The attention to these
petty peculiarities is the very cause of this naturalness so much
admired in the Dutch pictures, which, if we suppose it to be a beauty,
is certainly of a lower order, which ought to give place to a beauty
of a superior kind, since one cannot be obtained but by departing from
the other.
"If my opinion was asked concerning the works of Michael Angelo,
whether they would receive any advantage from possessing this
mechanical merit, I should not scruple to say, they would not only
receive no advantage, but would lose, in a great measure, the effect
which they now have on every mind susceptible of great and noble
ideas. His works may be said to be all genius and soul; and why should
they be loaded with heavy matter, which can only counteract his
purpose by retarding the progress of the imagination?"
Examining carefully this and the preceding passage, we find the
author's unmistakable meaning to be, that Dutch painting is _history_;
attending to literal truth and "minute exactness in the details of
nature modified by accident." That Italian painting is _poetry_,
attending only to the invariable; and that works which attend only to
the invariable are full of genius and soul; but that literal truth and
exact detail are "heavy matter which retards the progress of the
imagination.
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