against amber sky; and the
darkness of the hollow in the centre of a wild rose is one glow of
orange fire, owing to the quantity of its yellow stamens. Well, the
Venetians always saw this, and all great colourists see it, and are thus
separated from the non-colourists or schools of mere chiaroscuro, not by
difference in style merely, but by being right while the others are
wrong. It is an absolute fact that shadows are as much colours as lights
are; and whoever represents them by merely the subdued or darkened tint
of the light, represents them falsely. I particularly want you to
observe that this is no matter of taste, but fact. If you are especially
sober-minded, you may indeed choose sober colours where Venetians would
have chosen gay ones; that is a matter of taste; you may think it proper
for a hero to wear a dress without patterns on it, rather than an
embroidered one; that is similarly a matter of taste: but, though you
may also think it would be dignified for a hero's limbs to be all black,
or brown, on the shaded side of them, yet, if you are using colour at
all, you cannot so have him to your mind, except by falsehood; he never,
under any circumstances, could be entirely black or brown on one side of
him.

176. In this, then, the Venetians are separate from other schools by
rightness, and they are so to their last days. Venetian painting is in
this matter always right. But also, in their early days, the colourists
are separated from other schools by their contentment with tranquil
cheerfulness of light: by their never wanting to be dazzled. None of
their lights are flashing or blinding; they are soft, winning, precious;
lights of pearl, not of lime: only, you know, on this condition they
cannot have sunshine: their day is the day of Paradise; they need no
candle, neither light of the sun, in their cities; and everything is
seen clear, as through crystal, far or near.

This holds to the end of the fifteenth century. Then they begin to see
that this, beautiful as it may be, is still a make-believe light; that
we do not live in the inside of a pearl; but in an atmosphere through
which a burning sun shines thwartedly, and over which a sorrowful night
must far prevail. And then the chiaroscurists succeed in persuading them
of the fact that there is a mystery in the day as in the night, and show
them how constantly to see truly, is to see dimly. And also they teach
them the brilliancy of light, and the degree in