mirer, and has done much to impress us with the beauties of his Last Supper, in the Refectory of the Dominicans at Milan, which he abandoned likewise without finishing the head of Christ, exhausted by a wild chase after models for the heads and hands of the apostles: had he been able to conceive the centre, the radii must have followed of course.' Towards the beginning of the century in which Leonardo da Vinci was born, the use of oil was adopted as a vehicle for painting, and afforded the means of most extensive improvements, particularly in color and effect. The methods to which the former execution of the art had been restricted (namely, distemper, in colors mixed with size and water, and afterwards fresco) were of a limited nature, especially the latter, in which, no means being given to change or retouch the colors without manifest detriment to the work, the artist was hampered in his plan of conduct and management of design. The invention of oil-painting remedied this disadvantage; and, as it allowed endless variety in effects as well as disposition of colors, together with complete harmony throughout the whole, the fancy of the artist was now permitted to take its full swing, and to produce enchantments which successive ages have not been sufficient to dissolve or even weaken.

The circumstance of varnishing over pictures which had been painted in water colors is thought, and perhaps justly, to have been that which led to this important discovery. John Van Eyck, who flourished at Brussels in 1410, is the artist to whom the first exercise of painting with colors ground and mixed with oil has been attributed. At all events, if he was not the first who actually applied it to the purposes of his art, it was he who first made effectual use of it. In any other case, his application of the system would not, to use the words of Vanmander, have made as much noise in the world as the discovery of gunpowder by Bertoldo Schwartz had done nearly a century before.' According to this same writer, the art of painting had been carried into Flanders, about the time of Giotto, by some Flemings, who went to Italy for the purpose of receiving instruction in it; and he goes on to describe it as having been practised with gum and eggs, at its first commencement, by Cimabue.' The Germans, likewise, acquired the art about the same time; but its most succesful progress and achievements were confined to the classic countries of Italy.

'Bartolomeo della Porta, or di S. Marco, the last master of this period, first gave gradation to color, form and masses to drapery, and a grave dignity, till then unknown, to execution. If he was not endowed with the versatility and comprehension of Leonardo, his principles were less mixed with base matter, and less apt to mislead him. As a member of a religious order, he confined himself to subjects and characters of piety; but the few nudities which he allowed himself to exhibit show sufficient intelligence and still more style he foreshortened with truth and boldness; and, whenever the figure admitted of it, made his drapery the vehicle of the limb it invests. He was the true master of Raffaelle,

whom his tuition weaned from the meanness of Pietro Perugino, and prepared for the mighty style of Michel Angiolo Buonarrotti.

Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner, are the elements of Michel Angiolo's style. By these principles he selected or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as architect, he attempted, and above any other man succeeded, to unite magnificence of plan, and endless variety of subordinate parts, with the utmost simplicity and breadth. His line is uniformly grand: character and beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to grandeur. The child, the female, meanness, deformity, were by him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impressed with dignity; his women are moulds of generation; his infants teem with the man; his men are a race of giants. This is the terribil via' hinted at by Agostino Caracci, though perhaps as little understood by the Bolognese as by the blindest of his Tuscan adorers, with Vasari at their head. To give the appearance of perfect ease to the most perplexing difficulty was the exclusive power of Michel Angiolo. He is the inventor of epic painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine chapel, which exhibits the origin, the progress, and the final dispensations of theocracy. He has personified motion in the groups of the cartoon of Pisa; embodied sentiment on the monuments of St. Lorenzo; unravelled the features of meditation in the prophets and sybils of the chapel of Sextus; and in the Last Judgment, with every attitude that varies the human body, traced the master-trait of every passion that sways the human heart. Though, as sculptor, he expressed the character of flesh more perfectly than all who went before or came after him, yet he never submitted to copy an individual, Julio the second only excepted, and in him he represented the reigning passion rather than the man. In painting he contented himself with a negative color; and, as the painter of mankind, rejected all meretricious ornament. The fabric of St. Peter, scattered into an infinity of jarring parts by Bramante and his successors, he concentrated; suspended the cupola, and to the most complex gave the air of the most simple of edifices. Such, take him all in all, was M. Angiolo, the salt of art: sometimes he no doubt had his moments of dereliction, deviated into manner, or perplexed the grandeur of his forms with futile and ostentatious anatomy: he met with armies of copyists, and it has been his fate to have been censured for their folly.

