DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.73712#0241
RAPHAEL MENGS.
149
hands of women, because nature offers but
few beautiful; failing always in one of the ex-
tremes; either by being very fat, or very thin.
I imagine that great man was habituated,
almost always, to draw grown persons, be-
cause he never knew how to give to his chil-
dren that morbidity, and sseshiness of a suck-
ing babe, which nature requires. He paint-
ed his children as those of the ancients must
have been; serious and ressective, and when
he made any one for a model, one sees that
he did not pretend to any thing more than
the heads, without even giving them the lead
nobleness ; because, no doubt, they were mo-
dels of the children of poor people, and p!e=
bians; as one observes in the Child of the
Virgin della Seggiola copied assuredly from
nature; which although it is qf a lively phy-
siognomy, wants much os that nobleness and
- beauty to be able to compare with the great
elegance of Titian. Nor is he as great, or as
noble as the authors of the aforesaid statues,
because he never believed that it was possible
there could be any thing greater than the
taste of Michael Angelo, who seeking to be
always great was always vulgar, and extending
by a convex line beyond the limits os nature,
be lost the way to re-enter it again; and being
fixed in his youthful brain that false idea of
greatness, he maintained it through lise, and
was always overcharged. ^For this reason the
works of Michael Angelo will^always be much
inferior to those of the Ancients of good
149
hands of women, because nature offers but
few beautiful; failing always in one of the ex-
tremes; either by being very fat, or very thin.
I imagine that great man was habituated,
almost always, to draw grown persons, be-
cause he never knew how to give to his chil-
dren that morbidity, and sseshiness of a suck-
ing babe, which nature requires. He paint-
ed his children as those of the ancients must
have been; serious and ressective, and when
he made any one for a model, one sees that
he did not pretend to any thing more than
the heads, without even giving them the lead
nobleness ; because, no doubt, they were mo-
dels of the children of poor people, and p!e=
bians; as one observes in the Child of the
Virgin della Seggiola copied assuredly from
nature; which although it is qf a lively phy-
siognomy, wants much os that nobleness and
- beauty to be able to compare with the great
elegance of Titian. Nor is he as great, or as
noble as the authors of the aforesaid statues,
because he never believed that it was possible
there could be any thing greater than the
taste of Michael Angelo, who seeking to be
always great was always vulgar, and extending
by a convex line beyond the limits os nature,
be lost the way to re-enter it again; and being
fixed in his youthful brain that false idea of
greatness, he maintained it through lise, and
was always overcharged. ^For this reason the
works of Michael Angelo will^always be much
inferior to those of the Ancients of good