a Parallel between Painting and Sculpture. 87 
jn its field of composition, not only curtails, and as it were shuts 
up, but obscures the career which is always open with respect 
to painting, against narrow minds and professed boasters. 
The facility of speaking and the silence above alluded to are, 
therefore, wholly dependent on the nature of each of these arts. 
Iam the more anxious to communicate these ideas on painting 
and sculpture, because those who practise them evince no desire 
to know that the labour and execution, the methods of which 
as transmitted from master to scholar are adopted in the school, 
to say the truth, are a kind of routine which may have advan- 
_ tages for men of middling talents, whose habitudes induce idle- 
ness. But this routine and this beaten track are not only ene- 
mies to greatness, but lead artists to despise theory, and reject 
the reflections which men of letters may. chance to communicate. 
This prejudice, the source of the greatest misfortunes to the arts, 
is absolutely false in its principle. 
The slightest reflection teaches us that the theory of an art 
always serves to the perfection of its practice ; and artists them- 
selves prove every day: that these parts are inseparable : in fact, 
those of superior talents would not retain the pre-eminence 
which they enjoy, without the application of the essential parts 
of theory to the beauty of the touch of the chisel, the perfection 
of the tracings, and general grandeur of idea. I shall admit that 
it may not be requisite that they should reason methodically on 
their art, or write upon it with order: all this may not be re- 
quired of them; but they ought to be able to speak of it cor- 
rectly, and with decent warmth : in short, they ought to be lu- 
minous. Could they have these advantages, if this theory which 
they despise were not indelibly but unconsciously rooted in their 
minds ?. It does exist there certainly, but mixed and confounded 
with what they cali their practice. We may be the more assured 
that the theory is uething but the rationale of the art, because 
artists continually use it without having the least doubt of its 
potency: in fact, they both oppose it incessantly to the critiques 
which are made on their productions, and use it in those which 
they make themselves on the works of ancient or modern artists. 
In order that sculpture may be brought within the compre- 
hension of persons in general, who have no idea of the resources 
of intellect and dexterity of workmanship requisite for its opera- 
tions, 1 think it best to compare all its parts with those of 
painting; to point out the portions which are common to both, 
and which establish their sisterhood ; and, finally, to notice the 
facilities or difficulties which both kinds of artists have to en- 
counter. ‘This arrangement appears to me to be the simplest, 
and the most capable of making known the real difference of the 
two arts. 
F4 Their 
