over-head. That "men seek truth in their own little world, and not in the great and common world," has been amply exemplified in connexion with art. The microcosm of individual and partial notions has there, as in every other subject, too frequently been made to regulate the decisions of judgment.

The nature of the colour of Venetian painting is a condition merely of the essential character of the Venetian school, not that in itself. The colour, and also the form and light of Giorgione and Titian, and to a certain extent of their predecessors, but still more eminently of their successors, are dependent upon the ultimate relation of their works. The individually varied styles of the Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Bonifazio, the elder Palma, and Schiavone,* with those others who may be considered to belong to this school, have one basement. While they differ in certain particulars, each exhibiting that variety which immediately distinguishes his works, they are bound together by one general intention or reference. From the time of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, (before which none of the schools of revived art had made any very distinct endexis of their particular character-all having, with considerable similarity, been step by step progressing in the use of the language of art, regulated in the mode of their productions by the type which had been founded upon those sentiments in connexion with which it had re-appeared) -from his time to that of the younger Palma, when deterioration had become apparent, Venetian painting is directed by one predominating object, by which it is separated from the other schools of the same period, and in obedience to the dictates of which, its style of form, colour, and light and shade, originated. These, however, as means or portions of the language of painting, are each differently adapt. ed, from their specific nature, to con

stitute an efficient medium in working out or substantiating this primary end; in connexion with which they are also employed with different degrees of success. In both respectsin efficiency, and in the degree of power with which it has been employed to enunciate the express use or end of the painting of Titian and his followers - colour becomes an obvious and striking feature of their art; and hence has been considered to be its ultimate distinction.

Another designation, still less adequate to express the character of Venetian painting, has been applied to itthat of the Ornamental School. But the sense attached to the term has not been defined. Whether, however, it is to be understood to apply to sentiment of an universal or of a factitious kind, or to the mere representation of actual variety or decorative multiplicity of parts, in form, colour, and light- allowing the most extended interpretation to be put upon the titleit is perfectly inapplicable to many of the most important productions of the school of Venice, which most strongly exemplify its particular character. Can the inspissated depth in colour and tone of the Virgin and Saints, by Giovanni Bellini ;† the unengaging substantiality of the Concert Champêtre of Giorgione ; the ponderous solidity of the Assumption of the Virgin, by Titian; § the strength and corrugated impasto of the Virgin in Glory, by Bonifazio; || the sober monotonous uniformity of the St Peter surrounded by Saints, by the elder Palma-can these works, which may be held to represent the greater number of the others of these masters-the roots and stem of Venetian painting-be called ornamental? The attempt, however, to embrace them inclusively under this appellation, speaks the unity which was felt to exist among them, although its nature was not perceived.**

But while colour and ornament are

In the Gallery of the Louvre.

There also.

neither finally constitutive of the distinct nature of this circle of painting and with form, and light and shade, must be considered merely to be the means through which signification is intimated-it must, at the same time, be observed, that they bear a relation to the art of Titian and his school, which is peculiar, and distinct from that which they hold in respect to the works of Michael Angelo and Raphael-a relation upon which their prominence in many instances depends. This, however, will afterwards come to be adverted to.

By these attempts to discriminate the range within which the genius of Titian is most distinctly prominent, it has been abridged and curtailed. A false boundary has been assigned to the wide geometry of his tenure, while, by implication, the erroneous supposition that his style alone, among the painters of Italy, furnished the example of excellence in colour, has originated the misconception, that it should, in every instance, be made the standard of judgment in that respect. The super-materiality of sentiment, to which colour has been rendered subservient, in the tints of the prophets and sibyls of the Capella Sistina, and its purified strength in the Madonna da Foligno, and the Marriage of the Virgin, by Raphael, have been lamented and decried. Thus, as if one language were to be deemed the only tongue which should be employed to convey every diversity of perception and thought, colour, as subjected to the particular range of

Venetian art, has been held alone to present truth or excellence.* But this, by a similar misapprehension, has, on the other hand, been amply retaliated upon the Venetians, in connection with their style of design or form. In respect to this, the Florentine and Roman schoolst have been made the rule of judgment; and however different, or even opposed, their objects are to that of the school of Venice, it has been made to bend to their standard. Weighed against the intellectual reference of the style of Michael Angelo, and the selection or moral preference of Raphael, it has been found wanting. It, however, is not amenable to such a criterion. Its domain is distinct; and the question in such instances should be, shall not each be judged by the particular purpose which constitutes the different law of

each? The separate question, in respect to which is greatest or best in this their final relation-which dictates these and every other portion of their mode or style, and stamps the worth of each as a whole-is, in its turn, dependent upon a still more ultimate connexion, which has before been alluded to,‡-the portion of the mental constitution of which it expresses the operation, in carrying forward and sustaining the existence of humanity in man.

