intense the color, whether red, 
 lapis-lazuli, or turquoise," says de Beaumont, " the 
 more the Orientals make it miroiter, shade it upon 
 itself, to render it more intense and lessen its dryness 
 and monotony, to produce, in a word, that vibration 
 without which a color is as insupportable to our eyes 
 as under the same conditions a sound would be to 
 our ears.' 
 
 Color of the Light. In nature the light comes to 
 us variously colored, according to climate, the me- 
 dium, the hour of the day. If the painter have cho- 
 sen an effect of colorless light, of diffused and grey 
 light, the laws of the heightening and enfeebling of 
 the colors will not be contrary to those of chiaro 
 'scuro, that is to say it will suffice to render vigor- 
 ously the colors in the light and to soften them in 
 the shadow (except for shining stuffs and polished 
 bodies like satin, coats of mail, etc). But if the 
 painter chooses a cold and blue light, or warm and 
 
1 66 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 orange, he cannot represent the phenomena produced 
 if he has not the notions of color. 
 
 Blue drapery, for example, under the cold light of 
 the north will have its blue heightened in the light, 
 attenuated in the shade. On the contrary if the 
 light is orange like that of the sun, this same dra- 
 pery will seem much bluer in the shade and less so in 
 the light. Why? Because the mixture of the com- 
 plementary colors will have substituted a tinted grey 
 for the pure blue of the stuff in the lightest portions. 
 Now replace the blue by orange drapery, pour upon 
 it the light from the north, the blue of this light will 
 partly neutralize the orange, but that will happen 
 only in the light, for in the shadow the orange, find- 
 ing itself sheltered from the rays that would have 
 taken its color, will preserve all the value the 
 shadow can give it. Whence it results that the 
 effect of colored light upon colors can be obtained 
 only by the absolute knowledge of the phenomena 
 we have described. 
 
 Such are the laws that must guide the painter in 
 the play of colors ; such are the riches at his dispo- 
 sal. Happy if he adds to optical beauty the expres- 
 sion of the wished-for sentiment, if timing his pal- 
 ette to the diapason of the fable or history, he knows 
 how to draw from it the accents of poetry. In truth 
 it is only in our days that the eloquence, the aesthetic 
 value of color has been discovered. Veronese and 
 Rubens are always intent upon presenting a fete, 
 playing a serenade, even when the drama repre- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 167 
 
 sented demands sombre, austere, or cold harmonies. 
 Whether Jesus Christ is seated at the marriage at 
 Cana, or marches to Calvary, or appears to the disci- 
 ples at Emmaus, Veronese scarcely changes the 
 moral character of his colors. He does not renounce 
 the enchantment of the eye, with naive serenity he 
 contradicts at need the severity of the theme by ex- 
 ternal magnificence. In his turn Rubens scarcely 
 makes a difference in the coloring he uses to paint 
 those superb women in the " Garden of Love," and 
 that which will show us in a " Last Judgment," these 
 same women, like a stream of fresh and rosy bodies, 
 precipitated into hell. Even when he wishes to 
 frighten he is determined to seduce. 
 
 More poetical, more penetrated by his subject, 
 more moved by his emotion, Eugene Delacroix never 
 fails to tune his lyre to the tone of his thought, so 
 that the first aspect of his picture shall be the pre- 
 lude to his melody, grave or gay, melancholy or tri- 
 umphant, sweet or tragic. Afar off, before discerning 
 anything, the spectator forebodes the shows that will 
 strike his soul. What desolation in the crepuscular 
 sky of the " Christ at the Tomb." What bitter sad- 
 ness in the picture of " Hamlet and the Grave-dig- 
 gers." What a sensation of physical well-being in 
 the " Jewish Wedding in Morocco," whose harmony, 
 composed of two dominant and complementary colors, 
 red and green, gives the idea of coolness while allow- 
 ing us to divine without an incandescent sun. What 
 a flourish of trumpets in the coloring of the " Jus- 
 
1 68 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 tice of Trajan," in which we see the Roman Em- 
 peror in his pomp and his purple issuing from a 
 triumphal arch, accompanied by his generals, his 
 trumpeters, and his eagles, while a woman bathed in 
 tears, throws at his feet a dead child. Below, livid 
 tones ; above, the splendid, radiant gamut, an arch 
 filled with azure, a sky that becomes dazzling by the 
 contrast formed by the tones of an orange-colored 
 trophy. 
 
 Thus colorists can charm us by means that science 
 has discovered. But the taste for color, when it pre- 
 dominates absolutely, costs many sacrifices ; often it 
 turns the mind from its course, changes the senti- 
 ment, swallows up the thought. The impassioned 
 colorist invents his form for his color, everything is 
 subordinated to the brilliancy of his tints. Not only 
 the drawing bends to it, but the composition is dom- 
 inated, restrained, forced by the color. To introduce 
 a tint that shall heighten another, a perhaps useless 
 accessory is introduced. In the " Massacre of Scio," 
 a sabre-tache has been put in the corner solely be- 
 cause in that place the painter needed a mass of 
 orange. To reconcile contraries after having height- 
 ened them, to bring together similars after having 
 lowered or broken them, he indulges in all sorts of 
 license, seeks pretexts for color, introduces brilliant 
 objects ; furniture, bits of stuff, fragments of mosaic, 
 arms, carpets, vases, flights of steps, walls, animals 
 with rich furs, birds of gaudy plumage; thus, little 
 by little, the lower strata of nature take the first place 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 169 
 
 instead of human beings which alone ought to oc- 
 cupy the pinnacle of art, because they alone repre- 
 sent the loftiest expression of life, which is thought. 
 
 In passionately pursuing the triumph of color, 
 the painter runs the risk of sacrificing the action to 
 the spectacle. Our colorists go to the Orient, to 
 Egypt, Morocco, Spain, to bring back a whole arse- 
 nal of brilliant objects; cushions, slippers, narghilehs, 
 turbans, burnous, caftans, mats, parasols. They make 
 heroes of lions and tigers, exaggerate the importance 
 of the landscape, double the interest of the costume, 
 and of inert substances, and thus painting becomes 
 descriptive ; high art sensibly declines and threatens 
 to disappear. 
 
 Let color play its true role, which is to bring to us 
 the cortege of external nature, and to associate the 
 splendors of the material creation with the action or 
 the presence of man. Above all let the colorist 
 choose in the harmonies of color those that seem to 
 conform to his thought. The predominance of color 
 at the expense of drawing is a usurpation of the rel- 
 ative over the absolute, of fleeting appearance over 
 permanent form, of physical impression over the em- 
 pire of the soul. As literature tends to its deca- 
 dence, when images are elevated above ideas, so art 
 grows material and inevitably declines when the 
 mind that draws is conquered by the sensation that 
 colors, when, in a word, the orchestra, instead of ac- 
 companying the song, becomes the whole poem. 
 
XIV. 
 
 The character of touch, that is the quality 
 of the material execution, is the painter's last 
 means of expression. 
 
 Touch is in painting what calligraphy is in writ- 
 ing. Certain delicate observers have thought it pos- 
 sible to discover the moral physiognomy of a person 
 from his handwriting. Doubtless they go too far, 
 but we cannot deny that there is a secret relation 
 between the hand that guides the pen and the mind 
 that guides the hand. Insipid as are the flourishes 
 our writing-masters multiply without reason, in 
 which they envelope their capitals and roll up their 
 tail pieces, or the ambitious spirals that pretend 
 even to model the human figure, yet it is curious 
 to follow, in the manuscript of a writer, the gait of 
 his pen and to recognize in his march, timid or reso- 
 lute, careful or negligent, embarrassed or precise, 
 something that resembles the accent of a person- 
 ality. 
 
 Open a book ; it seems at first as if nothing hu- 
 man could be hidden under the form of those letters 
 that a machine has printed. Nevertheless by the 
 choice, the arrangement of these types which the ad- 
 mirable correctness of language calls characters, you 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 171 
 
 will, at the first look, be informed of the nature of 
 the book, you will foresee if it is grave or trivial, 
 familiar or imposing, and, according to the changes 
 of type upon the same page, you will distinguish the 
 places where the tone of the discourse has changed, 
 simply by noticing the passages the printer has put 
 in smaller type, as if to make the author speak in a 
 lower tone. These delicate shades were formerly 
 marked in our language by the noblest, liveliest ex- 
 pressions. A work of lofty wisdom was printed in 
 Pkilosopky-smdM pica. For another they chose 
 Saint Augustine, which awoke austere memories 
 and seemed to refer to the Jansenism of thought. 
 The Cicero denoted a grave type that was elegantly 
 lengthened in books of poetry; the Gaillarde was 
 a light letter that in name as in fact marvellously 
 suits the pages of current literature — thus the hu- 
 man soul has its part in the expressive vocabulary 
 that in our days has been superseded by a mute and 
 inert numeration. 
 
 Touch is the hand-writing of the painter, the 
 stroke of his mind. Nevertheless what it ought to 
 reveal to us is not so much the personal character of 
 the master as the character of his work ; for the 
 touch is conditioned by essence ; it has its varying 
 conventionalities, its relative truths and beauties. It 
 is a quality that in the history of painting always 
 comes last. The greatest artists of the Renaissance 
 have generally disdained it. Michael Angelo painted 
 the "Last Judgment" with as much care and deli- 
 
172 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 cacy as if it had been an easel picture. Raphael ex- 
 ecuted the frescoes of the Heliodorus and the At- 
 tila almost as he did those of the Parnassus and the 
 School of Athens. Leonardo da Vinci treated all 
 his pictures with equal touch, smooth and melting. 
 Titian himself made little difference, and only in the 
 "Peter Martyr" and the "Assumption" he seems 
 led by his subject to accents more animated, 
 more marked than usual. Correggio handled the 
 brush with affection. His execution had as much 
 charm for him as for us and he tasted the pleasure 
 of losing and finding himself in color, but his pen- 
 cil was always the same, always caressing, sweet, 
 and tender. 
 
 It was only in the seventeeth century that the 
 conventionalities of touch were felt and that one 
 thought seriously of varying its characters. Poussin 
 painting " Pyrrhus Saved " or the " Rape of the Sa- 
 bines " treats his painting with a manly hand and in- 
 tentional rudeness, while he guides the pencil with 
 more gentleness when he represents Rebecca and 
 her companions. Rubens expresses his feeling with 
 more energy than ever when he puts on the stage 
 the peasants of the " Kermesse," or the furious, 
 breathless hunters of the wild-boar. Ribera writes 
 every muscle with the precision of a surgeon ; he 
 runs thick paste over dry tendons ; he sculptures all 
 the folds of the skin, hollows all the wrinkles, and 
 heaps up lumps of color upon the unequal asperities 
 of the epidermis. Van Dyck pushes to extremity 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 *73 
 
 the suppleness, the eloquence of touch. With a 
 facile and delicate pencil he spreads the light upon 
 the brow, glides over the contour of the temples, 
 strongly marks the lines of the nose, and resolutely 
 applies the white of the eye or the luminous point 
 of the pupil ; but his touch, indicative of the object 
 represented, has hardly any other shades ; it remains 
 uniform in presence of the variety of models. 
 
 Soon come the mannerists in execution, Jouvenet, 
 Restout, who, after having drawn squarely — it is 
 their word — paint in an angular way; afterwards 
 Boucher, Van Loo, Greuze whose hammered touch 
 makes the surface resemble creasings of paper or 
 bits of marble chipped under the mallet of the 
 sculptor. 
 
 Finally in our school, thirty years ago, the roman- 
 ticists by a legitimate reaction against the soft 
 enamel-like manner of Guerin and Girodet affected 
 an abundance of paint, threw on the color with a 
 trowel, and boast, as a sign of skill, of a hard execu- 
 tion, an execution purposely careless and heightened 
 by successive layers of paint. 
 
 Such is an abridgment of the history of touch, 
 and the reader can see what principles flow from it. 
 
 The first law of taste in these matters is that the 
 touch ought to be broad in large and delicate in 
 small works. Michael Angelo executed with extreme 
 delicacy the grand " Prophets " of the Sistine Chapel 
 and the terrible figures of the " Last Judgment," 
 but it is an example not to be imitated now because 
 
174 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 genius has prerogatives that belong to it alone, and 
 because it is not allowable to go back to those first 
 ages of painting in which art, young and strong, dis- 
 dained secondary means and ignored the last decora- 
 tion of form, which is touch. 
 
 So it would be shocking to see a small genre 
 picture like those of Terburg or Metsu treated with 
 negligence or want of delicacy. If the mind has 
 little to do in the lower regions of painting, we must 
 at least find there the mind of the pencil. What in- 
 terest can an old housewife, scouring a kettle or pre- 
 paring a meal, offer if the vulgarity of the subject is 
 not redeemed by the spirituelle accentuation of each 
 detail, if the beholder is not amused for a moment by 
 the treatment that allows him to touch with the 
 finger the changing down of the duck that is being 
 plucked, or the fur of the hare that is being skinned, 
 the white freshness of an oyster on the shell, the 
 velvety skin of a peach, the warty zest of a lemon — 
 and as the varied aspect of these surfaces, their sa- 
 vor, can only be expressed by touch, the correctness 
 of color not sufficing, a certain address of the pencil, 
 appropriate to the nature of each substance, is de- 
 manded. 
 
 Nevertheless if great works should be broadly 
 painted, boldness of execution ought not to be 
 pushed to insolence, as Tintoret and some other 
 Venetians imitating him have often done. It is only 
 in stage decoration that the brush can be handled 
 like a broom. The overloaded, hasty, negligent 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 175 
 
 manner had its admirers at the commencement of 
 the decadence, but the indifference of posterity has 
 condemned these coarse painters. Veronese is a 
 model of the way in which breadth of treatment 
 may be reconciled with respect for detail. 
 
 On the other hand easel-pictures may be delicately 
 handled without losing a certain apparent liberty by 
 means of which the labor they have cost is con- 
 cealed. Metsu is a good master to study. Instead 
 of being melted and porcelain-like, like Mieris, his 
 touch preserves accents full of spirit ; it indicates in 
 a head, even if very small, the flat lines of the 
 mouth, the cartilage of the nose, the corner of the 
 eye, and those lights that give play to the counte- 
 nance. Metsu teaches us what to understand by 
 " finished," in a small picture. To finish is to ani- 
 mate by some expressive touches that give an air of 
 frankness and liberty. To finish is to remove by 
 a few light, elegant strokes of the brush the insipid 
 neatness, the uniformity that communicates to the 
 spectator the ennui it must have caused the painter. 
 To finish is to characterize a distance, to shade a 
 contour, to give to the essential objects of the pic- 
 ture, for instance to the expression of the face or 
 the hand, that last accent which is life. 
 
 That the touch ought to be varied especially in 
 works of small or average size, according to the 
 character of the objects, is a thing of course ; yet how 
 many painters, even those eminent for practical skill, 
 have failed in this conventionality. Look at one of 
 
176 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Greuze's young girls, weeping over a broken pitcher 
 or a dead bird ; beside the fine, delicate, transparent, 
 satiny flesh, the chemise is rendered by a pencil that 
 does not give even the idea of linen or gives an idea 
 so gross as to shock. Gauze even, instead of being 
 expressed by varnish, is often indicated by thick, 
 dirty paint. 
 
 Teniers, on the contrary, admirably accommodates 
 his touch to the physiognomy of each object. With- 
 out the least difficulty, and as if in sport, he recog- 
 nizes and characterizes the flesh tints ; here the 
 fresh, thin skin of a young farm girl, there the rough 
 skin of an old fiddler with a warty nose. He throws 
 a ray of light over the ivory of a clarionette, or a 
 brilliant point upon a shining stone pot. He affirms 
 with resolution and a generous laying on of paint 
 the enlightened part of a cuirass, or caresses with 
 sweetness the reflections of a wash-basin. The solid- 
 ity of a wall, the lightness of the pack hooked to 
 the shutter, the hair of a saddle, the buckle of a 
 leather strap, the silkiness of long hair, the brush of 
 short hair, the soft look of the slate upon which the 
 dirty wench has rriarked the scot of the tap-room ; 
 all is expressed with marvellous correctness, seasoned 
 by a thought of malice or irony. 
 
 But the touch of Teniers, who in this regard may 
 be considered the painter, par excellence, is not only 
 varied ; it is unequal, because the master insists upon 
 the objects represented only in proportion to their 
 importance and also because his hand is continually 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 177 
 
 guided by the sentiment of perspective. If he 
 paints the hoops of a cask, he follows its circular 
 form ; if he paints the flying sides of the table, his 
 pencil instinctively directs itself towards the point 
 of sight. Vivid and thick upon the light parts of 
 objects placed upon the level of the frame, his 
 paste becomes lighter, thinner, more melting when it 
 represents the distant parts of the picture if it is a 
 landscape, or the depths of the back-chamber if it is 
 a tap-room, and the touch less and less decided, soft- 
 ened and breathed upon indicates the presence of air. 
 The more the atmosphere is thickened by distance, 
 the more the color is thinned, to indicate by its 
 transparency and vagueness, the successive layers of 
 it. The touch makes aerial perspective visible after 
 the drawing has traced the linear perspective. It 
 designates what is near and what is afar off, and 
 thus destroys the idea of a level surface to substi- 
 tute the illusions of space. Velasquez is a superior 
 master for the expression of ambient air, and Claude 
 Lorraine has carried it to magic in his enchanting 
 landscapes. His frame is like a window opening 
 sometimes upon the boundless level of a calm sea in 
 which the sun is sinking, sometimes upon a smiling 
 valley that extends out of sight. 
 
 But outside of these conventionalities which re- 
 quire that the handling of the pencil shall be varied, 
 the touch of the painter will always be good if it is 
 natural, that is according to his heart. An orator 
 who should seek to imitate the voice of another 
 
i 7 8 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 would be no more ridiculous than the painter affect- 
 ing a manner not his own. Ribera is coarse, but his 
 coarseness does not displease because it is sincere. 
 Rembrandt has a mysterious palette, because he has 
 a genius dreamy and profound. Velasquez is frank, 
 because his pencil is guided by the muse of truth. 
 The touch of Poussin is like his character, manly, 
 noble, and expressively simple. Rubens handled the 
 brush with the nerve and warmth that animated him, 
 he is fascinating because his temperament fascinates 
 him. Prud'hon, amorous and sad poet, chose a 
 soft, sweet execution that lulled lines to sleep, tran- 
 quillized shadows and let nature appear only through 
 a veil of love and poetry. There are a hundred 
 manners of painting well, but it is none the less true 
 that the practice of the pencil ought never to fall 
 into the cold daintiness of Mignard, nor the insi- 
 pidity of a Carlo Dolci or a Van der Werff, nor the 
 glassy polish of a Girodet, nor the minute and sterile 
 manner of a Denner. 
 
XV. 
 
 Certain conventionalities of painting vary and 
 must vary according to the character of the 
 work and the nature of the surface the artist 
 has to cover. 
 
 The painter may work for the selfish enjoyment 
 of one man or for the pleasure of a whole people. 
 But in proportion as his work is ennobled by the 
 number of people who will enjoy it, the surfaces 
 upon which he should exercise his genius become 
 vaster and more solid, and a proof of the dignity to 
 which he elevates himself is the necessity of paint- 
 ing upon the walls of an indestructible monument, 
 and thus to link his destiny to that of architecture. 
 
 Mural painting, that which decorates large edi- 
 fices, is the loftiest field for the artist, for in promis- 
 ing long duration it demands a work that shall be 
 worthy of it. 
 
 What will be, of all the modes of painting, the 
 most suitable to the decoration of buildings? Let 
 us examine the different methods with reference to 
 their sentiment and to the material employed ; fresco, 
 wax, distemper, oil, pastel, guache, enamel, miniature, 
 glass, and encaustic painting. 
 
i8o 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Fresco Painting. This is so called because execu- 
 ted with water colors upon fres/i plaster. This plas- 
 ter, made of slacked lime and fine sand, is applied 
 upon a coating rough enough to make it adhere to 
 it. The fresco needs a wall free from materials 
 tinctured with saltpetre, and the colors must be such 
 as the lime does not change. When the artist has 
 polished .and made very smooth the surface to be 
 painted, he traces upon it the previously prepared 
 composition. The designs, of the size of the pict- 
 ure, are called cartoons, because prepared upon large 
 sheets of paper glued together. Upon the damp 
 wall the drawing is traced with a point of ivory or 
 wood, or the contour of the drawing is pricked with 
 a pin and a tampon dipped in charcoal or red pow- 
 der passed along the line of the holes which fixes 
 the design on the plaster. Afterwards the artist fol- 
 lows the tracing with a sharp-pointed pencil or stylus, 
 and this indelible contour is called the nail of the 
 fresco. We find it in several Pompeian paintings 
 executed upon a mortar of lime and sand, and as it 
 could only have been done upon lime still damp it is 
 evident these paintings are frescoes. 
 
 The tracing made, the artist must write his 
 thought with a sure, prompt hand, without hesita- 
 tion, without change of purpose. " As long as the 
 plaster is fresh," says Gruyer (" Essai sur les fresques 
 de Raphael"), "the carbonate of lime takes up the 
 coloring matter, envelopes it, forms upon its surface 
 a true crystallization like a varnish perfectly translu- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 ISI 
 
 cent and without sensible thickness, which protects 
 the fresco from all external causes of destruction. 
 The painting thus made upon a properly prepared 
 wall is the most solid, the most beautiful imaginable. 
 It is unchangeable and resists the extremes of tem- 
 perature as well as the influence of humidity." 
 
 When the plaster becomes dry it can no longer fix 
 and protect the color. The artist can return to his 
 work only by painting over the first layers. But 
 these touches must be made with colors in distem- 
 per, that is diluted with liquid glue, which, not ab- 
 sorbed by the mortar, have not the same durability 
 as frescoes. These retouches in distemper Vasari 
 declares contemptible, cosa vilissima. But the 
 greatest masters have not disdained such retouches. 
 Another method is to go over the fresco, when the 
 plaster is dry, with colored crayons. But time redu- 
 ces these crayon strokes to powder and the fresco 
 becomes what it was at first. Moliere has very well 
 said : — 
 
 " Avec elle, il n'est point de retour a tenter 
 Et tout au premier coup se doit ex6 cuter." 
 
 It is then an exaggeration to call fresco " the most 
 beautiful painting imaginable." It is certain it is 
 limited in its means ; it admits only natural earths, 
 mineral colors being changed by the lime ; it does 
 not lend itself to the delicacies of imitation, does not 
 admit brilliancy and magnificence of coloring. But 
 in the decoration of a Christian temple the fault of 
 fresco becomes a title to admiration. Its pale colors 
 
182 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 have something grave and religious, and assimilating 
 itself to the monument it borrows its tranquil 
 strength, its imposing solidity. The figures, instead 
 of being added like an external decoration, seem to 
 be incorporated in the stone and the human feeling 
 to have penetrated the walls of the edifice. 
 
 Nevertheless if some great masters prefer fresco 
 on account of its austere charms and its historic 
 celebrity, others prefer different methods. 
 
 Wax Painting. This consists in the use of oil 
 colors diluted, at the moment of putting on, with 
 liquid wax mixed with essential oil, but without the 
 intervention of fire, that is without encaustic. The 
 advantage of this manner, is preserving the painting 
 from the alternation of shadows and bright spots 
 that in oil painting are scarcely corrected by the var- 
 nish that generalizes the gloss. The use of wax not 
 only gives to the whole a soft and uniform aspect 
 which allows the spectator to see the picture well 
 wherever he may be placed, but it resembles the 
 fresco with less lightness, less limpidness of tone. 
 
 The greater number of our wall painters at the 
 present time use wax because they can retouch their 
 work indefinitely and can use more brilliant colors. 
 Far from being restrained by the presence of the 
 stone, they seek to suppress even the appearance of 
 it, they would make the walls diaphanous and show 
 us a higher world, a heaven more beautiful than 
 ours, figures poetized by the colors of the prism, 
 and blended in an exalted harmony. 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 Painting in Distemper. Wall painting accommo- 
 dates itself equally to distemper ; it is perhaps the 
 oldest of all methods. The colors are steeped in 
 glue; a glue made of shreds of the skin, snout, and 
 feet of goats, as described by Cennini, or with the 
 yolk of egg, " rosso di uovo" says Vasari, " diluted 
 with vinegar to prevent putrefaction, and mixed 
 with the milk of the fig tree." 
 