"The inspiration of Michel Angiolo was followed by the milder genius of Raffaelle Sanzio, the father of dramatic painting, the painter of humanity; less elevated, less vigorous, but more insinuating, more pressing on our hearts, the warm master of our sympathies. What effect of human connexion, what feature of the mind, from the gentlest emotion to the most fervid burst of passion, has been left unobserved, has not received a characteristic stamp from that examiner of man? M. Angiolo came to nature, nature came to Raffaelle-he transmitted her

features like a lucid glass unstained, unmodified. We stand with awe before M. Angiolo, and tremble at the height to which he elevates us— we embrace Raffaelle, and follow him wherever he leads us. Energy, with propriety of character and modest grace, poise his line, and determine his correctness. Perfect human beauty he has not represented; no face of Raffaelle's is perfectly beautiful; no figure of his, in the abstract, possesses the proportions that could raise it to a standard of imitation: form to him was only a vehicle of character or pathos, and to those he adapted it in a mode and with a truth which leaves all attempts at emendation hopeless. His invention connects the utmost stretch of possibility with the most plausible degree of probability, in a manner that equally surprises our fancy, persuades our judgment, and affects our heart. His composition always hastens to the most necessary point as its centre, and from that disseminates, to that leads back, as rays, all secondary ones. Group, form, and contrast, are subordinate to the event, and common-place ever excluded. His expression, in strict unison with, and decided by, character, whether calm, animated, agitated, convulsed, or absorbed by inspiring passion, unmixed and pure, never contradicts its cause, equally remote from tameness and grimace: the moment of his choice never suffers the action to stagnate or to expire; it is the moment of transition, the crisis big with the past and pregnant with the future.-If, separately taken, the line of Raffaelle has been excelled in correctness, elegance, and energy; his color far surpassed in tone, and truth, and harmony; his masses in roundness, and his chiaro-scuro in effect-considered as instruments of pathos, they have never been equalled; and in composition, invention, expression, and the power of telling a story, he has never been approached.

Whilst the superior principles of the art were receiving the homage of Tuscany and Rome, the inferior but more alluring charm of color began to spread its fascination at Venice, from the pallet of Giorgione da Castel Franco, and irresistibly entranced every eye that approached the magic of Titiano Vecelli of Cadore. To no colorist before or after him did nature unveil herself with that dignified familiarity in which she appeared to Titiano. His skill, universally and equally fit for all her exhibitions, rendered her simplest to her most compound appearances with equal purity and truth. He penetrated the essence and the general principle of the substances before him, and on these established his theory of color. He invented that breadth of local tint which no imitation has attained; and first expressed the negative nature of shade: his are the charms of glazing, and the mystery of reflexes, by which he detached, rounded, connected, or enriched his objects. His harmony is less indebted to the force of light and shade, or the artifices of contrast, than to a due balance of color, equally remote from monotony and spots. His backgrounds seem to be dictated by nature. Landscape, whether it be considered as the transcript of a spot, or the rich combination of congenial objects, or as the scene of a phenomenon, dates its origin from him: he is the father of VOL. XVI.

portrait painting, of resemblance with form, character with dignity, and costume with subordination.

'Another charm was yet wanting to complete the round of art-harmony: it appeared with Antonio Læti, called Correggio, whose works it attended like an enchanted spirit. The harmony and the grace of Correggio are proverbial: the medium which by breadth of gradation unites two opposite principles-the coalition of light and darkness by imperceptible transition-is the element of his style. This inspires his figures with grace, to this their grace is subordinate: the most appropriate, the most elegant attitudes were adopted, rejected, perhaps sacrificed to the most awkward ones, in compliance with this imperious principle: parts vanished, were absorbed, or emerged in obedience to it. This unison of a whole predominates over all that remains of him, from the vastness of his cupolas to the smallest of his oil pictures. The harmony of Correggio, though assisted by exquisite hues, was entirely independent of color: his great organ was chiaro-scuro in its most extensive sense; compared with the expanse in which he floats, the effects of Lionardo da Vinci are little more than the dying ray of evening, and the concentrated flash of Giorgione discordant abruptness. The bland central light of a globe, imperceptibly gliding through lucid demitints into rich reflected shades, composes the spell of Correggio, and affects us with the soft emotions of a delicious dream.'

