National Casting Establishments. SI 



the art with them, as well as elsewhere. We cannot, however, 

 refuse them an equality with their great rivals in beauty and 

 harmony of colour. We must even concede to them, that ow- 

 ing to their system of painting, they excelled them in bril- 

 liancy ; but we must again repeat, that in sublimity, poetical 

 feeling, and all the qualities which touch the soul, they must 

 yield the palm of superiority to their great competitors. None 

 of the beings they represented rise in a great degree above the 

 nature they studied, and their drawing is often incorrect. 



The cause of this will be obvious to every one : the Venetian 

 painters had no opportunity of properly studying the antique, 

 and of purifying their design by such models ; they indeed ad- 

 hered to the nature which surrounded them, with a degree of 

 strictness which frequently rendered their works incongruous, 

 the costumes of their own times being applied to subjects taken 

 from ancient history. 



The Flemish school now comes to be considered, and it must 

 be placed on a level greatly lower than that of Venice. It is a 

 glaring example of the disastrous effects which may result to 

 art from inattention to its higher principles. Possessing a ge- 

 nius, equal to any, perhaps, of those of the great Italian mas- 

 ters, having a fertile imagination, and unequalled powers of 

 execution — Rubens — the great head of the Flemish school, con- 

 tributed to the corruption of art and taste. His design is the 

 very reverse of that which, by common consent, is held to be 

 the only true model of purity ; he copied the coarse and vulgar 

 nature with which he was surrounded. His works are a proof 

 that, when uninfluenced by the principles developed in Greek 

 art, powerful genius, although stimulated by the most extend- 

 ed patronage, cannot rise above the surrounding level of natu- 

 ral objects. 



These brief observations having now been made on the ge- 

 neral characteristics distinctive of peculiar schools, and one pre- 

 dominant cause having been assigned for the superiority of the 

 two former of these schools over the two latter, we consider it 

 unnecessary to notice any of a lesser importance ; the argument 

 that this is the primary cause of this superiority, is that with 

 which we are at present chiefly concerned. The inspiration, 

 the soul-begotten qualities, distinctive of Greek art, are equally 



