this as their maxim, 'That the art is greatest which conveys to the
mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of
the greatest ideas.'

Jean Baptiste Greuze was born at Tournus in Burgundy in 1726. He studied
painting from his youth in the studios of artists at Lyons, Paris, and
Rome, and his studies resulted in his being a celebrated genre painter.
He only painted one historical picture, but, with the touchy vanity
which seemed natural to the man, he ranked his genre pictures as high
art; and when he was placed in the ordinary list of genre painters on
his election as a member of the French Academy of Painting, Greuze
resented the imputation, and withdrew from the Academy. He died in 1805,
aged seventy-nine years. Greuze was a showy, clever, but neither earnest
nor truthful painter of domestic subjects and family pictures. His
pictures of women and heads of girls, the expression in some of which
has been severely condemned, are among his best known works, and by
these he is represented in the National Gallery.[35]

CHAPTER XI.

HOLBEIN, 1494-1543--VAN DYCK, 1599-1641--LELY, 1618-1680--CANALETTO,
1697-1768--KNELLER, 1646-1723.

Hans Holbein, sometimes entitled Hans the Younger, was born at Augsburg
about 1494 or 1495. He was the son of a painter, and belonged to a
family of painters, one or more of whom had preceded Hans Holbein in
leaving Augsburg, and taking up his residence at Basle. There Holbein
was under the patronage of, and on terms of friendly intercourse with,
the great scholar Erasmus. One bad result proceeded from this friendly
familiarity, that of establishing or originating the charge that
Holbein, as a young man, at least, was coarse and dissipated in his
habits. The evidence is sufficiently curious. There is still in
existence the copy of a Latin book, called the 'Praise of Folly,'
written by Erasmus, which Holbein, not being a scholar, could not have
read for himself, but which, according to tradition, Erasmus himself,
or some other friend, read to him, while Holbein was so delighted with
the satire that he covered the margin of the book with illustrative
sketches. (The sketches remain, and are unmistakably Holbein's.)
Opposite a passage, recording the want of common sense and energy in
many learned men, Holbein had drawn the figure of a student, and written
below, '_Erasmus_.' The book coming again into the hands of Erasmus, he
was offended with the liberty taken b