 Richer than fresco, distemper permits the use of 
 mineral colors. It is applied to walls after covering 
 them with smooth, fine plaster. The painter uses 
 bright, strong tints in anticipation of the fading they 
 will undergo in drying. Before oil painting was per- 
 fected by Van Eyck and taught in Italy by Anto- 
 nello da Messina, the Italian painters used distemper 
 upon walls, wood, and canvas. It sufficed to Man- 
 tegna, Giovanni Bellini, and Perugino to make 
 chefs d'ceuvre as durable as frescoes. Mantegna's 
 "Triumph of Julius Caesar" was thus painted, and 
 the magnificent picture of Bellini (the " Virgin sur- 
 rounded by Saints ") that was in the church of San 
 Giovanni e Paolo at Venice. Less liable to grow 
 brown than oil painting, tempera has almost as 
 much consistency with less heaviness. Memling 
 used tempera with egg when he painted the famous 
 shrine of St. Ursula in the hospital at Bruges. 
 
 Fresco, tempera, and wax then are preferable for 
 wall painting; by this w r e mean not only the decora- 
 tion of walls but that of cupolas and ceilings. 
 
184 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 CEILINGS AND CUPOLAS. 
 
 At first thought it seems ridiculous that fabulous 
 or historical scenes should be represented upon flat 
 or vaulted surfaces above our heads. It is absurd 
 that in a place where we could only see the sky the 
 painter should show us, for instance, the shady paths 
 of Versailles and Louis Quatorze walking with 
 Madame de Montespan to whom Puget is presenting 
 marble statues of frightful weight. To paint fig- 
 ures that, without being sustained by wings, shall 
 eternally keep a horizontal position, is a license that 
 would seem shocking ; the more that the spectator 
 is obliged to dislocate the neck to look at a picture 
 that he would see much better on the wall, and which 
 has verisimilitude only when placed vertically. The 
 Italians have finely criticized the painting of ceilings, 
 by placing in the middle of rooms decorated with 
 them, tables in which mirrors are framed, in which 
 the visitor sees below him what is painted above. 
 
 The only object that can decorate a ceiling with- 
 out shocking conventionalism, is a sky with flying 
 figures ; but here a new difficulty presents itself, 
 before which the great masters, with the exception 
 of Correggio, were arrested. Figures in the air 
 borne by their wings or upon clouds, can scarcely be 
 seen except foreshortened, and if the figures are 
 numerous, the foreshortening, by their variety, be- 
 comes bizarre even to extravagance. That happens 
 when the artist has plafonned his figures, that is 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 1*5 
 
 represented them seen from below upward. One 
 seems to touch his knees with his chin, another has 
 the hips coming out of his shoulder-blades. At the 
 palace of Te in Mantua certain mythological figures 
 are represented in a manner almost grotesque. Here 
 the horses of the Sun threaten to fall on the specta- 
 tor, dragging the god of poetry, who shows his prose 
 side. There a Neptune seems cravatted with the 
 muscles of the breast, so that the forms, under the 
 pretext of obeying rigorously the laws of perspec- 
 tive, undergo deviations the most monstrous, the 
 most offensive to the sight. 
 
 NRPTUNK. BY GIUI.TO ROMANO. 
 
 (Palace of Te, Mantua.) 
 
 Michael Angelo, to whom it would have been but 
 play to draw the boldest foreshortenings, painted the 
 
i86 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as he would have 
 painted a wall divided into compartments and Ra 
 phael did the same in the soffit of the Farnesina, 
 representing the banquet of the gods like tapestry 
 surrounded by a border, fixed to the ceiling by 
 nails. 
 
 Must we proscribe the painting of cupolas ? No. 
 The cupola is an imitation of the vault of heaven, 
 and there is poetry in the idea of an open sky, a di- 
 aphanous dome that gives to the lifted eye of the 
 believer a glimpse of paradise. But these aerial spec- 
 tacles, separated from us by some distance, should be 
 still more by aerial perspective, which, enfeebling the 
 shadows, veiling the lights, lends to the celestial fig- 
 ures an indecision, a happy vagueness. Too much 
 vigor in the contrasts would wound instead of 
 charming the eye, and the spectator might fear to 
 see fall upon his head or upon the pavement of the 
 church, groups that by the animated play of the 
 lights and shadows would too strongly detach them- 
 selves from each other. In the whole, especially in 
 the figures that have no apparent support on the 
 cornices, there must be the blond tints whose light- 
 ness reassures the eye. 
 
 An excellent judge of art, Henri Delaborde, has 
 said upon this subject in his " Melanges sur l'Art 
 Contemporain," " In decorating with frescoes the 
 chapel of San Giovanni at Parma the pencil of Cor- 
 reggio made through the walls an immense opening 
 to the sky, and thus apparently suppressed the very 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 I8 7 
 
 field upon which he was working. Bolder than 
 Michael Angelo, who, painting the ceiling of the Sis- 
 tine, figured upon the solid surface only symmetrical 
 apertures framed in the ornaments of a simulated 
 architecture, Correggio was not afraid to annihilate 
 the real architecture, and to suspend in the bosom of 
 this limitless space groups with irregular lines, infi- 
 nitely multiplied and rolled over one another ac- 
 cording to the most difficult laws of vertical perspec- 
 tive." 
 
 But instead of making holes throughout the whole 
 extent of vaults that are to be covered with luminous 
 tints and show us glimpses of the sky, this writer 
 thinks it would be better to pierce the cupola only 
 at intervals marked by the ribs of the building with- 
 out making the architecture seem to crumble away 
 to give place to a capricious image of what we sup- 
 pose passing without. 
 
 Oil Painting. When we look at certain pictures 
 of Perugino, of the Vivarinis, John Bellini, Man- 
 teoma and those of the Florentines of the fifteenth 
 century, Masaccio, Filippino Lippi, Angelico da 
 Fiesole, we ask if oil painting were really a progress, 
 and if we should prefer a method that changes the 
 colors, tarnishes, blackens them, and that seems con- 
 demned to an eternal dimness, to the temperas that 
 still are so fresh, so transparent, so pure. It is re- 
 markable that the older pictures are the better they 
 are preserved. " Antique paintings," says Lanzi, " in- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 suit modern paintings by their preservation." Almost 
 all the master-pieces in oil are threatened with de- 
 struction. If the pictures of Van Eyck, the reputed 
 inventor of oil-painting, are still brilliant with youth 
 and seem unchangeable, it is not because he mixed 
 his colors with the oil of flax, but in spite of this 
 mixture, and because of the excellence of the var- 
 nish he combined with his oil, which has given his 
 works the look of enamel. 
 
 The Baron Taubenhein wrote in the last century 
 (" De la Peinture a. l'huile-cire "), " The oily particles 
 with which the picture is loaded, drying, leave their 
 cells by evaporation. Reaching the surface they en- 
 counter a pellicle formed by the parts already dry, or 
 an impenetrable varnish that prevents the evapora- 
 tion, and all these oily particles arrested in their de- 
 sertion on the frontiers of color, form a mass of 
 grease that gradually condenses and embrowns the 
 picture." 
 
 Independent of the continual change of modern 
 works, and without reckoning the changes that 
 metallic colors like cinnabar undergo in their com- 
 bination with oil, painters know how irritating is the 
 presence of the embus, that is to say, those dull par- 
 ticles that here and there make a spot in conse- 
 quence of the unequal drying of the oil ; they know 
 what a restraint upon their. inspiration is the neces- 
 sity of waiting weeks till the sketch is sufficiently 
 dried to be resumed ; they know they must pay 
 dearly for the privilege inherent in the painting they 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 189 
 
 have learned, and which consists in allowing vigor- 
 ous browns, profound shadows, more energy in the 
 relief, and at the same time more mystery in the 
 whole. 1 
 
 Rub down the shadows, thicken the lights, is the 
 precept taught in the schools and that Rubens, Te- 
 niers, Van Dyck, have charmingly practised, but it 
 is only a relative truth. To paint shadows lightly 
 with thin layers of color diluted in oil, is a good 
 method, if one works upon a canvas prepared with 
 glue, very dry, consequently very clear. If on the 
 contrary it is prepared with oil, one cannot glaze the 
 shadows, because the oil used in the preparation will 
 show through the glaze, and will make the shadows 
 so much the darker, as, in glazing, oil will have been 
 added to oil. In such a case it is better to thicken 
 the shadows in the sketch, which will hinder their 
 blackening, by stifling the foundation that will disap- 
 pear under the thickness of the paint. 
 
 Veronese, who painted on canvas prepared with 
 water-colors, could glaze the shadows; but one who 
 
 1 Few painters now-a-days think of the duration of their works, and 
 consider the quality of the substances they employ. As an exception 
 we may mention Meissonier for the scrupulous care he takes in the 
 choice and purity of his materials. He has kept exposed at the win- 
 dows for years bottles of oil preserved from the dust, but accessible to 
 the air, and which, under the influence of the sun, have lost their color- 
 ing particles and become as clear as water, at the same time have ac- 
 quired more mucilage and turned to honey. He grinds, purifies, tries 
 his colors himself; thus his little pictures, independent of their other 
 merits, which are of the first order, do not change, and promise to 
 maintain themselves in a state of perfect preservation. 
 
190 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 works upon canvas prepared with oil will do well to 
 cover even the shadows with colors thick enough to 
 interrupt the communication of the foundation with 
 the surface. It is always necessary to load the 
 colors in the light portions more than in the shadows, 
 because the granules catching the sunbeams in their 
 passage, add a natural to the artificial light. 
 
 Pastel Painting. This is a painting with pastes 
 of different colors put on dry, and soft enough to be 
 powdered under the finger. A colorist who wishes 
 to catch fugitive tints, a painter who desires to assure 
 himself promptly of a certain effect, uses pastel, be- 
 cause it demands no preparation, lends itself to im- 
 provisation, and may be interrupted and resumed at 
 pleasure. 
 
 But pastel is not merely an auxiliary means ; some 
 excellent painters have made it a thing apart, and 
 have used it successfully in portraiture. 
 
 Applied to paper glued upon eanvas 5 the pastel 
 produces soft, opaque shadows ; it has not the depth 
 of oil painting, neither has it its shining spots that 
 reflect the light like a mirror. The freshness of 
 colors, the brilliancy and tenderness of flesh-tints, 
 the down of the skin, the velvety appearance of fruit, 
 cannot be better rendered than by these crayons of 
 a thousand shades that can be placed together in 
 vivid contrast or blended with the little finger, and 
 whose heaping up of layers grasps the light. The 
 pastel is suitable only for the portrait, landscape, or 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 I 9 I 
 
 still life. But the grace of pastel is also its defect — 
 to be friable and to fall in dust. In the eighteenth 
 century La Tour and Loriot invented an ingenious 
 way of remedying this defect — throwing upon the 
 pastel in the form of rain a composition of fish glue 
 and spirits of wine. The experiment was success- 
 fully performed before the Academy of Painting. 
 But it is to be feared that in giving it solidity and 
 durability, we should take from it the exquisite dust, 
 that flower of youth, so to say, that makes its fleeting 
 delicacy, but also its charm, its value. 
 
 Enamel Painting. Enamel is a vitreous sub- 
 stance colored by metallic oxides ; is composed of 
 two substances, the colorless, vitreous body, and the 
 oxides that give it color. The enamel is opaque or 
 transparent ; to make it opaque a certain quantity of 
 oxide of brass is added to the vitreous mass. By 
 the action of fire the enamel is fixed to the object it 
 covers. It maybe metallic, copper, gold, silver; or 
 non-metallic, porcelain, faience, brick, stone, lava. 
 
 When applied to non-metallic bodies, the enamel 
 is called varnish. Of whatever the paste may be, it is 
 capable of receiving colors that must be taken from 
 the mineral kingdom to remain indestructible in the 
 fire, and which, mingled with vitreous powder, melt, 
 uniting with and fixing themselves upon the surface 
 of the faience, porcelain, or lava. It often happens 
 that the baking changes the colors. The enamel 
 painter must anticipate what they will be upon com- 
 
192 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 ing out of the fire, not to speak of the thousand ac- 
 cidents that may happen in the course of the work. 
 The care, the necessary prudence, are of a nature to 
 chill the imagination of the artist ; so enamel paint- 
 ing is only used for copies, particularly if one works 
 upon plates of porcelain. Its most brilliant and 
 valuable use is to decorate vases. " Enamel paint- 
 ing," says Dussieux (" Recherches sur l'Histoire de 
 l'Email "), can resist the action of the air, the water, 
 heat, cold, dampness, dust, all the destructive agents 
 of oil painting ; thus enamel applied on a grand 
 scale to the preservation of master-pieces, would offer 
 inestimable advantages." These advantages enamel 
 painting possesses to-day, thanks to the discoveries 
 made thirty years ago by an artist industrious to the 
 point of genius, Morteleque. 
 
 Before him enamel painting, which unites brill- 
 iancy to imperishable solidity, could be used only 
 upon porcelain plates of small size, and with diffi- 
 culty made straight and smooth ; he thought of 
 enamelling and painting with verifiable colors great 
 slabs of volcanic lava, that could be smoothed and 
 adjusted to one another with extreme precision, so as 
 to form immense surfaces perfectly plane and contin- 
 uous. Before him the painter had no white capable 
 of being mixed with the other colors and of produ- 
 cing, by modifying them all, the scale of luminous 
 tones ; he was constrained to use the white of the 
 foundation, to reserve it, as they say ; he could not 
 pile on his colors, superpose them, put a clear tone 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 193 
 
 upon the brown, and this restraint rendered his labor 
 slow and painful. Morteleque invented a white, 
 similar in effect to that which is used in oil painting, 
 and which allows the artist to treat at his will the lu- 
 minous parts of a picture, without having to manage 
 the white foundation. The plates of lava or porce- 
 lain became then like canvases, upon which one 
 could henceforth paint freely and boldly. 
 
 Let us add that the palette of the painter upon 
 lava, although deprived of cinnabar and vermilion, 
 which are replaced by reds less vivid and of different 
 values, is richer than the palette of the oil painter. 
 " The colors," says Jollivet (" Peinture en Email sur 
 Lave "), " are mixed with porphyrized glass, which 
 does not change their brilliancy. When they are ex- 
 posed to fire, the powdered glass liquifies, envelopes 
 the molecules of the colors, and fixes them upon the 
 enamel. Before having been subjected to the action 
 of fire, the work has the appearance of a fresco 
 painting. In this state it can be retouched with im- 
 punity." Subjected to two or three fires, and, at 
 need, to a fourth baking, the picture may be led 
 gradually from the preparations of the sketch to the 
 last perfection. 
 
 Thus new horizons were opened to monumental 
 painting, and we may hope that in future the walls of 
 temples and public buildings will be covered with 
 vitrified paintings, brilliant and forever unchange- 
 able. 
 
 This discovery rendering useless the enormous 
 13 
 
i 9 4 
 
 FAINTING. 
 
 labor and expense of mosaic, will enable us by means 
 of imperishable imitations to preserve the master- 
 pieces of art that are perishing" ; the Sistine Chapel, 
 the " Last Supper," the Stanze of Raphael, the 
 pictures of Titian, the frescoes of Correggio. 
 
 If the art of enamelling pottery is almost as old 
 as the first earthen vases, if for ages it was known 
 to the Chinese, the Egyptians ; if the Phoenicians 
 transmitted it to Greece ; if that artistic people made 
 designs of incomparable elegance with filigranes of 
 colored glass, arranged in mosaics and soldered in 
 the fire, it seems certain that enamel painting upon 
 metals is a modern invention, dating no farther back 
 than the fifteenth century. This proceeding, which 
 consists in painting with fusible and indestructible 
 colors upon metal covered with a coating of enamel, 
 as one would paint upon canvas or wood, was in- 
 vented, or at least rediscovered at Limoges in 
 France. 
 
 Enamel painting upon metal has decided advanta- 
 ges. The colors melt with the first enamel, penetra- 
 ting it enough to give the picture a beautiful trans- 
 parency, and at the same time an impermeable 
 varnish, that protects it better than a covering of 
 glass. Upon porcelain the colors melt together, but 
 do not fuse with the enamel, and the effect is heavier, 
 more opaque. 
 
 Guaches and Aquarelles. In guache painting the 
 colors are ground in water and diluted with gum- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 1 95 
 
 water mixed with white. Guache is useful to store 
 up souvenirs of a landscape, to note the local colors 
 of the ground, of rocks, sky, etc. It is particularly 
 useful for stage decorations, and the sketches of large 
 compositions, has much freshness and transparency, 
 and does not exclude force of tone, is an expeditious 
 and convenient kind of painting, because one re- 
 quires only brushes, a loaded palette, and a glass of 
 water, but the colors dry so quickly it is difficult to 
 blend them ; hence landscapes in guache have a dry, 
 flat look, in which the skies seem cut up, the greens 
 crude, the yellows and reds hard. 
 
 To prevent the too rapid drying of the water, 
 artists have mixed with the gum some glutinous sub- 
 stance, like the milk of the fig tree, jujube paste, the 
 yolk of egg; thus guache becomes distemper, of 
 which it is a variety. In the hands of a skillful 
 painter it is not without sweetness and harmony. 
 
 A gauche painting may have a colored back- 
 ground, and the lights are put on in successive 
 layers, that is to say, the painter covers the whole 
 surface of the picture, while in the aquarelle the 
 artist, working upon a white ground, reserves this 
 white for the lights of the picture, and instead of 
 putting on the colors in successive layers, he washes 
 them. The aquarelle is often called a lavis, though 
 the word is applied especially to monochrome aqua- 
 relles made with India ink or sepia. 
 
 If tints diluted with gum- water want body and 
 consistency, they are nevertheless light, cheerful, and 
 
196 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 transparent. Literally the aquarelle is only a colored 
 drawing, but in our days the English school has 
 given it a solidity that makes of it almost a new 
 kind of painting. Its colorations have body at the 
 same time that its distances are melting and lumi- 
 nous. It is at once limpid and robust; has much 
 relief and much atmosphere. 
 
 Miniature. This word was also written migna- 
 ture, because it was supposed to come from the old 
 word mignard, mignon. It is in truth a kind of 
 painting that is always mignon, elegant and delicate ; 
 sometimes mignard, tender, sweet. Although one 
 can paint in miniature in many ways, with egg, glue, 
 oil, enamel, — proved by the many beautiful works 
 executed in France and Italy in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, — yet it has been agreed to 
 call a miniature a water-color upon vellum or ivory. 
 Nevertheless, the delicate paintings upon vellum or 
 parchment that so richly ornamented the middle-age 
 manuscripts, were rather guaches, because soft colors 
 were used, and the flesh-tints heightened with white ; 
 while miniatures upon ivory are real aquarelles be- 
 cause the white of the background is preserved. 
 These paintings constituted in France an art, that 
 as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century, 
 when Dante came to Paris, was called illumination. 
 That this art was known to the ancient Romans, and 
 flourished in the time of Augustus, is certain, but we 
 are permitted to believe that the most skillful illumi- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 197 
 
 nators were those of our own country. It was among 
 the first hermits of the Thebaic! and Syria, in the 
 fourth century, that the taste for books revived, and 
 with it the desire of ornamenting them. The greater 
 their voluntary poverty, the greater luxury the ceno- 
 bites displayed in their copies of the holy books. 
 They wrote the verses in letters of gold upon purple- 
 tinted parchment. Then came the Greek monks, 
 who, painting in miniature upon golden back- 
 grounds, represented in them fantastic animals and 
 ornaments borrowed from their Byzantine architec- 
 ture. To finish the ornamentation of the sacred 
 text, they framed it with a running vine, and created 
 the art of the vignette. 
 
 Once in possession of this art our French minia- 
 turists wrought wonders. Abandoning bizarre fan- 
 cies to draw near to nature, they looked through the 
 windows of the sanctuary and painted upon the parch- 
 ment of their manuscripts the flowers and plants of 
 their garden, the fruits of their trellis, the crawling 
 or flying insects, and the real living animals of crea- 
 tion. Some illuminators, like Jehan Fouquet, orna- 
 mented with small pictures the books of prayers and 
 the Greek and Latin classics, and they have left in 
 them models of invention and naturalness ; some- 
 times even, in spite of their diminutiveness, a senti- 
 ment of grandeur. 
 
 If art were a simple imitation of the true, every 
 representation in miniature would be proscribed, be- 
 cause it implies a contradiction between the distance 
 
198 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 that the smallness of the image supposes, and the 
 careful finish that destroys the idea of this distance. 
 As soon as an object is represented in miniature, I 
 can see it only by drawing it near my eye ; but seeing 
 it near I ought to see it clearly, for indecision would 
 be absurd in an object near the eye. On the other 
 hand, as it is only perspective that lessens objects, 
 everything smaller than nature is deemed afar off. 
 There is then a manifest contradiction in the art of 
 the miniaturist, since by the precision of forms he 
 draws near what by its diminutive size seems distant. 
 
 Happily, art is something besides imitation of the 
 real ; it is a beautiful fiction that gives us the mi- 
 rage of truth, upon condition that our soul shall be 
 the accomplice of the falsehood. 
 
 It is an error then to suppose that the miniature 
 painter ought to treat his little figures as if they 
 were sunk in the picture, separated from us by suc- 
 cessive layers of atmosphere, and that he ought to 
 make them seem afar off by means of light and 
 aerial colors. Nothing would be more insipid than 
 a vaporous execution that should allow what we hold 
 in our hands to vanish from our eyes. It is with 
 miniatures almost as with engraved stones. Taste 
 counsels happy trickeries, that strongly interest us in 
 essential features, leaving the rest out of sight. 
 Upon the ivory of the miniaturist, as well as the 
 intaglio or cameo of the engraver, art ought to ex- 
 press much with little. Since the artist must insist 
 upon that upon which expression depends, let him 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 199 
 
 content himself with putting " in evidence " the great 
 features, and gliding over the rest. Crowded into a 
 small space he will exclude all that is useless, but 
 in compensation will strongly express what is deci- 
 sive. 
 
 Some renowned miniaturists, on the contrary, 
 have worked with a magnifying glass, have in their 
 portraits brought out all the details that nature pre- 
 sents on a grand scale ; details one can find again 
 upon their ivories with a magnifying glass. So 
 much minutia produces only characterless works. 
 Accenting everywhere, they do not accent enough 
 where it is necessary. 
 
 Painting upon Glass belongs rather to ornamenta- 
 tion than to the art of the painter, as we have de- 
 fined it. 
 
 Encaustic Painting. The word encaustic desig- 
 nates a kind of painting in which the colors, mixed 
 with wax and resin, are softened, melted and fixed by 
 the aid of fire, and afterwards rendered lustrous by 
 rubbing. 
 
 Different passages from ancient authors, especially 
 Vitruvius, Pliny, and Philostratus, prove that the 
 most famous painters of Greece executed their works 
 in encaustic. But their method of working is a 
 secret half lost. To rediscover it, researches full of 
 sagacity were made in the last century by the Count 
 de Caylus, but he only invented imperfect means. 
 
200 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 In the present century a pupil of David, Paillot de 
 Montabert, has discovered a kind of painting if not 
 similar, at least analogous to that of antiquity. 
 
 He has proven that encaustic is not, like oil paint- 
 ing, liable to grow yellow and dark unequally in a 
 way to destroy the chiaro 'scuro of the picture ; that 
 it allows portions of the picture to be made soft 
 or transparent, according as one wishes to express 
 what is aerial and remote, or what is near the 
 eye and plainly visible ; that it is more suave, richer 
 then tempera and almost as luminous ; that, much 
 better than fresco, it lends itself to the delicacies of 
 imitation, that it may be employed for all sorts of 
 pictures, large or small ; and that it is excellent to 
 decorate vaulted ceilings or walls exposed to the 
 external air or to dampness ; finally, that encaustic is 
 as unchangeable to-day, as it was among the ancient 
 Greeks, when pictures perished only by violent death. 
 The " Battle of Marathon," painted by Polygnotus, 
 was preserved under an open portico at Athens for 
 more than nine hundred years. 
 
 Plutarch rendered homage to the long duration of 
 encaustic, when he wrote : " The sight of a beautiful 
 woman leaves in the mind of an indifferent man only 
 an image quickly effaced ; such is an aquarelle. In 
 the heart of a lover this image is as it were fixed by 
 the power of fire ; it is an encaustic painting ; time 
 never effaces it." 
 
XVI. 
 
 Although the domain of the painter is co- 
 extensive WITH NATURE, THERE EXISTS IN HIS ART A 
 HIERARCHY FOUNDED UPON THE SIGNIFICANCE, RELA- 
 TIVE OR ABSOLUTE, LOCAL OR UNIVERSAL, OF HIS 
 WORKS. 
 
