However, as the practice of copying is not entirely to be excluded, since the mechanical practice of painting is learned in some measure by it, let those choice parts only be selected which have recommended the work to notice.If its excellence consists in its general effect, it would be proper to make slight sketches of the machinery and general management of the picture.Those sketches should be kept always by you for the regulation of your style.Instead of copying the touches of those great masters, copy only their conceptions.Instead of treading in their footsteps, endeavour only to keep the same road.Labour to invent on their general principles and way of thinking.Possess yourself with their spirit.Consider with yourself how a Michael Angelo or a Raffaelle would have treated this subject: and work yourself into a belief that your picture is to be seen and criticised by them when completed.Even an attempt of this kind will rouse your powers.
But as mere enthusiasm will carry you but a little way, let me recommend a practice that may be equivalent, and will perhaps more efficaciously contribute to your advancement, than even the verbal corrections of those masters themselves, could they be obtained.What I would propose is, that you should enter into a kind of competition, by painting a similar subject, and making a companion to any picture that you consider as a model.After you have finished your work, place it near the model, and compare them carefully together.You will then not only see, but feel your own deficiencies more sensibly than by precepts, or any other means of instruction.The true principles of painting will mingle with your thoughts.Ideas thus fixed by sensible objects, will be certain and definitive; and sinking deep into the mind, will not only be more just, but more lasting than those presented to you by precepts only: which will, always be fleeting, variable, and undetermined.
This method of comparing your own efforts with those of some great master, is indeed a severe and mortifying task, to which none will submit, but such as have great views, with fortitude sufficient to forego thegratifications of present vanity for future honour.When the student has succeeded in some measure to his own satisfaction, and has felicitated himself on his success, to go voluntarily to a tribunal where he knows his vanity must be humbled, and all self-approbation must vanish, requires not only great resolution, but great humility.To him, however, who has the Ambition to be a real master, the solid satisfaction which proceeds from a consciousness of his advancement (of which seeing his own faults is the first step) will very abundantly compensate for the mortification of present disappointment.There is, besides, this alleviating circumstance.Every discovery he makes, every acquisition of knowledge he attains, seems to proceed from his own sagacity; and thus he acquires a confidence in himself sufficient to keep up the resolution of perseverance.
We all must have experienced how lazily, and consequently how ineffectually, instruction is received when forced upon the mind by others.Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.We prefer those instructions which we have given ourselves, from our affection to the instructor; and they are more effectual, from being received into the mind at the very time when it is most open and eager to receive them.
With respect to the pictures that you are to choose for your models, I could wish that you would take the world's opinion rather than your own.In other words, I would have you choose those of established reputation rather than follow your own fancy.If you should not admire them at first, you will, by endeavouring to imitate them, find that the world has not been mistaken.
It is not an easy task to point out those various excellences for your imitation which he distributed amongst the various schools.An endeavour to do this may perhaps be the subject of some future discourse.I will, therefore, at present only recommend a model for style in painting, which is a branch of the art more immediately necessary to the young student.Style in painting is the same as in writing, a power over materials, whether words or colours, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed.And in this Lodovico Carrache (I mean in his best works) appears to me to approach the nearest to perfection.His unaffected breadth of light andshadow, the simplicity of colouring, which holding its proper rank, does not draw aside the least part of the attention from the subject, and the solemn effect of that twilight which seems diffused over his pictures, appear to me to correspond with grave and dignified subjects, better than the more artificial brilliancy of sunshine which enlightens the pictures of Titian.Though Tintoret thought that Titian's colouring was the model of perfection, and would correspond even with the sublime of Michael Angelo; and that if Angelo had coloured like Titian, or Titian designed like Angelo, the world would once have had a perfect painter.
It is our misfortune, however, that those works of Carrache which I would recommend to the student are not often found out of Bologna.The "St.Francis in the midst of his Friars," "The Transfiguration," "The Birth of St.John the Baptist," "The Calling of St.Matthew," the "St.Jerome," the fresco paintings in the Zampieri Palace, are all worthy the attention of the student.And I think those who travel would do well to allot a much greater portion of their time to that city than it has been hitherto the custom to bestow.
