(1778) National Gallery] “His heads were various,” says Flaxman, still on the classical compositions, but holding the light even more closely to the portraits, “the male were decided and grand, the female lovely. His figures resembled the antique; the limbs were elegant, and finely formed. His drapery was well understood, either forming the figure into a mass with one or two deep folds only, or by its adhesion and transparency discovering the form of the figure, the lines of which were finely varied with the union or expansion of spiral or cascade folds, composing with or contrasting the outline and chiaroscuro. He was so passionately fond of Greek sculpture that he had filled his study and galleries with fine casts from the most perfect statues, groups, basso-relievos and busts of antiquity. He would sit and consider these in profound silence by the hour; and besides the studies in drawing and painting he made from them, he would examine them under all the changes of sunlight and daylight; and with lamps prepared on purpose at night he would try their effects lighted from above, beneath, in all directions, with rapturous admiration.” Before considering the particulars in which these observations may be said to be applicable to Romney’s portraits, it is perhaps worth pointing out that the essential difference between the work of Reynolds and Romney is to be traced back to the influence exerted on each of them by his studies in Italy. Reynolds, perhaps fortunately for British art at the time, seems to have taken Michel Angelo and Raphael as the founders of painting, and to have confined his study of art, accordingly, to them and their successors. Romney, on the other hand, while also regarding them as the chiefs, went back from them to the antique, taking Cimabue and Giotto on the way. That he particularly admired Correggio is stated by Hayley, but that Correggio’s “tenderness and grace he often emulated very happily in his figures of women and children” is a piece of criticism which I must confess to be beyond me. Certainly it cannot be applied to his portraits.