 Granting that painting is nothing more than the 
 mirror of life, all its representations cannot be placed 
 in the same rank, because life is so unequally divi- 
 ded among those things that make up the spectacle 
 of creation. The chain that unites all beings is 
 composed of rings, at first simple and rude, which 
 by degrees grow complicated, refined, developed, and 
 in proportion as the chain ascends, become more 
 richly wrought, more precious. It is not then a mat- 
 ter of indifference to represent inorganic bodies in 
 their inertia, or to paint animate beings in movement. 
 Neither is it a matter of indifference to take as a 
 model the plant that vegetates, a captive upon the 
 soil, or the animal that moves, led by a spirit still 
 blind but certain — instinct; much more man, who, 
 the resume of all anterior creations, crowns them by 
 intelligence, and dominates them because himself 
 free. 
 
202 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Moreover, if the dignity of the painter be meas- 
 ured by the difficulty of his work, what a difference 
 between the copy of a shapeless stone or a plant, and 
 the imitation of a well-proportioned and symmetrical 
 body, eternally submissive to the laws of a divine 
 rhythm, and yet one in which the symmetry is con- 
 stantly broken by movement and restored by equi- 
 librium. Is art a picture of life ? Then nothing can 
 be more interesting than the human figure, since 
 man is the most alive of all creatures. Is art the 
 manifestation of the beautiful ? The human figure 
 is still the noblest object of its studies, because man 
 is the only creature capable of attaining the highest 
 beauty. Whatever then may be the definition of art, 
 there exist in its works inferior and superior methods 
 according as the objects represented are more or less 
 endowed with life. 
 
 This truth may be expressed in another way. The 
 more necessary rigorous imitation is in a picture, the 
 nearer it approaches inferior methods ; the more the 
 things to be imitated are susceptible of interpreta- 
 tion, the higher painting will elevate itself. 
 
 Let us take some examples. Every day we see in 
 the streets of Paris merchants' signs that strike us 
 by the singular truth of the imitations painted upon 
 them. Sometimes they are hats, sabres, cartridge- 
 boxes that stand out so as to deceive the eye. Some- 
 times panels of mahogany, oak, or maple, imitated 
 with such perfection as to mislead the cabinet-maker 
 himself. But everybody knows these are the works 
 of an artisan, not an artist. 
 
PArNTIXG. 
 
 !03 
 
 Now suppose that painters, real artists, Roland de 
 la Porte and Chardin, for instance, are pleased to 
 paint what we call still life, that is, cooking utensils, 
 provisions, fruits, furniture ; the common things of 
 the interior of a house. Less an artist, and less in- 
 telligent than Chardin, Roland will make a table on 
 which he will place perhaps a bowl full of peaches, 
 a cup and saucer, a bottle of brandy, bits of sugar, a 
 tin box of coffee, a water-bottle, bread, plums — the 
 whole well represented, as well as they could be by 
 Chardin. 
 
 The latter examining the work of his brother ar- 
 tist, will notice that the utensils and the fruits are put 
 together hap-hazard ; that one does not drink brandy 
 out of a cup ; nor put peaches near a tin coffee- 
 box — and that the picture instead of being com- 
 posed of these different elements is overloaded with 
 them. He will not commit such a fault; he will 
 group upon his little canvas better assorted objects, 
 for example, two porcelain cups, a coffee-pot, a sugar- 
 bowl, and a glass of water. These two cups of old 
 Dresden china, forming a tete-a-tete, are there like 
 persons in the privacy of home, and seem to keep 
 house as well as the masters themselves. Every one 
 comprehends that the mistress is not far off, and that 
 two beings closely united are to sit down at this 
 table. Something of the pleasant uniformity that 
 characterizes quiet, happy homes, manifests itself to 
 us. Here is a simple picture of still life, that says 
 something to the mind. Apart from the excellence 
 

 204 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 of the execution, the work of Chardin will be supe- 
 rior to that of Roland de la Porte, because the one 
 will only have imitated nature, while the other, in im- 
 itating, will have interpreted her. Roland draws 
 near the workman ; Chardin at one step will have 
 passed over the space that separates the artisan 
 from the artist. 
 
 But in this domain of pure art opened to us by a 
 true painter simply by showing us two china cups, 
 everything is not on the same plane, nor at the same 
 level. Let the models, instead of cups and saucers, 
 be living, intelligent beings, art rises at once to a 
 higher stage ; and more difficult, it will also be more 
 valuable. 
 
 The Louvre is full of excellent pictures in which 
 we can measure the distance between still-life and a 
 familiar scene, or, as the Dutch say, " a conversation- 
 picture," like the " Music Lesson " of Gaspar Nets- 
 cher. It is a small panel, upon which we see a 
 young girl seated near a table covered with a rich 
 cloth, playing the violoncello. Dressed in white 
 satin, she is taking a lesson of a music-master who 
 is smitten with her beauty, and who, clothed in 
 brown, is thrown back into the middle distance in a 
 half-tint of shade. The Saint Preux of this Dutch 
 Julia presents a sheet of music to his pupil, and while 
 pointing out with his finger the words of the song, 
 opens his heart. At the moment in which the mute 
 drama is played in a corner of the picture, a little 
 page, who has entered noiselessly, advances, holding 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 205 
 
 a violin in his hand, interrupts the declaration of the 
 professor, and puts an end to the embarrassment of 
 the pupil. What has happened ? Why such anima- 
 tion upon the countenance of the master ? That is 
 what the young page seems to ask, incapable of com- 
 prehending the sentiments just exchanged between 
 two persons, one very much in love, the other on the 
 point of becoming so. 
 
 Is there a man of taste who would not prefer this 
 picture to one of still-life that Netscher might have 
 painted with the same talent and a touch as fine, by 
 grouping on the table-cover the violoncello, the vio- 
 lin, the bow, the sheets of music, and perhaps the 
 teacher's forgotten hat? 
 
 If painting can elevate itself thus by the mere 
 substitution of human figures for inanimate objects, 
 what will it become when it chooses its heroes, no 
 longer in common life, but in the world of history or 
 poetry ; when, instead of representing local manners, 
 it represents the customs of humanity, and its heroic 
 characteristics ; when it replaces the changing cos- 
 tume of an epoch by that generalization of vest- 
 ments suitable to all times and all peoples, which 
 drapery is ; when seeking beauty of form in its prim- 
 itive essence and drawing nigh to sculpture, it con- 
 ceives and creates those immortal types that are 
 gods ! We see there is a wide interval between Nets- 
 cher and Raphael, between Chardin and Michael 
 Angelo. To go over this interval as an observer, is 
 to explore the entire domain of art, landscape, sea- 
 
206 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 views, animals, battles, conversation-pictures and fa- 
 miliar scenes, that properly speaking are genre pic- 
 tures ; finally history, fable, poetry, allegory. 
 
 However diverse these kinds of painting, they can- 
 not be the basis of a complicated classification. It 
 would falsify philosophy to find divisions where there 
 are only shades and varieties. The true distinction, 
 the only one, we believe, to establish, is that of which 
 we have spoken — the difference between imitation 
 and style. 
 
XVII. 
 
 The different kinds of painting belong to the 
 lower or higher method, according as imitation 
 or style plays in them the principal role. 
 
 If the reader recalls our definition of style, he will 
 perceive that the objects embraced by painting are 
 all susceptible of imitation, but not all of style. 
 
 Style being typical truth, exists only for beings 
 endowed with organic and animal life. The mind 
 conceives a type of the horse or the lion, because the 
 organism of the horse and the lion follow a constant 
 law ; but it is impossible to conceive the type of a 
 rock or a cloud. Why ? Because those bodies not 
 being living are not organized ; not being organized 
 they have no proportion. How, then, discover the nor- 
 mal form of that which is without form ? How seize 
 the fixed rule of that which is irregular? How find 
 a perfect proportion where there exist only varia- 
 ble dimensions ? When I see the head or leg of a 
 horse, I can reconstruct the entire animal by virtue 
 of the fixed relation of the parts to the whole ; but 
 the half of a stone being given, I cannot know the 
 form of the other half, because no known principle 
 has governed the ao-£ re nation of its molecules. 
 
208 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Even the creations of the vegetable kingdom, for 
 the most part, elude a common measure ; they have 
 no standard, although we notice, repetitions, alterna- 
 tions, that indicate a beginning of regularity and 
 order, a sketch of life. Who can draw the typical 
 form of a fruit or a vegetable ? Who can fix the 
 type of the orange or turnip? Admitting that the 
 painter could do this, he would have only a frozen 
 image, without interest, without savor. For one 
 orange to represent all oranges, it would be neces- 
 sary to eliminate precisely that which in the painting 
 would give to this fruit singularity and attractiveness, 
 that is, the accidental peculiarities, infinitely varied, 
 which distinguish one orange from another, the 
 roughness or smoothness of the rind, the black spots 
 that have stained its surface, the parasites that gnaw 
 its skin, the shades of pale yellow or of vermilion 
 that announce unequal ripeness, as a part has ma- 
 tured in the sun or in the shade. 
 
 These delicate details are the delight of such ar- 
 tists as David de Heem, or Rachel Ruisch. It 
 pleases them to particularize by scrupulous imitation 
 that which, generalized, would become cold and in- 
 sipid. Have they under the eye a lobster ; their 
 touch dwells upon the sharp claws, spins out the an- 
 tennae, lingers over each articulation where a bit of 
 soft flesh unprotected by the cuirass may be per- 
 ceived. Have they a lemon to represent ; they will 
 make you taste the oil of the zest that rolls in a spiral 
 under the knife ; and how this half-peeled lemon will 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 209 
 
 make your mouth water when the silver blade passing 
 through the thick, white skin shows you in the cells 
 of the fruit that which will refresh and delight the 
 palate. Do they wish to paint just opened oysters ; 
 they will make us touch them with finger and lips ; 
 will sharply define the rough edges of the shell, 
 grossly foliated exteriorly, but within delicate, trans- 
 parent, polished, moist, nacred. 
 
 They take pride in painting the drops of water on 
 which the light plays, the pearls " which are," says a 
 poet, " a malady of the oyster, as poetry is a malady 
 of men." Lovingly they observe in every object the 
 curious tones, the delicate shades, the soft and the 
 shining, the smooth and the rough, the dense and 
 the friable. They express at the end of the brush 
 the delicate skin of the plum, its spots, its bloom, 
 and the downy envelope of the nut, and the cuttings 
 in the green skin that imprisons the kernel. They 
 forget neither the butterfly, the worm, the beetle, nor 
 the fly. In a word, they find delight in the imita- 
 tions that are for an instant to please the eye. 
 
 Thus, the value of such a painting is entirely in 
 the treatment. When the objects represented rise 
 in importance, style will find a place. 
 
 Landscape. Here still, imitation plays the most 
 important role, without, however, being so scrupu- 
 lous, so literal as it was in a picture of still-life. Let 
 the reality of the landscape be studied in each of the 
 elements that compose it, let one perceive in it the 
 14 
 
2IO 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 presence of the air, the distance of the horizon, the 
 lightness of the moving clouds, the depth of the 
 water ; let the land be solid, the stones hard, the 
 bark rough, the reeds damp, and the bushes thorny; 
 let the trembling leaves be traversed by the light, 
 hollowed by shadows, recognizable in their variety, 
 by their forms, their movement, — that is indispen- 
 sable, certainly. The poetry of the fields and forests 
 travels only in company with truth. 
 
 But the painter must idealize the real by making it 
 express some sentiment of the human soul, and the 
 proof that faithfulness of imitation does not alone 
 suffice is, that if the instrument of the photographer 
 could seize colors as it does forms, it would give us 
 a certain view of a certain country, but it would not 
 produce a work of art, — a landscape. 
 
 Look at that hut of Rembrandt's, now celebrated 
 among amateurs under the name of the " Hut of the 
 Big Tree." Had it painted itself on the plate of the 
 camera, instead of being seen by the eye of Rem- 
 brandt, we should, perhaps, pay it no attention ; cer- 
 tainly we should not find in it the sentiment of rus- 
 tic liberty and happiness that Rembrandt excites in 
 us after having experienced it himself. Fortunate 
 cabin ! What profound peace reigns around it. The 
 city is far, far off; we see it just enough to feel satis- 
 fied not to be in it. Before the door two children 
 are busy doing nothing. They are the only living 
 beings near this dwelling, except a cat that watches a 
 company of sparrows and two ducks, one of which 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 213 
 
 is plucking its feathers with its head thrust under its 
 wing. One can forget one's self long in contempla- 
 tion of this sublime disorder, this dilapidated thatch 
 carpeted with plants, and bright with flowers, and 
 this heap of fagots from which we might light up the 
 hearth if we entered to dry our shoes after a prome- 
 nade through the overflowed meadows. Managed 
 by a painter like Rembrandt, imitation apparently 
 the most naive charms us with objects that have no 
 relation to our affections. An old cask, a broken 
 wheel, a little wash house under which we hear the 
 croaking frogs, lilies floating on the lazy waters of 
 the canal, aquatic plants so well indicated by the pen- 
 cil of the artist, and the grand and beautiful linden 
 that gives majesty to a picture so rustic and humble. 
 Inanimate things: but they speak to us a language 
 that enchants us because Rembrandt has put in it 
 something of his own heart. 
 
 The spectacles of nature want the essential charac- 
 teristic of art — unity. Nature not only varies every 
 moment of the day, but in her infinite complexity, 
 her sublime disorder, she contains and manifests to 
 us that which corresponds to the most contradictory 
 emotions. Capable of exciting these emotions in 
 man, she is powerless to express them. He alone 
 can render them clear, visible, by choosing the scat- 
 tered features lost in the bosom of the real, and elim- 
 inating from them what is foreign to or contradic- 
 tory of his thought. 
 
 If Ruysdael paints a landscape, the sky is over- 
 
214 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 cast, the wind drives the clouds, whistles through the 
 bushes, sweeps over the fields of grain, and rustles 
 in the leaves of the old oaks. Under his impas- 
 sioned gaze, everything grows sombre, takes a charac- 
 ter of sadness ; the brook becomes a torrent, and rolls 
 over the uprooted trees ; the sun scarcely pierces the 
 clouds enough to change the characteristics of this 
 savage nature, and the smile of its light adds to the 
 melancholy of the picture. Should the painter meet 
 a sportive farm-girl gayly dressed, he would not see 
 her, and would never introduce her into his landscape, 
 in which we see only far-off, ill-defined figures that 
 enhance its solitude. 
 
 Let Berghem paint the same places, the spectator 
 would not recognize them. The sky is serene, the 
 forest peaceful, the water flows gently or sleeps in a 
 pond to which the cattle come to drink, driven by a 
 joyous peasant girl, in gay, fresh colors, mounted on 
 an ass. At night even the scene will be made gay 
 with some drama of light, either peasants kindling a 
 brush-heap to fish for crabs, or by the half-veiled 
 light of the moon, travellers and animals traversing 
 a wooded country, pass through a swampy glade in 
 which their images are reflected. 
 
 Thus the artist master of reality enlightens it with 
 his eyes, transfigures it according to his heart, and 
 makes it utter what is not in it — sentiment, and 
 that which it neither possesses nor understands — 
 thought. 
 
 But is landscape, already stamped with the imprint 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 217 
 
 of a personal character, susceptible of being aggran- 
 dized by style? Two great French painters have 
 affirmed it in a striking manner, Nicholas Poussin 
 and Claude Lorrain. Both, without overstepping 
 the bounds of truth, transport us into countries that 
 their imagination has embellished, and with real ele- 
 ments they compose an ideal whole. Their trees 
 present pleasing forms whose silhouette fills the space 
 but does not rend it ; their lines, varied without be- 
 ing fantastic, and contrasted without violence, pre- 
 serve even in their opposition a solemn breadth and a 
 calmness full of majesty. The buildings with which 
 their landscapes are ornamented, recall ancient times 
 and peoples. Those of Poussin remind of Sicily, 
 Greece, Egypt, so that one is not surprised to see 
 on the shore of the waters that bathe them the pur- 
 suit of Galatea, Diogenes throwing away his bowl, or 
 Moses saved by the daughter of Pharaoh. 
 
 Those of Claude recall sometimes the Golden Age, 
 those times in which life was a long breath of hap- 
 piness, when the land of Saturn was inhabited by 
 fauns and nymphs, when cavaliers were centaurs. 
 By a sublime transmigration of soul, Claude recol- 
 lects having lived among the shepherds of Theocri- 
 tus, having heard the flute of Pan, and upon his 
 canvas bathed in light, he hollows infinite distances 
 that are not only depths of space, but perspectives 
 of the soul. Sometimes he represents a ruined tem- 
 ple under the shadow of a sacred wood that 
 stretches out till lost on the horizon ; sometimes he 
 
218 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 paints with astonishing truth an imaginary gulf in 
 which ships, built in the workshops of the ideal, set 
 sail upon long voyages over seas that will never be 
 upheaved by a storm. 
 
 No other school has given such grandeur, such po- 
 etry to landscape. There is in truth poetry and 
 grandeur in finding in nature the past of history, in 
 transforming the field into an Elysium, in making it 
 the sojourn of the demi-gods ; but upon condition of 
 not losing sight of the accents of truth, of not sub- 
 stituting for the characteristics of the fields and 
 forests the factitious representations of an Utopia. 
 Nothing is more contrary to the laws of art than the 
 historic or heroic landscape reduced to a system. 
 Worth a hundred times more is a bit of ground 
 naively treated by Karel Dujardin, a little familiar 
 brook by Van de Velde, or even an oak of Bruandet. 
 The historic landscape is beautiful only when it is 
 sincere, that is to say, when, instead of being the 
 work of a teacher who has not felt what he wishes to 
 express, it emanates from a master who expresses 
 what he has felt. 
 
 Animals. When they are the principal object in 
 the painting, animals fall into the list of subjects in 
 which imitation plays the chief role. They ought to 
 be simplified and aggrandized by style only when 
 they figure in a fabulous composition or in some au- 
 gust scene in the suite of the gods. They are then 
 considered as emblematic, and to imitate them too 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 221 
 
 closely would be a puerility. When Cybele passes 
 on her car drawn by lions, when the triumphant 
 Bacchus guides his panthers, it is not fitting to ren- 
 der too exactly the fur of these animals, the details of 
 their manes, the spots upon their skins. They should 
 retain something mythical, because such animals 
 being taken as symbols, participate in the divinity 
 they accompany. How much less effective would be 
 a decoration in which the steeds of the sun or of 
 Neptune were introduced, if the artist limited him- 
 self to copying them from nature, instead of, like 
 Julio Romano or Polydorus, giving them something 
 supernatural. When they have played a role in his- 
 tory, or have been in the service of heroes, animals 
 may receive the imprint of style. When bulls and 
 oxen decorated with garlands are led by the victima- 
 rius to the sacrifice, the artist who wishes to put him- 
 self in unison with the personages that compose the 
 drama of his picture, will not go to the stable to 
 study them. He will rather draw his inspiration 
 from antique bas-reliefs or engraved stones, because 
 in them animals are represented in a way that lifts 
 them above the trivial, and because, each people hav- 
 ing had its own way of regarding and representing 
 them, it is of consequence to catch the spirit of those 
 who were their masters. 
 
 There are animals so consecrated by ancient re- 
 ligions and history, that we cannot escape the tradi- 
 tions that have ennobled them. Such are the horse, 
 the lion, the elephant, the tiger, the wild boar, the 
 
222 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 stag, the ram, the goat, the eagle, the owl, the ibis, 
 the serpent, the dolphin, the swan, the dove, the tor- 
 toise. Aside from the idea evoked by their presence, 
 wild animals are more susceptible of being idealized 
 by style than domestic animals. Those that are al- 
 ways under our eyes, and associated with our every- 
 day life, demand close obervation and imitation. The 
 sheep and cows that were sculptured by Phidias on 
 the frieze of the Parthenon, are rendered with ex- 
 treme naivete, while the lions' heads that crown the 
 cyma of the cornice recall a remoter, loftier nature. 
 
 If Jean Fyt, and Jean Leducq, are studying the 
 habits of dogs, if Hondecoeter, and Simon de Vlie- 
 ger are painting the life of the barn-yard, their sole 
 aim is to copy their models faithfully, to be true in 
 the least particulars. Paul Potter himself has no 
 other ambition ; he who has the power to charm us 
 by painting cows and sheep at pasture, and who so 
 well knows how, by the language of drawing and 
 color, to make apparent to us the unknown idioms 
 and the hidden poetry of this obscure world, in 
 which these inferior beings live as in a dream. 
 
 If the artist amuses himself by painting an ass 
 sauntering in a pasture, as Wouvermans has done, in 
 what way can he interest us other than by details ? 
 Having munched his thistles, the donkey has stopped 
 on the brink of a ravine, and seems philosophically 
 occupied in snuffing up the fresh air, and pensively 
 listening to the sound of the water. His bony back 
 and his long ears are vigorously defined against the 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 225 
 
 clear sky. Involuntarily one draws near the creature 
 and marks the variety of colors on his skin ; here 
 black, there grey, yellow in spots, marked with white 
 under the belly in tones delicate, brilliant, silvery. 
 We notice where the hair has been worn off by the 
 rubbing of the bridle, the cicatrized wounds, finally 
 scrutinize the physiognomy of this dreaming animal, 
 and its profound quietude. But let the scene change, 
 let this ass of the fields become the ass of Scripture, 
 stopped in the way by the angel, or bearing Jesus in 
 triumph into Jerusalem. What a stupid fault it 
 would be to insist upon the little details that charmed 
 us a moment ago. In one of the admirable paint- 
 ings that decorate the choir of St. Germain-des-Pres, 
 Flandrin has given a fine example of the style that 
 transforms the humblest animals when they are asso- 
 ciated with divine actions. 
 
 One means of heightening imitation in animals is 
 to put into them that fire, dash, fullness of life, that 
 lend to their passions something human, and that 
 Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, and Sneyders have so 
 well expressed in their battles and hunting-scenes. 
 
 Battles and Hunting-scenes have this in common 
 — it is impossible to paint them with other than 
 probable truth. How can one represent in a single 
 instant an action that lasted a whole day? How 
 preserve in a picture the exactitude of strategic 
 movements, the precision of the bulletin, the fidelity 
 of history ? The talent of the painter is shown in 
 
 iS 
 
226 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 choosing the most interesting feature of the action, 
 the most characteristic episode, the decisive mo- 
 ment. 
 
 Every painting is subject to the rigorous law of 
 unity. But genius must invent the unity of the bat- 
 tle or the chase, or know how to unravel it from the 
 complications of a long recital. The important 
 thing is to give us a vivid idea of the combat, a 
 memorable impression by striking one grand blow 
 upon the imagination. In his " Battle of Aboukir," 
 Gros happily personifies the two armies, the two 
 races, the two forms of courage, by the choice of a 
 single episode. While Mustapha, thrown from, his 
 horse, disarmed, shudders at the abandonment of his 
 soldiers, and with indignant hand strives to retain 
 the fugitives, his son, to save the father's life, picks 
 up his sword and presents it to General Murat, who, 
 as handsome in the melee as on parade, stops short 
 his Arab horse, and by an heroic and eloquent ges- 
 ture, spares the vanquished. 
 
 In his sublime " Battle of Eylau," the same 
 painter makes a single figure the resume of a ter- 
 rible defeat. In the foreground are groups of dead 
 under the snow, dying disturbed by the noise of the 
 imperial escort, savage enemies whose wounds our 
 surgeons dress in spite of them. Farther off, over a 
 a vast, extended space, we see entire regiments 
 stretched upon the ground, lines of soldiers who 
 maintain their ranks even in death, and others in the 
 ranks awaiting their turn to die. But all these epi- 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 227 
 
 sodes do not hinder the eye from turning ever to the 
 figure of Napoleon, to that pale face lifted to heaven 
 in search of the vanished star, and which, ceaselessly 
 present to the eye, forms the unity of this great dis- 
 aster. 
 
 Sometimes the unity consists in the absence of a 
 dominant episode ; the battle is then the image of 
 two armies that seem to obey the breath of contrary 
 winds, and make of a thousand slaughters one butch- 
 ery. However, all is not pure invention in such a 
 picture, but what role shall be given to imitation or 
 to memory where so many scenes, movements, ges- 
 tures, attitudes, have lasted but a moment, even sup- 
 posing the painter engaged in the battle had leis- 
 ure to see them ? 
 
 It was permissible to Raphael, to introduce in the 
 " Battle of Constantine," the grand style rendered 
 possible by the action of half-naked figures, and the 
 tournure of antique arms. Such paintings, repre- 
 senting under forms of highest beauty the eternal 
 horrors of war, and under the features of a father 
 lifting the still warm corpse of his son, the eternal 
 sorrows that follow human sacrifices, such paintings, 
 we say, belong to the highest order in the hierarchy 
 of art. So of the " Battles of Alexander," upon 
 which Charles Lebrun has imprinted a character 
 truly epic. 
 
