VII
The application of this idea does not end with the simple proportions of
measurement between the limbs and parts of the figure; it is also
concerned with what is called the modelling, and the treatment of
surfaces such as the draperies, the hair, the fleshy portions and those
beneath which the bony structure comes to prominence; in painting it may
be applied to the chiaroscuro and colour. Reynolds' remarks on the
Venetians in his Eighth Discourse well illustrate this fact. He says:
It ought, in my opinion, to be indispensably observed that the masses of
light in a picture be always of a warm mellow colour, yellow, red, or a
yellowish-white; and that the blue, the grey, or the green colours be
kept _almost_ entirely out of these masses, and be used only to support
and set off these warm colours; and, for this purpose, a small
_proportion_ of cold colours will be sufficient.
If this conduct be reversed, let the light be cold, and the surrounding
colours warm, as we often see in the works of the Roman and Florentine
painters; and it will be out of the power of art, even in the hands of
Rubens or Titian, to make a picture splendid or harmonious.[86]
Here we see a great colourist attempting to establish a canon for
colour. Had he lived at an earlier period, before expression had become
generally a subject of criticism, he would have described his discovery
in less guarded and elastic language, such as is now applied to
scientific laws. And then he might have been as excusably misunderstood
as Leonardo and Dürer have been; as it is, the misunderstanding dealt
out to him is quite without excuse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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