Note 105 — ESSAYS. (continued 2)

No one can be more sensible than I am of the great merits of the modern German artists. Yet I think they have carried their admiration of the ancients to excess in some points, and I cannot but consider the outlines of Riepenhausen, intended to illustrate the descent of Ulysses, by Polygnotus, a proof of it. Surely a German should have looked at Hemelink, and at the history of St. Paul, at Augsburg, by the elder Holbein, where he would have found that a double story, or even one of many parts, can be treated without violating common sense, or the rules of painting.