He said so, simply because he had neither the skill to lay a single touch of good oil-painting, nor the patience to overcome even its elementary difficulties. And it is one of my reasons for the choice of subject in this concluding lecture on Sculpture, that I may, with direct reference to this much quoted saying of Michael Angelo, make the positive statement to you, that oil-painting is the Art of arts;[46] that it is sculpture, drawing, and music, all in one, involving the technical dexterities of those three several arts; that is to say--the decision and strength of the stroke of the chisel;--the balanced distribution of appliance of that force necessary for graduation in light and shade;--and the passionate felicity of rightly multiplied actions, all unerring, which on an instrument produce right sound, and on canvas, living color. There is no other human skill so great or so wonderful as the skill of fine oil-painting; and there is no other art whose results are so absolutely permanent. Music is gone as soon as produced--marble discolors,--fresco fades,--glass darkens or decomposes--painting alone, well guarded, is practically everlasting. Of this splendid art Michael Angelo understood nothing; he understood even fresco, imperfectly. Tintoret understood both perfectly; but he--when no one would pay for his colors (and sometimes nobody would even give him space of wall to paint on)--used cheap blue for ultramarine; and he worked so rapidly, and on such huge spaces of canvas, that between damp and dry, his colors must go, for the most part; but any complete oil-painting of his stands as well as one of Bellini's own: while Michael Angelo's fresco is defaced already in every part of it, and Lionardo's oil-painting is all either gone black, or gone to nothing. 228. (II.) Introduction of dramatic interest for the sake of excitement. I have already, in the _Stones of Venice_, illustrated Tintoret's dramatic power at so great length, that I will not, to-day, make any farther statement to justify my assertion that it is as much beyond Michael Angelo's as Shakspeare's is beyond Milton's--and somewhat with the same kind of difference in manner. Neither can I speak to-day, time not permitting me, of the abuse of their dramatic power by Venetian or Florentine; one thing only I beg you to note, that with full half of his strength, Tintoret remains faithful to the serenity of the past; and the examples I have given you from his work in S. 50,[47] are, one, of the most splendid drama, and the other, of the quietest portraiture ever attained by the arts of the Middle Ages.