176 Dissertation on the Paintings of the middle Jge. 



to have been brought from the Vatican : in a word, it was 

 then that they introduced the strange and revoking custom 

 of employing grotesque draperies of woollen stuff or moist- 

 ened parchment: a style which even for gravest subjects 

 too much resembles that which painters would study at 

 present in our great cities, were they to frequent every 

 public masquerade. 



Let persons call these shameful perversions of painting 

 Gothic if they please; ihey possess nothing in common 

 with the fine arts of antiquity, and it is unfair to class them 

 with the simple and rational productions of the middle 

 ace : certainly it was not these miserable daubings which 

 Kaphael made use of as his models ; and it would not be 

 absurd to suppose, that in these degraded times that con- 

 tempt arose which the Italians have ever since cherished 

 for ultramontane artists. 



r conclude therefore from these observations, that Rome 

 in tl'.e middle age produced paintings of a simple, rational, 

 and regularly composed style, and that there are to be 

 found in the" works of that time subjects clearly conceived 

 and finely expressed, — methodical compositions, and dra- 

 peries of a happy and graceful flow : that the Greek school 

 of the Lower Empire aKvays presented figures of a severe 

 and dignified character ; that it still excels with the lustre 

 of the colours of the Eist, and that it propagated this grand 

 and ancient problem, magnificevce on simplicity. I con- 

 clude that Tuscany witnesstd the cultivation of painting 

 by men of genius who fm-med for themselves a style ani- 

 mated but not very coiirormable to the elevation of the 

 arts : that Venice exhibited in the most distant periods 

 proofs of intelligence in colouring and chiaro-oscuro, and 

 participated in some respects with the Greek taste of Con- 

 stantinople : in a word, that the Goths of the North, who 

 went in search of the arts to that Florence whose celebrity 

 attracted the whole world, brought nothing from it, or 

 from Rome, but superficial and altered ideas, or false and 

 trivial traditions, w'hich spread thoughuut their own siill 

 barbarous country all those hideous images which I will- 

 ingly abandon to the ill-nature of the malcontents. 



There ccrtiiniy were mixtures of thc^e various manners 

 in difiercnt countries : but the characters of these schools 

 are not the less determined, and seem to be founded on the 

 nature of things. 



it has been already shown how erroneous the opinion of 

 those has been, who, confounding all limes and styies, do 

 not admit of common sense as guiding the painters until 



the 



