Therefore, I Freely Acknowledge That When I See A Jolly Young
Waterman Representing A Cherubim, Or A Barclay And Perkins's
Drayman depicted as an Evangelist, I see nothing to commend or
admire in the performance, however great its reputed Painter.
Neither am I partial to libellous Angels, who play on fiddles and
bassoons, for the edification of sprawling monks apparently in
liquor. Nor to those Monsieur Tonsons of galleries, Saint Francis
and Saint Sebastian; both of whom I submit should have very
uncommon and rare merits, as works of art, to justify their
compound multiplication by Italian Painters.
It seems to me, too, that the indiscriminate and determined
raptures in which some critics indulge, is incompatible with the
true appreciation of the really great and transcendent works. I
cannot imagine, for example, how the resolute champion of
undeserving pictures can soar to the amazing beauty of Titian's
great picture of the Assumption of the Virgin at Venice; or how the
man who is truly affected by the sublimity of that exquisite
production, or who is truly sensible of the beauty of Tintoretto's
great picture of the Assembly of the Blessed in the same place, can
discern in Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, in the Sistine chapel,
any general idea, or one pervading thought, in harmony with the
stupendous subject. He who will contemplate Raphael's masterpiece,
the Transfiguration, and will go away into another chamber of that
same Vatican, and contemplate another design of Raphael,
representing (in incredible caricature) the miraculous stopping of
a great fire by Leo the Fourth--and who will say that he admires
them both, as works of extraordinary genius--must, as I think, be
wanting in his powers of perception in one of the two instances,
and, probably, in the high and lofty one.
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