xcellences to his own works. Whoever has acquired the power of
making this use of the Flemish, Venetian, and French schools is a real
genius, and has sources of knowledge open to him which were wanting to
the great artists who lived in the great age of painting.

To find excellences however dispersed, to discover beauties however
concealed by the multitude of defects with which they are surrounded, can
be the work only of him who, having a mind always alive to his art, has
extended his views to all ages and to all schools, and has acquired from
that comprehensive mass which he has thus gathered to himself, a well
digested and perfect idea of his art, to which everything is referred.
Like a sovereign judge and arbiter of art, he is possessed of that
presiding power which separates and attracts every excellence from every
school, selects both from what is great and what is little, brings home
knowledge from the east and from the west, making the universe tributary
towards furnishing his mind and enriching his works with originality and
variety of inventions.

Thus I have ventured to give my opinion of what appears to me the true
and only method by which an artist makes himself master of his
profession, which I hold ought to be one continued course of imitation,
that is not to cease but with our lives.

Those who, either from their own engagements and hurry of business, or
from indolence, or from conceit and vanity, have neglected looking out of
themselves, as far as my experience and observation reaches, have from
that time not only ceased to advance and improve in their performance,
but have gone backward. They may be compared to men who have lived upon
their principal till they are reduced to beggary and left without
resources.

I can recommend nothing better, therefore, than that you endeavour to
infuse into your works what you learn from the contemplation of the works
of others. To recommend this has the appearance of needless and
superfluous advice, but it has fallen within my own knowledge that
artists, though they are not wanting in a sincere love for their art,
though they have great pleasure in seeing good pictures, and are well
skilled to distinguish what is excellent or defective in them, yet go on
in their own manner, without any endeavour to give a little of those
beauties which they admire in others, to their own works. It is
difficult to conceive how the present Italian painters, who live in the
mid