least, if we must
have composition, let the design of the artist be such as the architect
would applaud. But it is surely very grievous, that while our idle
artists are helping their vain inventions by the fall of sponges on
soiled paper, glorious buildings with the whole intellect and history of
centuries concentrated in them, are suffered to fall into unrecorded
ruin. A day does not now pass in Italy without the destruction of some
mighty monument; the streets of all her cities echo to the hammer, half
of her fair buildings lie in separate stones about the places of their
foundation; would not time be better spent in telling us the truth about
these perishing remnants of majestic thought, than in perpetuating the
ill-digested fancies of idle hours? It is, I repeat, treason to the
cause of art for any man to invent, unless he invents something better
than has been invented before, or something differing in kind. There is
room enough for invention in the pictorial treatment of what exists.
There is no more honorable exhibition of imaginative power, than in the
selection of such place, choice of such treatment, introduction of such
incident, as may produce a noble picture without deviation from one line
of the actual truth; and such I believe to be, indeed, in the end the
most advantageous, as well as the most modest direction of the
invention, for I recollect no single instance of architectural
composition by any men except such as Leonardo or Veronese, who could
design their architecture thoroughly before they painted it, which has
not a look of inanity and absurdity. The best landscapes and the best
architectural studies have been views; and I would have the artist take
shame to himself in the exact degree in which he finds himself obliged
in the production of his picture to lose any, even of the smallest parts
or most trivial hues which bear a part in the great impression made by
the reality. The difference between the drawing of the architect and
artist[13] ought never to be, as it now commonly is, the difference
between lifeless formality and witless license; it ought to be between
giving the mere lines and measures of a building, and giving those lines
and measures with the impression and soul of it besides. All artists
should be ashamed of themselves when they find they have not the power
of being true; the right wit of drawing is like the right wit of
conversation, not hyperbole, not violence, not frivolity, only