before I proceed, it will not be amiss, if I copy from Bellori (a most ingenious author) some part of his idea of a painter, which cannot be unpleasing, at least to such who are conversant in the philosophy of Plato; and to avoid tediousness, I will not translate the whole discourse, but take and leave as I find occasion.

"God Almighty, in the fabric of the universe, first contemplated himself, and reflected on his own excellencies; from which he drew and constituted those first forms, which are called ideas, so that every species which was afterwards expressed, was produced from that first idea, forming that wonderful contexture of all created beings. But the celestial bodies above the moon being incorruptible, and not subject to change, remained for ever fair and in perpetual order. On the contrary, all things which are sublunary, are subject to change, to deformity and to decay; and though nature always intends a consummate beauty in her productions, yet, through the inequality of the matter, the forms are altered; and in particular, human beauty suffers alteration for the worse, as we see to our mortification, in the deformities and disproportions which are in us. For which reason, the artful painter, and the sculptor, imitating the Divine Maker, form to themselves, as well as they are able, a model of the superior beauties; and reflecting on them, endeavour to correct and amend the common nature, and to represent it as it was

first created, without fault, either in colour or in lineament.

"This idea, which we may call the goddess of painting and of sculpture, descends upon the marble and the cloth, and becomes the original of those arts; and, being measured by the compass of the intellect, is itself the measure of the performing hand; and being animated by the imagination, infuses life into the image. The idea of the painter and the sculptor is undoubtedly that perfect and excellent example of the mind, by imitation of which imagined form all things are represented which fall under human sight: such is the definition which is made by Cicero, in his book of the Orator, to Brutus. 'As therefore in forms ' and figures, there is somewhat which is excellent ' and perfect, to which imagined species all things ' are referred by imitation, which are the objects ' of sight; in like manner we behold the species of eloquence in our minds, the effigies, or actual 'image of which we seek in the organs of our hear

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ing. This is likewise confirmed by Proclus, in the dialogue of Plato, called Timæus: If, says you take a man as he is made by nature, and

‹ he, compare him with another who is the effect of art, • the work of nature will always appear the less

beautiful, because art is more accurate than na'ture.'. But Zeuxis, who, from the choice which he made of five virgins, drew that wonderful picture of Helena, which Cicero, in his Orator before

VOL. III.

mentioned, sets before us, as the most perfect example of beauty, at the same time admonishes a painter to contemplate the ideas of the most natural forms; and to make a judicious choice of several bodies, all of them the most elegant which we can find by which we may plainly understand, that he thought it impossible to find in any one body all those perfections which he sought for the accomplishment of a Helena, because nature in any individual person makes nothing that is perfect in all its parts. For this reason Maximus Tyrius also says, that the image which is taken by a painter from several bodies, produces a beauty, which it is impossible to find in any single natural body, approaching to the perfection of the fairest statues. Thus nature, on this account, is so much inferior to art, that those artists who propose to themselves only the imitation or likeness of such or such a particular person, without election of those ideas before mentioned, have often been reproached for that omission. Demetrius was taxed for being too natural; Dionysius was also blamed for drawing men like us, and was commonly called 'Avoрwπóуpapos, that is, a painter of men. In our times, Michel Angelo da Caravaggio was esteemed too natural: he drew persons as they were; and Bamboccio, and most of the Dutch painters, have drawn the worst likeness. Lysippus, of old, upbraided the common sort of sculptors for making men such as they were found in

nature; and boasted of himself, that he made them as they ought to be; which is a precept of Aristotle, given as well to poets as to painters. Phidias raised an admiration even to astonishment in those who beheld his statues, with the forms which he gave to his gods and heroes, by imitating the idea rather than nature; and Cicero, speaking of him, affirms, that figuring Jupiter and Pallas, he did not contemplate any object from whence he took any likeness, but considered in his own mind a great and admirable form of beauty, and according to that image in his soul he directed the operation of his hand. Seneca also seems to wonder that Phidias, having never beheld either Jove or Pallas, yet could conceive their divine images in his mind. Apollonius Tyanæus says the same in other words, that the fancy more instructs the painter than the imitation; for the last makes only the things which it sees, but the first makes also the things which it never sees.

"Leon Battista Alberti tells us, that we ought not so much to love the likeness as the beauty, and to choose from the fairest bodies severally the fairest parts. Lionarda da Vinci instructs the painter to form this idea to himself; and Raffaelle, the greatest of all modern masters, writes thus to Castiglione, concerning his Galatea: To paint a "fair one, it is necessary for me to see many fair "ones; but because there is so great a scarcity of lovely women, I am constrained to make use of

one certain idea, which I have formed to myself ' in my own fancy.' Guido Reni sending to Rome his St. Michael, which he had painted for the church of the Capuchins, at the same time wrote to Monsignor Massano, who was the maestro di casa (or steward of the house) to Pope Urban VII. in this manner: 'I wish I had the wings of an angel, to have ascended into paradise, and there to have beheld the forms of these beatified spirits, from which I might have copied my archangel but not being able to mount so high, it 'was in vain for me to search his resemblance here below; so that I was forced to make an introspection into my own mind, and into that idea of beauty, which I have formed in my own imagination. I have likewise created there the con'trary idea of deformity and ugliness; but I leave the consideration of it till I paint the devil, and in the mean time shun the very thought of it as much

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as possibly I can, and am even endeavouring to 'blot it wholly out of my remembrance.' There was not any lady in all antiquity who was mistress of so much beauty, as was to be found in the Venus of Gnidus, made by Praxiteles, or the Minerva of Athens, by Phidias, which was therefore called the beautiful form. Neither is there any man of the present age equal in the strength, proportion, and knitting of his limbs, to the Hercules of Farnese, made by Glycon; or any woman who can justly be compared with the Medicean Venus of