“As a play is seldom good, in which there are too many actors,” &c. Annibal Caracci did not believe that a picture could be good, in which there were above twelve figures. It was Albano who told our author this, and from his mouth I had it. The reasons which he gave were, first, that he believed there ought not to be above three great groupes of figures in any picture; and secondly, that silence and majesty were of necessity to be there, to render it beautiful; and neither the one nor the other could possibly be in a multitude and crowd of figures. But nevertheless, if you are constrained by the subject, (as for example, if you painted the day of judgment, the massacre of the innocents, a battle, &c.) on such occasions, you are to dispose things by great masses of lights and shadows, and union of colours, without troubling yourself to finish every thing in particular, independently one of the other, as is usual with painters of a little genius, and whose souls are incapable of embracing a great design, or a great composition. _Æmilium circa ludum, faber imus et ungues_ _Exprimet, et molles imitabitur ære capillos;_ _Infelix operis summâ: quia ponere totum_ _Nesciet._ The meanest sculptor in the Æmilian square, Can imitate in brass the nails and hair; Expert in trifles, and a cunning fool, Able to express the parts, but not dispose the whole. Says Horace in his “Art of Poetry.” [*†162.] “The extremities of the joints must be seldom hidden, and the extremities or end of the feet never,” &c. These extremities of the joints are as it were the hafts, or handles of the members. For example, the shoulders, the elbows, the thighs, and the knees. And if a drapery should be found on these ends of the joints, it is the duty of science, and of decorum, to mark them by folds, but with great discretion; for what concerns the feet, though they should be hidden by some part of the drapery, nevertheless, if they are marked by folds, and their shape be distinguished, they are supposed to be seen. The word _never_, is not here to be taken in the strictest sense; he means but this,—so rarely, that it may seem we should avoid all occasions of dispensing with the rule. [*†164.] “The figures which are behind others, have neither grace nor vigour,” &c. Raphael and Julio Romano have perfectly observed this maxim; and Raphael especially in his last works. [*†169.] “Avoid also those lines and outlines which are equal, which make parallels,” &c. He means principally to speak of the postures so ordered, that they make together those geometrical figures which he condemns. [*†176.]