1. The Nuptials of Cana.
2. The Feast of Levi the Publican.
3. The Madonna, St. Jerome, &c.
4. The Martyrdom of St. George.
5. Jupiter launching his Thunder on the Crimes.
6. Christ carrying his Cross.
7. The Crucifixion.
8. The Pilgrims of Emaus.
The two first, the third, and last of these pictures, are perhaps
the fullest models of that ornamental style by which a great critic
has discriminated the Venetian from the rest of Italian
styles,--"monsters to the man of native taste, who looks for the
story, for propriety, for national, unartificial costume,--mines of
information to the student and the masters of art." The most
technic comprehension of a magnificent whole, and supreme command
over the infinite variety of its parts, equal suavity, energy, and
ease of execution, go hand in hand with the most chaotic caprice in
the disposition and the most callous tyranny over the character of
the subject. Whatever relates to the theory of colours, of solid,
middle, and aërial tints, to the opposition of hues warm or cold,
and the contrast of light and dark masses, is poised here with
prismatic truth; the whole is a scale of music. It is more by
following the order of nature and of light in the disposition of
the whole, that Paolo attained that illusion, which approaches to
deception, than by the attempt of making _fac similes_ of the
parts. He knew that dark, juicy, and absorbent colours come
forward, that white recedes, and that the middle parts partake of
both, and hence, uniting the two extremes by the intermediate tint,
he obtained that superior harmony on which the Venetian school
rests its superiority of colour, and which Rubens sought with
unequal success in the capricious disposition of a nosegay or a
bunch of flowers.
THE MADONNA OF FOLIGNO--RAPHAEL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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