 As for the modern battle, with its official truths 
 and its obligatory uniforms, it has only a value of 
 anecdote, because it would be unintelligible if the 
 
228 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 - 
 
 painter pretended to develop the plan of the general- 
 in-chief, and to show us the grand manoeuvres. 
 Horace Vernet in his pictures, Raffet in his litho- 
 graphs, have tried to preserve, at least in part, the 
 identity of time and place, and the physiognomy of 
 the combatants. They felt it would be absurd to 
 transfigure military men whom one might meet in the 
 streets of Paris, between two battles, and without hes- 
 itating between the insipidity of an allusion and the 
 energy of the truth, they have found it piquant to 
 paint heroism in overcoat and cap, as they deem it 
 just to do homage with the popular chiefs, to the 
 great collective man — the regiment. Unfortunately, 
 such respect for bulletins and reports, gives exces- 
 sive importance to little truths, to little things, but- 
 ton-holes, straps, epaulettes, gaiter-buttons ; the artist 
 cannot forget these details, because, doing so, he 
 would sacrifice the interest, the real value of his work. 
 
 Michael Angelo said one day to Francois de Hol- 
 lande : " What painter would be silly enough to pre- 
 fer the shoe of a man to his foot ? " He thus 
 affirmed the superiority of the nude over the vest- 
 ment, and necessarily the superiority of drapery 
 over costume. Without being so austere as sculp- 
 ture, the art of the painter rises in proportion as it 
 frees itself from conventionalities purely conditional 
 and local. Costume varies according to place and 
 time ; it is often an affair of caprice or fashion ; dra- 
 pery, on the contrary, is eternal, because it is the 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 229 
 
 clothing of humanity. The interest of familiar 
 painting is heightened, when to the representation 
 of customs is added the piquancy of costumes, but 
 high art rejects costumes, and admits, willingly, only 
 draped figures. 
 
 When Raphael had entirely broken with Gothic 
 usages, and gotten rid of the habit contracted by 
 him under his master Perugino, of dressing the Gos- 
 pel characters according to the fashion of Florence 
 or Perugia, he learned what grandeur there is in 
 Greek drapery. The mantles that cover the philos- 
 ophers in the " School of Athens," like those that 
 envelop the " Prophets " of the Sistine Chapel, were 
 not cut by the tailors of Rome, but conceived, ad- 
 justed by the supreme taste of Raphael, the free 
 genius of Michael Angelo. 
 
 The Venetian School, so charming and so gor- 
 geous in Veronese, so imposing in Titian, is inferior, 
 as a whole, to the Roman and Florentine schools, 
 because it displayed stuffs instead of studying dra- 
 pery, was pleased with the habiliments of the stage, 
 and with painting satin, taffeta, velvet, brocade, with 
 the sole object of pleasing the eye. By the profu- 
 sion of their costumes, the Venetians were led to 
 indulge in gaudy colors and ostentatious displays, so 
 brilliantly renewed by Rubens, that lead one, little 
 by little, to neglect sentiments and ideas, to replace 
 the eloquence of art by picturesque phrases. 
 
 There is, however, one kind of painting for which 
 drapery is not suitable — foe. portrait. 
 
2 30 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 Here, the truth of imitation would seem to be a 
 quality of the first order, and resemblance by means 
 of clothing a necessity. Nevertheless, portraiture is 
 one of the highest branches of art, and only the 
 greatest artists have excelled in it ; in Italy, Titian, 
 Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto ; in 
 Spain, Velasquez ; in Germany, Holbein and Albert 
 Durer; in the Low Countries, Anthony More, Ru- 
 bens, Van Dyck ; in England, Reynolds and Law- 
 rence ; in France, Rigaud, Largilliere, David, Gerard, 
 Ingres. 
 
 If works of art ought to be measured by the de- 
 gree of intellect they demand, the perfection of the 
 portrait is the last word of painting. In truth, the 
 model that apparently gives the law to the painter, 
 that imposes upon him the peculiarities of his feat- 
 ures, the singularity of his coiffure, the cut of his 
 clothes, his habitual carriage, yet leaves him count- 
 less liberties. These profoundly personal character- 
 istics, that must be profoundly treated, may be modi- 
 fied in a hundred ways ; the ugliness of the face cor- 
 rected by choosing full-face, three quarters, or profile, 
 lowering, raising, or turning aside the head, adopting 
 a pose that hides what is insignificant and makes 
 prominent what is advantageous, by calling in the aid 
 of light and its charms, shadow and its mysteries. 
 
 Can anything be more difficult than to get the ex- 
 pression of intelligent life? But the means of suc- 
 cess ? Will it be by literal imitation ? If that sufficed, 
 the best portrait painter would be the photographer. 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 231 
 
 But who does not know how deceitful is the truth, 
 that pretends to be infallible, of the photographic 
 image ? The painter endowed with mind can call 
 forth the mind of his model, but how can a machine 
 evoke a soul ? In presence of the human figure, the 
 photographer, according to the sculptor Preault, 
 gives us only " the soot of the flame." 
 
 Before a being who feels and thinks, everything 
 ought to be felt and thought, consequently chosen; 
 the attitude, the physiognomy, the lines of adjust- 
 ment, the chiaro 'scuro, the color, the accessories, 
 even the relative proportion of the frame which may 
 make the model seem larger or smaller. If the per- 
 son is of lofty stature, it will be better to narrow 
 the field above the head so that he will seem to 
 touch the ceiling of the picture ; if of small size, it 
 will be indicated clearly enough by the distance left 
 between the top of the head and the border. 
 
 The attitude is one of the grandest means of ex- 
 pression in the portrait. Much skill is required 
 that the pose may not seem far-fetched, forced, but 
 striking, and, at the same time, natural. By repre- 
 senting Henry VIII. standing and full-face, his 
 cane in his hand, and one arm hanging down, Hoi 
 bein has been able to manifest with energy the in- 
 stincts and appetites of this gross man, of this obese 
 and voracious brute, who fills his frame to bursting- 
 This pose displays his round face, small, cruel 
 mouth, narrow, pinched nostrils, swine's eyes, swol- 
 
232 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 len temples, and jaws that by their enormous devel- 
 opment seem to drag intelligence down into the 
 region of the viscera. Ever since Holbein's time, 
 the English school has shone by the variety of its 
 attitudes. Reynolds displays fine, inventive imagi- 
 nation in the portrait of the celebrated Dr. Johnson. 
 With half-closed eye, anxious brow, hands opening 
 as if about to seize a fleeting thought, he seems 
 plunged in an ecstasy of meditation, and to revolve 
 some great problem in the folds of his mind. 
 
 For a century, artists have surpassed their predeces- 
 sors in exaggerating the exceptional, heightening the 
 accidental, to represent certain strange types, certain 
 temperaments engendered by the crossing of races 
 and the current of new thoughts. In our clays, In- 
 gres, in his portrait of Bertin, has, with rare power, 
 indicated the power of his model, merely by the at- 
 titude he caught after having observed him for 
 months. Seated, and loaded down by his embon- 
 point, he places his two hands, turned inwards, upon 
 his wide-apart legs, and with his rounded arms seems 
 to sustain the weight of his corpulency. In this 
 admirable portrait we find the indelible features of 
 an individuality that it would be impossible to con- 
 found with any other ; it is full of style in its imita- 
 tion, because its truth is a typical truth, that is to 
 say, it is a personification of the higher bourgeoisie 
 of our times, a class strong, intelligent, and tenacious, 
 disdainful of what is below and above it, and in 
 which the pride of the theorist is mingled with the 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 233 
 
 positivism of the business-man, and the manifest well- 
 being of fortune acquired by labor. Yet how pro- 
 foundly individualized is the physiognomy of the 
 original, not only by the questioning expression of 
 
 BERTIN. BY INGRES. 
 
 the piercing eye, the slight disorder of the hair, the 
 taper fingers of the puffy hands, but even by the 
 folds of the vest and coat, whose optical physiognomy 
 completes the moral physiognomy of the portrait. 
 
2 34 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 The Physiognomy. There is in the individual a 
 general truth that the painter cannot at the first mo- 
 ment divine, for it often happens that a coarse man 
 has a vein of gentleness, and a mild man has fits of 
 violence. Anxious to seize the unity of the charac 
 ter through the accidental or misleading expressions, 
 Van Dyck kept his sitters to dinner, the better to spy 
 out the moment in which their true physiognomy 
 should betray itself, in which the natural, driven 
 away by factitious conventionality, should return on 
 the gallop. Holbein had reflected upon that, and 
 looked closely, when he painted that ascetic, mild old 
 man, whose bony hands, crossed one over the other, 
 repeat the leanness and sadness already announced 
 by the withered face, the eyes hollowed by medita- 
 tion, the sunken cheeks, and thin lips accustomed to 
 silence. The black cap crowded down over the ears, 
 the furred pelisse that covers the shoulders, the table 
 upon which he leans, all aid in showing us a denizen 
 of the North, who lives in the interior of his house 
 and of his thoughts. "Who could help loving," says 
 Paul Mantz, " this srrave and gentle face of a thinker 
 who, we are sure, suffered all the disquietudes of the 
 sixteenth century, and who, without having the mock- 
 ing lip of Erasmus, like him saw the old world end, 
 and the new one begin. These portraits of Holbein 
 are full of ideas. The human has never been ren- 
 dered so visible under the mask that covers it." 
 
 Lines simple or involved, abrupt or blended to- 
 gether, light and shadow, adapted to the tempera- 
 
PAINTING, 
 
 235 
 
 ment of the individual, coloring vigorous or tender, 
 brilliant or subdued, dress careless or severe, the ac- 
 cessories, the attributes, the background, these di- 
 verse elements in the portrait fall within the prov- 
 ince of the mind. Each of the great masters has 
 employed them, according to the characteristics of 
 
 PORTRAIT BV HOLBEIN. 
 
 the persons represented, sometimes according to his 
 own genius. Leonardo da Vinci veils in loving half- 
 tints the portrait of " Mona Lisa," the beautiful 
 woman with the reserved, yet provoking smile, the 
 magnetic eye. He envelops her in a harmony of a 
 minor key, that the blending of light and shadow 
 
236 
 
 PAINTING. 
 
 may correspond to the secret fascination of this coun- 
 tenance, this voluptuous look. Rembrandt throws 
 over the commonest nature a mysterious glimmer 
 that is poetry, the romance of light. Velasquez ex- 
 presses so perfectly the shade of temperament by 
 the exquisite truth of local tone, that we discover 
 without effort the unison between the visible form 
 and the hidden spirit. Van Dyck and Anthony 
 More give to all their personages the stamp of 
 good breeding, or the investiture of nobility. Ru- 
 bens exalts life in the image of his model ; he seems 
 to throw into it the circulation of the blood, and 
 when it is a child or a woman, he lavishes upon it 
 freshness, youth, and the sun. All Titian's portraits 
 are imposing. Their beauty attracts, at the same 
 time their dignity keeps us at a distance. They are 
 speaking, though silent. 
 
 The old distinction between genre and history, or 
 rather between familiar, anecdotic painting and style, 
 is then necessary, profound, and must be maintained. 
 Individual truth suits the one ; the other demands a 
 more general, a higher truth. Let Teniers individ- 
 ualize with spirit, and with all the accents of their 
 grotesque deformity, his peasants, whom Louis Qua- 
 torze called baboons ; let Van Ostade detail the in- 
 teresting ugliness of his wandering minstrels, of his 
 poor, deformed villagers ; let him introduce us, with a 
 sunbeam, into that little "Village School," where 
 twenty charming monkeys have each his own fashion 
 
PAINTING. 
 
 237 
 
 of pouting at work, and dreaming of the hedge-rows; 
 that is admirable. A charlatan at a fair, a public 
 fete, a game of chess, a familiar conversation, the 
 comedies of the household, the little dramas of pri- 
 vate life, demand only justness of observation and 
 talent for imitation. All pretension to style would 
 be unpleasing, out of place. 
 
 Very different is the work of the painter, when the 
 person whose biography he relates is the human race. 
 The form, gesture, expression, external nature, the 
 landscape, all are under the control of his thought ; 
 he is like one who, melting common worn-out 
 money, stamps it anew and creates with it other spe- 
 cies of purer metal, higher value. He knows that 
 in the scales of history, little things are borne down 
 by the weight of great ones. " It matters not," says 
 Reynolds, " if Alexander were short of stature, if 
 Agesilaus were maimed, if Saint Paul were mean in 
 appearance ; in the representation of these heroes 
 the painter prefers the resemblance of the mind to 
 that of the body. If, by chance, he has seen a boy 
 hurling a sling, bite his lip, he will not, like Bernin, 
 give to the conqueror of Goliath that trivial and acci- 
 dental expression, thus disobeying the higher laws of 
 art. 
 
 Color, also, has its conventionalities and its dignity, 
 in the eyes of the painter of style. Sometimes, to 
 give more severity, he tempers it or reduces it to the 
 tone of chiaro 'scuro, or, if he finds the harmony too 
 effeminate, he does not fear to break it by sudden 
 
238 PAINTING. 
 
 transitions, bold juxtapositions, that move the spec- 
 tator as would the staccato notes of martial music. 
 
 The great artist is not he who enters our house to 
 put on our clothes, to conform to our habits, to speak 
 to us an every-day idiom, and to give us a represen- 
 tation of ourselves ; the greatest artist is he who 
 guides us into the region of his own thought, into 
 the palaces or fields of his own imagination, and who 
 there, while speaking to us the language of the gods, 
 while showing us ideal forms and colors, makes us 
 for a moment believe, by force of the truth in his 
 falsehoods, that these regions are those in which we 
 have always lived, these palaces belong to us, these 
 mountains looked down upon our birth ; that this 
 language is ours, and these forms, these colors, cre- 
 ated by his genius, are the forms and colors of Na- 
 ture herself. 
 
dfttgrabius 
 
 i. 
 
 Engraving is the art of tracing in intaglio 
 
 UPON METAL, OR IN RELIEF UPON WOOD, A DRAWING 
 FROM WHICH IMPRESSIONS CAN BE TAKEN. 
 
 To engrave, is to draw by in- 
 cision upon a hard body, stone, 
 wood, or metal. This kind of 
 drawing is very ancient ; we 
 find many examples of it in 
 Egyptian hieroglyphics, not to 
 speak of the seals that the citi- 
 zens of Babylon carried upon their persons, and the 
 ring of Ulysses, upon which a dolphin was engraved. 
 We have only to look at the ancient coins to see a 
 type in relief produced by an engraving in intaglio, 
 and a hollowed area produced by an engraving in 
 relief. The art of engraving, then, is not a modern 
 invention, it is only the art of taking impressions 
 upon paper from an engraving upon wood or metal, 
 that is of recent origin. In other words, it is the 
 marriage of engraving with the printing-press. 
 
 As there are two kinds of engraving, well defined, 
 in relief and in intaglio, so there are two kinds of im- 
 
240 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 pressions. Engraving in relief, which is ordina- 
 rily upon wood, and which we call, for that reason, 
 xylographic, is a drawing in which the lights are 
 deeply hollowed, while the shadows and the contour 
 arc in relief. To print a wood engraving, ink is 
 passed over the surface so as to blacken only the pro- 
 jecting portions of the wood, and an imprint upon 
 paper is obtained, a proof, by pressing the sheet 
 upon the inked surface. Before the invention of 
 printing, this pressure was obtained by means of a 
 brush, still used for wall-papers. Thus the proofs of 
 the "St. Christopher" were made in 1423, which 
 probably are the oldest impressions of wood engrav- 
 ing of undisputed date. 
 
 Intaglio, generally upon copper or steel, consists 
 in leaving intact the lighter parts of the drawing, and 
 hollowing in the plate of metal only the contour and 
 the shadows. To print such an engraving, one be- 
 gins by covering the whole plate with ink ; after- 
 wards it is dried with a tampon of linen or the palm 
 of the hand, so as to leave ink only in the cuttings, 
 that is, in the furrows hollowed by the artist. Ap- 
 plying to the plate a damp paper, under heavy pres- 
 sure, between two cylinders covered with flannel, 
 the paper is crowded to the bottom of the cuttings, 
 where it takes up the ink. 
 
 The generic name prints, is given to the images 
 obtained upon paper by means of pressure. Al- 
 though every print may be a proof, and every proof 
 a print, the word is used in a more restricted sense. 
 
ENGRA VING. 
 
 241 
 
 It signifies trial, when the engraver, to test his work, 
 prints an impression ; and is employed in a relative 
 sense in speaking of one print as compared with 
 another taken from the same plate. We say, for in- 
 stance, my proof is better than yours. A proof is 
 clear or muddy, according as the plate was well or 
 badly dried ; it is gray or pale when the pressure 
 was insufficient, or when the plate, worn at the sur- 
 face, begins to lose the fullness or precision of its 
 black. In a word, the proof is to the print what the 
 copy is to the book. 
 
 If it is true that there exists in Europe no proof 
 from a wood engraving anterior to the " St. Chris- 
 topher ; " if it is true that the date 14 18 of the " Vir- 
 gin surrounded by Saints," in the library at Brussels, 
 may have been changed, the first xylographic print 
 preceded, by thirty years, the first print made from 
 an engraving on metal by a Florentine jeweller, 
 Maso Finiguerra. 
 
 Wonderful coincidence ! The invention of en- 
 graving, which is the printing of the fine arts, was 
 contemporaneous with that of printing, which is the 
 engraving of belles-lettres. The means of popular- 
 izing the works of the artist was born at the same 
 time with the means of propagating the thoughts of 
 the poet and the philosopher. In 1452, when Gu- 
 tenberg and Faust were printing at Mayence their 
 first Latin Bible, the Florentine, Maso Finiguerra, 
 created the first prints, taking impressions from a 
 silver paten he had engraved for the Church of St. 
 
 16 
 
242 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 John Baptist, at Florence. It is Important to ex- 
 plain how he was led to his discovery, and in what 
 it consisted. 
 
 Like all the jewellers of his time, Finiguerra orna- 
 mented his works, sword-hilts, caskets, patens, cups, 
 chalices, reliquaries, with patterns engraved in intag- 
 lio. These delicate miniature ornaments were called 
 nielli, from the Latin word nigellum, — black, hence 
 applied to the engravings made by jewellers. When 
 the artist had finished his work, he spread over the 
 
 ITALIAN NIELLO. 
 COLLECTION OF M. EMILE GALICHON. 
 
 engraving a black enamel, niello, whose composition 
 is carefully described by Benvenuto Cellini, in his 
 treatise upon jewelry. This enamel, filling the cut- 
 tings of the engraving, made the design visible in 
 black upon the clear tone of the metal. But as any 
 retouching was impossible after the melted niello 
 had been run into the mould, the jeweller, before 
 proceeding to this last operation, took one or several 
 
ENGRA VING. 
 
 243 
 
 impressions with clay, to be able to inspect his work 
 and, if need were, to correct it. Upon the clay the 
 engraving presented itself in relief and reversed ; if, 
 for instance, an inscription were traced in the origi- 
 nal from right to left it would in the impression run 
 from left to right. Now to see his work as he would 
 have seen it upon the niello-covered plate, the jewel- 
 ler poured sulphur over the clay, and, after having 
 colored with lamp-black the furrows in the sulphur, 
 he printed a counter proof that replaced the engrav- 
 ing in its proper position before his eyes. 
 
 This method Finiguerra had employed when he 
 engraved for the church of the Baptist at Florence 
 one of those patens to which the name paix was 
 given, because they received the kiss of peace in re- 
 ligious ceremonies. After having taken, with sul- 
 phur, two impressions, Finiguerra conceived the idea 
 of printing one upon the silver plate with damp 
 paper that he pressed with a roller, and the proof 
 thus obtained was the first print from an intaglio. 
 
 This inestimable relic is preserved in the cabinet 
 of prints at Paris, where it was exhumed in 1797, by 
 the Abbe Zani. Fortune kindly giving to an Italian 
 the discovery of the print, that proves, in spite of 
 German pretension, the Italian origin of printed en- 
 graving. Additional information with regard to this 
 curious historic controversy, is furnished by the two 
 proofs in sulphur, printed by Finiguerra, that still 
 exist, one at Genoa in the Durazzo collection, the 
 other in the British Museum. 
 
244 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 Nevertheless the invention of Finiguerra, which 
 was such for Europe, was not new in the world. 
 We know from the testimony of the Venetian, Marco 
 Polo, who travelled in China in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, that at that time the Mongolian conquerors had 
 assignats printed upon mulberry-tree paper from 
 copper plates. The Florentine jeweller only found 
 again a secret already known in Eastern Asia, where 
 also from time immemorial they had known how to 
 print stuffs from engravings in relief. But the Floren- 
 tine discovery was of incalculable importance : first, 
 by multiplying the impressions of an original work 
 the printer spread it through the whole world and in- 
 sured it a duration that might almost become eter- 
 nal ; and because the delicacy of the engraving, the 
 vigor of its shadows, the clearness of its lights, the 
 depth of its distances, the variety of tones that color 
 lent it, cannot be caught upon the red background 
 of the copper, or the sombre one of the wood, and 
 are brought out only by the whiteness of the paper. 
 What an instrument of civilization, what a benefit to 
 the artist, what a source of enjoyment to those that 
 admire him, and to those who, by means of the en- 
 graving, will learn to admire him. 
 
II. 
 
 The art of the engraver is bound by certain- 
 general LAWS, ALTHOUGH THERE EXIST PARTICULAR 
 CONVENTIONALITIES FOR EACH OF THE DIFFERENT 
 KINDS OF ENGRAVING. 
 
 The engraving is a drawing made with a steel in- 
 strument instead of a pen or pencil. If the drawing is 
 an invention of the engraver, it must be judged as any 
 other drawing would be. If it is the reproduction 
 of a work of art, painting, sculpture, architecture, 
 cameo, coin, medal, vase, ornament, the first quality 
 of the engraver is fidelity, in the sense that he ought 
 not only to render the original feature for feature, to 
 repeat the contour and the relief, but also, and above 
 all, to preserve the spirit and the aspect of the re- 
 produced work, to bring out its excellencies and avow 
 its defects, in fine, to reveal frankly its character. 
 
 If a painting is in question, the engraver having at 
 his disposal, so far as color is concerned, only white 
 and black, ceases to be a copyist to become a trans- 
 lator. He translates truly into chiaro 'scuro the col- 
 oring of the picture, and abstracting the tints gives 
 only their values. The colors being considered as 
 spots more or less luminous, more or less sombre, 
 he engraves yellow drapery, for instance, with lighter 
 
246 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 cuttings and wider spaces than blue drapery, so that 
 the latter forms in the engraving a darker mass than 
 the former. 
 
 To imitate the perspective of bodies especially in 
 architecture, the engraver will direct his cuttings to- 
 wards the point of sight; to imitate aerial perspec- 
 tive, he will express by delicate work the indecision 
 of objects the most remote in the picture, and will 
 reserve the sharp strokes for the parts nearest the 
 eye. As to the diverse substances, wood, stone, 
 marble, earth, trees, water, clouds, stuffs, flesh, he 
 will make them apparent by work that will vary in 
 the different kinds of engraving. 
 
 The two great divisions of this art are intaglio 
 and relief, but each of these is subdivided. In the 
 first we have copper-plate, aquafortis, mezzotint, aqua- 
 tint, imitation of pencilling. In the second, engrav- 
 ing on wood and upon several plates in chiaro 'scuro 
 or cameo, whose development has produced colored 
 enarravinar. 
 
III. 
 
 ENGRAVING ON COPPER. 
 
 However important in the copper-plate the 
 choice and the treatment of the work may be, 
 the engraver should strive above everything, 
 by correct and expressive drawing, to render 
 the characteristics of the model he wishes to 
 
 ENGRAVE. 
 
 Engraving on copper is, 
 par excellence, classic, that 
 which has rendered the most 
 service in perpetuating the 
 works of the great masters 
 and which itself has pro- 
 duced the most master-pieces. 
 It is also called engraving with the burin, because 
 it consists in cutting the copper with this steel in- 
 strument which traces there, more or less profoundly, 
 sharp, regular strokes, firm, but supple enough to 
 indicate by their direction their projection or atten- 
 uation, and by their manner of crossing each other, 
 the material quality of objects, their apparent dis- 
 tance, their optical effect. To copy the contour with 
 
248 
 
 ENGRA VJNG. 
 
 sentiment, to put the light and the shadow properly 
 in their places, to express the visible nature of sur- 
 faces, the gradation of distances, the inequality of 
 reliefs, all that does not suffice to the engraver; it is 
 of consequence that the expression should be gotten 
 by one method of procedure rather than another, and 
 it is the choice of method that constitutes the narrow 
 specialty of his art. 
 
