Whilst we have thus had to consider the prevalent imitation of external objects as an element tending to the corruption of purist feeling, it unquestionably enlarged the scope and stimulated the mechanism of painting. Such was the naturalism by which Raffaele, Michael Angelo, and Titian developed the comparatively feeble and stunted efforts of their predecessors into forms ennobling nature, and redolent of intelligence. But, in studying these palpable qualities, the more subtle ingredients of spirit and feeling were often overlooked; indeed, most of the creators of the new style outlived it, and saw it supplanted by a yet newer and far more degrading naturalism, which, with few bright intervals, has continued to cramp and pervert the manner of their successors. Such were and are those painters who, on the strength of their sketches from the life, and their studies of landscape and architecture, or with the plea of occasionally introducing portraits into sacred or historical compositions, proclaim themselves followers of nature, whilst their works outrage or caricature her. There may be great anatomical accuracy, and much truth in the separate heads, combined with inventions the most unreal, movements the most constrained, mannered attitudes, draperies meagre or overloaded, and a general substitution of mean conceptions for pleasing realities. The elaborate finish invariably found in the early masters was either bestowed upon accessories in themselves trifling, but stamping an extraordinary verity upon their works, or, as in the Sienese or Venetian schools, it was lavished upon gorgeous costumes illustrative of national manners. But similar details in later pictures are justly considered to remove them in some degree from the category of artistic performances to that of mere decoration, and are despised by those who, aiming at breadth of effect, sometimes adopt the most hopeless of all affectations, that of slovenly superficiality. Whence then this difference? and why should jewels and embroidery, that seem beautiful in Crivelli's saints or Dello's pageants, be vulgar gewgaws on recent canvasses? Merely because, in the former, _all_ is minutely worked, but all is subsidiary to the general sentiment, whilst, in the latter, the absence of a simply pervading expression leaves each individual detail crudely prominent; because the ancient masters made everything subservient to that one overruling feeling of the picture, which, in most modern works, is totally wanting. [Illustration: _Anderson_ THE KNIGHT OF MALTA _From the picture by Giorgione, once in the Ducal Collection at Urbino, now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence_] * * * * *