the painters who have most formed them selves on those models, however they may have departed from them in certain points, are most distinguished for some of those excellencies; but one very material difference between sculpture and painting, must always be taken into consideration. Insculpture, the whole work being of one uniform colour, and the figures, whether single or grouped, without any accompaniments, there is nothing to seduce or distract the eye from the form; to which therefore the efforts of the sculptor are almost exclusively directed; whereas in painting, the charm of general effect or impression, of whatever kind it may be, will often counterbalance the greatest defects in point of form, and make amends for the want of grandeur, beauty, and correctness.

The grandest style of painting is generally allowed to be that of the Roman and Florentine schools; and among the works produced by them, the fresco paintings of Michael Angelo and Raphael claim the first place. Nearly the same rank may

be assigned to the pictures in oil of the same schools, in which, according to Sir Joshua Reynolds, the full unmixed colours, the distinct blues, reds, and yellows, very much conduce to the general grandeur. The style of these schools is more congenial to sculpture than that of any other, as the great masters by which they were rendered so illustrious, directed their chief attention to the same objects as the sculptors; and either rejected, or very spar ingly admitted those captivating charms belonging to their own art, of which the other schools have so much availed themselves. This is particularly the case with Michael Angelo, himself a statuary, and at least as eminent in sculpture as in painting: he worked almost entirely in fresco, the grandeur of which was SO suited to his genius, that he is said to have declared after a single trial in oil, that oil-painting was fit only for women. works, as it may well be supposed, have nothing of sensual attraction, and the same thing may be said in a great measure of

His

the other masters of his and the Roman school: their colouring, however well adapted to the character of their figures and compositions, however it may satisfy the judgment, has little to please the eye; and I should conceive that if it were applied to objects divested of grandeur and dignity, the union would appear incongruous, and that the affinity I mentioned between the grand style of painting and sculpture would be still more evident from their being almost equally unfit to represent objects merely picturesque.

The Venetian style, on the other hand, in which there is a greater variety of colours, and those broken, and blended into each other, is in itself extremely at

art!

tractive from its richness, glow and har levy mony it gives a sort of consequence and cl elevation to objects the most simply picturesque, yet preserves their just character. One painter of this school, must in some measure be considered separately from the rest; for when Sir Joshua Reynolds speaks of the Venetian style as ornamental

or picturesque, and consequently, according to the principles he has laid down, less suited to grandeur, he makes an exception in favour of Titian; and the grounds on which he makes it, very clearly explain his ideas of the distinction between grandeur and picturesqueness. In comparing a picture of that master with one of Rubens, he opposes the regularity and uniformity, the quiet solemn majesty in the work of the Venetian, to the bustle and animation, and to the picturesque disposition in that of the Flemish Master *.

As the ornamental style of the Venetians, and of Rubens, who formed himself upon it, bears a nearer relation to the beautiful than to the grand, so, on the other hand, the pic turesque style where ornament is little used, as in the works of Salvator Rosa, is more nearly related to grandeur. The style of Salvator and that of Rembrandt, though widely different, resemble each other in one particular; in each the strokes of the

*Note 25th on Du Fresnoï.

pencil are often left in the roughest manner i and as nothing can be more adapted to strongly marked picturesque objects and effects, so nothing can be less suited to express beauty, and to convey a general impression of that character. What is the style most truly productive of that general impression, will be much better learnt from the words of Sir Joshua Reynolds, than from any thing I could say; though he had not exactly the same point in view. Speaking of Correggio, he says, "his colour and his mode of finishing, approach nearer to perfection than those of any other painter; the gliding motion of his outline, and the sweetness with which it melts into the ground, the clearness and transparency of his colouring, which stops at that exact medium in which the purity and perfection of taste lies, leave nothing to be wished for."

If there be any style of painting, which, in contra-distinction to the others, might justly be called the beautiful style, that of Correggio has certainly from this descrip