mean or
degrading, though scarcely right. Supposing the other higher qualities
first secured, it adds in no small degree to our impression of the
artist's knowledge, if the means used be such as we should never have
thought of, or should have thought adapted to a contrary effect. Let us,
for instance, compare the execution of the bull's head in the left hand
lowest corner of the Adoration of the Magi, in the Museum at Antwerp,
with that in Berghem's landscape, No. 132 in the Dulwich Gallery. Rubens
first scratches horizontally over his canvas a thin grayish brown,
transparent and even, very much the color of light wainscot; the
horizontal strokes of the bristles being left so evident, that the whole
might be taken for an imitation of wood, were it not for its
transparency. On this ground the eye, nostril, and outline of the cheek
are given with two or three rude, brown touches, (about three or four
minutes' work in all,) though the head is colossal. The background is
then laid in with thick, solid, warm white, actually projecting all
round the head, leaving it in dark intaglio. Finally, five thin and
scratchy strokes of very cold bluish white are struck for the high light
on the forehead and nose, and the head is complete. Seen within a yard
of the canvas, it looks actually transparent--a flimsy, meaningless,
distant shadow; while the background looks solid, projecting and near.
From the right distance, (ten or twelve yards off, whence alone the
whole of the picture can be seen,) it is a complete, rich, substantial,
and living realization of the projecting head of the animal; while the
background falls far behind. Now there is no slight nor mean pleasure in
perceiving such a result attained by means so strange. By Berghem, on
the other hand, a dark background is first laid in with exquisite
delicacy and transparency, and on this the cow's head is actually
modelled in luminous white, the separate locks of hair projecting from
the canvas. No surprise, nor much pleasure of any kind, would be
attendant on this execution, even were the result equally successful;
and what little pleasure we had in it, vanishes, when on retiring from
the picture, we find the head shining like a distant lantern, instead of
substantial or near. Yet strangeness is not to be considered as a
legitimate source of pleasure. That means which is most conducive to the
end, should always be the most pleasurable; and that which is most
conducive to the end