en I
recommended the diligent study of the works of our great predecessors;
but I at the same time endeavoured to guard them against an implicit
submission to the authority of any one master, however excellent; or by a
strict imitation of his manner, to preclude ourselves from the abundance
and variety of nature. I will now add that nature herself is not to be
too closely copied. There are excellences in the art of painting, beyond
what is commonly called the imitation of nature: and these excellences I
wish to point out. The students who, having passed through the
initiatory exercises, are more advanced in the art, and who, sure of
their hand, have leisure to exert their understanding, must now be told
that a mere copier of nature can never produce anything great; can never
raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator.

The wish of the genuine painter must be more extensive: instead of
endeavouring to amuse mankind with the minute neatness of his imitations,
he must endeavour to improve them by the grandeur of his ideas; instead
of seeking praise, by deceiving the superficial sense of the spectator,
he must strive for fame, by captivating the imagination.

The principle now laid down, that the perfection of this art does not
consist in mere imitation, is far from being new or singular. It is,
indeed, supported by the general opinion of the enlightened part of
mankind. The poets, orators, and rhetoricians of antiquity, are
continually enforcing this position, that all the arts receive their
perfection from an ideal beauty, superior to what is to be found in
individual nature. They are ever referring to the practice of the
painters and sculptors of their times, particularly Phidias (the
favourite artist of antiquity), to illustrate their assertions. As if
they could not sufficiently express their admiration of his genius by
what they knew, they have recourse to poetical enthusiasm. They call it
inspiration; a gift from heaven. The artist is supposed to have ascended
the celestial regions, to furnish his mind with this perfect idea of
beauty. "He," says Proclus, "who takes for his model such forms as
nature produces, and confines himself to an exact imitation of them, will
never attain to what is perfectly beautiful. For the works of nature are
full of disproportion, and fall very short of the true standard of
beauty. So that Phidias, when he formed his Jupiter, did not copy any
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