 A word upon the operations of the copper-plate 
 engraver, — and we could not speak of it here without 
 grateful remembrance of the eminent masters, Cala- 
 matta and Mercuri, who have taught us the laws and 
 the secrets of their art. 
 
 Let us suppose the engraver wishes to reproduce 
 a half-draped figure. After making a drawing of it, 
 he traces this drawing upon the copper or steel, 
 marking by a succession of points, the contour of 
 the figures, the strongest shadows, even the half-tints. 
 Then with the graver, he masses the shadows by 
 means of a succession of cuttings that are called 
 first, and which, following the projections and depres- 
 sions of the muscles or folds, become more slender, 
 and are farther apart near the light, while they are 
 crowded together and thickened in the shadows. This 
 first work not sufficing, and often letting the pure 
 white penetrate even to the black, the engraver blots 
 out the white by crossing the first lines with more 
 slender second lines. But that the lessening of these 
 hatchings may be well graduated, that the execution 
 may be brilliant and smooth, the artist must several 
 
ENGRA VJNG. 
 
 249 
 
 times go over the first furrows of the graver, deep- 
 ening the cutting. Sometimes instead of crossing 
 the first, the engraver slips in intercalary lines, 
 which, allowing the passage of slender threads of 
 light, suit the imitation of polished, shining bodies. 
 
 According as the second lines cross the first ob- 
 liquely or at right angles, they produce lozenges or 
 squares that may be cut anew by a third line. All 
 these crossings form little luminous triangles that 
 prevent the shadows from growing heavy by preserv- 
 ing a certain freshness in them. The lozenge, when 
 oblong, produces a sort of undulation not suitable for 
 flesh, making it resemble a moired ribbon, but in 
 drapery it gives the aspect of cloth hot pressed. 
 
 Although the cuttings are lessened at the extremi- 
 ties, the passage from light to shadow would often 
 be too brusque ; to manage the transition the artist 
 finishes his cuttings with points which are sometimes 
 arranged without apparent order, sometimes distrib- 
 uted with evident symmetry. 
 
 Such, in brief, are the methods of the engraver 
 upon copper. They are reduced, as we see, to the 
 combination of two very simple elements, the light 
 represented by the white of the paper, and the 
 shadow obtained by hatchings and points. 
 
 In reading the annals of engraving we shall dis- 
 cover the laws of this art: they are engraved upon 
 brass by the master engravers. We have a striking 
 proof of the superiority of art over a handicraft 
 in the early prints, which, in their rudimentary 
 
250 
 
 ENGKA VING. 
 
 simplicity, present no manual skill, no choice in 
 methods, but nevertheless have been deservedly ad- 
 mired for four centuries. If we look at the works 
 of Mantegna, what imposing features, in spite of the 
 primitive rudeness of the methods, we see in his 
 bacchanals, his combats of Tritons, and his plates of 
 
 TRITON. BY MANTEGNA. 
 
 the " Triumph of Caesar." The graver is guided 
 with savage monotony. The caparisoned elephants 
 
ENGRA VING. 
 
 2 5i 
 
 bearins: torches and candelabra, the Roman soldiers 
 holding the eagles and the trophies, the musicians 
 sounding the trumpet, the bulls led to the sacrifice, 
 the standards, the vases, the litters, all are engraved 
 in the same way. Short, stiff, and always parallel 
 hatchings mark the shadows. But how strongly he 
 accentuates the characteristics by this uniform mode 
 of procedure. In spite of his unvarying mode of 
 cutting, how well he varies the expressions, how in- 
 cisive he is in his rude naivete, how grand in his 
 stiffness. 
 
 But such austerity of means is not enough for 
 engraving. It ought to be an art apart from pure 
 drawing. The engraved drawing should be made 
 more interesting by a certain manner of cutting the 
 
 SAINT GEORGE. BV MARTIN SCHOEN. 
 
 metal, a manner that is to engraving what touch is to 
 painting, calligraphy to writing. 
 
252 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 There are German and Dutch masters, Martin 
 Schoen, Albert Durer, Lucas de Leyden, who have 
 invented and introduced into the art the piquant 
 truth of proceedings that double the interest of an 
 engraving. The " Nativity " of Durer, and the print 
 of " St. Jerome in his Cell," are of a perfection that 
 leaves nothing to be desired. Seated before a desk, 
 St. Jerome is absorbed in the study of the Scriptures. 
 A bright light enters, through the casement, into the 
 chamber of the anchoret, and throws the trembling 
 shadow of the window-frame upon the wall. All the 
 objects that compose the picture preserve the physi- 
 ognomy befitting them. The pine of the floor is 
 rendered with charming truth by cuttings that follow 
 the veins of the wood, and turn around the knots. 
 In the lion and fox of the foreground, the fine hair 
 of the one, and the rough hide of the other, are 
 plainly indicated. The incisions of the graver run 
 in the direction required by the perspective, the form 
 and nature of the objects and their dominant dimen- 
 sion. A gourd is suspended from the ceiling and 
 we feel that the surface of the fruit is smooth. The 
 accessories, in a word, play a very interesting optical 
 role, perhaps too interesting. 
 
 But Durer failed, if not in knowledge of aerial 
 perspective, at least in marking well the gradation of 
 distance between the different planes of the picture. 
 Lucas de Leyden gave the first instance of it, in in- 
 dicating by an ever and ever lighter touch the dis- 
 tance of objects. He puts air into his prints; many 
 
THE NATIVITY. BY ALBERT DURER. 
 
ENGRA VING. 
 
 255 
 
 people might breathe in them. The plate upon 
 which, following a middle-age fable, he has engraved 
 the " Poet Virgil suspended in a Basket," by a cour- 
 tesan, presents in the foreground, figures that seem 
 to be within reach of the hand, while in the back- 
 ground the basket in which Virgil is hanging from 
 the window, is rendered by less decisive strokes that 
 indicate the successive layers of air and the dis- 
 tance. 
 
 With Marc Anthony, who in the atelier of 
 Raphael works under his eyes, after giving up copy- 
 ing the original but Teutonic engravings of Albert 
 Diirer, something new in the art of engraving is 
 produced. Beauty of execution unites with breadth 
 of style. The savage and sublime monotony of 
 Mantegna is followed by a manner elegant and 
 chaste, varied without being whimsical, imitative 
 without minutia. 
 
 Under the surveillance of Raphael, under the em- 
 pire of his counsels, Marc Anthony conceives en- 
 graving as it should be, when attempting to repeat 
 the works of great masters. He conceives it as a 
 concise translation that represents the essential, that 
 indicates everything, says everything, and that, de- 
 prived of the language of color, insists upon the 
 supreme beauty of contour, accentuates the char- 
 acter of the heads, the chosen forms, the proud tour- 
 nure, the strength or delicacy of the ligaments and 
 muscles. His manly, sober manner- of cutting the 
 copper, harmonizes wonderfully with the dignity 
 
 Fjf> 
 
256 
 
 ENGRA VI NG. 
 
 of the designs he interprets. His supple stroke 
 turns with the muscles and marks the presence of 
 the bones, the depressions or prominences of the 
 flesh ; and in reserving broad lights upon the plate, 
 he attains simple but powerful effects ; obtains in a 
 small print a grand image. 
 
 Marc Anthony is, par excellence, an engraver of 
 style. But what is style in the art made illustrious 
 by the Bolognese master ? 
 
 Style in engraving is the preeminence of drawing 
 over color, of beauty over richness. I say color, be- 
 cause the engraver, although reduced to the mono- 
 chrome effect of black and white, is, nevertheless, in 
 one sense a colorist. Raphael had inaugurated style 
 in engraving, Rubens introduced color. He taught 
 the two Bolswert, Pontius and Wostermann, his en- 
 gravers, not to neglect the value of local tints, which 
 are, after all, only notes in the music of chiaro 'scuro. 
 Cinnabar, for instance, being a more sombre color 
 then rose, ought to be rendered in the print by 
 deeper black. It was the last step of progress en- 
 graving could take, the last resource with which it 
 could enrich itself. Nothing now hindered the print 
 from being the equivalent of the picture. Albert 
 Diirer had learned, by variations in the work, to im- 
 itate the variety of substances ; Lucas de Leyden 
 had shown how to indicate aerial perspective ; Marc 
 Anthony, how the suppleness of the tool may serve 
 the triumph of the drawing; the pupils of Rubens 
 were to show in what manner the effect of a painting 
 

' 
 
 ENGRA VI NG. 
 
 259 
 
 could be reproduced ; that is, its coloration by means 
 of light. 
 
 Thus our engraver is armed at all points, for 
 already, in the time of Rubens, all the different 
 methods of cutting copper had been learned. Dra- 
 pery, flesh, hair, landscape, sculpture, architecture, 
 all the objects that can enter into the composition of 
 a picture, are susceptible of characterization with 
 the point of the graver. 
 
 Drapery. The graver should repeat the woof and 
 distinguish the material quality of it. If it is linen, 
 the fineness will be indicated by means of lines 
 closely pressed together, delicate and unique. If it is 
 cloth, the width of the cutting must be proportioned 
 to the coarseness of the tissue. The artist will make 
 one cutting in the direction of the large folds, and 
 run the other, waving and supple, over the half-tints 
 that mark the slight depressions. In crossing at 
 the bottom of the fold, the two cuttings will increase 
 the vigor of the black, but wherever the fabric turns, 
 the stroke of the graver should turn and become 
 slenderer, losing itself at the limits of the contour. 
 
 In the case of shining stuffs, like silk or satin, the 
 graver will imitate the creases by a brusque interrup- 
 tion of the strokes at the luminous places, and will 
 imitate the softness of the shadows by slight strokes 
 apart from the first. These same interlineations may 
 be used for metals, vases of gold or silver, armor of 
 polished steel. Edelinck, in his splendid prints after 
 
26o 
 
 ENGRA V1NG. 
 
 Raphael, Charles Lebrun, and Philip de Champagne, 
 and Drevet in his " Bossuet " after Rigaud, have 
 reached perfection in the representation of drapery. 
 
 Flesh. The artist will take care not to make that 
 of women and children like that of men. He 
 chooses for the first smoother cuttings that express 
 its softness, its delicacy, avoiding the square meshes, 
 which are suitable for hard substances, and the loz- 
 enge which is too angular for suavity. Generally 
 delicate flesh is represented by broken cuttings min- 
 gled with dots, especially near the lights. These 
 dots, that should be as round as possible, imitate the 
 layers of paint, whether employed simply to termi- 
 nate the more feeble half-tints, or interposed in the 
 shadows to extinguish the luminous lozenges some- 
 times placed between the broken cuttings which 
 then resemble the different sized beads of a rosary ; 
 the points express still better the tenderness of the 
 skin and the warmth of life. " The points," says 
 Abraham Bosse (" Traite des Manieres de Graver en 
 Taille-douce "), " ought to be arranged almost like the 
 bricks of a wall ; above all we must maintain order, 
 for whether the thickness of the varnish deceives, or 
 from some other cause, it happens that when the 
 plate has been bitten, in spite of all the regularity 
 observed they are still badly arranged, and if one 
 did not correct by going over them again with the 
 graver, the flesh would seem scabby." 
 
 The nude in the faces of men is engraved rather 
 
ENGRA VING. 
 
 261 
 
 with lengthened points, that, mixed with the cut- 
 tings, mould the flesh but produce an effect less soft, 
 less feminine than the round points. Models of per- 
 fection in the treatment of flesh are the "Crowning 
 with Thorns," by Bolswert, after Van Dyck; the 
 " Battle of Alexander," by Gerard Audran, after Le 
 Brun ; the "Rat Poisoner," by Cornelius Vischer; 
 the portraits of Rembrandt by George Frederick 
 Schmidt ; the prints of Robert Strange. The move- 
 ment, the roundness of the muscles, the folds of the 
 skin, the dimples, the flat surfaces, the palpitation of 
 the cellular tissue, the warmth of the nude, are admi- 
 rably imitated. 
 
 The Hair. To separate the hairs, to engrave 
 them one by one, is not the best mode of proceed- 
 ing. Nanteuil, in his portraits of Turenne and Fou- 
 quet; Edelinck, in those of Desjardins and de Cham- 
 pagne, have followed it, it is true, but with modera- 
 tion. Masson, engraving his famous plates of the 
 Marshal d' Harcourt, and of " Brisacier," affects to 
 carry off at the sharp point of the graver, the de- 
 tached hairs of a wig or a moustache ; and it must be 
 acknowledged the extreme boldness of the cuttings 
 produces a sharp, metallic effect. The eminent 
 artist who has so magnificently engraved the " He- 
 micycle," of Paul Delaroche, has followed the con- 
 trary method ; has rendered the hair with the re- 
 quired lightness, by strokes relatively wide apart, 
 which, instead of counting the hairs as if they were 
 
262 
 
 ENGRA V1NG. 
 
 combed with a fine comb, gathers them in little 
 masses and produces the same illusion to the eye, 
 because the eye, in the transparency of the whole, 
 supplies the delicacies of detail. It is then just to 
 say the artist is always true when he catches the 
 spirit of things. 
 
 Raphael Morghen, in the print of the " Marquis 
 of Moncade, on horseback," after Van Dyck, wished 
 to imitate with dots the hair of the animal, and, in 
 spite of all his address, he has given to these hairs 
 the appearance of brass wires. Goltzius was more 
 successful when he engraved the beautiful silk, some- 
 times soft and long, sometimes frizzed, of the dog, 
 celebrated among connoisseurs under the name of 
 " Goltzius's Dog." But Blooteling, in a valuable plate 
 representing a landscape, and a cavalier on horse- 
 back, has proved that the skin of a well-groomed 
 horse can be marvellously engraved, like armor or 
 satin, by waving and smooth strokes. 
 
 Landscape is rarely made by the graver alone ; it 
 is prepared with aquafortis, but this must be done in 
 such a way that in some places the rudeness of the 
 preparation shall disappear, in others be retained. 
 For earth, stones, knotty tree-trunks, mountains, 
 rocks, the hatchings should be broken, left off ab- 
 ruptly, freely crossed in different directions. The 
 coldness of the rocks, their superficial smoothness, 
 their fissures, are well imitated by crossings at right 
 angles ; but the roughness of the bark, the uneven 
 
ENGRA VI NG. 
 
 263 
 
 surface of the ground, and of old walls, are expressed 
 by unequal and short strokes, rude points, that seem 
 to gnaw the copper, and that engravers call nibbling. 
 Of course, account must be taken of the interposed 
 air, of the aerial perspective, by indicating objects 
 more vaguely in proportion to their remoteness in 
 the picture. 
 
 Water, if it is calm, is represented by cuttings 
 parallel to the horizon, with interlines and interrup- 
 tions that indicate its sheen. The form of reflected 
 objects is repeated by secondary verticals, taking 
 care to separate the forms of these objects according 
 as they are near the foreground or remote. If trees 
 are mirrored in clear water, one will do well to mark 
 the configuration by a light, undecided contour. 
 
 When the waves of the sea are tossed in a marine 
 view, the first cuttings follow their movement, and 
 the counter-cuttings run decidedly in lozenges, be- 
 cause thus one imitates better their transparency, but 
 here and there may be bold irregularities of the 
 graver. Balechou, in the " Tempest " of Joseph 
 Vernet, was admirable in this manner. When the 
 water falls in cascades, the cutting naturally runs in 
 the direction of the fall, with insertion of interlines 
 and abrupt breaking off where it strikes the light 
 portions. 
 
 Clouds are drawn by horizontal strokes. If they are 
 distant and fade gradually into the sky, care must 
 be taken that the cutting instead of forming a con- 
 tour at the extremity of the cloud, should die out 
 
264 
 
 ENGKA VING. 
 
 there. If the clouds are agitated, tempestuous, the 
 graver must figure the swelling and the agitation, 
 but not be everywhere bellied out. The cross-cut- 
 tings will be in pointed lozenges lowered by a third 
 cutting, because thus transparency and a sort of 
 movement can be given ; but the flaky vaporousness 
 will be secured by light points. In every case the 
 first cuttings ought to dominate the second. Callot, 
 La Belle and others, have used waved lines for 
 clouds; it is an error; the cloud engraved by circular 
 lines resembles a mass of wool or tow. 
 
 As to the foliage of trees, the engraver masses the 
 middle parts and represents in detail only the ex- 
 tremities, always according to the character of the 
 species. His instrument flows over the branches of 
 the willow, bristles on the twigs of the oak, and di- 
 lates upon the broad leaves of the plane-tree. The 
 landscape-engraver could not study finer prints than 
 those of Woolett, which revive the solemn aspect of 
 the Arcadian fields of Claude, those of Baudet that 
 reproduce the majestic landscapes of Poussin, and 
 those of Vivares, of Phillippe le Bas, d'Aliamet, 
 Surugue, and of Dupuis after the savage or fairy 
 scenes of Guaspre, Berghem, Karel Dujardin, Wat- 
 teau. 
 
 Architecture. Let the hand of the engraver be 
 guided by the sentiment of perspective, thus the 
 stroke of his instrument will contribute to the opti- 
 cal illusion ; this, first of all, must be observed. The 
 
ENGRA VI NG. 
 
 265 
 
 cuttings that cover the retreating surfaces, ought to 
 approach each other and converge at the point of 
 sight; but the increase of tone thus produced, is 
 balanced by the interlines placed where the cuttings, 
 more widely separated, would be relatively too clear. 
 In general, it is fitting that the architecture of the 
 picture should be engraved in the direction of the 
 greatest dimension, that the columns, for instance, 
 should be shaded by perpendicular cuttings. The 
 columns in fact perform their office of support only 
 by virtue of their vertical elevation. However, as 
 architecture, in the representations of the painter, is 
 usually only an object of secondary decoration, a 
 foundation subordinated to the figures, it is impor- 
 tant that the engraver should harmonize the lights 
 and shadows by avoiding cuttings too strongly ac- 
 centuated. But of all the hatchings the engraver 
 uses, the verticals are those that strike the eye, espe- 
 cially if they are wide apart. The artist then will 
 keep them pressed together that the eye may be 
 more occupied with the object itself than with that 
 which covers it. In running through the " Life of 
 St. Bruno," in the fine prints of Chauveau after 
 Lesueur, we see how architecture may in engraving 
 preserve its interest, without necessarily attracting at- 
 tention, without diverting it, so true is it that senti- 
 ment may be displayed even in the treatment of 
 stones. The monotonous stroke of the graver seems 
 to glide tranquilly over the walls of the monastery. 
 The scenes of the cloister, the monks at prayer, the 
 

 266 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 cenobites visited in slumber by celestial visions, de- 
 tach themselves from the architectural foundation, 
 whose pilasters, capitals, archivolts, mouldings are 
 portrayed modestly, piously, noiselessly. 
 
 These many varieties in the art of engraving on 
 copper, have an importance, a charm of their own, 
 but the beauty of design must never yield to beauty 
 of execution ; the character of the model must have 
 precedence over the delicacy of the work. Often 
 without troubling themselves about fixed rules, en- 
 gravers who were also painters, have executed master- 
 pieces. Look at the portraits of Jansenius, of Saint 
 Cyran ; of Jean Morin, after Phillippe de Cham- 
 pagne ; especially his incomparable plate of " Benti- 
 voglio," in which he equals Van Dyck ; the flesh is 
 rendered with astonishing life and vigor, by a min- 
 gling of the cuttings of the graver with the bitings 
 of aquafortis, and the free accents of a point, bold, 
 irregular, expressive. On the other hand, Jonas Suy- 
 derhoef neglected classic cutting to paint his prints 
 by biting, scratching the copper the better to accent 
 the reliefs of Rembrandt, the touch of Ostade, the 
 abrupt manner and the lively flat surfaces of Hals. 
 
 Such infractions of received methods are worth 
 more than the prodigious dexterity of a Goltzius, 
 when it degenerates into fantastic elegance, affecta- 
 tion. In abusing the excellent principle of envelop- 
 ing strokes, Goltzius arrives at effects most contrary 
 to his aim. By twisting the muscles in nude figures, 
 he obtains, not the delicacy of flesh, but the aspect of 
 
ENGKA VJNG. 
 
 267 
 
 metal. In his " Fates," the legs resemble cylinders, 
 because the graver has twice gone over the round- 
 ness ; in his " Venus," the breasts are like balls of 
 steel, because the second cutting instead of deepen- 
 ing the shadow, curves like the first around the 
 form. 
 
 Goltzius, it is true, had sometimes a delicacy imi- 
 tated from Edelinck ; his first cutting after having 
 dominated in the rendering of a large muscle or fold, 
 resumes the second role, and is used only to augment 
 the tone ; while the second, that at first had served 
 only to increase the black, becomes in its turn domi- 
 nant. We can, then, in studying the work of Golt- 
 zius, find in it fine methods and dangerous errors ; 
 but what, above all, we learn in it, and should not 
 forget, is that the copper-plate engraver must always 
 sacrifice the puerile ostentation of the handicraft to 
 the serious dignity of art. 
 
IV. 
 
 AQUAFORTIS ENGRAVING. 
 
 Engraving with aquafortis, when it is not a 
 preparation for copper, ought generally to be 
 executed without apparent regularity, with 
 free strokes rarely crossed, which never cover- 
 ing the whole plate, leave a role for the 
 whiteness of the paper. 
 
 Examining once a portfolio of engravings with 
 an excellent landscapist, he said, " Painters make 
 pictures upon their good and bad days, but one 
 uses aquafortis only upon the good days." By an 
 aquafortis is understood, among artists, a composi- 
 tion conceived in a happy moment, engraved as it 
 is invented, whose execution is rapid, facile, without 
 preparation, familiar as conversation, piquant as a 
 stroke of wit. The print is not a translation of 
 impressions, it is an original work. The artist 
 himself writes upon it his thought and his memo- 
 ries. But how can he be at the same time the 
 designer of his engraving, and the engraver of his 
 design ? 
 
 He takes a smooth plate of copper and warms it 
 
' 
 
 ENGRA V/NG. 
 
 269 
 
 over a brasicr. Heated to a certain degree, he 
 passes over it a stick of varnish, that melts at once, 
 and is spread equally over the plate with a tampon. 
 Then the varnish is blackened in the smoke of a 
 lamp ; when cooled, he draws with a steel point upon 
 the black foundation, strokes as free as those of the 
 pen or pencil. These strokes, taking away the var- 
 nish, uncover the metal they had scratched, so that, 
 the operation finished, we see a red drawing upon a 
 black plate. 
 
 Now to give the strokes of the drawing the de- 
 sired depth, he begins by surrounding it with a little 
 dyke of wax, that he melts by passing over it a 
 heated iron, so as to solder the rampart and prevent 
 all infiltration. The drawing being thus at the 
 bottom of a basin, the engraver pours in a quantity 
 of aquafortis and allows the corrosive to bite, that 
 is, to deepen the strokes of the point, a longer or 
 shorter time, according to the effect he wishes to 
 obtain. The acid having no power upon the var- 
 nish, acts only upon the portions of the metal left 
 naked by the point. Then the wax is removed, the 
 varnish rubbed off with rags dipped in oil, and the 
 copper dried represents in intaglio, a design from 
 which prints can be taken. 
 
 For a long time this method of engraving, so 
 simple, so rapid, had been in use among armorers 
 for damaskeening. We do not know exactly when 
 it was applied for the first time to the execution of 
 prints ; but one of the oldest aquafortis is a " Saint 
 
270 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 Jerome," by Albert Diirer in 15 12 ; it is the print in 
 which the anchoret is represented half-naked in a 
 rocky, desert landscape. Once known in the ateliers, 
 it attracted painters, and during the sixteenth century 
 was practiced in Germany, the Low Countries, and 
 in Italy. There we see Parmesan drawing upon cop- 
 per, light, delicate sketches, slender figures, proud 
 and elegant; but these were only the gossip of the 
 point, thoughts or rather phrases without connec- 
 tion, abandoned in the condition of sketches. Aqua- 
 fortis attained its full expression, its value, its color, 
 in the seventeenth century. Rembrandt was its in- 
 ventor, its poet, its Shakespeare. It was he who 
 made of a simple method an art. 
 
 Enlightening this black plate with his genius, he 
 made it scintillate with all the phenomena of light ; 
 he knew how to trace upon it all the gradations of 
 shadow. Before him no one had thought of destroy- 
 ing in places the transparency of the paper, as if 
 layers of paint had been washed over it. Rem- 
 brandt obtained this effect, either by putting on the 
 aquafortis itself with a brush, or by using the imper- 
 ceptible shavings that the point of the graver had 
 taken off in scratching the copper. These shavings 
 retain the black, and give to the impression the most 
 delicate and varied half-tints. Colored by these, the 
 print under the hand of Rembrandt becomes a sort 
 of picture painted with aquafortis, for he tones down 
 certain portions of the engraving, lulls the light to 
 sleep, and brings silence into it. Thence those mys- 
 
ENGRA VJNG. 
 