The patronage which the art had enjoyed in Italy, from the commencement of its restoration, kept pace with its progress, and was at length perfected by Julius II. and Leo X: at Rome, and by the truly illustrious family of the Medici at Florence. Cosmo di Medici, at the same time that his care and thoughts were directed to the state affairs of the latter province, still found time and means to watch over the development of the fine arts. His grandson Lorenzo (surnamed the Magnificent), who became his successor A. D. 1464, carried these elegant tastes to a still greater extent, and increased, among other praiseworthy actions, that mass of ancient relics which the industrious search prescribed by his predecessor had collected, and which adorned the Medici palace. Desirous of stimulating his countrymen to a succesful rivalry with these invaluable treasures, Lorenzo threw open his gardens, wherein they had been deposited, as a school for study, and honored both his own discrimination and the consummate ability of the artist by placing Michel Angiolo at the head of it. By the influence of this potentate, principally, the council hall of the Florentine republic (which had been shortly before rebuilt), was adorned with paintings by Michel Angiolo and Lionardo da Vinci, each being allotted one side of the hall for the exercise of his talents. This may be considered as the first instance of any moment of public civil employment being given to the painters of Italy; their chief exertions having been previously restricted to the decoration of religious edifices.

The internal discords which about this period began to engross the attention of the Florentines 2 G

prevented them from continuing to patronise the arts as they had done; and, added to this, Julius II., who then filled the papal chair, aware of the splendor and glory attached to a state by the successful cultivation of the fine arts, summoned to Rome both Raffaelle and Michel Angiolo, who, under his auspices, began those inimitable works in the Vatican which every judicious artist or amateur both thinks and speaks of with enthusiasm. Leo X., his successor, was son of Lorenzo di Medici, and thus possessed a double stimulus, both from the example of his father and his predecessor, to encourage and preside over art. We use but weak words when we say this stimulus was not disregarded. It served to direct the efforts of painting towards the service and splendor of the church over which he swayed, of his rank as a secular sovereign, and of himself as one of the Medici. Thus was the principal seat of the arts transferred from Florence to Rome; which gradually became, in consequence of its many combined advantages, a complete university of art, and the resort of all such as were ambitious to excel therein; and thus may be said to have terminated in the reign of Leo X. the second grand epoch of the

art.

The resemblance which marked the two first periods of ancient and modern art vanishes altogether as we extend our view to the consideration of the third, or that of refinement, and the origin of schools. The pre-eminence of ancient art, as we have observed, was less the result of superior powers, than of simplicity of aim and uniformity of pursuit. The Helladic and the Ionian schools appear to have concurred in directing their instruction to the grand principles of form and expression: this was the stamen which they drew out into one immense connected web. The talents that succeeded genius applied and directed their industry and polish to decorate the established system, the refinements of taste, grace, sentiment, color, adorned beauty, grandeur, and expression. The Tuscan, the Roman, the Venetian, and the Lombard schools, whether from incapacity, want of education, of adequate or dignified encouragement, meanness of conception, or all these together, separated, and in a short time substituted the medium for the end. Michel Angiolo lived to see the electric shock which his design and style had given to art, propagated by the Tuscan and Venetian schools, as the ostentatious vehicle of puny conceits and emblematic quibbles, or the palliative of empty pomp and degraded luxuriance of color. He had been copied but was not imitated by Andrea Vannuchi, surnamed del Sarto, who in his series of pictures on the life of John the Baptist, in preference adopted the meagre style of Albert Durer. The artist who appears to have penetrated deepest to his mind was Pelegrino Tibaldi of Bologna; celebrated as the painter of the frescoes in the Academic Institution of that city, and as the architect of the Escurial under Philip II. The compositions, groups, and single figures of the Institute exhibit a singular mixture of extraordinary vigor and puerile imbecility of conception, of character and caricature, of style and

