The banquet-hall of our Islanders was in the rich palace of the absent
Borromæan family. They conceded to the lovely island the prize-apple of
Paris and the laurel-wreath. Augusti and Gaspard wrote their eulogies
upon it in a clear, easy style, only Gaspard used the more antitheses.
Albano's breast was filled with a new world, his eye with radiance, his
cheeks with joyous blood. The Architect extolled as well the taste as
the purse of the hereditary Prince, who by means of both had brought
with him to his country, not artistic masters indeed, but still
masterpieces, and at whose instance this very Dian was going to Italy to
take casts for him there of the antiques. Schoppe replied: "I hope the
German is as well supplied with painters' academies and painters' colics
as any other people; our pictures on goods, our illuminated Theses in
Augsburg, our margins of newspapers, and our vignettes in every dramatic
work, (whereby we had an earlier _Shakespeare Gallery_ than London,) our
gallows-birds hung in effigy,--are well known to every one, and show at
first sight how far we carry the thing. But I will even allow that
Greeks and Italians paint as well as we; still we tower far above them
in this, that we, like nature and noble suitors, never seek isolated
beauty, without connected advantage. A beauty which we cannot also
roast, sell at auction, wear, or marry, passes with us only for just
what it is worth; beauty is with us (I hope) never anything else but
selvage and trimming to utility, just as, also, at the Diet of the
Empire, it is not the side-tables of confectionery, but the
session-tables, that are the proper work-tables of the body politic.
Genuine Beauty and Art are therefore with us set, painted, stamped only
on things which at the same time bring in something; e. g. fine Madonnas
only in the journals of fashion,--etched leaves only on packages of
tobacco-leaves,--cameos on pipe-bowls,--gems on seals, and wood-cuts on
tallies; flower-pieces are sought, but on bandboxes,--faithful
Wouwermanns, but in horses' stalls before the stallions,[14]--bas-reliefs
of princes' heads, either on dollars or on Bavarian beer-pitcher covers,
but both must be of unalloyed pewter,--rose-pieces and lily-pieces, but
on tattooed women. On a similar principle, in Basedow's system of
education, beautiful painting and the Latin vocabulary were always
linked together, because the Institute more easily retains the latter by
the help of the former. So, too, Van der Kabel never painted a hare to
order, without requiring for himself one freshly-shot model after
another to eat and copy. So again, the artist Calear painted beautiful
hose, but painted them immediately on to his own legs."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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