It is the drawing--the design projected from that peculiar
pictorial temperament or constitution, in which, while it may possibly
be ignorant of true anatomical proportions, all things whatever, all
poetry, every idea however abstract or obscure, floats up as a visible
scene, or image: it is the colouring--that weaving as of just
perceptible gold threads of light through the dress, the flesh, the
atmosphere, in Titian's Lace-girl--the staining of the whole fabric of
the thing with a new, delightful physical quality. This drawing,
then--the arabesque traced in the air by Tintoret's flying figures, by
Titian's forest branches; this colouring--the magic conditions of light
and hue in the atmosphere of Titian's Lace-girl, or Rubens's Descent
from the Cross--these essential pictorial qualities must first of all
delight the sense, delight it as directly and sensuously as a fragment
of Venetian glass; and through this delight only be the medium of
whatever poetry or science may lie beyond them, in the intention of the
composer.
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