While one system of the mind demands the distinct and separate existence of material being from that which is mental or immaterial, as a basis for its construction, another founds upon the denial of this, and

same school.

proceeds to erect its scheme in idealism or in sensation. But whether the distinction may be questionable or not, supposing it is even denied that the operations of perception should necessarily be brought about by a means which is separate from and not recognisable by the mind-like the gold and ivory of the Jove of Elis, covering a machinery which is unseen-the separation of the mental or relative, and the material or individual, as differing claims of apprehension, as distinct circles of the perceptions of our conscious being, may be entered into and adopted. Through both, humanity or rational life is constituted. The range of human faculty consists in mental existence on the one hand, and animal or material on the other. By the first, which embraces and involves intellection and morality, the distinction of man is asserted in his relation to the perfect or infinite, the relatio inter divos. By the last, his separation or outness from that is sustained. By the one, the spirit of man goeth upwards; by the other, that of the beast goeth downwards. The universal or abstract is the region of the one; nature or individuality, the immediately apprehensible that of the other-the celestial and the sensible of Plato, figured under the allegoric form of Venus ministered unto by the Graces, which signify intellect, choice, and physics, one of whom proceeds outwards, and the others recede into the divine intelligence-a symbol of the unity of existence and the combination of its separate elements, which, although couched in terms connected with a mythos which is imperfectly understood, finds a wretched substitute in the cramped and fragmentary concretions of some later philosophers, encrustations upon the crucibles and retorts of inductive experiment, seen under the glare and dazzle of its lenses and prisms.

It is in connexion with this distinction, that the ultimate and final discrimination of the works of Titian must be made, in which must be found that difference which separates them from

those of Buonarotti and Urbino, and led to the adoption of those qualities of form, colour, and effect, which they display, as the necessary means by which their intention might be fulfilled.

The reference of the painting of Titian is founded in the sense of the material. Its essential or distinctive nature consists in recognising and signifying the impressions of sensuous being. While Michael Angelo announces the impulsion of the will intellectually opposed to imperfection and suffering, and the works of Raphael intimate intimate the repose of recognised difference in undoubting acceptance or rejection, the result of moral distinction; those of Titian are expressive of material or physical existence. Their object furnishes the antithesis to that of Michael Angelo. To signify the outward, to convey or reiterate the sensations of animal life, is the wide field of the intention of the art of Venice. This is the ground upon which its distinction rests. It is upon this that the strength or separate quality of its signification is built. It is from this that the extent to which this range of art is entered into originates; but at the same time the confined nature of its influence.

Titian in this, the peculiarity of his genius, eminently exemplifies that of the Venetian people. Altogether, Venice intimated, or was exponent of the dominance of the sensual or animal.* The breath of Venetian life was drawn under this influence. It may be said to have constituted the predominating and animating energy of its endeavour, prompting to luxurious enjoyment, and the diffusion of that throughout Europe. In Venice (then possibly the second city of importance in the Christian world) there was an escape from the severity of superior sanctity claimed at least by Rome; but at the same time dereliction from mental dignity-outward existence was all-engrossing. The Queen of the Sea, like the Aphrodisiac goddess born from its waves, acknowledged the ascendency of the empire of sense. the spoils of eastern war, she imported

With

eastern sentiment. The mart of Oriental traffic-the means of transfusing throughout Europe the magnificence and refinement of India and the East, so far as they were then known-Venice existed by administering not more to the needs of physical life than to the desire of variety and the de. mands of luxury. From the marriage of its doge, wedded to the Adriatic by a ring its lengthened carnival

its Duomo-the hoary St Mark's, dark, unequal in its parts, and time-marked, with dome after dome, and arch upon arch, in gold and mosaic, heaped up from time to time during five centuries, figured with the most infantine efforts of art to those of its decadencethe walls of marble of all colours-the pillars of all forms and materials, granite, porphyry, bronze, brass, and cedar-the pavement lined and circled over, swelling and falling, as if every part were to express fluctuation and change-from these traits of its state, its enjoyments, and its religion, to its licensed descendent followers of As. pasia and Lais, with their added numbers imported by order of the senate all are indicative and impressive of this character, exemplified in connexion with a high state of civilisation.

