Note 247 — Chapter I

The above passage is open to criticism. Hegel hardly makes allowance for the fact that the defective technique, so far as it is defective, of the earlier masters, was mainly due to their state of knowledge. Art was, in a certain aspect of technique, in its infancy. Moreover to compare Dutch landscape with that of Bellini or Raphael is to compare things that are each unique of their kind and not comparable. Their aim was entirely different. In such pictures as the San Sisto Madonna of Raphael, the great Crucifixion of Tintoret, or the Entombment of Titian it is quite impossible to maintain that the earnestness of conception is in any way inferior to the technique, although we have no doubt a different degree of conviction expressed by Fra Angelico. And the classical landscape of Titian or Tintoret is of its type supreme.