356 Dissertation on the Pnintings of the middle Age. 



oF an unalterable and easy description, and which can hand 

 down to posterity the glory and genius of our artists*. 



I think I have demonstrated that the principal parts of 

 painting were preserved in the middle age, and that as soon 

 as the art of designing had lost its strength and accuracy, 

 the claire-oscure was almost forgotten, the art of colour- 

 ing very little cultivated, and the execution very often 

 despicable: what remained nevertheless formed those qua- 

 lities which were most difficult to recover among altered 

 manners, qualities grand and simple, which constitute the 

 character and dignity of the art, and the loss of which the 

 boldness of our most intrepid artists can never repair. 



Conclusion. 



T conclude from all these observations, that the paintings 

 of the middle age are the records of the precious doctrines 

 of ancient art; that they are not vitiated, aid that they 

 ought not to be confounded with some barbarous and man- 

 nered works painted during the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries in the north of Europe 5 that they have formed 

 our greatest painters; and that those only have a right to 

 neglect them, who have attained the climax of the best 

 models of antiquity : — in a word, that artists ought to ob- 

 serve and study them without intermission, and as easy 

 versions, calculated to explain the secret idioms of a lan- 

 guage which is of most difficult attainment. 



* It ought to be remarked, that most of the paintings of the middle age, 

 existing in cabinets, have very rarely preserved their primitive colours, con- 

 sidering the practice of reviving them by means of varnish. I shall not 

 here speak of all the ravages or decompositions which may result from this 

 method, when indiscriminately employed upon paintings the materials of 

 which have not been previously studied. lu general, it is very rare to 

 find paintings, either antique or Gothic, which are really originals (vicri^es), 

 and which <'.<i not exhibit some .Therations proceeding from restorations. 



It seems that the famous painting of Colantonio, dated 14."6, which is pre- 

 served at Naples, was the occasion of so manv disputes,' only because it was 

 afterwards covered, like many others, by a piiycht coat of oil: the same per- 

 haps may be said of those contained in the G iil('ry at Vienna : one is dated in 

 1090, the other in 129'2. This last is the work of Thomas Mutina.a Bohe- 

 mian gentleman. Some others of the same gallery are dated in the middle 

 of the fourteenth century, and are by Theodoric of Prague and Nicholas 

 Wurmser of Strasburg. Now John of Bruges died about the middle of the 

 fifteenth century, in 144 1. Upon tho whole, without having recuur.-e lo 

 numerous works upon this subject, it is scircely credible that the use of oil 

 in painting had never been imagined before the existence of that celebrated 

 Fleming, who being a chemist could perliaps put in practice ancient recipes, 

 the principles of which were v/ell known. 



LVr. On 



