DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.73713#0133
RAPHAEL MENGS.
128
As I have observed, how even in the worst of
these paintings that part has been understood,
although executed with negligence it has stu-
pisied me to think, and to figure to myself, how
they could have been the works of the most fa-
mous painters contemporary with the sculptors
of an Apollo of Belvedere, of a Gladiator, of a
Venus of Medicis, and other similar works,
which are of artists of the first rank os anti-
quity.
Although the colouring of these paintings is
not very excellent, we are not by that to doubt
that the ancients possessed it in great perfection,
when we know that they made a distindion be-
tween the twoAjaxs of differenthands, saying that
one was nourished with roses, and the otherwith
sseih. Theyknew perspective, as one may find
by the aforesaid paintings of Herculaneum; and
if we do not underhand it, I know not what
Parrlasius would with to say, when he insilled
that no one could be a good painter without
geometry. That which perhaps the ancients did
not possess as well as the moderns is, machi-
nery composition, because their principal stu-
dy was the perfection and quality of things,
and not the quantity of them. One may be-
lieve that their style of composing paintings
was little different from the style of bas-relief
according as one sees in the same paintings of
Herculaneum, in which the contrasts, the grace
of the figures, the beautiful partitions, and the
expressions are excellent. One knows even
that they were done with quickness, and frank-
vol. II.S
128
As I have observed, how even in the worst of
these paintings that part has been understood,
although executed with negligence it has stu-
pisied me to think, and to figure to myself, how
they could have been the works of the most fa-
mous painters contemporary with the sculptors
of an Apollo of Belvedere, of a Gladiator, of a
Venus of Medicis, and other similar works,
which are of artists of the first rank os anti-
quity.
Although the colouring of these paintings is
not very excellent, we are not by that to doubt
that the ancients possessed it in great perfection,
when we know that they made a distindion be-
tween the twoAjaxs of differenthands, saying that
one was nourished with roses, and the otherwith
sseih. Theyknew perspective, as one may find
by the aforesaid paintings of Herculaneum; and
if we do not underhand it, I know not what
Parrlasius would with to say, when he insilled
that no one could be a good painter without
geometry. That which perhaps the ancients did
not possess as well as the moderns is, machi-
nery composition, because their principal stu-
dy was the perfection and quality of things,
and not the quantity of them. One may be-
lieve that their style of composing paintings
was little different from the style of bas-relief
according as one sees in the same paintings of
Herculaneum, in which the contrasts, the grace
of the figures, the beautiful partitions, and the
expressions are excellent. One knows even
that they were done with quickness, and frank-
vol. II.S