Dissertation on the Paintings of the middle Jge. 173 



qualities of expression were most frequently to be found. 

 To attain this there was no occasion for the assistance of 

 the Greeks and Romans: the mere bent of the genius of 

 the artists and the study of the passions were sufficient. 

 Hence those painters, who gradually got rid of the ancient 

 maxims in their taite and in their sis le, gave more ani- 

 mation to their figures. Hence proceeded those expressive 

 and true images which have been subjects of imitation 

 with so many subsequent painters ; hence those physio- 

 gnomies truly natural, and inspired by a sound judgement 

 and feelmg heart. In this school therefore may be ac- 

 quired a great accuracy of delineation, a quality which 

 alone perhaps, when it was properly appreciated, fcnmed 

 the Verrochios,the Michdel-Angelos, the Leonard is, and the 

 bold designers who adorned Tuscany, and whose celebrity 

 was such that the whole of the painters of Iialy,in studyiug 

 theirdesigns, were forced to imitate their new taste. May we 

 not suppose also, that this custom of servilely copying in- 

 dividual peculiarities, and this neglect of the ancient mo- 

 dels, may have led them to introduce into almost all their 

 subjects the costumes of contemporaries ? and perhaps several 

 pictures of that time, in which the costume is Grecian, 

 have been executed by Florentine artists. 



Ve?Jetian School of the middle yJge. 



Venice received the arts from the East, and her school 

 of painting was much more influenced by the painters of 

 Constantinople than by those of Rome or Florence : there 

 was a dirtct and commercial communication wiih the city 

 in which the emperors had taken up their residence ; and 

 if commerce ought to be considered as a vehicle of,. or as 

 influcntial-on, the arts, we may easily conceive that all the 

 portable works, which could be regarded as objects 'of spe- 

 culation, must have had the character of those which were 

 exported from the East. The Venetians, following the ex- 

 ample of the Orientalists, studied brilliancy of colouring, 

 and all the arts by which this effect could be obtained ; and 

 it would seem that not only did they profit by the rich co- 

 louring materials which commerce procured them, but 

 long before the lime of Giorgioni there were painters who 

 studied the calculation of the masses of (.hiaro-oscuro, as 

 well as the effects of opposite shades ; so that this school can- 

 not fail to be regarded as the parent of the modern colonrists; 

 since long before the Carpacci, the Basacti, and even the 

 Bellini, they had always painteci with vivid and durable co- 

 lours. 



