reasons already stated, and which the notices of the Carracci and their scholars in the Catalogue will explain more fully. But in this period we have again a partial development; and, reversing the circumstances of the first period, we find the sensuous dominating the sentimental, and the gradual debasement of art as the consequence.
In all visits to picture galleries, therefore, one of the first inquiries of the mind must be whether a work belong to the period of development, establishment, or decline; whether it be quattrocento, cinquecento, or academic. And this general inquiry must be succeeded by a modification of the same idea when investigating a picture as the work of a particular master; as, what was his School? and what the peculiar circumstances of his life, if any. For to thoroughly enjoy, or be instructed by, a picture, we must enter into the spirit of the work, whether it be animated by a common sentiment of an age, or some simply subjective expression of the idiosyncrasy of the painter. All pictures should be viewed objectively; it is not for us to look for what we consider ought to be there, but honestly to endeavour to apprehend what really is there. There is something to be admired in all works. If the academic painter shows us nothing beyond his fine limbs or harmonious masses of colour, there is even here real matter for enjoyment; though we may not find the exalted sentiment, the impressive grandeur of character, the dramatic truth, or the illusive reality of representation, that we have admired elsewhere.
Works will often be limited or modified also in their powers of pleasing us by the method in which they are executed. The Italians have had three great methods, which prevailed at different periods—tempera, fresco, and oil, which have all, more or less, their peculiar properties of effect. During the thirteenth century, tempera was the universal method for wall or easel pictures; the colours were mixed in water, with egg, gum, size, and the sap of plants. In the fourteenth century a method of painting on the wet plaster was adopted, hence called fresco, and this was the prevailing method for wall painting from that time. The colours were put on mixed simply with water (boiled or distilled), and when the picture was dry the early masters used to retouch in tempera, but this practice of retouching gradually ceased, until what is called pure fresco was established. In the middle of the fifteenth century, oil, or rather varnish painting, was introduced into Italy; and the great majority of the works of the period of the decline are executed in this method, while the majority of the great cinquecento works are frescoes,
