in which the understanding has no part
*
back of Plate III. Fig. 1. “Represents the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian.”
in John Burnet (1781-1868 *). Practical Hints on Colour in Painting : Illustrated by Examples from the Works of the Venetian, Flemish, and Dutch Schools. London, 1827.
UCLA copy, digitized January 17, 2013
—
- ... in which the understanding has no part; and what pretence has art to claim kindred with poetry, but its powers over the imagination?...
- The grand style of painting requires this minute attention to be carefully avoided, and must be kept as separate from it as the style of poetry from that of history. Poetical ornaments destroy that air of truth and plainness which ought to characterise history; but the very being of poetry consists in departing from this plain narration, and adopting every ornament that will warm the imagination...
- The attention to these petty peculiarities is the very cause of this naturalness, so much admired in the Dutch pictures, which, if we suppose it to be a beauty, is certainly of a lower order, that ought to give place to a beauty of a superior kind, since one cannot be obtained but by departing from the other.
p 24
tags:
deserts; lower order; paradoxes; peculiarities
John Burnet, Practical Hints on Colour (1827)