manner. Polypheme groping at the mouth of his cave for Ulysses, and Æolus granting him favorable winds, are striking instances of both: than the Cyclops, Michel Angiolo himself never conceived a form of savage energy with attitude and limbs more in unison; whilst the god of winds is degraded to a scanty and ludicrous semblance of Thersites, and Ulysses with his companions travestied by the semibarbarous look and costume of the age of Constantine or Attila; the manner of Michel Angiolo is the style of Pelegrino Tibaldi; from him Golzius, Hemskirk, and Spranger, borrowed the compendium of the Tuscan's peculiarities. With this mighty talent, however, Michel Angiolo seems not to have been acquainted: but by that unaccountable weakness incident to the greatest powers, and the severe remembrancer of their vanity, he became the superintendent and assistant tutor of the Venetian Sebastiano, and of Daniel Ricciarelli, of Volterra; the first of whom, with an exquisite eye for individual, had no sense for ideal color, whilst the other rendered great diligence and much anatomical erudition useless, by meagreness of line and sterility of ideas: how far Michel Angiolo succeeded in initiating either in his principles, the far famed pictures of the Resuscitation of Lazarus, by the first (once in the cathedral of Narbonne, and now one of the chief ornaments of the British National Gallery), and the fresco of the Descent from the Cross (in the church of La Trinità del Monte), at Rome, by the second, sufficiently evince: pictures which combine the most heterogeneous principles. The group of Lazarus in Sebastiano del Piombo's, and that of the women, with the figure of Christ, in Daniel Ricciarelli's, not only breathe the sublime conception that inspired, but the master hand that shaped them : offsprings of Michel Angiolo himself, models of expression, style, and breadth, they cast on all the rest an air of inferiority, and only serve to prove the incongruity of partnership between unequal powers; this inferiority, however, is respectable when compared with the depravations of Michel Angiolo's style by the remainder of the Tuscan school, especially those of Giorgio Vasari, the most superficial artist, and the most abandoned mannerist of his time, but the most acute observer of men, and the most dexterous flatterer of princes. He overwhelmed the palaces of the Medici and of the popes, the convents and churches of Italy, with a deluge of mediocrity, commended by rapidity and shameless

bravura' of hand: he alone did more work than all the artists of Tuscany together, and to him may be truly applied, what he had the insolence to say of Tintoretto, that he turned the art into a boy's toy.'

Giulio Romano was the most eminent of the pupils of Raffaelle; but though, like his illustrious master, impressed with the stupendous views and style of Buonarotti, he had by no means equal force of judgment, or delicacy of taste, to guide him in his application of these qualities. It is not so much from his tutored works in the Vatican that we are to judge of the best achievements of Romano as from the grand conceptions, the pathetic or sublime allegories,

and the luxurious reveries which constitute the principal charm of the palace del T, near Mantua: had the artist united purer taste with loftiness of imagination, the magnitude of these performances would perhaps have distanced all competition: but, as it is, they have been likened to a mighty stream, sometimes flowing in a full and limpid vein, but oftener turbid with rubbish. Besides this celebrated artist, Parmegiano, Tintoretto, Polydori, and Caravaggi, were amongst the most skilful of those who continued to uphold the practise of art with ability. artist ever painted his own mind so powerfully as did Michel Angiolo Amerigi, surnamed Il Caravaggi. To none did nature ever set limits with a more decided hand. Darkness gave him light; into his melancholy cell light stole only with-a pale reluctant ray, or broke on it as flashes in a stormy night. The most vulgar forms he recommended by ideal light and shade, and a tremendous breadth of manner.'

No

Titian and Correggio had, in point of the adoption of their respective principles, fates 'widely different. That of the former being less pure in itself, and less decided in its object of imitation, than either Angiolo's or Raffaelle's, suffered comparatively less from the various applications of it by his followers. It had besides for its support the irresistible fascinations of color, which speak to every spectator, and hence was successfully pursued for a considerable time. But the principle of Correggio was not calculated for this species of longevity. It vanished with its author. His expansive breadth of light; His inexpressible grace (so much talked of, yet so little understood); his perfect harmony and depth of tone have never been otherwise than partially imitated. Parmegiano may be considered to have imbibed his style the most fully. This admirable artist, was, like Raffaelle and Giorgione, abstracted from this world in early manhood, and perhaps before the complete capabilities of his mind had been developed.

