a Parallel-between Painting and Seulpture. 91 
/ 
advantages. He has no guide but experience, and, if we may 
so express ourselves, the fountain of his chisel,as the painter has 
that of his pencil. The imitation of the human skin is the ob- 
ject and principle of the imitative arts: the flesh merits the 
particular attention of both arts,since there is no part more pro- 
minent and with which the spectator is more struck: it ought to 
he perceived chiefly over the muscles which it covers, without 
diminishing their play or size, and without altering their strength 
or position. But how great are the differences in the method 
of expressing this skin! Sculptors must search for examples in 
the chefs-d’ceuvre of the Greeks; they alone have given the 
model of profound knowledge and sublime executicn: they must 
place all their confidence in the correctness and beauty of their 
works, and must not seek to surprise into admiration by a contrast 
in thé positions. It would have been desirable if ancient au- 
thors had made any mention of their method of studying. It is 
evident, however, that it must have been different from that of 
the present day; for even those among the moderns who have 
most copied and who have been most penetrated with admira- 
tion of the Greek sculptors, have never caught their style nor 
method of working. We merely know from the accounts of 
Pliny, that, far from neglecting the theory, they reflected deeply 
on their art. The great number of artists whom he mentions 
as haying written profoundly on this subject, does not admit of 
our refusing to believe this complinient. 
[ return to the-means which the painter possesses of giving 
expression to the skin. It is easy for him to colour his work; 
and, without speaking of half-tints, to support it by large shades. 
He may easily enliven it by forcible touches which produce an 
agreeable opposition aud a happy contrast with this same skin; 
whereas the sculptor cannot produce the same effect without the 
greatest pains, and he does so without the aid of any of those 
chance-touches of the painter which resemble the sallies of the 
imagination in a lon mot which reflection never could have fore- 
seen. When the studies of the painter are at an end, he may 
sit by his fire and survey all the parts of his pictnre: he covers, 
extinguishes, revives, and harmonizes: the sculptor with a sharp 
chisel, which acts only when itis struck with a mallet*, and 
without having it in his power to restore the substance which it 
has removed, cannot give harmony to his figure without the 
most laborious attention and the most accurate judgement, sub- 
ject to the idea of a perfect whole, which he ought to have con- 
___ stantly present in his mind, without having it in his power to 
* All the fine works of seulpture are finished with the point of the 
chisel: the rasp is. a most pernicious instrument. 
abandon 
