ainted to
suit its elevated position, with low horizon and figures telling boldly
against the sky. Those placed low down are modern French pictures, with
the horizon high up and almost above their frames, but placed on the
ground they fit into the general harmony of the arrangement.

It seems to me it is well, both for those who paint and for those who
hang pictures, that this subject should be taken into consideration. For
it must be seen by this illustration that a bigger style is adopted by
the artists who paint for high places in palaces or churches than by
those who produce smaller easel-pictures intended to be seen close.
Unfortunately, at our picture exhibitions, we see too often that nearly
all the works, whether on large or small canvases, are painted for the
line, and that those which happen to get high up look as if they were
toppling over, because they have such a high horizontal line; and
instead of the figures telling against the sky, as in this picture of
the 'Infant' by Velasquez, the Reynolds, and the fat man treading on a
flag, we have fields or sea or distant landscape almost to the top of
the frame, and all, so methinks, because the perspective is not
sufficiently considered.

_Note._--Whilst on this subject, I may note that the painter in his
large decorative work often had difficulties to contend with, which
arose from the form of the building or the shape of the wall on which he
had to place his frescoes. Painting on the ceiling was no easy task, and
Michelangelo, in a humorous sonnet addressed to Giovanni da Pistoya,
gives a burlesque portrait of himself while he was painting the Sistine
Chapel:--

_"I'ho gia' fatto un gozzo in questo stento."_

Now have I such a goitre 'neath my chin
That I am like to some Lombardic cat,
My beard is in the air, my head i' my back,
My chest like any harpy's, and my face
Patched like a carpet by my dripping brush.
Nor can I see, nor can I budge a step;
My skin though loose in front is tight behind,
And I am even as a Syrian bow.
Alas! methinks a bent tube shoots not well;
So give me now thine aid, my Giovanni.

At present that difficulty is got over by using large strong canvas, on
which the picture can be painted in the studio and afterwards placed on
the wall.

However, the other difficulty of form has to be got over also. A great
portion of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and notably the prophets
and sibyls, are painted on