“It is wrong, believe me. If Raphael’s masterpieces delight the soul, it is because everything in them, color as well as drawing, contributes to the enchantment. Look at the little _Saint George_ in the Louvre, at the _Parnassus_ in the Vatican, at the cartoons for the tapestry at South Kensington; the harmony in these works is charming. Sanzio’s color is different from Rembrandt’s, but it is exactly suited to his inspiration. It is clear and enamelled. It offers fresh, flowery, joyous tonalities. It has the eternal youth of Raphael himself. It seems unreal, but only because the truth as observed by the master of Urbino is not that of purely material things; his is the domain of feeling, a region where forms and colors are transfigured by the light of love. Doubtless an out-and-out realist would call this coloring inexact; but a poet finds it true. “What is certain is that the color of Rembrandt or of Rubens joined to Raphael’s drawing would be ridiculous and monstrous, just as Rembrandt’s drawing differs from that of Raphael, but is not less good. Raphael’s lines are sweet and pure; Rembrandt’s are often rude and jarring. The great Dutchman’s vision was arrested by the roughness of garments, by the asperity of wrinkled faces, by the callousness of plebeian hands; for to Rembrandt beauty is only the antithesis between the triviality of the physical envelope and the inner radiance. How could he express this beauty composed of apparent ugliness and moral grandeur if he tried to rival Raphael in elegance? You must recognize that his drawing is perfect because it corresponds absolutely to the exigencies of his thought.” [Illustration: A DRAWING By Rembrandt ] “So, according to you, it is an error to believe that the same artist cannot be at once a great colorist and a great draughtsman?” “Certainly, and I do not know how this idea has become as firmly established as it seems to be. If the great masters are eloquent, if they carry us away, it is clearly because they possess exactly all the means of expression that are necessary to them. I have just proved it to you in the case of Raphael and Rembrandt. The same demonstration could be made in the case of all the great artists. For instance, Delacroix has been accused of ignorance of drawing. On the contrary, the truth is that his drawing combines marvellously with his color; like it, it is abrupt, feverish, exalted, it is full of vivacity, of passion; like it, it is sometimes mad, and it is then that it is the most beautiful. Color and drawing, one cannot be admired without the other, for they are one. “Where the demi-connoisseur deceives himself is in allowing for the existence of but one kind of drawing; that of Raphael, or perhaps it is not even that of Raphael, but that of his imitators, that of David or of Ingres. There are really as many kinds of drawing and of color as there are artists.