them effects similar to
certain combinations in sounds? This is a subject well worth the
attention of any one who has leisure and disposition to take it up:
and I am persuaded that the old masters either worked from a knowledge
of this art, or had such an instinctive perception of it, that it is
to be discovered in their works. Suppose a painter were to try various
colours on boards, and combinations of them--place them before him
separately with fixed attention, and then examine the channels into
which his thoughts would run. If he were to find their character to be
invariable, and peculiar to each of the boards put before him, he
would learn that before he trusts his subject to the canvass, he
should question himself as to the sentiment he intends it to express,
and what combination of colours would be consentient or dissentient to
it.

"This will certainly account for the colours of the old (particularly
the historical) painters being so much at variance with common nature,
sometimes glaringly at variance with the locality and position of the
objects represented." "This knowledge of the effect of colours is
certainly very remarkable in the Bolognese school. Who ever saw
Corregio's backgrounds in nature, or indeed the whole colour of his
pictures, including figures? Examine his back-ground to his Christ in
the garden--what a mystery is in it! The Peter Martyr, at first sight,
from the charm of truth that genius has given to it, might pass for
the colour of common nature; but examine the picture as an artist, and
you will come to another conclusion, and you will the more admire
Titian."

Some critics have been misled by the simplicity of art in this
masterpiece of Titian's, and have greatly admired the exactness with
which he has drawn and coloured every object; but they have been
deceived by that perfect unity which exists in all its parts, and have
wrongly conceived the kind of naturalness of the picture. It is full
of this sympathetic naturalness of colour; we are thoroughly
satisfied, and ascribe that general naturalness to each particular
part. Indeed if it were altogether in colour and forms no more than
common nature, there would be no real martyrdom in it--it would be but
a vulgar murder; but every part is in sympathy with the sentiment. Had
Titian merely represented the clear sky of Italy, and brought out
prominently green-leaved trees and herbage, because such things are,
and were in such a scene where th