Such was the condition of the art when, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Caracci (Ludovico, Agostino, and Annibale), founded at Bologna that Eclectic School, the aim of which was, by selecting the beauties, correcting the faults, supplying the defects, and avoiding the extremes of the different styles then practised, to establish a perfect system. The plan was laid down by Agostino Caracci in the following

sonnet :

Chi farsi un buon Pittor cerca, e desia,
Il disegno di Roma habbia alla mano.
La mossa coll' ombrar Veneziano,
E il degno colorir di Lombardia.
Di Michel' Angiol la terribil via,
Il vero natural di Tiziano,

Del Correggio lo stil puro, e sovrano,
E di un Rafel la giusta simetria.
Del Tibaldi il decoro, e il fondamento,
Del dotto Primaticcio l'inventare,
E un po di gratia del Parmigianino.
Ma senza tanti studi, e tanto stento,
Si ponga l'opre solo ad imitare,

Che qui lasciocci il nostro Niccolino. 'Take,' says Agostino, the design of Rome, Venetian motion and shade, the dignified tone of

Lombardy's color, the terrible manner of Michel Angiolo, the just symmetry of Raffaelle, Titiano's truth of nature, and the sovereign purity of Correggio's style: add to these the decorum and solidity of Tibaldi, the learned invention of Primaticcio, and a little of Parmegiano's grace; but to save so much study, such weary labor, apply your imitation to the works which our dear Nicolo has left us here.' This tone of advice has, it must be confessed, very much the character of a good receipt for making blacking; and it is the more curious that it should be so, inasmuch as the object proposed by these celebrated relatives, although not effectually attained, yet was sufficiently so to arrest for awhile the backward progress of the art. Ludovico, indeed, instead of blindly following the dictates of any master or masters, was the decided pupil of nature: by the simplicity and purity of his taste and execution not only surpassing his kinsmen, Annibale and Agostino, but in a considerable degree restoring the art once more to its first and greatest principles. Annibale, it is true, disputed the point vigorously by his energetic execution and academic acquirement; but the work on which his fame chiefly reposes (the gallery of the Farnese palace at Rome), proves, that if superior to both of his kinsmen in those accomplishments, he was inferior to either in taste, sentiment, or discrimination.

6

Sir Joshua Reynolds, who saw the works of Ludovico Caracci at Bologna, holds him out, in his Discourses, as the best model for what is more specifically denominated style in painting. Ludovico Caracci,' says he (I mean in his best works), appears to me to approach the nearest to perfection. His unaffected breadth of light and shadow, the simplicity of coloring, which, holding its proper rank, does not draw aside the least part of the attention from the subject, and the solemn effect of that twilight which seems diffused over his pictures appears to me to correspond with grave and dignified subjects better than the more artificial brilliancy of sunshine which enlightens the pictures of Titian. The school formed by the Caracci for the improvement of their art was entitled L'Academi degli Desiderosi, but is better recognised as the Academy of the Caracci, and gave rise to many artists of high name and merited celebrity. But these individuals soon threw aside, at least as completely as they could, the heterogeneous principle on which it was founded, each following the dictates of his own uncontrolled imagination, and differing from his fellow students as well in manner as in objects of imitation. The greatest of these names is that of Guido Rheni, whose grace, although exquisite, was yet artificial; his female forms, more especially, may be considered as abstracts of antique beauty, attended by languishing attitudes, and dressed in voluptuous attire. Domenichino comes next, who, unusually obedient to the prescription of his master, strove to combine with the expression of Raffaelle the energy of Annibale Caracci, and the color of Ludovico, Schidone, Lanfranco, Guercino, each studied in the school of the Caracci; but the indefinite nature of its system soon wrought its downfall.

From this period is to be dated the rapid decline of the art in Italy. Da Cortona and Giordana both possessed great powers, but abused them by yielding implicitly to the tasteless suggestions of their employers. Nicholas Poussin, a Frenchman, but grafted on the Roman stock, placed himself in the gap, and endeavoured to stem the torrent of corrupted taste. He reverted, for his models to the pure source of Grecian art: indeed, such was his attachment to the an-. cients, that he has been said to have copied their relics rather than imitated their spirit. The costume, the mythology, the rites of antiquity, were his elements; his scenery, his landscape, are pure classic ground. The wildness of Salvator Rosa opposes a striking contrast to the classic regularity of Poussin. Terrific and grand in his conceptions of inanimate nature, he was reduced to attempts of hiding, by boldness of hand, his inability of exhibiting her impassioned, or in the dignity of character. With Poussin and Salvator closes all record worth notice of the history of the art in Italy.

