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who was perhaps too much looking COLOGNE. about him for the picturesque, or some thing uncommon. A man with his head downwards is certainly a more extraordinary object than in its natural place. Many parts of this picture are so feebly drawn, and with so tame a pencil, that I cannot help suspecting that Rubens died before he had completed it, and that it was finished by some of his scholars.

This picture is of great fame, I suppose from the letter of Rubens, where he says, it was or would be his best work. We went from Dusseldorp to Cologne on purpose to see it; but it by no means recompensed us for our journey. From Cologne we made an excursion to Bernsburgh, a hunting-seat of the Elector Palatine, which we found very different from what we had been taught to expect. The three rooms painted by Weeninx, however excellent in their WEEninx. kind, are not better, nor even so good as what we had seen before of his hand, in

BERNS

BURGH.

the gallery of Dusseldorp. His figures as large as life, which he is fond of introducing, are very indifferent, if not bad. His dead game certainly cannot be too much admired; but a sample is enough here is too much of it. His portraits are such as no one would hang up in his house, if they were not accompanied with his birds and animals.

The Frescos on the walls and ceiling are by Belluci Pellegrino, and other late painters, not worth a minute's attention. We saw a picture of the Slaughter of the Innocents, by old Brueghel, the same as one I had seen before in some part of Holland; and I have another myself. This painter was totally ignorant of all the mechanical art of making a picture; but there is here a great quantity of thinking, a representation of variety of distress, enough for twenty modern pictures. In this respect he is like Donne, as distinguished from the modern versifiers, who carrying no weight of thought, easily fall into that false gallop

of verses which Shakspeare ridicules in COLOGNE. "As you like it."

There is the same difference between the old portraits of Albert Durer or Holbein, and those of the modern painters: the moderns have certainly the advantage in facility, but there is a truth in the old painters, though expressed in a hard manner, that gives them a superiority.

At Cologne, in the possession of one LI BRUN. of the family of Jabac, is the famous picture, by Le Brun, containing the portrait of Jabac, his wife, and four children.* It is much superior to what I could conceive Le Brun capable of doing in the Portrait style. She is sitting on his left hand, with four children about her, and a greyhound, equally correct and well painted with the rest. Jabac himself is much in shadow, except the

* This picture is now (1797) in the collection of Mr. Hope, late of Amsterdam. M.

COLOGNE face. Le Brun is represented by his picture on a canvass which is placed on an easel; before him lie prints, drawings, port-crayons, and a large gold bust of Alexander. The portraits are equal to the best of Vandyck: but there is a heaviness in the effect of the picture, which Vandyck never had, and this is its only defect.

RUBENS.

AT AIX LA CHAPELLE,

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in the church of the Capuchins is the
Adorations of the Shepherds, by Rubens;
it appears to be much damaged, but it
never was a very striking picture.
There is a print of it by
A Shep-
herdess, not a very poetical one, is
making an offering of a hen's egg to the
Virgin, having already given three eggs,
which lie by the infant Christ, who is
sucking the Virgin: neither of them
take any notice of the shepherdess; if
the Virgin may be said to be looking at
any thing, it is at the egg in the woman's
A shepherd with his hand to his
hat, as if going to pull it off, appears to

hand.

be well painted; and the ox is admirably well done.

St. Francis receiving the stimata, seems likewise to be by Rubens, but is not much to be admired.

LIEGE.

LIEGE.

In the great church is the Ascension LATRESSE. of the Virgin, by Lairesse. Parts of this picture are well painted; but it has no effect upon the whole, from the want of large masses. His manner is not open, and appears too restrained for large pictures. The same defect is observable in pictures of Poussin, where the figures are as large as life, and in those of Vanderwerf. We are creatures of habit, and a painter cannot change his habits suddenly; he cannot, like the fallen angels of Milton, increase or diminish at pleasure.

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