Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 15, NIC-PAR

654
PAINTING.
Part I, art 1
Colouring, transmutations, all the soft transitions, in a word, all
the pleasing modulations, of tmts and colours. W hen
a young painter has, by close application, acquired
from Titian, whom he can never sulftcientiy dwell up¬
on, that art which, of all painters, he has best contri¬
ved to hide, he would do well to turn to Bassano and
Taolo, on account of the beauty, boldness, and ele¬
gance of their touches. That richness, softness, and
freshness of colouring for which the Lombard school
is so justly cried up, may likewise be of great service
to him. Nor will he reap less benefit by studying the
principles and practice of the Flemish school •, which,
chiefly by means of her varnishes, has contrived to give
a most enchanting lustre and transparency to her co¬
lours. .
But whatever pictures a young painter may choose
to study the art of colouring upon, he must take great
care that they be well preserved. There are very few
pieces which have not suffered more or less by the
length, not to say the injuries, of time j and perhaps
that precious patina, which years alone can impart to
paintings, is in some measure akin to that other kind
which ages alone impart to medalsinasmuch as, by
giving testimony to their antiquity, it renders them
proportionably beautiful in the superstitious eyes of the
learned. It must indeed be allowed, that if, on the
one hand, this patina bestows, as it really does, an
extraordinary degree of harmony upon the colours of a
picture, and destroys, or at least greatly lessens, their
original rawness, it, on the other hand, equally im¬
pairs the freshness and liie of them. A piece seen many
years after it has been painted, appears much as it
would do, immediately after painting, behind a dull
<dass. It is no idle opinion, that Paolo Veronese, at¬
tentive above all things, to the beauty of his colours,
and what is called strepito, left entirely to time the caie
of harmonizing them perfectly, and (as we may say)
mellowing them. But most of the old niasteis took that
task upon themselves ; and never exposed their works
to the eyes of the public, until they had ripened and
finished them with their own hands. And who can say
whether the Christ of Moneta, or the Nativity of Bas¬
sano, have been more improved or injured (if we may
so speak) by the touchings and retouchings of time,
in the course of more than two centuries P It is indeed
impossible to be determined. But the studious pupil
may make himself ample amends for any injuries which
his originals may have received from the hands of time,
by turning to truth, and to Nature which never grows
old, but constantly retains its primitive flower of youth,
and was itself the model of the models before him. As
soon, therefore, as a young painter has laid a proper
foundation for good colouring, by studying the best
masters, he should turn all his thoughts to truth and
nature. And it would perhaps be well worth while to
have, in the academies of painting, models for colour¬
ing as well as designing •, that as from the one the pu¬
pils learn to give their due proportion to the several
members and muscles, they may learn from the other
to make their carnations rich and warm, and faithfully
copy the different local hues which appear quite dis¬
tinct in the different parts of a fine body. To illustrate
still farther the use of such a model, let us suppose it
placed in different lights : now in that of the sun, now
in that of the sky, and now again in that of a lamp or
candle $ one time placed in the shade, and another in Drapery,
a reflected light. Hence the pupil may learn all the —y—
.. reflected --- y i -- -v
different effects of the complexion in different circum¬
stances, whether the livid, the lucid, or transparent;
and, above all, that variety of tints and half tints, oc¬
casioned in the colour of the skin by the epidermis ha¬
ving the bones immediately under it in some places,
and in others a greater or less number of blood-vessels
or quantity of fat. An artist who had long studied
such a model would run no risk of degrading the beau¬
ties of nature by any particularity of style, or of giving
into that preposterous fulness and floridness of colour
which is at present so much the taste. He would not
feed his figures with roses, as an ancient painter of
Greece shrewdly expressed it, but-with good beef j a Drift, dial,
difference which the learned eye of a modern writer s.
could perceive between the colouring of Barocci and
that of Titian. To practise in that manner, is, ac¬
cording to a great master, no better than inuring one’s
self to the commission of blunders. What statues are
in design, nature is in colouring 5 the fountain-head ot
that perfection to which every artist, ambitious to ex¬
cel, should constantly aspire: and accordingly the Fle¬
mish painters, in consequence of their aiming solely to
copy nature, are in colouring as excellent as they are
wont to be awkward in designing. The best model for
the tone of colours and the degradation of shades is
furnished by means of the camera obscura. See Diop¬
trics, Sect. vi. and ix.
Sect. VI. Of Drapery.
Drapery is one of the most important branches of
the whole art, and accordingly demands the greatest
attention and study. It seldom happens that a painter
has nothing but naked figures to represent ; nay, Ins
subjects generally consist of figures clothed from bead
to foot. Now tlie flowing of the folds in every gar¬
ment depends chiefly upon the relief of the parts that
lie under it. A certain author, we forget his name,
observes, that as the inequalities of a surface are dis¬
coverable by the inequalities in the water that runs over
it, so the posture and shape of the members must be
discernible by the folds of the garment that covers
them. Those idle windings and gatherings, with which
some painters have affected to cover their figures, make
the clothes made up of them look as if the body had
fled from under them, and left nothing in its place but
a heap of empty bubbles, lit emblems of the brain that
conceived them. As from the trunk of a tree theie
issue here ami there boughs ol various forms, so fiom
one mistress fold there always flow many lesser ones :
and as it is on the quality of the tree that the elegance,
compactness, or openness of its branches chiefly depends;
it is, in like manner, by the quality of the stull ot which
a garment is made, that the number, order, and size of
its folds must be determined To sum up all in two
words, the drapery ought to be natural and easy, so as
to show what stuff it is, and what parts it covers. It
ought, as a certain author expresses it, to cover the
body, as it were merely to show it.
It was formerly the custom with some of our masters
to draw all their figures naked, and then drape them ;
from the same principle that they first drew the skele¬
tons of their figures, and aftei wards covered them with
muscles.