r each in particular, nor all
together, come into any degree of competition with the principal; they
should make a part of that whole which would be imperfect without them.
To every part of painting this rule may be applied. Even in portraits,
the grace and, we may add, the likeness, consists more in taking the
general air than in observing the effect similitude of every feature.

Thus figures must have a ground whereon to stand; they must be clothed,
there must be a background, there must be light and shadow; but none of
these ought to appear to have taken up any part of the artist's
attention. They should be so managed as not even to catch that of the
spectator. We know well enough, when we analyse a piece, the difficulty
and the subtlety with which an artist adjusts the background, drapery,
and masses of light; we know that a considerable part of the grace and
effect of his picture depends upon them; but this art is so much
concealed, even to a judicious eye, that no remains of any of these
subordinate parts occur to memory when the picture is not present.

The great end of the art is to strike the imagination. The painter is,
therefore, to make no ostentation of the means by which this is done; the
spectator is only to feel the result in his bosom. An inferior artist is
unwilling that any part of his industry should be lost upon the
spectator. He takes as much pains to discover, as the greater artist
does to conceal, the marks of his subordinate assiduity. In works of the
lower kind everything appears studied and encumbered; it is all boastful
art and open affectation. The ignorant often part from such pictures
with wonder in their mouths, and indifference in their hearts.

But it is not enough in invention that the artist should restrain and
keep under all the inferior parts of his subject; he must sometimes
deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth in pursuing the grandeur
of his design.

How much the great style exacts from its professors to conceive and
represent their subjects in a poetical manner, not confined to mere
matter of fact, may be seen in the cartoons of Raffaelle. In all the
pictures in which the painter has represented the apostles, he has drawn
them with great nobleness; he has given them as much dignity as the human
figure is capable of receiving yet we are expressly told in Scripture
they had no such respectable appearance; and of St. Paul in particular,
we are told by himself,