ON THE KELATION OF OPTICS TO PAINTING. 125 



frould have led to this ; or the experiments of Munich's 

 celebrated optician Steinheil, which he made as a 

 matter of science, that is, to produce oil paintings 

 which should be looked at in bright sunshine, would 

 not be isolated. 



Experiment seems therefore to teach, that modera- 

 tion of light and of colours in pictures is ever advan- 

 tageous, and we need only look at frescoes in direct 

 sunlight, such as those of the new Pinakothek in 

 Miinich, to learn in what this advantage consists. 

 Their brightness is so great that we cannot look at 

 them steadily for any length of time. And what in 

 this case is so painful and so tiring to the eye, would 

 also operate in a smaller degree if, in a picture, bril- 

 liant colours were used, even locally and to a moderate 

 extent, which were intended to represent bright sun- 

 light, and a mass of light shed over the picture. 

 It is much easier to produce an accurate imitation 

 of the feeble light of moonshine with artificial light 

 in dioramas and theatre decorations. 



We may therefore designate truth to Nature of a 

 beautiful picture as an ennobled fidelity to Nature. 

 Such a picture reproduces all that is essential in the 

 impression, and attains full vividness of conception, 

 but without injury or tiring the eye by the nude lights 

 of reality. The differences between Art and Nature 

 are chiefly confined, as we have already seen, to those 