But it may here be necessary to anticipate an objection which may be made that the works of no individual school or master altogether conform to one intention. This, however, is by no means intended to be asserted; and it will be observed, that while the validity of the usual distinctions of the greater names in art are thus called in question, and the discriminations built upon them are held to be unsatisfactory and inconclusive, those distinctions which have been advanced are in conformity with the general sense of the relative station of each. This has necessarily taken place; the data which have been adverted to, being infallibly and universally recognised. The opinion, or in many in stances more properly the predilection, is influenced by them, although they may not be apprehended by the understanding. But that the operation of this may have assumed a definite form, time must have sufficiently distanced things to admit of a distinct and separate view being taken of them.

*

On removing from the usually accepted grounds of discrimination, and the accredited boundaries of excellence, it has not been to invalidate rules of criticism, which are already sufficiently indefinite and unfixed, but to endeavour to establish a foundation for the decisions of the judgment, in essential and ultimate principles-to quit immediate and partial distinctions, in order to gain those by which the different purposes of the various works of painting may be seen in an uninterrupted and distinct view - to endeavour to lead to the possibility of at once perceiving the extent to which those final relations have been approached and sustained in each particular instance, and the various subdivided branches into which art separates under their general laws, with the comparative completeness of style manifested in obedience to them. With this object, those great divisions of the signification of painting intimated by Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Titian, have thus been entered into; but it must be distinctly observed, that, amidst their general exemplification of those characteristics which have been assigned to them, there are many exceptions. There is no sphere which is not, in particular instances, deviated from; and those which we have already assigned, (and, in connexion with the prosecution of the subject, which it may be necessary to assign to others,) are only asserted to be such as within which the proper or distinguishing nature of each is exemplified: not that there is no other in which they may appear and even take a place with success. The ecphonesis of the one is not unfrequently made by the other. Raphael visits the circle of Titian, and Titian enters into that of Raphael. Both have attempted that of Buonarotti, who at times quits his own sphere.* Besides, it must be kept in view, that the substance, or body, of the works of all are the same; not the means or material alone-form, colour, and light-but the unchangeable emotions and passions, which constitute the subject-matter of art; and that it is through the intervention of these, which constitute a general source of sameness, that those distinctions which have been referred to are exemplified. It must also be recollected, that the modes of art (as has been already noticed) of every particular period, in many important respects, cause an uniformity, beyond which it is necessary to look, in order to arrive at the detection of the true grounds of difference or distinction.

In the nature of the painting of Titian, as now stated, according to what we consider that to be, in its essential distinction, the originating cause of those particular modes of form, colour, light, and composition, which it exemplifies, and the species of influence which it exerts, will be found.

It is in obedience to, and in giving expression to the outward or material, as a primary object, that colour becomes the very necessary and eminent portion, of the means of signification in this school. Expression by colour involves a diversity of direct impressions of sense, which are altogether coincident with those of the objects signified, which expression by form is not accompanied by. The distinctions of visual form are mediately produced, and constitute a mental act or perception - those of colour are immediate, and may terminate with a sensation.* It is essentially specific and individualizing; and its importance here arises from these qualities which do not include the wide field of comparison which dependence upon the distinctions of form demands; and also from its power of immediate reference, in connexion with a varied scale of sensation. This is its value in Venetian painting. While the colour of Michael Angelo, in connexion with sensation, approximates to a unity of degree, by an equivalence of tints, upon which a large quantity of light appears to operate; that of

Titian presents that wide variety of sensible impressions, both in kind and in degree, by which the specification of particular classes of things, as expressed by colour, is entered into with forcible discrimination. Thus, in connexion with those peculiar methods adopted in its practice, which endows the colour of the Venetians with a capacity of imitation, which neither the intention nor mode of any other school, (if that of Coreggio is in certain respects excepted,) admitted, or carried into effect; and the science of its combinations; constitutes colour the principal means of their art, in the hands of the Venetians.

Of the instruments or means of expression, the next in importance in the practice of this school, is light and shade. It is made to reproduce individual impressions- to discriminate peculiarity. It exemplifies contrast and opposition; by which a vivid sensation is made. The forcible dismemberment or union of parts is adopted: a varied combination is presented, which at first, like the diversity of nature or individuality, appears to be under no law. Irregularity, and an apparent subjection to accident, seem to deny system or method, and to adopt those unpremeditated combinations which are the result of particular circumstances and occasions.

Form in Venetian painting is generally transcribed or literal, but rendered with a reference to the expression of bulk or of strength. In Titian and Giorgione this is most obvious: a preponderance towards solidity and heaviness, with interruption and discontinuity of parts is the manner, in connexion with which their signification is rendered. ‡

In composition, the same princi