Such skill was not merely confined to the fleshy parts, in whose colour the disciples of Titian have so far excelled every other school; it extended also to the drapery. For indeed, there are no pieces of velvets, of stuffs, or of crapes, which they did not imitate to perfection, more particularly in their portraits, in which the Venetians of that period abounded, displaying specimens the most ornamental and beautiful. The cavalier Mengs is of opinion, that also to this branch of the art, requiring the strictest attention to truth, and conferring a peculiar kind of interest upon a picture, may be in some measure attributed the degree of power and truth acquired by those eminent colourists. Their merit was moreover conspicuous in imitating every kind of work in gold, in silver, and every species of metal; so much so, that there are no royal palaces or lordly feasts, read of in any poet, which do not appear more nobly represented in some Venetian paintings. It was equally remarkable in point of landscape, which sometimes surpassed the efforts of the Flemish painters, and in architectural views, which, with a magnificence unknown elsewhere, they succeeded in introducing into their compositions, as we had before occasion to observe of the artists of the fourteenth century; a species of industry extremely favourable, likewise, to the distribution, the variety, and to the complete effect of groups of figures. In these extensive compositions, which about the period of the Bellini abounded in half-length or diminutive figures, there has since been displayed a grandeur of proportions which has led the way to the most enlarged productions, on the scale we have more recently seen. The most terrific among these is the Supper of Paolo Veronese at S. Giorgio, in which the gifts of nature are so nobly seconded by the exhibition of talent, which appears to have been transmitted by succession through this school, nearly until the present day. Such ability consists in finely designing all the details of any work, however great, including the transmission and gradations of light, so that the eye of itself seems to follow its track, and embraces the entire effect from one end of the canvass to the other. And it has been observed by several who have witnessed ancient paintings (a violation of good taste, of late but too common,) cut up and curtailed to adapt them to the size of walls and doors, that such an operation often succeeds tolerably well with the pictures of other schools, but is extremely difficult with those of the Venetians; so intimately is one part connected with another, and harmonized with the whole.