 271 
 
 terious effects in the midst of which lie shows us an 
 old man plunged into nocturnal shadows, or the dead 
 Christ descending into the night of the tomb. 
 
 QmBwSfitfec; 
 
 FRYING FISH. 
 AN AQUAFORTIS. BY REMBRANDT. 
 
 Thus after Rembrandt appeared, aquafortis was 
 transformed, enriched with resources, to prove to us, 
 by the example of this great master himself, that the 
 
272 
 
 ENGRA VI NG. 
 
 artifices of the trade, the little secrets, the recipes, 
 are subordinate to the intentions, to the genius of 
 the designer, much more in aquafortis than in cop- 
 per-plate engraving. " In the prints of Rembrandt," 
 says a skillful critic, — Henri Delaborde, — "one is 
 more touched by the mysterious meaning of these 
 impassioned reveries, than by the form under which 
 they appear. In the " Christ Healing the Sick," the 
 " Ecce Homo," the " Resurrection of Lazarus," and 
 many other similar chefs-d'oeuvre, who could blame 
 the want of beauty of the types, or the strangeness 
 of the arrangement? He alone who would begin 
 by examining with a magnifying glass the execution 
 of the ray of light in the " Disciples of Emmaus." 
 Rembrandt has, so to say, an immaterial manner. 
 Sometimes he touches, strikes the copper as it were 
 by chance, sometimes proceeds by delicate cuttings ; 
 he interrupts in the light the stroke that marks the 
 contour, to make it more energetic in the shadow, or 
 reverses this method. He uses instruments as Bos- 
 suet used words, subjecting them to his thought, con- 
 straining them to express it, without preoccupation 
 of their end, their subtlety. Like him, he composes 
 an eloquent and magical style with the most diverse 
 elements, the familiar and the pompous, the vulgar 
 and the heroic, and from this mixture results the ad- 
 mirable harmony of the whole.'' 
 
 Such as Rembrandt conceived it, such as the other 
 Dutch painters, Pierre de Laar, Paul Potter, Ruys- 
 dael, Berg-hem, Karel Dujardin, Stoop, Van de Velde, 
 
ENGRA VI NG. 
 
 273 
 
 Ostade, practiced it, aquafortis engraving could not 
 have flourished in the times of the first great mas- 
 ters, for it is hardly compatible with style. Marc 
 Anthony, when he engraved the "Judgment of 
 Paris,"- after Raphael, or the " Climbers " of Michael 
 Angelo, did not foresee this kind of engraving, 
 would not have comprehended it. What a difference 
 between them ! As the graver with its regular step, 
 its methodic elegance, befits solemn compositions, 
 ideal figures and the nude, so aquafortis in its ca- 
 pricious march, suits familiar or rustic things, savage 
 landscapes, picturesque ruins, and the episodes al- 
 ways new, of the struggle ever going on under our 
 eyes between light and shadow. The graver renders 
 by slow strokes the chefs-d'ceuvre of sculpture and 
 monumental painting; the aquafortis recalls the pass- 
 ing incidents, and the varied phenomena of real 
 life, or the fancies of a day. The graver, in a word, 
 corresponds to the majesty of art and the severe 
 eloquence of drawing; the aquafortis represents im- 
 provisation, liberty, and color. Under the point 
 of Van Ostade it interests us in the disorder of a 
 poor, rustic house, the adventures of the tap-room, 
 the .ugliness of a peasant and his gossip ; in the 
 work of Ruysdael it communicates to us the senti- 
 ment of melancholy that wooded solitudes inspire in 
 dreamers ; upon the copper of Thomas Wyck, of 
 Karel Dujardin, it lends a singular charm to the fig- 
 ure of a beggar asking alms, to the mules trotting 
 
 along the highway shaking their bells. Aquafortis 
 18 
 
2 74 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 engraving attaches itself from choice to all that is 
 irregular, fantastic, unfinished, or in ruins. It loves to 
 render the falling plaster of an old wall, the dilapida- 
 
 A PEASANT PAYING HIS SCOT. 
 AQUAFORTIS OF OSTADE. 
 
 tion of a well from which a servant is drawing water, 
 the decaying roof of a grange where the pigeons 
 are nesting, the overturned cart on which the chick- 
 ens have perched, and even the dung-heap of the 
 
ENGRA VING. 
 
 275 
 
 barnyard in which the swine are wallowing. But 
 O, miracle of art; in its kingdom are neither un- 
 clean beasts, nor odious monsters, nor unhealthy ex- 
 halations, nor fetid odors. Through it all is puri- 
 fied, and painful sensations become agreeable senti- 
 ments ; by means of it the insignificant attracts us, 
 the useless captivates, ugliness can please, the igno- 
 ble even, though unpardonable, is pardoned. 
 
 In the French School one artist has united aqua- 
 fortis to style — Claude Lorraine. It is true his 
 genius manifested itself only in landscape. But by 
 a sublime transposition he brought the ideal down 
 into material things ; the landscapes he has engraved 
 are astonishing, without being fantastic ; attractive, 
 without disorder. The firmament is pure, the earth 
 smiling, and if we see the sea, it is calm, radiant, 
 hardly moving under the evening breeze. Even 
 when, in the prints of Claude, the aquafortis gnaws 
 the acanthus leaves of the broken column or the re- 
 mains of a ruined bridge, the ideal dominates the 
 picturesque. 
 
 Another famous example of the introduction of 
 style by means of aquafortis, is the work of Piranesi. 
 Who would believe that a familiar engraving could 
 produce the prints of this engraver without a peer, 
 without a possible imitator. Here also we must 
 recognize the subordination of the method to the 
 sentiment. Like the ploughshare, the point of Pira- 
 nesi goes over the field of his plate, and torrents of 
 aquafortis dig furrows in it, into which the shadows 
 
276 
 
 ENGKA VING. 
 
 precipitate themselves. His print is traversed by 
 the sun, and broad beams perform the office of half- 
 tints. He exaggerates the solemn, even to the terri- 
 ble. He makes the antique monuments of Rome 
 more imposing in their image than the reality. The 
 Pantheon of Agrippa, the temple of Antonine, the 
 colossi of the Quirinal, the mole of Hadrian, the 
 debris of the Forum, seem vaster in the folios of 
 Piranesi than in the eternal city. This unique en- 
 graver amplifies and elevates all that he touches. 
 In reducing the Coliseum he aggrandizes it. Upon 
 his plates the light vibrates, the shadows move, the 
 stones become animated, and Roman grandeur seems 
 immense. One would say the fragments of Trajan's 
 column, the tympanum of the arch of triumph, the 
 frieze, the trophies, have left their colossal imprint 
 upon his plates. In his hand, aquafortis has the 
 manner of Michael Angelo. 
 
 Whatever may be the authority of example in 
 these exceptional works, it is not less true that aqua- 
 fortis engraving does not lend itself readily to works 
 of large size. Rembrandt himself when he went 
 beyond the quarto, retouched his plate with the 
 graver, thus taking away the character of inspira- 
 tion. To finish an aquafortis seems a contradiction 
 in terms. Ostade going over his engravings with 
 the dry point, that is upon the naked copper and dry, 
 has generally made them heavy and dark. The 
 prints of Van Dyck, especially his portraits of ar- 
 tists, before the graver has touched them, are exquis- 
 

 ENGRA V1NG. 
 
 277 
 
 ite works; sketches, but perfect. Sneyders, Francois 
 Franck, Breughel, Vostermann, De Vos, and others 
 are living; they move, speak to you, call you, stretch 
 out the hand to you. With a few strokes of the 
 steel, Van Dyck has indicated the boniness of the 
 brow, the depression of the temples, the projection 
 of the cheek-bones, the cartilage of the nose, the flat 
 parts of the cheek and chin. Two strokes more, a 
 few dots here and there, a little nibbling, and you 
 touch the beautiful, elegant hands, with their long 
 fingers and delicate joints. You seem to feel the 
 moisture of life that the paper imbibes. But what 
 has become of these marvellous works when the 
 artisans of Antwerp have finished them with the 
 graver? What heaviness! what coldness ! what effac- 
 ing of all the accents of life ! 
 
 Unless you wish, like Rembrandt, to obtain a mys- 
 terious effect, the whole plate must not be covered. 
 In general, plates intended for biting ought to be 
 prepared with little work, in view of the whiteness 
 of the background. We must, as the engravers 
 say, let the paper work. Tiepolo, Canaletti, Thomas 
 Wyck, have allowed it to appear even in the shad- 
 ows, by avoiding cross-cuttings, reaching the greatest 
 vigor by repeated bitings. They have thus obtained 
 a certain shimmering of silver light that enchants 
 the eye. But what piquant, spirituelle effects do we 
 not owe to the rapid, but incisive point of Callot. 
 Without going back so far, the aquafortis of some 
 of our contemporaries, above all, those of Charles 
 

 
 278 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 Jacque, may serve as models to young engravers in 
 the art of lighting up the print by economizing the 
 bitings, rilling it without stifling, being charming at 
 little expense, that is to say in constant collaboration 
 with the light of the paper. 
 

 V. 
 
 MEZZOTINT. 
 
 Mezzotints lacking firmness, the engraver must 
 correct their softness, and unless a vaporous 
 effect is to be given, must bring out the lights 
 with a firm, resolute hand. 
 
 The mezzotinter proceeds in a manner the reverse 
 of that of the copper-plate or aquafortis engraver. 
 They distribute black upon a white surface; he white 
 upon a black one. They use a graver or a point to 
 make lines and shadows upon a polished plate that 
 represents the clear portions, he a scratching-knife 
 and scraper to bring back lights upon a blackened 
 plate that represents the shadows. 
 
 The graining of the plate is obtained by means 
 of the berceau. This is a convex instrument, striated 
 like a fine grater. It is passed over the copper with 
 an oscillatory movement, so that the plate bitten by 
 the teeth of the grater, is covered with slight asperi- 
 ties that form the graining. If a plate prepared in 
 this way is put under pressure, one gets a proof cov- 
 ered with a uniform velvety black. This black is 
 the basis upon which the engraver is to work. 
 
28o 
 
 EN OR A VING. 
 
 After having counter-drawn his design, he- puts in 
 the half-tints and the lights, using more, or less the 
 grain of the plate, or scratching it clean with the 
 scraper. These lights, half-tints and blacks that the 
 graining forms, give the desired effect of chiaro 
 'scuro. The art of the engraver consists, not in en- 
 graving the copper, but in adroitly destroying what 
 the berceau had engraved upon it. 
 
 Horace Walpole attributes the invention of the 
 mezzotint to the nephew of Charles I., Prince Ru- 
 pert, who lost the battle of Marston Moor. " This 
 prince," says Walpole, " who had retired to Brussels 
 after the tragic death of his uncle, going out one 
 morning, noticed a sentinel rubbing his gun. ' What 
 are you doing ? ' asked the prince. The soldier re- 
 plied that the dew that had fallen during the night 
 had rusted his gun, and he was scraping and cleaning 
 it. The prince looking at it closely, thought he saw 
 something like a figure stamped on the barrel, with 
 innumerable little holes close to each other, like 
 damaskeening on silver or gold, of which a part was 
 already engraved. The genius fertile in resources 
 drew from this simple incident the conception of 
 the mezzotint. From what he had seen, the prince 
 concluded that one could produce upon a plate of 
 copper fine asperities that would give to the impres- 
 sion a black proof, scratching which, one could easily 
 get the half-tints and the lights. He communicated 
 this idea to the painter, Wallerant Vaillant, and to- 
 gether they proceeded to experiment." 
 
ENGRA VING. 
 
 281 
 
 From the recital of Walpole, it would seem that 
 Prince Rupert invented the mezzotint after the death 
 of his uncle, necessarily after 1649, but this assertion 
 is falsified by the fact that in 1643 an officer in the 
 service of Hesse Cassel, Louis de Siegen, had pub- 
 lished a portrait-bust of the landgravine, Amelie 
 Elizabeth, engraved in mezzotint. Leon de Laborde 
 has established from the testimony of Rupert him- 
 self, and the letters of Siegen, that the latter was the 
 inventor of mezzotint and the author of the first en- 
 graving in this style. But if Prince Rupert were 
 not the inventor, he brought it to perfection in the 
 print of the " Executioner of St. John," after Ribera. 
 From this fine print we learn what can be accom- 
 plished by mezzotint when the hand of a master cor- 
 rects its softness, its cottony appearance, by boldness in 
 bringing out the lights, brusqueness in transition, and 
 firmness in using the scraper. Thus treated, mezzo- 
 tint becomes like a painting, because to the softness 
 of broad and well united shadows, it adds the free 
 touch, the vigorous relief, that belong only to painters. 
 These fine effects the graver cannot easily attain, be- 
 cause it digs in the metal only the blacks, and con- 
 tents itself with managing the lights instead of ap- 
 plying them resolutely as in the mezzotint, by ener- 
 getic strokes of the scraper. 
 
 The mezzotint is more suitable than any other 
 style of engraving to represent phantoms, incanta- 
 tions, artificial lights like those of the lamp, torches, 
 fire, all the drama of conflagrations, all the effects of 
 night. 
 

 282 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 Gerard de Lairesse says it is also most fitting for 
 plants, fruits, flowers, vases of gold or silver, armor. 
 But to us it seems that objects distinguished by the 
 rich variety of their substances and colors, that pre- 
 sent aspects so diverse, can be better rendered by the 
 graver. Classic engraving has invented a thousand 
 ingenious ways of characterizing objects by the cut- 
 ting of the copper, metallic bodies as well as the 
 satiny surface of flowers or the spines of a stem ; 
 the down of a peach as well as the rough shell of 
 a nut, or the rind of a lemon. But even in the hands 
 of a master like Richard Earlom, mezzotint has but 
 one way to express all these different surfaces, and 
 can reproduce them with only uniform softness. 
 
 Another fault inherent in this style of engraving, 
 is that the plates are soon worn. The English, who 
 have excelled in it, say they get scarcely more than 
 a hundred good impressions from a plate, the rub- 
 bing of the hand and the press quickly blunting the 
 graining upon the surface of the copper. The first 
 impressions are not the best, are too hard and black ; 
 the finest are between the fortieth and sixtieth ; the 
 graining is then softened, but has not lost strength. 1 
 
 In France, the mezzotint was never a favorite with 
 artists or the public. Her school, rarely led away by 
 imagination, did not give itself up to sombre fan- 
 tasies, Rembrandt effects. Before the advent of ro- 
 manticism, French art had nothing like the Biblical 
 
 1 Plates of copper or steel may be covered with a layer of metal by a 
 galvanic process, so that about a thousand impressions of equal excel- 
 lence may be taken. 
 
ENGRA VI NG. 
 
 283 
 
 inventions of Martin, the magic lantern, and fairy 
 scenes that borrow from the mezzotint a certain 
 vague poetry, like that of dreams. The precision of 
 the graver, the spirit of aquafortis, suit it better. 
 
 If mezzotint does not imitate well solid and hard 
 bodies, it is valuable for rich hangings, satin, velvet, 
 and for flesh. By the depth of its shadows, the 
 union of their masses, its blended half-tints, it adapts 
 itself marvellously to the fantastic compositions of 
 Bramer and Rembrandt, to the night scenes of 
 Schalken and Gerard Dow, and to the moonlight 
 effects of the melancholy Elzheimer. 
 
 There is a kind of engraving that resembles mez- 
 zotint and yet differs from it, — aquatint, — an inven- 
 tion of a French painter, Jean Baptiste Leprince, in 
 1760. After tracing with the point the contour of 
 objects, the plate is covered with a layer of powdered 
 rosin, or salt, or fine sand; across this aquafortis is 
 passed, which thus sifted, produces on the plate a 
 uniform graining, suitable for imitations of aquarelles 
 in India ink, sepia, or umber. The shadows seem 
 made with the brush. 
 
 The aquatint was skilfully managed by the inven- 
 tor, whose first prints passed for aquarelles. Facile, 
 rapid, it has been used to reproduce the works of 
 an eminently popular artist, Horace Vernet, whose 
 prompt, impatient march would have wearied a le- 
 gion of copper-plate engravers. 
 
 The Spaniard Goya, used the aquatint success- 
 fully, making it an element of expression. In his 
 

 284 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 " Misfortunes of War," and " Caprices," it contrib- 
 utes to the physiognomy of things. Here it veils a 
 portion of the print and adds piquancy to the satire 
 upon manners, by leaving corruptions more profound 
 to be divined. There it spreads damp shadows over 
 the tragic scenes of the invasion, and covers them 
 with a mystery that augments their horror. Some 
 of his prints seem, not washed with aquafortis, but 
 bathed in blood. Urged by fever, moved to indigna- 
 tion, his hand translates in haste what is present to 
 the eyes of his imagination or his memory; one 
 would say ' twas a Velasquez intoxicated with fury, 
 who had borrowed for a day the acids of Rembrandt 
 and his genius. 
 
 Beside this style of engraving is placed the imi- 
 tation of pencilling, the honor of whose invention, 
 about 1756, is disputed by Francois and Demarteau, 
 and which Louis Bonnet applied to the imitation of 
 pastel by combining differently colored plates. 
 
 The pencilling is imitated with a little instrument 
 called a ruideiie, with a toothed wheel, thai, passing 
 over the copper, produces points resembling crayon 
 hatchings. This instrument, used in jewelry, was 
 applied to engraving first in 1650 by Lutma, son of 
 the jeweller whom Rembrandt has immortalized in 
 an aquafortis portrait of the rarest beauty. But in- 
 stead of using the tool with the hand, Lutma struck 
 in the teeth with the hammer; hence the engraving 
 was called opus mallei. 
 
 There is a distinction to be observed between the 
 
ENGKA VING. 
 
 285 
 
 pencil-manner and the pointille, which is the art of 
 modelling with points more or less widely apart, that 
 indicate the delicacy of flesh, its morbidezza. At the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century, a Paduan artist 
 interpreted in this manner the paintings of Giorgi- 
 one. But while this admirably suits the light and 
 color of Giorgione, it is misplaced and powerless to 
 express the superior qualities of Mantegna or any 
 other painter of severe style. 
 
 Pointing is a kind of engraving very ancient, so 
 true is it that in all inventions, great or small, there 
 is always some one who preceded the inventor. 
 

 VI. 
 
 WOOD ENGRAVING, 
 
 Engraving upon wood, incapable of producing 
 the delicate shadings of copper-plate, suits seri- 
 ous works, which, by the terseness of their ex- 
 pression, lend grandeur even to works of small 
 
 SIZE. 
 
 It is not to the en- 
 graver, it is to the de- 
 signer upon wood the 
 principle just enuncia- 
 ted is addressed. What 
 is the role of the xylo- 
 graph ? He is scrupu- 
 lously to respect the 
 drawing traced for him 
 upon a piece of wood, 
 and hollow more or 
 less profoundly all that 
 is not this drawing. 
 Formerly, wood-engraving was called tallied cpargne ; 
 it consisted in saving all the strokes of which the im- 
 age to be put in relief was formed. 
 
ENGRA VING. 
 
 :8 7 
 
 It would seem that such work left to the engraver 
 no liberty of interpretation, that he must resign him- 
 self to passive obedience. But his task is not purely 
 mechanical. 
 
 To obey the sentiment of another, especially in 
 works often of exquisite delicacy, one must have the 
 faculty of feeling. Wherever man puts his hand, we 
 recognize the trace of his mind. This is so true, 
 that the same drawing may become unctuous or dry, 
 colored or pale, as the tool of the engraver shall 
 have hollowed it discreetly or rigorously, as he shall 
 more or less have spared it. That is, in cutting the 
 wood so as to put each stroke of the designer in 
 relief between two depressions, the engraver may 
 have taken something from the edges of the stroke, 
 but were it only so much as a hair's breadth, it might 
 suffice to give a sad, arid, cold aspect to the warmest 
 drawing. 
 
 There is, then, room for sentiment on the part of the 
 wood-engraver even when everything has been indica- 
 ted, fixed for him. With more reason may he become 
 an artist when the designer has left him a choice, for 
 it sometimes happens that the drawing given to the 
 engraver is made by a painter, who, not knowing 
 how to trace line by line the forms of his thought, 
 or not wishing to take the trouble, has only ex- 
 pressed it in mass. The work is then abandoned to 
 the engraver. He must render the chiaro 'scuro by 
 a cutting that seems to him more expressive than 
 another ; must calculate the width of his strokes 
 
HHEBB 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 make them simple or crossed, follow the evolutions 
 indicative of the object represented ; attenuate the 
 strokes, interrupt them or finish them by points 
 lighter and lighter as he recedes from the fore- 
 ground, or draws near the light. In such cases the 
 wood-engraver becomes an artist with the same title 
 as the copper-plate engraver. 
 
 Glancing at the oldest prints, we see that drawing 
 upon wood was coarse and rude, but in the rudeness 
 of its rapid work it was on the road to the grandeur 
 and true style demanded by wood engraving. In 
 the first xylographic books, the " Bible of the Poor," 
 and the " History of the Virgin," we notice a naivete 
 that is not without attraction and a lively sentiment 
 of reality, joined to a subtle and mystical spirit ; in 
 a word, we recognize the influence of Van Eyck. 
 The thought of the master is translated by a sim- 
 plicity of means that, rudimentary as it is, shows, 
 nevertheless, a beginning of expression. These books, 
 however, were printed before 1454, at least accord- 
 ing to the dictum of a very competent author — Fir- 
 min Didot (" Essai sur l'Histoire de la Gravure sur 
 Bois " ), and his opinion is strengthened by the fact 
 that these works, properly speaking, are xylographic 
 books. We understand by this word, in its restricted 
 sense, books in which the picture and the text were 
 engraved upon one plate, and the impression taken 
 with a brush ; books that preceded press-printing 
 the first specimen of which (" Les Lettres dTndul- 
 gence ") dates from 1454. 
 
FROM TUP. LIFE OF THE VIRGIN. ALRERT DURER. 
 
WOOD ENGRA VING. 
 
 291 
 
 When Albert Dlirer appears, wood engraving 
 suddenly rises to perfection without going beyond 
 its primitive condition of simplicity. Traced with 
 breadth and decision, the drawings of Dlirer teach 
 us the concise, vigorous manner demanded by this 
 kind of work. He whose graver was so delicate 
 when cutting copper, who lingered over the slightest 
 details, was transformed in drawing upon wood, and 
 renouncing secondary half-tints, fine transitions, he 
 composed and saw en grand; distributed broad lights, 
 produced imposing effects, to be taken in at a distance, 
 and to impress themselves strongly upon the memory. 
 
 The fantastic and terrible prints of the " Apoca- 
 lypse" ; the hundred and thirty-five plates upon which 
 unfolds itself so magnificently the triumphal march 
 of the Emperor Maximilian ; the two series that 
 represent the " Passion of Christ," and that " Life of 
 the Virgin," in which the grace of costumes, the life 
 of countenances, and even their delicacy is united to 
 sobriety of work, and the large works ordered by 
 Maximilian of Burgmair and Schauffelein, are and 
 will remain specimens of high art applied to xylog- 
 raphy. But these prints of extraordinary, often co- 
 lossal size, could be rarely used, being suitable only 
 for the ornamentation of the partitions of a vestibule, 
 or the walls of a gallery or palace. Wood engrav- 
 ing seems above all suitable for the illustration of 
 books ; the great painter, Holbein, gave admirable 
 models of it, models that have not been surpassed. 
 
 In frames smaller than the palm of the hand, often 
 

 2g: 
 
 WOOD ENGRA VI NG. 
 
 but an inch square, were introduced pictures, some- 
 times historical, sometimes familiar, sometimes rising 
 to the height of tragic symbolism ; real pictures with 
 their architecture, their landscapes, their background, 
 their distances, their accessories. The same sheet 
 of paper was to contain the ideas of an eminent 
 mind and the work of a superior artist. The " Dia- 
 logues " of Lucian, the " Adagia " of Erasmus, the 
 "Utopia" of Thomas More, the Treatises of St. 
 Augustine, the Epistles of St. Paul, the Bible, are 
 decorated with magnificent frontispieces in which 
 figure the personages of pagan antiquity and of the 
 Scriptures ; gods, sages, heroes, Hercules and Cer- 
 berus, Apollo pursuing Daphne, Solomon, Socrates, 
 Pythagoras, Curtius leaping into the chasm, Scasvola 
 holding his hand in the kindled brasier, Judith killing 
 Holofernes, Cleopatra slaying herself. Sphinxes, si- 
 rens, satyrs, troops of tritons and children guiding 
 the car of Neptune, a band of peasants chasing a 
 thieving fox, a swarm of Cupids playing with gar- 
 lands or masks, frame these frontispieces that pre- 
 pare the mind of the reader and lure him on, giving 
 a body to thought by showing the invisible. Some- 
 times the frame of the title is a triumphal arch un- 
 der which stands the figure of Erasmus, a statuesque 
 effigy, an apotheosis. 
 
