engraving;[20] but it is
an utterly false method of _study_, as we shall see presently.

Sec. 20. Of the three advantages possessed by the colorists over the
chiaroscurists, the first is, that they have in the greater portions of
their pictures _absolute_ truth, as shown above, Sec. 12, while the
chiaroscurists have no absolute truth anywhere. With the colorists the
shadows are right; the lights untrue: but with the chiaroscurists lights
and shadows are both untrue. The second advantage is, that also the
_relations_ of color are broader and vaster with the colorists than the
chiaroscurists. Take, for example, that piece of drapery studied by
Leonardo, in the Louvre, with white lights and black shadows. Ask
yourself, first, whether the real drapery was black or white. If white,
then its high lights are rightly white; but its folds being black, it
could not _as a mass_ be distinguished from the black or dark objects in
its neighborhood. But the fact is, that a white cloth or handkerchief
always is distinguished in daylight, as a _whole white thing_, from all
that is colored about it: we see at once that there is a white piece of
stuff, and a red, or green, or grey one near it, as the case may be: and
this relation of the white object to other objects _not_ white, Leonardo
has wholly deprived himself of the power of expressing; while, if the
cloth were black or dark, much more has he erred by making its lights
white. In either case, he has missed the large relation of mass to mass,
for the sake of the small one of fold to fold. And this is more or less
the case with all chiaroscurists; with all painters, that is to say, who
endeavor in their studies of objects to get rid of the idea of color,
and give the abstract shade. They invariably exaggerate the shadows, not
with respect to the thing itself, but with respect to all around it; and
they exaggerate the lights also, by leaving pure white for the high
light of what in reality is grey, rose-colored, or, in some way, not
white.

Sec. 21. This method of study, being peculiarly characteristic of the Roman
and Florentine schools, and associated with very accurate knowledge of
form and expression, has gradually got to be thought by a large body of
artists the _grand_ way of study; an idea which has been fostered all
the more because it was an unnatural way, and therefore thought to be a
philosophical one. Almost the first idea of a child, or of a simple
person looking at anyt