DORP. TINTORET. A fine portrait of Vesalius the Ana- DUSSELtomist when young, by Tintoret. He has a skirrous bone in his left hand, the other holds a compass: he looks at the spectator with a most penetrating eye. It is apparently the same countenance as the engraved portrait prefixed to his works, but much younger. Christ putting in the Sepulchre, by A.CARACCI. Annibal Caracci. This appears to have been one of his best works: it is finely drawn and composed; and the Christ is in graceful attitudes. FETI. Under this picture is an ECCE HOMO, DOMENICO a head only; said to be of Correggio; but apparently of Domenico Feti. It should seem by this mistake that there is a resemblance in the manner of Domenico Feti to that of Correggio; what there is, which is very little, lies in the colouring; there is something of a transparent and pearly tint of colour in this head, but the character is much inferior to Correggio: it is in heads or DUSSEL- small parts of pictures, only, that DORP. CARLO LUCA C. PROCAC CINI. per haps some resemblance may be discovered; in the larger works of Domenico Feti nobody can be deceived. A Carlo Dolci; Madonna and Bambino with a lily. This is one of his best works the expression of the Virgin is very beautiful; the Christ, which is a little figure at length, though not excellent, is still better than his children generally are. Two portraits dressed in rags, like beggars, by Luca Giordano, in imitation of Spagnolet's manner; well painted. They are said to be his own and his father's pictures. I have seen a portrait by Caravaggio, painted by himself, in the same style: it is difficult to find out the wit or humour of this conceit of being drawn in the characters of beggars. A holy family by Camillo Procaccini, his best; finely coloured: the Christ's head admirable. * St. Jerome, said to be by Paul Veronese, but certainly by Giacomo Bassan. FOURTH ROOM. DUSSEL DORP. GIACOMO WERF. THE most distinguished pictures in VANDERthis room are the Vanderwerfs, which are twenty-four in number. Three of them are as large as life; a Magdalen whole-length, and two portraits. The Magdalen was painted as a companion to the St. John of Raffaelle, but it was not thought even by his friends and admirers, that he had succeeded: however, he certainly has spared no pains; it is as smooth and as highly finished as his small pictures; but his defects are here magnified, and consequently more apparent. His pictures, whether great or small, certainly afford but little pleasure. Of their want of effect it is worth a painter's while to inquire into the cause. One of the principal causes appears to me, his having entertained an opinion that the light of a picture ought to be thrown solely on the figures, and little or none on the ground or sky. This DUSSEL gives great coldness to the effect, and is DORP. so contrary to nature and the practice of those painters with whose works he was surrounded, that we cannot help wondering how he fell into this mistake. His naked figures appear to be of a much harder substance than flesh, though his outline is far from cutting, or the light not united with the shade, which are the most common causes of hardness; but it appears to me, that in the present instance the hardness of manner proceeds from the softness and union being too general; the light being every where equally lost in the ground or its shadow: for this is not expressing the true effect of flesh, the light of which is sometimes losing itself in the ground, and sometimes distinctly seen, according to the rising or sinking of the muscles: an attention to these variations is what gives the effect of suppleness, which is one of the characteristicks of a good manner of colouring, DORP. There is in nature a certain proportion DUSSELof bluntness and sharpness; in the medium between these two extremes, the true and perfect art of imitating consists. If the sharp predominate, it gives a dry manner; if the blunt predominate, it makes a manner equally removed from nature; it gives what painters call woolliness and heaviness, or that kind of hardness which is found in those pictures of Vanderwerf. In describing Vanderwerf's manner, were I to say that all the parts every where melt into each other, it might naturally be supposed that the effect would be a high degree of softness; but it is notoriously the contrary, and I think for the reason that has been given his flesh has the appearance of ivory, or plaster, or some other hard substance. What contributes likewise to give this hardness, is a want of transparency in this colouring, from its admitting little or no reflexions of light. He has also the defect which is often found in Rem |