Before discussing this judgment let us note Fromentin’s approval of Rembrandt’s use of light--in the case of subjects that seem to him to justify it. He instances particularly _The Supper at Emmaus_ and _The Good Samaritan_, both in the Louvre. He speaks with fine sympathy of the original and infinitely human conception of Christ in the former picture, while upon the technique of the latter he comments as follows: “The canvas is enveloped in smoke (_enfumée_), all impregnated with somber golds, very rich in depth and, above all, very grave. The material is muddy, yet transparent; the brushwork heavy, yet subtle; hesitating and resolute; labored and free; very unequal, uncertain, vague in some parts, astonishingly precise in others. No contour appears, not an accent added in the way of routine. There is evident an extreme timidity, which is not the result of ignorance and proceeds, one would say, from the fear of being banal or from the price which the thinker attaches to the immediate and direct expression of life. The objects have a structure that seems to exist in itself, almost without the help of formulas, rendering, without any means that you can seize upon, the uncertainties of nature. There are some nude limbs and feet of irreproachable construction--moreover, ‘style.’ In the pale, pinched, groaning visage of the wounded man, there is nothing save expression, something that comes from the soul, from within outward; tonelessness (_atonie_), suffering; as it were, the sad joy of collecting one’s self when one feels about to die. Not a contortion, not a trait that overreaches moderation, not a touch in this rendering of the inexpressible that is not pathetic and restrained; everything dictated by profound emotion and interpreted by means altogether extraordinary.” And, adds Fromentin: “Examine other painters of sentiment, of physiognomy and characterization, the men of scrupulous observation or of _verve_. Take account of their intentions; study their scrutiny, measure their domain, weigh well their language, and ask yourself, if anywhere you perceive an equal intimacy in the expression of a visage, an emotion of this nature, such ingenuity in the manner of feeling; anything, in a word, which is as delicate to conceive, as delicate to say, and is said in terms more original, more exquisite, or more perfect.” Nothing else, I suppose, has ever been written about this phase of Rembrandt’s art that is at once so fine in thought and diction, so enlightening, and so memorable. For one here meets in union the trained thinker and practised writer and the painter; thus getting much more than the painter’s exclusive point of view, and at the same time the latter, interpreted by the painter at first hand. The gist of it is that, when the subject involved an idea, Rembrandt was not only justified in sacrificing the corporeal to the incorporeal, but was master of a technique that could express the idea conclusively and with supreme emotional appeal.