The artists repository and drawing magazine: exhibiting the principles of the polite arts in their various branches (4.1790)

4© C H A

thenUc ; though it mufl be owned, deceit has fo weli
imitated verity on many occafions, that not every
critic has been able to pull off the mafk. Deceit is
however fo far laudable in the arts of defign, that to
impofe on a capable judge, fliews no fmall talents in
the artift; though it mult,be confeffed, they feem fome-
what mifapplied.

CHARGED is ufed as fynonimous to overloaded,
{trained, &c, but is generally underftood to be, the con-
fequence of defire in an artift to impart a certain
fomewhat of greatncfs to his work. Thus the fubjedts
painted by Annieale Carrachi in the Farnefe
Gallery, though in many refpefts admirable, are yet
thought by artifts to be charged : for being painted
from models, the painter has endeavoured to give his
figures a certain fomething of advantage, which his
models had not: and thereby he has often exceeded the
modefty of nature.

It muft however be confeffed, that too clofe an adhe-
rence to a model, even in a portrait, is not altogether
an adherence to-mature. There is a difference between
duty and fervitude. To be bound down to imitation
of what is before the eye, is a conftraint, a flavery,
for which the work will certainly fuffer: but judg-
ment muff determine how far deviation may be carried.
Bad painters charge their works, even their portraits,
through ignorance, and mifapplication ; that kind of
charge in which good artifts indulge themfelves, is the
refult of found difcretion and fcience, affifted by the
decifion, firmnefs, and fpirit, of a mafteily hand.
Its objedt is to elevate the character reprefented, by
2 omitting