 Hardly has the reader crossed the threshold of the 
 first page, before his eye is arrested by singular, some- 
 times fantastic images. The cold letters of the al- 
 phabet, that begin the different chapters of the book, 
 
WOOD ENGRAVING. 
 
 295 
 
 are embellished with arabesques, flourish in gardens, 
 move in lively figures. Within the microscopic di- 
 mensions of a letter, Holbein has represented the 
 drama of Death, twenty-four times repeated. 
 
 " In the diminutive subjects of his alphabets,"' says 
 Renouvier, " it seems that the narrowing of the field 
 has only spurred on the artist, such life and expres- 
 sion does he display. See in the Y of the " Alphabet 
 of Death," the skeleton, with a superb movement, 
 striding over the cradle, lifting with both hands the 
 babe from beside the terrified mother. The scene is 
 less than an inch square ; but if Michael Angelo had 
 had a block two yards long, he could not have been 
 grander, more terrible." 
 
 After having exercised his verve upon this funereal 
 theme, that fed the terrors of the Middle Ages, Hol- 
 bein has resumed it in his famous prints of the 
 " Dance of Death," which are, with the figures of 
 the Bible (" Icones veteris Testamenti)," the chefs 
 ifceuvre of wood engraving. Nothing can be more 
 moving, more vivid than these images, always varied 
 and always similar, of Death triumphant. We pene- 
 trate with him first into Eden, where begins with 
 the original sin the moral death of the human race ; 
 afterwards into homes the most diverse ; the labora- 
 tory of the alchemist, the cabinet of the astrologer, 
 the hut of the miser, the alcove of a dreaming duch- 
 ess. In this way tragedy familiarizes itself in genre 
 pictures and better possesses itself of the reader. It 
 is remarkable that the greater number of the persons 
 
296 
 
 WOOD ENGRAVING. 
 
 surprised by Death are calmly resigned to their fate. 
 The captain defends himself from habit ; the beg- 
 ging friar, the prince robed in ermine, the abbess and 
 the abbot, also resist. The last, a sated and plethoric 
 Vitellius of the cloister, repulses Death, who, dan- 
 cing and grinning, has put on the Abbot's mitre, and 
 bears on his shoulder the crucifix of the dying man. 
 
 adam cultivating the ground. the peddler, 
 
 from holbein's " dance of death." 
 
 A striking feature in this series of engraved com- 
 positions is the malicious, ironical, often facetious 
 character stamped upon Death. Here he strikes 
 with his wand the tambourine before the wedding 
 procession, there he takes the role of a chambermaid, 
 and clasps around the neck of a pretty countess a 
 necklace of bones. Farther on he stops the peddler 
 
WOOD ENGRAVING. 
 
 297 
 
 loaded with his basket, or pulls off the hat of a car- 
 dinal who is selling indulgences. Sinister in his car- 
 nival disguises, sometimes he puts on the accoutre- 
 ments of Folly to mislead a queen ; sometimes an un- 
 expected guest, in the garb of a cup-bearer, he pours 
 the deadly beverage for a king. Now he puts on 
 the deacon's stole to interrupt the sermon of the 
 preacher; now that of the sacristan, with bell and 
 lantern, to guide the convoy of the priest himself 
 bearing the viaticum to the dying, or he takes the 
 place of the dog o( the blind man, who, groping to- 
 wards the tomb, trembles lest he should make a false 
 step. Here Death has not the horrible grin ; he is 
 serious, pitiful. See the resigned sadness of the poor 
 husbandman, who, pushing the plough before him, is 
 suddenly assisted by a plough-boy who is Death. 
 How touching is this scene that nature frames with 
 such naive grace, lighted up by the sun sinking to 
 the horizon behind the tower of the village-church. 
 
 All this is rendered by strokes never crossed, with a 
 delicate graver varied in its movements, but always 
 elementary in its methods, always laconic. The 
 wrinkles of the eye, the muscles of the mouth, the 
 furrows made by fear or hollowed by life, the charac- 
 ter of the hair, embonpoint, emaciation; all are indi- 
 cated by a firm, decided stroke, and although the 
 softening of transitions is incompatible with the 
 smallness of the frame, the expression never be- 
 comes a grimace. As to the landscape, the architec- 
 tural background, the accessories, the sentiment of 
 

 
 2 9 8 
 
 WOOD ENGRA VING. 
 
 linear perspective in the management of the hatch- 
 ings and the indication of distance by the attenua- 
 tion of the work, suffice to give them an optical in- 
 terest, so that the graver of Holbein, or rather that 
 of the engraver under his orders, seems by turns 
 rich in the scenes of the " Emperor" and the " Pope," 
 undulating in the " Paradise," picturesque in those 
 of the " Carter" and the " Husbandman." 
 
 A perfection has been added to xylographic prints 
 by putting bits of paper or thin cards on certain 
 parts of the wheel that transmits the pressure of the 
 roller to the plate, thus securing greater or less pres- 
 sure at desired places. If one wishes to bring for- 
 ward the foreground of an engraving", increased 
 thickness of cards is given to the place that corre- 
 sponds to it. Is vagueness desired in the back- 
 ground, the roller is forced farther off, so that the 
 pressure being less and the ink less abundant, the 
 tone is lighter. 
 
 Aided by these new methods that make printing 
 an auxiliary artist, wood engraving now produces 
 marvels. In France, more than in any other coun- 
 try, this mode of engraving has served the interests 
 of thought by the ornamentation of books. The 
 profession of printer and book-editor were often 
 united, and from the fifteenth century exercised at 
 Lyons, Paris, and other cities of France, by men of 
 culture and taste whose names belong to the History 
 of Art. Among the number are Simon Vostre, 
 whose " Books of Hours " have such curious borders ; 
 
WOOD ENGRAVING. 
 
 299 
 
 Antoine Verard, who used xylography as a back- 
 ground for colored miniatures ; Guyot Marchand 
 who, before Holbein, printed "Dances of Death"; 
 and Geoffroi Tory, who was distinguished by the 
 universality of his knowledge and his talents. 
 
 The last imported the Italian style of the Renais- 
 sance into our wood engraving, in which, up to that 
 time, had appeared only a Gothic archaism or the 
 Gallic spirit, with its familiar turn, its ironical na- 
 ivete, its malice. We must recall also the names of 
 Jean Dupre, Trechsel, Jean de Tournes, Bernard 
 Salomon. The names of these old printers are to- 
 day sought as works of art. French and Italian 
 artists of the first rank have not disdained to write 
 upon wood the inventions that were to put in relief 
 their knowledge and that of others. As Titian 
 painted with great pen-strokes the master-pieces 
 Boldrini was to cut, as Jean de Calcar drew at Ven- 
 ice the magnificent plates for the " Anatomy " of the 
 celebrated Vesali, so Jean Goujon illustrated the 
 translation of Vitruvius by Jean Martin, while Phili- 
 bert Delorme and Jean Cousin traced the elegant 
 wood engravings that decorate their books upon 
 architecture and perspective. 
 
 Our age has witnessed the revival of wood engrav- 
 ing, a revival that twenty-five years ago gave us the 
 graceful and tender vignettes of Johannot and the 
 spirituelle sketches of Gigoux, who, at every page of 
 " Gil Bias," opens a window upon Spanish, or rather 
 upon human life. All these little works conceived 
 

 
 
 
 ;oo 
 
 WOOD ENGRAVING. 
 
 and executed according to the laws of xylography, 
 seem to speak to the reader a language brief, unfin- 
 ished, that it is his task to finish. At the present 
 moment it is no longer so. Treating his plate as a 
 canvas washed with white, the designer covers the 
 wood with blended tints, imitating the layers of the 
 aquarelle, or the depths of mezzotint. Forced to fol- 
 low the modelling of the figures, to put them in 
 unison with a mysterious landscape or a background 
 richly and carefully finished, the engraver is led out 
 of his domain to attempt the impossible imitation 
 of copper plate engraving. But this bold overthrow 
 of the old method has produced certain effects of 
 unforeseen beauty in the interpretation of the " Hell " 
 of Dante, or, when before the eyes of the reader 
 are unrolled the savannas, the virgin forests that in 
 " Atala " are so mingled with the drama as to seem 
 like mute but impassioned personages. Finding 
 under their graver an unknown gamut of varied 
 tones, of fugitive half-tints that serve as transitions 
 more or less rapid between the velvety, profound 
 black, and the pure, brilliant white, the engravers of 
 Dore have represented marvellously the landscapes 
 of America, the herds of buffalo traversing the Mes- 
 chacebe, the enormous pines whose overthrown 
 trunks serve as bridges across yawning chasms, the 
 dawn rising over the Alleghanies, and the moired 
 heavens, diapered with clouds that seem to change 
 its aspect whether they catch a sunbeam in their pas- 
 sage, or the moon fringes them with its light. But 
 
WO On ENGRAVING. 
 
 301 
 
 the weakness of the new method is betrayed in the 
 representation of antique scenes, in which man held 
 the first place, where the idea dominated the panthe- 
 ism of the landscape. In these representations the 
 accessory has become the principal, the setting of 
 the thought devours the thought itself, the actors are 
 overpowered by the magnificence of the decora- 
 tions. 
 
 For the illustration of books, it is better to go 
 back to the traditions of Holbein, Calcar, and Jean 
 Goujon, and for large plates, to the firm, concise cut- 
 tings of Albert Durer, or to the style of Christopher 
 Jegher, the Piranesi of wood engraving, who, envelop- 
 ing with a superb stroke, forms that palpitate upon 
 the paper, makes them vibrate and blaze with the 
 genius of Rubens. 
 
VII. 
 
 ENGRAVING IN CAMEO. 
 
 Engraving in colors. 
 
 The cameo is an engraving of several tones ob- 
 tained by the aid of superposed plates. I say of 
 several tones and not of several tints, for it is an en- 
 graving of a single color, a monochrome ; but this 
 tint bistred, greenish, or bluish not being the same as 
 that of paper colored with bistre, green, or blue, the 
 chiaro 'scuro of the print allows always some parts 
 of the pure white of the paper to appear. 
 
 The most simple cameo is that made with two 
 plates engraved in relief. The first gives the proof 
 the contour and the strong shadows ; the second 
 inked, for instance, with bistre, will print in bistre 
 the half-shadows, without touching the lights, so that 
 the whiteness of the paper, everywhere that it may 
 have been spared, will heighten the bistred tint and 
 the dark shadows, as if the painting had been first 
 washed then touched with white with the brush. 
 
 If one wishes to graduate the half-tints he will use 
 ihree plates, the first printing the most intense black, 
 the others a second and third tone of different inten- 
 sity. Sometimes the three plates having been cov- 
 ered with black, a fourth is used to spread a uniform 
 
SlWtl.fi' a 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 303 
 
 color over the whole plate, always reserving the 
 white for the lights. 
 
 It is interesting to know how the inventors of 
 cameo were led to their invention. Printing having 
 replaced the beautiful and rare manuscripts by mul- 
 tiplied books, the first printers wished to make the 
 products of their industry pass for manuscripts, and 
 thus add the appearance of quality to quantity. To 
 accomplish this, they left in white the capital letters, 
 the titles or rubrics — so-called because usually writ- 
 ten in red. After the book was printed, these ru- 
 brics and letters were filled in by the hand of an 
 artist. 
 
 But the secrets of printing were soon known. 
 " When it became impossible," says Paul Cheron, 
 (" Gazette des Beaux-Arts "), " to conceal the means 
 by which copies of the same book were multiplied, 
 there was an economic interest in multiplying also 
 the ornamental letters. These letters were evidently 
 composed of pieces of different colors inked sepa- 
 rately, then fastened one within another, to be printed 
 simultaneously." 
 
 These methods were a first step towards cameo- 
 engraving, to which we are indebted for so many 
 magnificent works. Placing one engraving within 
 another as in a box, to print them all at once was 
 suitable for the reproduction of the enlaced orna- 
 ments of a capital letter, because the contour is fixed, 
 precise. But it was inapplicable to all that demands 
 gradation of tone ; shadings like the human figure 
 

 3°4 
 
 ENGRA VI NG. 
 
 and landscape. They used then successive plates, 
 that, being superposed, at each impression left a 
 shade of color upon the paper; thus it was possible 
 to imitate aquarelles retouched with white. 
 
 The perfection of the cameo, that is its perfect re- 
 semblance to a drawing, demands that the plates 
 should be of exactly the same size, and that each in 
 turn being put under press, they should fit each other 
 with the greatest precision. To secure this, fine 
 points, that penetrated the paper always in the same 
 places, were inserted at the four angles of the frame, 
 or upon the wheel of the press, to mark the points 
 at which the plates must touch each other. 
 
 This was, properly speaking, the cameo. The 
 Italians, who claim its invention, gave it the name 
 of engraving in chiaro 'scuro, because it is mono- 
 chrome ; they attribute its invention to Ugo da 
 Carpi, who claims it in an essay addressed to the 
 Venetian Senate, in 15 16. But plates by Lucas 
 Cranach and Baldung exist, seven years anterior to 
 the first cameos executed by Da Carpi. Hence the 
 honor of the discovery belongs to Germany. 
 
 But the most beautiful cameos have come to us 
 from Italy, naturally because the Italian masters, 
 designers par excellence, have excelled in a branch of 
 art whose first element is drawing, " the capo di tutto" 
 says Vasari. Their compositions, when equally well 
 printed, surpass all that have been executed else- 
 where. When we look at the " Triumph of Caesar," 
 drawn by Andrea Andreani, after Mantegna> we 
 
ENGRA VING. 
 
 305 
 
 seem to have before us the originals themselves of 
 those sublime temperas, in which the painter has 
 evoked the Roman world and the graces of antique 
 sculpture. When we find upon the plates of the 
 same engraver the grand drawings traced upon the 
 dome of Siena by Beccafumi — pictures that arrest 
 the steps of the traveller and excite his admiration — 
 we are charmed to see them again and are not less 
 happy to think that others, without having journeyed 
 to Italy, may enjoy them. 
 
 The use of copper-plate engraving in the cameo 
 was a progress towards engraving in colors, whose 
 discovery is due to a painter of Frankfort, Jacques 
 Christopher le Blon. This ingenious artist thought 
 he could obtain by successive impressions from su- 
 perposed plates, not merely a monochrome effect but 
 a print in several colors. Wood engraving would 
 have been too coarse for work demanding above all 
 things delicate shadings. Le Blon used copper 
 plates upon which he made a graining with the ber- 
 ceau, a steel instrument with almost imperceptible 
 teeth, finer than that for mezzotint, and as such 
 graining deposited upon the paper transparent tints, 
 he conceived the idea of combining these tints with 
 the three primitive colors, yellow, red, blue, which 
 placed one upon another would produce mixed col- 
 ors, orange, violet, and green, without reckoning the 
 white of the paper, which, reserved in the printing, 
 would give a fourth element of color. 
 
 The chiaro 'scuro of the print would consist in the 
 

 
 ;o6 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 play of dark and light colors, and as the graining 
 could not engender shadows strong enough, recourse 
 was had to the graver to hollow the copper in places 
 where the brown ought to be black and that de- 
 manded vigorous touches. 
 
 Such was the method invented by Le Blon, or at 
 least brought to perfection by him, for rude sketches 
 of this method had already appeared in certain im- 
 pressions essayed in Holland by Pierre Lastman, the 
 master of Rembrandt. 
 
 The art of printing pictures is a useful invention 
 but upon condition that the imitation of painting 
 shall be avoided. The " Portrait of Louis Quinze," 
 printed by Le Blon, with four plates, shows the de- 
 fects of his invention, ill employed. The delicacies 
 of the human head, and the expression of life, are 
 not consonant with this mechanical mixture of col- 
 ors, which is neither engraving nor painting. There 
 results a bastard production, to which one may ap- 
 ply the dictum of the celebrated engraver Longhi : 
 " Colored prints, never able to be what is really nec- 
 essary, are mere puerilities." As compensation ; in 
 rendering intelligible to the eye scientific works, 
 books upon natural history, anatomy, architecture, or 
 polychrome ornamentation, a print in colors becomes 
 a very valuable auxiliary. 
 
 After having furnished the charming engravings 
 of Debucourt, the methods of Le Blon were re- 
 placed by chromo lithography, which consists of sue- 
 
ENGRA VING. 
 
 307 
 
 cessive impressions from lithographic stones, as nu- 
 merous as the tints that are to appear in the print. 
 Tried at Munich in 18 14, perfected by Engelmann 
 in 1837, and brought to an unexpected degree of 
 delicacy and transparency, by an artist of Cologne, 
 Kellerhoven, lithography in colors is used for the 
 reproduction of the miniatures of old manuscripts, 
 to illustrate books of ornamentation, because, thanks 
 to the perfection to which the fabrication of paper 
 has been brought, the juxtaposition and superposi- 
 tion of colors can be made with the greatest exact- 
 ness. " Formerly," says Firmin Didot (" De la Gra- 
 vure sur Bois "), " it was necessary to soften the 
 rigidity and grain of the paper by wetting, before 
 putting it under the press, and the variable dampness 
 of the paper thus soaked with water, distended the 
 sheets unequally and occasioned continual variation 
 in the marking points. These inconveniences are 
 avoided by printing upon dry paper." 
 
 The " Temple of Selinus," by Hittorff, the " Gram- 
 mar of Ornament," published at London by Owen 
 Jones, the " Spanish Iconography," published at 
 Madrid, by Carderera, the " Imitation of Christ," by 
 Curiner, and the numerous plates that accompany 
 the books of Gailhabaud and Caesar Daly, are mag- 
 nificent works that it would have been impossible to 
 execute and that would have been almost unintelli- 
 gible without chromolithography. 
 
 Nevertheless, considered in its noblest attribute, 
 which is to perpetuate the great masters, engraving 
 
Baac 
 
 »<te 
 
 
 3 08 
 
 ENGRA VING. 
 
 is not compatible with color. In aspiring by painful 
 efforts at impossible similitude, it loses its peculiar 
 characteristics without acquiring new ones. What 
 it seeks to gain in richness by mechanical artifices, it 
 loses in dignity by the change of style. Contrary to 
 to the opinion of Emeric David (" Historie de la 
 Gravure "), we believe with Diderot, that engraving 
 is less a copy than a translation. Like the musician 
 who transposes an air, like the prose-writer who in- 
 terprets in his own language the poets of a foreign 
 tongue by insisting above all and before all upon the 
 genius of the poem, the artist who engraves a paint- 
 ing upon copper, reproduces the spirit of it, that is 
 the composition, drawing, character, expression ; and 
 if the local colors disappear, the general coloration 
 remains, concentrated, unified in the chiaro 'scuro. 
 One principle it is important to remember, we should 
 not attempt by one method what can be better done 
 by another. 
 
Litljograpl)?- 
 
 Allied to engraving is lithography ; the art 
 OF TRACING upon stone a drawing from which im- 
 pressions CAN BE PRINTED. 
 
 Although a German invented it, lithography is a 
 French art, French by the qualities it demands ; 
 quick observation, facility, esprit, the use of a lively, 
 animated language, which, for fear of wearying, re- 
 frains from saying all, and a superficial manner of 
 expressing profound things. The word esprit has 
 here two significations. It means not onlv the abil- 
 ity to catch delicate relations and show their brill- 
 iancy by comparison or contrast, but also the talent 
 of perceiving the essential of an image, that which 
 is characteristic of it. Lithography, like conversa- 
 tion, demands spirit in the foundation, and wit in the 
 form. 
 
 It seems as if Nature, the better to secure the 
 solidarity of the human race, pleases herself by pro- 
 ducing in one country what is necessary to the gen- 
 ius of another. Lithography, which would seem to 
 have been created expressly for the artists of France, 
 
IO 
 
 LITHOGRAPHY. 
 
 was discovered in Bavaria, and could not have been 
 elsewhere, since there was a condition indispensable 
 to its invention — the existence of a compact lime- 
 stone, neither too hard nor too soft, with smooth sur- 
 face, fine grain, but rough enough to rasp the pencil. 
 This stone is found in perfection only in the quarries 
 of Solenhofen, in Bavaria, where for ages it has been 
 used for house-floors. At Munich all the halls are 
 paved with it, and it was in noticing the fineness and 
 polish of these stones that a dramatic author — Alois 
 Senefelder — a native of Prague, invented lithog- 
 raphy. 
 
 Wretchedly poor, this man of inventive genius, 
 sustained by German perseverance, had the strange 
 idea of printing his own works by engraving them 
 with aquafortis upon a plate of copper. He was too 
 poor to buy more than one plate and was frightened 
 to see its thickness diminishing as he effaced one 
 page to begin another. He was trying to substitute 
 some cheaper material for the copper when accident 
 put him upon the road to his discovery. 
 
 One day when at work, his mother asked him to 
 write the washing-list for the laundress. His paper 
 had all been used for proofs. Having at hand a 
 stone he had just polished he wrote the memoran- 
 dum upon it, intending to copy it. The ink he used 
 was varnish, that is a mixture of wax, soap, and 
 lampblack. Having copied the writing, when about 
 to efface it, it occurred to him to see what would be- 
 come of it if he poured aquafortis upon the stone. 
 
LITHOGRAPHY. 
 
 3" 
 
 The level of the stone was lowered everywhere ex- 
 cept upon the parts covered with the ink, so that the 
 writing appeared in relief like a wood-engraving. 
 That was the beginning of the invention. It re- 
 mained to prove, by turning it to the profit of art, 
 the property the stones of Solenhofen have of ab- 
 sorbing greasy substances, consequently of rendering 
 inaccessible to dampness all traces left upon them by 
 pen or pencil. 
 
 Lithography was invented in 1799, but perfected 
 chemically and mechanically by Engelmann, — the 
 first lithograph printer in France, — Motte, Lemer- 
 cier, and the Count de Lasteyrie, whose names are 
 inseparably connected with lithographic art. 
 
 The advantage of the lithograph is that, better 
 than any other method, it puts in relief the genius, 
 the characteristics, the temperament of each master, 
 because it does not require the intervention of a for- 
 eign hand and is capable of representing subjects 
 the most diverse. 
 
 It is an art that a single generation saw born and 
 fall into desuetude, but before passing away it made 
 the tour of our epoch, reported its thoughts, its cus- 
 toms, its elegancies, its vagaries ; Deveria used it 
 gracefully to illustrate the life of the boudoir, Ga- 
 varni to represent the comedy of his time. Uau- 
 mier stamped upon it the grimace of caricature, with 
 it Raffet put armies in the field. This easy talk — 
 lithography — Raffet elevated to the sublime in the 
 " Reveil," a strange dream in which, like ghosts, ap- 
 

 
 #j*.-*S) 
 
 
 312 
 
 LITHOGRAPHY. 
 
 pear the barefoot volunteers of '92, the sergeant of 
 Marengo, the ensign of Austerlitz, the sappers of 
 the Beresina, the grenadiers of Montmirail and 
 Champaubert. In the " Night Review," they reap- 
 pear, armed, cuirassed spectres, grouped under the 
 funereal light of the other world. 
 
 At the moment of being abandoned by painters, 
 lithography became, in France and Germany, a vari- 
 ation of engraving ; it deserved well of art by trans- 
 lating by the hand of Lecomte, the charming 
 thoughts of Prudhon, and the Ossianic dreams of 
 Girodet ; under the delicate pencil of Sudre, the 
 " Sistine Chapel" of Ingres; and upon the stones of 
 Mouilleron the famous " Night Watch " of Rem- 
 brandt, with its mysterious effects that the mezzotint 
 cannot give with vigor, and in which the light, by 
 turns lost and found again by the scratch ing-knife, 
 hollows fantastic depths to which the reliefs of form 
 and the accents of touch fasten themselves. 
 
 Woe to the societies that allow lithography and 
 engraving to perish. They are the daily papers that 
 constrain us to live, if but for a few minutes, in the 
 regions of art and the ideal ; they educate the peo- 
 ple gratuitously, manifest the beautiful, teach history, 
 making it intelligible to the most illiterate, the hum- 
 blest, by giving them the sight of ideas. 
 
