h much
of local colour, and grey and ochry balance. Would so great a master of
tone as Reynolds have forgot this master-key if he had found it in the
picture? The fact is, the picture has no other than the painter's usual
tone. Rubens came to his work with gay, technic exultation, and by the
magic of his pencil changed the horrors of Golgotha to an enchanted
garden and clusters of flowers. Rembrandt, though on a smaller scale
of size and composition, concentrated the tremendous moment in one flash
of pallid light. It breaks on the body of Christ, shivers down his
limbs, and vanishes on the armour of a crucifix--the rest is gloom."

This is given with all the eloquence Fuseli was so well able to utter;
but it displays, also, a severe castigation on those who would class
Tintoret and Paul Veronese in the catalogue of ornamental painters.
The observations which seem to have kindled his wrath are to be found
in Sir Joshua's fourth lecture, in which he says--"Tintoret, Paul
Veronese, and others of the Venetian school, seem to have painted with
no other purpose than to be admired for their skill and experience in
the mechanism of painting, and to make a parade of that art which, as I
before observed, the higher style requires its followers to conceal."
But, to understand the matter, the whole lecture must be read. With
regard to the two pictures Fuseli brings into comparison with the
Venetian, both are described in Reynolds' Tour to Flanders and Holland.
Sir Joshua certainly criticizes the Rubens correctly with regard to
colouring; but sentiment it has none. The Rembrandt is now in the Munich
Gallery, and though one of his early pictures, it is very grand and
striking. Of it Reynolds remarks--"There are likewise in this room eight
Rembrandts, the chief merit of which consists in his peculiarity of
manner--of admitting but little light, and giving to that little a
wonderful brilliancy. The colouring of Christ in the elevation of the
cross cannot be exceeded--it is exactly the tint of Vandyke's 'Susanna,'
in the other room; but whether the ground of this picture has been
repainted, or the white horse, which was certainly intended to make the
mass of light broader, has lost its brightness, at present the Christ
makes a disagreeable mass of light."

In bringing the opinions of these two great artists in contact, the
truth is elicited, that the tone of colour has much to do in conveying
the sentiment and pathos of the picture, an