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d, is largeness and general effect. The following puts the truth clearly. "Perhaps nothing that we can say will so clearly show the advantage and excellence of this faculty, as that it confers the character of genius on works that pretend to no other merit, in which is neither expression, character, nor dignity, and where none are interested in the subject. We cannot refuse the character of genius to the 'Marriage' of Paolo Veronese, without opposing the general sense of mankind, (great authorities have called it the triumph of painting,) or to the Altar of St Augustine at Antwerp, by Rubens, which equally deserves that title, and for the same reason. Neither of these pictures have any interesting story to support them. That of Paolo Veronese is only a representation of a great concourse of people at a dinner; and the subject of Rubens, if it may be called a subject where nothing is doing, is an assembly of various saints that lived in different ages. The whole excellence of those pictures consists in mechanical dexterity, working, however, under the influence of that comprehensive faculty which I have so often mentioned." The power of _a whole_ is exemplified by the anecdote of a child going through a gallery of old portraits. She paid very little attention to the finishing, or naturalness of drapery, but put herself at once to mimic the awkward attitudes. "The censure of nature uninformed, fastened upon the greatest fault that could be in a picture, because it related to the character and management of the whole." What he would condemn is that substitute for deep and proper study, which is to enable the painter to conceive and execute every subject as a whole, and a finish which Cowley calls "laborious effects of idleness." He concludes this Discourse with some hints on method of study. Many go to Italy to copy pictures, and derive little advantage. "The great business of study is, to form a mind adapted and adequate to all times and all occasions, to which all nature is then laid open, and which may be said to possess the key of her inexhaustible riches." Mr Burnet has supplied a plate of the Monk flying from the scene of murder, in Titian's "Peter Martyr," showing how that great painter could occasionally adopt the style of Michael Angelo in his forms. In the same note he observes, that Sir Joshua had forgotten the detail of this picture, which detail is noticed and praised by Algarotti, for its minute discrimin
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