DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61012#0220
186 THE ELE VENTH DISCO URSE.
our high estimation of such pictures, without considering, or
perhaps without knowing the subject, shows how much our
attention is engaged by the art alone.
Perhaps nothing that we can say will so clearly show the
advantage and excellence of this faculty, as that it confers
the character of Genius on works that pretend to no other
merit; in which is neither expression, character, or dignity,
and where none are interested in the subject. We cannot
refuse the character of Genius to the marriage of Paolo
Veronese without opposing the general sense of mankind
(great authorities have called it the triumph of Painting), or
to the altar of St. Augustine at Antwerp, by Rubens,
which equally deserves that title, and for the same reason.
Neither of those pictures have any interesting story to
support them. That of Paolo Veronese is only a repre-
sentation of a great concourse of people at a dinner; and
the subject of Rubens, if it may be called a subject where
nothing is doing, is an assembly of various Saints that
lived in different ages. The whole excellence of those
pictures consists in mechanical dexterity, working, however,
under the influence of that comprehensive faculty which I
have so often mentioned.
It is by this, and this alone, that the mechanical power is
ennobled, and raised much above its natural rank. And it
appears to me, that with propriety it acquires this character,
as an instance of that superiority with which mind pre-
dominates over matter, by contracting into one whole what
nature has made multifarious.
The great advantage of this idea of a whole is, that a
greater quantity of truth may be said to be contained and
expressed in a few lines or touches than in the most
laborious finishing of the parts where this is not regarded.
It is upon this foundation that it stands; and the justness
our high estimation of such pictures, without considering, or
perhaps without knowing the subject, shows how much our
attention is engaged by the art alone.
Perhaps nothing that we can say will so clearly show the
advantage and excellence of this faculty, as that it confers
the character of Genius on works that pretend to no other
merit; in which is neither expression, character, or dignity,
and where none are interested in the subject. We cannot
refuse the character of Genius to the marriage of Paolo
Veronese without opposing the general sense of mankind
(great authorities have called it the triumph of Painting), or
to the altar of St. Augustine at Antwerp, by Rubens,
which equally deserves that title, and for the same reason.
Neither of those pictures have any interesting story to
support them. That of Paolo Veronese is only a repre-
sentation of a great concourse of people at a dinner; and
the subject of Rubens, if it may be called a subject where
nothing is doing, is an assembly of various Saints that
lived in different ages. The whole excellence of those
pictures consists in mechanical dexterity, working, however,
under the influence of that comprehensive faculty which I
have so often mentioned.
It is by this, and this alone, that the mechanical power is
ennobled, and raised much above its natural rank. And it
appears to me, that with propriety it acquires this character,
as an instance of that superiority with which mind pre-
dominates over matter, by contracting into one whole what
nature has made multifarious.
The great advantage of this idea of a whole is, that a
greater quantity of truth may be said to be contained and
expressed in a few lines or touches than in the most
laborious finishing of the parts where this is not regarded.
It is upon this foundation that it stands; and the justness