566 On the Art of Painting 



tury, and adorns their heads with turbans ; when 

 Guido, in a painting of Jefus. appearing to his 

 mother after his refurredion, places St. Charlds 

 Borronnee in a kind of defk in the back ground, 

 as witnefs to the interview j when Tintoret, at 

 the miraculous fall of manna, arms the Ifraelites 

 with fufils; and Corregio appoints St. Jerome 

 as the inftruftor of the child Jefus : common 

 fenfe revolts at the impropriety j and we are v 

 compelled to exclaim quicquid ojlendas mihiftCj in- 

 credulus odi. 



The mythological tafte of the learned Pouflin 

 is well known i but Reubens feems to claim 

 the merit of having prefented to the world a ftill 

 greater number of fupreme abfurdities in this 

 learned ftyle : nor is it eafy to conceive a more 

 heterogeneous mixture of circumftances real and 

 imaginary, facred and profane, than the Lux- 

 embourg* Gallery, and the other works of that 

 great mafter perpetually exhibit. 



But 



* In the Luxembourg Gallery (among other inftances) 

 when Mary de Medicis efcapes from the caftle of Blois, 

 Ihe is conduced by Minerva and the Duke D'Efpernon. 

 In the fame colleftion, the city of Lyons goes to meet the 

 queen who appears in the air with her fon, fomewhat like 

 the kings of Brentford in the Rehearfal. 



Le Seur, in his martyrdom of St. Stephen, adorns him 

 with a rich cope, which had Stephen been a bifhop would 

 have been fufficiently well. He admits alfo the abfurdity 

 of repiefenting him as perfeftly inflexible in his joints as 

 they carry him off. 



Carlo 



