“I should be sorry if what has been said should be understood to have any tendency to encourage that carelessness which leaves work in an unfinished state. I commend nothing for the want of exactness; I mean to point out that kind of exactness which is the best, and which is alone truly to be so esteemed.”—Vol. II. p. 65. This Sir Joshua has already told us consists in getting above “all particularities and details of every kind.” Once more we find it stated that
“It is in vain to attend to the variation of tints, if in that attention the general hue of flesh is lost; or to finish ever so minutely the parts, if the masses are not observed, or the whole not well put together.”
Nothing can be truer; but why always suppose the two things at variance with each other?
“Titian’s manner was then new to the world, but that unshaken truth on which it is founded has fixed it as a model to all succeeding painters; and those who will examine into the artifice will find it to consist in the power of generalising, and in the shortness and simplicity of the means employed.”
Titian’s real excellence consisted in the power of generalising and of individualising at the same time: if it wore merely the former, it would be
