DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF PAINTING COMPARED.

“The painters of the Roman school were the best designers, and had more of the antique taste in their works than any of the others, but generally they were not good colorists. Those of Florence were good designers, and had a kind of greatness, but it was not antique. The Venetian and Lombard schools had excellent colorists, and a certain grace, but entirely modern, especially those of Venice; but their drawing was generally incorrect, and their knowledge in history and the antique very little. And the Bolognese school of the Caracci is a sort of composition of the others; even Annibal himself possessed not any part of painting in the perfection which is to be seen in those from whom his manner is composed, though, to make amends, he possessed more parts than perhaps any other master, and all in a very high degree. The works of those of the German school have a dryness and ungraceful stiffness, not unlike what is seen amongst the old Florentines. The Flemings were good colorists, and imitated nature as they conceived it—that is, instead of raising nature, they fell below it, though not so much as the Germans, nor in the same manner. Rubens himself lived and died a Fleming, though he would fain have been an Italian; but his imitators have caricatured his manner—that is, they have been more Rubens in his defects than he himself was, but without his excellencies. The French, excepting some few of them (N. Poussin, Le Sueur, Sebastian Bourdon), as they have not the German stiffness nor the Flemish ungracefulness, neither have they the Italian solidity; and in their airs of heads and manners they are easily distinguished from the antique, how much soever they may have endeavored to imitate it.”—Richardson.