The first name which claims our attention, in noticing the progress of painting in Germany, is that of Albert Durer. This man's talents were various, his compositions the result of deep study, his thoughts ingenious, his colors brilliant. On the other hand he has been blamed for stiffness and aridity in his outlines, for the absence of taste or grandeur in his expression, for ignorance of costume, of aerial perspective, and of gradation of colors. Lucas of Leyden was Durer's most successful rival, unless we except Holbein, who, if he did not equal him in composition, unquestionably surpassed him, and that greatly, in portrait.

The history of the art in the neighbouring countries of Flanders and Holland is not distinct from that of Germany until the appearance of those two meteors of art Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt Van Rhyn. The former of these extraordinary men produced an immense number of works. He excelled alike in historical painting, in portrait and landscape, in fruit, flowers, and animals. He both invented and executed with the utmost facility; and, to show the extent of his powers, frequently made a great number of sketches of the same subject altogether different, and without allowing any time to elapse between them. His figures appear to be the exact counterpart of his conceptions, and their creation nothing more than a simple act of the will. He had great knowledge of anatomy, but was often hurried away by the impetuosity of his imagination, and his ardor for execution. He preferred splendor to beauty of form, and occasionally sacrificed correctness of design to the magic of color. In short, the qualities of Rubens, generally speaking, indicate a mind full of fire and vigor rather than accuracy or profound thought.

It appears evident, from the works of Rubens, that his method of painting was to lay the colors in their place one at the side of another, and mix them afterwards by a slight touch of the pencil. Titian mingled his tints as they are in nature, in such a manner as to render it impossible to discover where they began or terminated;

the effect is evident, the labor is concealed. Thus Rubens is more dazzling, and Titian more harmonious. In this respect, the first excites the attention, the second fixes it. The carnations of Titian resemble the blush of nature; those of Rubens are brilliant and polished like satin, and sometimes even his tints are so strong and separate, as to have the effect of spots. 'Rubens,' says Sir Joshua Reynolds, is a remarkable instance of the same mind being seen in all the various parts of the art. The whole is so much of a piece, that one can scarce be brought to believe but that, if any one of them had been more correct and perfect, his works would not be so complete as they appear. If we should allow a greater purity and correctness of drawing, his want of simplicity in composition, coloring, and drapery would appear more gross.' He was truly the father of Flemish art, so remarkable for brilliancy of coloring, for exactness of drawing, and the magic of their chiaroscuro. To these may be added profound arrangement, though not exercised on the most beautiful forms; a composition not destitute of grandeur, a certain air of nobleness in the figures, strong and natural expression; in short, to speak generally, a species of art neither copied from the ancients, nor from the Roman or Lombard schools, and indeed unknown to any other part of the world; and which, during the course of the seventeenth century, furnished those countries wherein it arose with innumerable works of the greatest perfection in their kind.

Rembrandt was a genius of the first order, if we except what relates to form, and in him the choice of low figures is the more offensive, as his compositions frequently required the very opposite. As his father was a miller near Leyden, his education must altogether have depended on the exertion of great talents, and the study of nature. He studied the grotesque figure of a Dutch peasant, or the servant of an inn, with as much application as the greatest masters of Italy would have studied the Apollo Belvidere or the Venus de Medici. In spite, however, of the most portentous deformity, and without dwelling on the spell of his chiaro-scuro, such were his powers of nature, such the grandeur, pathos, or simplicity of his composition, from the most elevated or extensive arrangement to the meanest or most homely, that the best cultivated eye, the purest sensibility, and the most refined taste, are equally fascinated by them. Like Shakspeare he combined transcendant excellence with many even unpardonable faults, and reconciled us to them. He possessed the complete empire of light and skade, and of all the tints which float between them. He tinged his pencil, with equal success, in the cool of dawn, in the noontide ray, in the livid flash, in evanescent twilight, and rendered darkness visible. Though made to bend a stedfast eye on the bolder phenomena of nature, he knew how to follow her into her calmest abodes, gave interest to insipidity or baldness, and plucked a flower in every desert.' 'Rembrandt's manner of painting (says M. Descamps) is a kind of magic. No artist knew better the