Conclusion, 
 
 The more we reflect upon it, the more clearly we 
 perceive that man created the first arts by the reac- 
 tion of an innate sentiment, that of order, proportion, 
 unity, against the opposite characteristics presented 
 by inorganic nature — infinite complexity, the ab- 
 sence of visible proportion, the immensity of ap- 
 parent disorder. Let us imagine, if possible., what 
 passed in the mind of man when he appeared on 
 earth after the frightful cataclysms that had thrown it 
 into confusion. Burned by volcanoes or drowned by 
 deluges, the terrestrial globe might present the spec- 
 tacle of the sublime, but man bears within himself 
 the elements of the beautiful — order, proportion, 
 harmony. Sovereignly free by imagination and mas- 
 ter by virtue of intelligence, he was none the less 
 subject to an admirable order, the order which in his 
 body is symmetry, in his mind reason, in his move- 
 ments equilibrium. 
 
 Thus made, man invents successively all the arts. 
 Under his hand inert substances express beliefs and 
 thoughts, arranging stones according to certain laws, 
 imprinting upon them by means of symmetry the 
 stamp of unity, he communicates to them an arti- 
 ficial proportion, a sort of organism that renders 
 them expressive, and Architecture is invented. 
 
3H 
 
 CONCL USION. 
 
 Measuring sounds, putting into them a rhythm 
 marked by the beatings of his own heart, he brings 
 them back to the unity of sentiment and creates 
 Music. 
 
 He arranges the trees, directs the flow of waters, 
 regulates their fall, prunes the wild plants, produces 
 new flowers, and converts the savage wastes into a 
 vast landscape-garden. 
 
 Wishing to imitate the human figure, man has no 
 longer to introduce order, proportion, unity, of which 
 he is himself the most striking model ; but correct- 
 ing the errors of individual nature, he uses it to re- 
 construct the species, and ascending thus, through 
 the innumerable accidents of life, to original unity, 
 to primitive and perfect proportions, he invents 
 Sculpture. 
 
 Does he wish to fix, by means of forms and colors, 
 the features of a creature that is dear to him, or the 
 memory of an action that has moved him, he begins 
 by inclosing the desired image in a frame that separ- 
 ates it from all other images ; he puts order into it 
 by arrangement, proportion by drawing, unity by the 
 distribution of light, and finds a new art — Painting. 
 
 The arts were created then not to imitate nature, 
 but to express the human soul by means of imitated 
 nature. 
 
 And what noble imitation, how independent it is 
 in all the arts. In Architecture subject to no model, 
 not copying created things, it imitates only the su- 
 preme intelligence that has created them. It studies 
 
CONCL US I ON. 
 
 15 
 
 the thoughts that presided over the formation of the 
 human body. In Music it makes us listen to what it 
 is impossible to understand ; with sounds it paints 
 the night, dreams, the desert ; and, as Rousseau says, 
 " with noise it expresses silence." 
 
 More imitative because it has an obligatory, inevi- 
 table model, Sculpture forbids the pushing of imita- 
 tion to the utmost ; it uses the weight of marble to 
 represent the lightness of hair, suppresses the fugi- 
 tive look of the eye but insists upon the permanency 
 of the mind, imitates natural forms but to draw from 
 them more perfect, ideal forms. 
 
 Painting, more imitative still than sculpture, de- 
 parts from nature by an enormous license — figuring 
 length, breadth, and depth, upon a flat surface. 
 
 Thus all the arts born in the mind or heart of 
 man are so elevated above Nature, that the more lite- 
 rally and servilely they copy her, the more they tend 
 to degrade and destroy themselves. The arts of de- 
 sign, in their highest dignity, are not so much arts 
 of imitation as of expression. And if the photo- 
 graph is a marvellous invention without being an art, 
 it is because in its indifference it imitates all, and ex- 
 presses nothing. Where there is no choice, there is 
 no art. Gathering together features scattered in the 
 real world, and lost in the immensity of things, the 
 artist makes them serve the expression of his 
 thought, bring it to the light of day, plain, clear, 
 visible, sensible, one. Reality contains only the 
 germs of beauty; from it he sets free beauty itself. 
 
316 
 
 CONCL USION. 
 
 Thus the artist is superior to nature. He unravels 
 what is entangled, lights up what is obscure, compels 
 the silent to speak, and if he wishes to imprint upon 
 his representations the stamp of grandeur, he puri- 
 fies the real from the accidents that have corrupted 
 it, the alloy that has adulterated it ; abridges what is 
 diffuse, simplifies what is impoverished and compli- 
 cated by detail, and in simplifying aggrandizes it. 
 In a word, in natural truth he discovers typical 
 truth — style. 
 
 It is nevertheless true that, in the arts of design, 
 painting especially, there are works that charm by 
 their naivete alone, having an unexpected and spon- 
 taneous grace in certain creations, in which, the por- 
 trait sufficing, the type would be out of place. Style 
 is not befitting everywhere. If one wishes to give 
 to forms the savor of the accidental, he emphasizes 
 detail, if grandeur is the object, he simplifies. No- 
 tions of aesthetics are so obscure, so little diffused, 
 that it is believed style is irreconcilable with nature, 
 that the expression of life cannot be found outside 
 of the individual who alone is living ; that the ideal 
 is the imaginary and there is nothing true but the 
 real. 
 
 What is a living being? It is a being all of whose 
 molecules are arranged in a certain order around a 
 centre, so arranged that their separation is impossi- 
 ble. The idea of the being existed before the being 
 and will persist after it ; before there were individ- 
 uals there was a type ; before there were horses 
 
CONCL US I ON. 
 
 3*7 
 
 there was the type of a horse, since all horses in 
 spite of accidental differences, resemble each other 
 so nearly as never to be confounded with other races. 
 They belong to the same family, originated from 
 the same stock, attach themselves to a primitive ex- 
 emplar with which they have maintained a common 
 resemblance, generic, unchangeable. This primitive 
 exemplar is the ideal. 
 
 The ideal then is the prototype of all beings of 
 the same genus ; virtually it contains the individuals 
 that exist, those that have existed and those that will 
 exist. It is permanent, they pass away ; it is invari- 
 able, they change ; it is one and identical, they are 
 unequal and innumerable ; it is immortal, they per- 
 ish. Real beings are casts, more or less imperfect, 
 from an ideal mould eternally engraved upon the 
 divine thought. To idealize the figure of a living 
 being is not to diminish its life, but, on the contrary, 
 to add to it the accents of a more abundant, higher 
 life, discovering in it characteristic features, the es- 
 sential of its race. To idealize the real is to take it 
 from time, to manifest what is eternal in that which 
 is perishable. 
 
 If the types of perfection were only a dream of 
 the mind, if the artist were not led to them by long 
 and profound study of living nature, if the visible 
 and the known were not his point of departure in 
 lifting himself to the unknown and invisible, his ere-' 
 ations would be only cold phantoms, because life 
 would be absent and the ideal would be imaginary. 
 
3i8 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 But when the artist has sought the type, the product 
 of sentiment and thought, in a being that is a child 
 of life, he is senseless to believe, to say that the 
 ideal is a frozen conventionality, a vague and vain 
 chimera. 
 
 Let us guard against thinking that principles are 
 bonds to freedom, a shackle to genius. Reynolds 
 compared them to the solid armor, that to the feeble 
 warrior is a burden, but that robust men bear easily 
 as a defence, even as a decoration. Far from being 
 embarrassed by aesthetic laws, in some respects they 
 will give the artist more liberty by freeing him from 
 the restraint of uncertainty, the hindrance of ob- 
 scurity. The principles of art are not of inflexible 
 rigor. The exceptional, the accidental, the irregular 
 are everywhere, even in the machine of the universe, 
 that nevertheless is not shaken by them. Often the 
 heavens are traversed by brilliant meteors that it 
 would seem must derange the concert of astronomic 
 laws ; in the numbers that express the revolutions of 
 our planet, there are fractions that are apparent er- 
 rors, which in time correct themselves so that there 
 is no dissonance that does not resolve itself into the 
 universal harmony. So in the realm of art, there is 
 room for the happy deviations of liberty, for the con- 
 tradictions of genius, and we may rejoice when they 
 introduce novelties that seem to falsify tradition, but 
 really augment its treasures. 
 
 But will the perfection of the type ever be at- 
 tained ? Will the art of man finally discover, in all 
 
CONCL US10N. 
 
 3*9 
 
 its splendor the primitive exemplar of creatures ? 
 Shall we ever see entirely removed the veil lifted by 
 Grecian genius, the veil that covers the mysterious 
 and sacred model of which we have within us a con- 
 fused, obscure image, as if sometime we had " con- 
 templated beings in their essence and dwelt with the 
 gods." It may be that the day in which the curi- 
 osity of the human soul should be satisfied, the day 
 in which man should possess in their fullness the 
 truth he seeks, the happiness he hopes for, the beau- 
 tiful he aspires to, life would be aimless ; and hu- 
 manity satiated, inactive, useless, could only pass 
 away or be transformed into a higher order of crea- 
 tion. But were it true that the extinction of the hu- 
 man race would be consequent upon the realization 
 of its Utopias, our world certainly cannot be near its 
 end. 
 
 Devoted more than ever to the worship of the 
 real, it carries the taste for it into the arts ; hence the 
 gross naturalism that under the pretext of showing 
 us the real truth, invites the passer-by to look at fla- 
 grant crimes of vulgarity and indecency instead of 
 the chaste nudities of art. Hence also the usurpa- 
 tions of photography, whose eye, so clairvoyant in 
 the world of matter, is blind to the world of mind. 
 
 That will be but for a time. New horizons will 
 open to the eyes of the coming generations ; already 
 we perceive them, we who wander on the confines of 
 the future. It seems to us that aesthetics, a modern 
 
m 
 
 320 
 
 CONCL US ION. 
 
 science, although born in the meditations of an an- 
 cient poet, the pupil of Socrates, will henceforth 
 serve to enlighten the teaching of the fine arts. Af- 
 ter having existed in the condition of presentiment, 
 of intuition, in the soul of great artists of the past, 
 the principles drawn from their works will guide fu- 
 ture masters. Now last, the philosophy of the beau- 
 tiful will resume its natural place, the first. Once 
 found through the glimmering of sentiment, the 
 darkness that envelops it, synthesis will, in its turn, 
 be the guiding torch. 
 
 If future artists shall lack the grace of the precur- 
 sors, the charm inherent in things that one divines 
 and in the hope of the beautiful, in lieu thereof their 
 march will be firmer, surer, and their route being 
 shortened, life will be longer. They will not be slow 
 to follow this humanity become so breathless, so 
 eager to live. Strong in accumulated riches, and 
 acquired facility, they will have time to cut new facets 
 on the diamond — art. In the mean time, thank 
 Heaven, genius has not abandoned Lhis earth. We 
 have always had chosen creatures, winged natures, 
 masters. We have them to-day, we shall have them 
 to-morrow. We cannot doubt it ; from another Icti- 
 nus another Phidias will be born, and other Ra 
 phaels who will find new ways of being sublime 
 For neither the beautiful, nor the ideal, nor style are 
 dead, because of their very nature they are immor- 
 tal ; and although in certain periods of decadence 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 321 
 
 they seemed threatened with destruction, they have 
 only slumbered, like the Evangelist, whom the poe- 
 try of the Middle Ages represents to us as sleeping 
 in his tomb, where, cradled by dreams, he awaits 
 the awakening angel. 
 
PAINTINGS DESCRIBED IN THIS WORK. 
 
 Those marked with an asterisk (*) are represented by engravings. 
 
 Apotheosis of Homer 
 
 Battle-field of Eylau. Louvre Gros . . , 
 
 Battle of Aboukir. Louvre Gros. . , 
 
 Battle of Const antine. Vatican Raphael. . . 
 
 *Bertin Ingres . . 
 
 Christ at the Tomb Eugene Delacroix. . . 
 
 Clytemnestre Guirin . . 
 
 Coronation of Marie de Medicis. Louvre Rubens.. 
 
 Cure of the Lame Man. South Kensington Raphael.. 
 
 Dawn of Christianity. Pantheon, Paris Chenavard. . 
 
 Descent from the Cross. Antwerp Rubens. . 
 
 Disputa. Vatican Raphael. . , 
 
 *Elymas struck with Blindness Raphael. . 
 
 ♦Erasmus Holbein . . , 
 
 Hamlet and the Grave-digger Delacroix. . . 
 
 Heliodorus driven from the Temple. Vatican.. .Raphael. . , 
 
 *Hut of the Big Tree Rembrandt. . 
 
 Jewish Wedding in Morocco Delacroix. . , 
 
 Judgment of Solomon Lesueur. . . 
 
 Justice of Trajan Delacroix. . , 
 
 *Last Supper. Milan Leonardo da Vinci. . , 
 
 Last Judgment. Sistine Chapel Michael Angelo . . , 
 
 Life of St. Bruno Lesueur. . . 
 
 Marriage at Cana. Louvre Paul Veronese. . . 
 
 Mona Lisa. Louvre Leonardo da Vinci. . . 
 
 Music Lesson. Louvre Gaspar Netscher . . 
 
 Night Watch. Haag Rembrandt. . . 
 
 Philosophers. Louvre Rembrandt. . . 
 
 Page 
 
 6i 
 
 53 
 226 
 
 227 
 
 233 
 167 
 140 
 
 131 
 21 
 
 30 
 46 
 46 
 89 
 
 293 
 
 167 
 
 62 
 
 21 1 
 
 167 
 
 60 
 
 1 68 
 
 80 
 
 70 
 
 43 
 
 63 
 
 235 
 
 204 
 
 133 
 132 
 

 
 324 PAINTINGS DESCRIBED IN THIS WORK. 
 
 ♦Portrait Holbein . . 
 
 Prophets and Sibyls. Sistine Chapel Michael A ngelo. . 
 
 ♦Sacrifice of Abraham Rembrandt. . 
 
 Serment du jeu de Paume David. . 
 
 Shepherds of Arcadia Nicholas Poussin . . 
 
 Shifwreck. of the " Medusa " 
 
 Sistine Madonna. Dresden Raphael- • 
 
 St. Paul at Ephesus Lesueur. . 
 
 *Supper at Emmaus Rembrandt. 
 
 Testament of Eudamid as Poussin . 
 
 Transfiguration. Vatican Raphael. 
 
 Triumph of Julius Cesar. Mantua Mantegna. 
 
 ♦Virgin and Saints. (Copy.) Academy at Venice 
 
 Gio. Bellini 
 
 ♦Virgin of Francis the First. Louvre Raphael. 
 
 ♦Voltaire's Staircase Chenavard '. 
 
 Wine Drinkers. Royal Gallery, Madrid Velasquez. 
 
 Young Man dressed in Black. Louvre Prancia. 
 
 22, 
 
 Page 
 
 235 
 
 79 
 
 87 
 
 58 
 
 23 
 128 
 
 46 
 60 
 142 
 
 43 
 45 
 59 
 
 183 
 116 
 
 27 
 
 14 
 144 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Achromatism 153 
 
 Aim of the Arts of Design, to manifest the beautiful ... 25 
 
 Albert Diirer, characteristics of his drawing .... 291 
 
 Anamorphoses 64 
 
 Animals, when may they receive the imprint of style . . 221 
 
 Aquafortis of Piranesi ..... ... 276 
 
 Aquatint, mode of engraving .... . 283 
 
 Architecture, mode of engraving .... ... 265 
 
 Arrangement of a picture .34 
 
 Arrangement, symmetrical ..... • • 37 
 
 Arrangement, in equilibrium ....... 39 
 
 Arrangement, pyramidal ........ 44 
 
 Arrangement, unity its one principle, its true secret ... 46 
 
 Art, its effect upon manners and morals 9 
 
 Arts, their creation . . ....... 313 
 
 Battles and hunting-scenes can be painted only with probable 
 
 truth 225 
 
 Border, form of, ought to be indicated by dominant line of picture 46 
 
 Cameo, what is it . . . . . . . . . . 302 
 
 Cameo, mode of printing ........ 302 
 
 Cameo, what led to its invention . 303 
 
 Cameo, a German discovery ....... 304 
 
 Ceilings and Cupolas, their decoration 184 
 
 Character of objects not seized by the eye, but by the thought . 99 
 Character, its germ to be found in the caricatures of the market 
 
 and the faubourg . . . . . . . . 112 
 
 Chiaro 'scuro the essential part of painting 123 
 
 Chromo-lithography 307 
 
326 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Color, the only language of inorganic nature 
 
 Color and sentiment, affinity between them 
 
 Color, a means of expression 
 
 Color, what is it 
 
 Color, is it produced by the eye . 
 
 Color of the Light 
 
 Color, its true role ..... 
 Colors, primitive three, composite three . 
 Colors, their vibration ..... 
 Complementary colors, their law 
 Complement of a color in the surrounding space 
 Composition not improvised .... 
 
 Composition, tests of 
 
 Composition, coloring of sketch preferable 
 
 4 
 
 146 
 149 
 156 
 165 
 169 
 148 
 164 
 150 
 
 155 
 68 
 69 
 
 74 
 
 Dance of Death 295 
 
 Dance of Death, characteristics of the engraving . . . 297 
 
 Designing, hollowing fictitious depths upon smooth surfaces . 105 
 
 Dignity of the painter measured by the difficulty of his work . 202 
 
 Distemper ........... 183 
 
 Drapery, its superiority over costume ..... 228 
 
 Drapery, faults of the Venetian school ..... 229 
 
 Drapery, the graver should make apparent its material quality . 259 
 
 Drawing, definition of . .98 
 
 Drawing, geometrical, should be first taught . . . . 103 
 
 Drawing, beginner must learn forms before drawing them . . 104 
 
 Drawing, principles of, correct . . . . . . . 10/ 
 
 Drawing, Raphael's Virgins .114 
 
 Drawing, different modes of, illustrated by Raphael and Albert 
 
 Diirer . . . . . . . . . . . 109 
 
 Egyptian painting, individuality lost in the uniformity of the sym- 
 bol , 113 
 
 Enamel painting . . . . . . . . . 191 
 
 Encaustic painting ......... 199 
 
 Engraving, what is it ........ 239 
 
 Engraving, in relief ......... 240 
 
 Engraving, in intaglio ........ 240 
 
 Engraving, direction of cuttings to imitate the perspective of 
 
 bodies . . 246 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 327 
 
 Engraving, method upon copper 248 
 
 Engraving, should be an art apart from pure drawing . , 251 
 
 Engraving, aerial perspective introduced by Lucas de Leyden . 252 
 
 Engraving, a translation that represents the essentials of painting 255 
 
 Engraving, method for earth, stones, etc. ..... 262 
 
 Engraving, method for water ....... 263 
 
 Engraving, method for clouds 263 
 
 Engraving, method for foliage of trees ..... 264 
 
 Engraving, with aquafortis 269 
 
 Engraving, Rembrandt's manner 272 
 
 Engraving, in colors, its discovery ...... 305 
 
 Engraving, not compatible with color ..... 308 
 
 Esprit in engraving 309 
 
 Expression and beauty, interval between them . . . . 18 
 
 Expression of lines 40 
 
 Expression attained by means of gesture . . . .78,83 
 
 Fiction in art, its role . . . . 
 
 Finish, its meaning in painting .... 
 First law of painting, to choose what it shall express 
 Flesh, mode of engraving .... 
 
 Fresco painting . . 
 
 16 
 175 
 
 25 
 260 
 180 
 
 Genre painting and historical, distinction between them . . 236 
 Gesture, modified by temperament, varied by custom, climate, etc. 76 
 Gesture, its roots in the human heart ..... 76 
 
 Gesture, optical language, illustrated by Rembrandt ... 85 
 Graver and aquafortis, comparison between them . . . 273 
 Guaches and aquarelles . . . . . . . -195 
 
 Hair, mode of engraving 
 
 Horizon, elevation of 
 
 Horizon lines, two in one picture 
 
 261 
 
 57 
 63 
 
 Ideal the, the prototype of all beings of the same genus 
 Illumination ........ 
 
 Invention in painting ....... 
 
 Italian style, application to wood-engraving 
 
 317 
 197 
 
 299 
 

 328 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Jointed models of the ancients .... 
 
 95 
 
 Landscape, imitation plays the most important role, but the painter 
 
 must idealize the real . . . . . . . .210 
 
 Landscape, the artist gives to it that which it has not, sentiment 
 
 and thought .214 
 
 Last word of art, to reconcile force of gesture with beauty of 
 
 movement .......... 86 
 
 Light and shadow, a means of expression only in modern times 126 
 Light, choice of, must be left to the will of the painter . . .129 
 Light, when chosen, may be narrow or wide, diffuse or concen- 
 trated, animated or cold 131 
 
 Light should fall perpendicularly upon the human figure, obliquely 
 
 upon the landscape . . . . . . . 134 
 
 Lights and shadows, their arrangement in a picture . . . 136 
 
 Lights and shadows, their diminution 142 
 
 Lithography, its invention 310 
 
 Lithography, its advantages 311 
 
 Mezzotints, manner of engraving . ..... 279 
 
 Mezzotints, their inventor ....... 280 
 
 Mezzotints, objects to which they are suited .... 282 
 
 Mezzotints, fault inherent in this style ..... 282 
 
 Miniatures 196 
 
 Model, the, an instruction, a reference . . . . . 117 
 
 Modelling of the picture a peculiarity of modern art . . .127 
 
 Models, rarity of fine ones . . . . . . • 119 
 
 Models, the introduction of their commonplace features character- 
 istic of the decadence .... ... 119 
 
 Morality taught by painting 7 
 
 Mural painting the loftiest field for the artist . . . . 179 
 
 Nature, role in genre pictures 84 
 
 Nature, from her the painter draws the elements of the ideal . 97 
 Nature shows the artist what he carries in the depths of his own 
 
 soul 100 
 
 Nature, her spectacles want the essential characteristic of art, 
 
 unity ........... 213 
 
 Nielli, invented by Finiguerra . 242 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 329 
 
 Nielli, method of printing 243 
 
 Nielli, the invention that was such in Europe not new in the world 244 
 
 Oil painting ....... 
 
 Optical angle ....... 
 
 Optical beauty under the sovereign law of unity 
 Optical mixture ....... 
 
 Painting supplants sculpture, when, by what means 
 Painting and sculpture, differing aims of . 
 Painting not an imitation .... 
 Painting a mean between sculpture and music . 
 Painting, its limitations .... 
 
 Pantomime, use of 
 
 Pastel Painting ...... 
 
 Pencilling, imitation of 
 
 Perfection of the type, will it ever be attained 
 Perspective, linear and aerial .... 
 
 Perspective, rules of . 
 
 Perspective, point of distance .... 
 
 Perspective, point of sight . 
 Perspective, the ideal of visible things 
 Perspective, the science of apparent forms . 
 Physiognomy ....... 
 
 Picturesque form of metaphysical idea 
 
 Plates of lava or porcelain, their use 
 
 Pointille', modelling with points . 
 
 Portrait, its perfection the last word of painting 
 
 Portrait, attitude one of the grandest means of expression 
 
 Principles not bonds to freedom . 
 
 Printer and book editor, union of crafts 
 
 Proof, its relation to the print 
 
 187 
 
 65 
 138 
 162 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 5 
 
 12 
 
 13 
 
 9i 
 . 190 
 
 284 
 
 • 319 
 
 49 
 
 • 55 
 54,63 
 48, 60 
 
 67 
 . 102 
 
 234 
 . 29 
 
 193 
 
 . 285 
 230 
 
 • 231 
 3i8 
 
 . 29S 
 241 
 
 Sculpture the dominant art of antiquity . 
 Sculpture, its limitations .... 
 Shadows, their management with oils 
 Sketch transformed by light 
 Soul influences the muscles but not the blood 
 Still life, definition, illustrations . 
 
 1 
 
 19 
 189 
 121 
 
 93 
 203 
 

 330 
 
 GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Style, its signification , 19 
 
 Style, is its quality the same in painting as in sculpture . .110 
 Style being typical truth exists only for beings endowed with or- 
 ganic and animal life ........ 207 
 
 Sublimity in painting from thought perceived but not formulated 22 
 
 Teniers master of touch ........ 176 
 
 Tone, to be distinguished from tint . . . . . .124 
 
 Touch in painting what calligraphy is in writing . . . 170 
 Touch, its conventionalities felt, its characters varied first in the 
 
 17th century 172 
 
 Touch, should be broad in large, and delicate in small works . 173 
 
 Touch should be natural . . . . . . . . 177 
 
 Truth is beauty 8 
 
 Unity the secret of composition ....... 46 
 
 Unity of chiaro 'scuro .... . ... 139 
 
 Values, definition of 123 
 
 Wax painting . 182 
 
 White and black not colors . . . . . . . .158 
 
 White and black, their aesthetic value ..... 160 
 
 Wood-engraving, its revival in our own time .... 299 
 
 Wood-engraving, attempted imitation of copper-plate . . 300 
 
 Xylograph, what is its role 
 Xylographic books, definition 
 
 286 
 288 
 


 


 
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