DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.73713#0013
RAPHAEL MENGS.
9
feeking to follow Giordano they departed from
the imitation of Truth, which they had pur-
sued until then, without acquiring the part of
the taste of beauty which was preserred in
From that time nothing else has been done
but to propagate ignorance, by means of bad
instru&ion, and one might almost compare
Spain to a country of infirm people placing
guards at their boundaries that no foreign phy-
sician may enter.
I have rapidly ran through the history of
Spain, without touching on the other arts, be-
cause painting ought to be the mistress of good
taste. Of their architecture, I say only, that al-
though it has been almost forgotten, even to
our days, yet it was cultivated with good
maxims by some professbrs. It had scarce began
to be removed from the Gothic style, when
they built the Escurial, an immense and solid
work, done on good principles of building, but
without any idea of true beauty or elegance.
It is an emblem of the character of the prince
who constru&ed it. In spight of the multitude
of artists employed in that great work, they ex-
tended very little the arts in the generality of
the nation, probably because they continued
to think, that the great and the beautiful consist
only in riches; and from that ignorance we
see produced, that monstrous magnificence of
altars of gilded wood, which custom cancelled
every idea of beauty in the form ; recalling all
the attention to the richness of the matter.
VOL. II. C
9
feeking to follow Giordano they departed from
the imitation of Truth, which they had pur-
sued until then, without acquiring the part of
the taste of beauty which was preserred in
From that time nothing else has been done
but to propagate ignorance, by means of bad
instru&ion, and one might almost compare
Spain to a country of infirm people placing
guards at their boundaries that no foreign phy-
sician may enter.
I have rapidly ran through the history of
Spain, without touching on the other arts, be-
cause painting ought to be the mistress of good
taste. Of their architecture, I say only, that al-
though it has been almost forgotten, even to
our days, yet it was cultivated with good
maxims by some professbrs. It had scarce began
to be removed from the Gothic style, when
they built the Escurial, an immense and solid
work, done on good principles of building, but
without any idea of true beauty or elegance.
It is an emblem of the character of the prince
who constru&ed it. In spight of the multitude
of artists employed in that great work, they ex-
tended very little the arts in the generality of
the nation, probably because they continued
to think, that the great and the beautiful consist
only in riches; and from that ignorance we
see produced, that monstrous magnificence of
altars of gilded wood, which custom cancelled
every idea of beauty in the form ; recalling all
the attention to the richness of the matter.
VOL. II. C