in another medium, the very best mode of applying
the Flemish system; and that when the result proposed is an effect of
vivid color under bright cool sunshine, it would be impossible to adopt
any more perfect means. But a system which in any stage prescribes the
use of a certain pigment, implies the adoption of a constant aim, and
becomes, in that degree, conventional. Suppose that the effect desired
be neither of sunlight nor of bright color, but of grave color subdued
by atmosphere, and we believe that the use of brown for an ultimate
shadow would be highly inexpedient. With Van Eyck and with Rubens the
aim was always consistent: clear daylight, diffused in the one case,
concentrated in the other, was yet the hope, the necessity of both; and
any process which admitted the slightest dimness, coldness, or opacity,
would have been considered an error in their system by either. Alike, to
Rubens, came subjects of tumult or tranquillity, of gayety or terror;
the nether, earthly, and upper world were to him animated with the same
feeling, lighted by the same sun; he dyed in the same lake of fire the
warp of the wedding-garment or of the winding-sheet; swept into the same
delirium the recklessness of the sensualist, and rapture of the
anchorite; saw in tears only their glittering, and in torture only its
flush. To such a painter, regarding every subject in the same temper,
and all as mere motives for the display of the power of his art, the
Flemish system, improved as it became in his hands, was alike sufficient
and habitual. But among the greater colorists of Italy the aim was not
always so simple nor the method so determinable. We find Tintoret
passing like a fire-fly from light to darkness in one oscillation,
ranging from the fullest prism of solar color to the coldest grays of
twilight, and from the silver tingeing of a morning cloud to the lava
fire of a volcano: one moment shutting himself into obscure chambers of
imagery, the next plunged into the revolutionless day of heaven, and
piercing space, deeper than the mind can follow or the eye fathom; we
find him by turns appalling, pensive, splendid, profound, profuse; and
throughout sacrificing every minor quality to the power of his prevalent
mood. By such an artist it might, perhaps, be presumed that a different
system of color would be adopted in almost every picture, and that if a
chiaroscuro ground were independently laid, it would be in a neutral
gray, susceptible aft