Note 6 — CHAP. I.
Reading edition
Dial. Ὑπὲρ τῶν Εἰκόνων—Καὶ τοὶ παλαιὸς οὕτος ὁ λόγος, ἀνευθύνους εἶναι Ποιητὰς καὶ Γραφέας. The Greek word ἀνευθύνους, used here, literally signifies that Poets and Painters are not obliged to give any account of their actions. Horace has also expressed a thought of the same kind with regard to them, in his Ars Poetica, “Painters and Poets have always equally enjoyed the power of daring every thing.”
Pictoribus atque Poëtis Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas. A. P. v. 9, 10.
The complaints of our Author with respect to the loose which Painters have been used to give to their own fancy, when they have treated religious subjects, are well grounded; and persons who have travelled in Catholic Countries cannot but have taken notice of the freedom that prevails in their Church-pictures: hence a number of stories are related among them of Nuns, or other Women, who have fallen in love with naked figures of Angels and Saints, and of Men who have been led into extravagances by the passion they had conceived for certain statues, or pictures. As to errors concerning facts merely, and faults against the Costume, which our Author seems more particularly to allude to, in this Chapter, they are certainly very frequent in the works of Painters: even the first among them, such as Paul Veronese and others, are reproached with capital ones. On this occasion the Writer of this Commentary thinks he may relate what he himself has seen in a Country Church in Germany, in which a Painter, who had intended to represent the Sacrifice of Isaac, had so far availed himself of the potestas quidlibet audendi, mentioned above, that he had represented Abraham with a blunderbuss in his hand, ready to shoot his son, and an Angel, suddenly come down from Heaven, pouring water on the pan.