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LETTER

CONTAINING

OBJECTIONS against the foregoing

REFLEXIONS.

SIR,

AS you have written on the Greek arts and artifts, I wish had made your

you

treatise as much the object of your caution as the Greek artifts made their works ; which, before difmiffing them, they exhibited to publick view, in order to be examined by every body, and especially by competent judges of the art. The trial was held during the grand, chiefly the Olympian, games; and all Greece was interested on Ætion's producing his picture of the nuptials of Alexander and Roxana. You, Sir, wanted a Proxenidas

to be judged by, as well as that artist; and had it not been for your mysterious concealment, I might have communicated your treatise, before its publication, to fome learned men and connoiffeurs of my acquaintance, without mentioning the author's name.

One of them vifited Italy twice, where he devoted all his time to a most anxious examination of painting, and particularly x feveral months to each eminent picture, at the very place where it was painted; the only method, you know, to form a connoiffeur. The judgment of a man able to tell you which of Guido's altar-pieces is painted on taffeta, or linnen, what fort of wood Raphael chofe for his transfiguration, &c. the judgment of fuch a man, I fancy, must be allowed to be decifive.

Another of my acquaintance has ftudied antiquity: he knows it by the very finell;:

Callet & Artificem folo deprendere Odore.

Sectan. Sat.

He

He can tell you the number of knots on Hercules's club; has reduced Neftor's goblet to the modern measure: nay, is fufpected of meditating solutions to all the questions propofed by Tiberius to the grammarians.

A third, for feveral years paft, has neglected every thing but hunting after ancient coins. Many a new discovery we owe to him; especially some concerning the history of the ancient coiners; and, as I am told, he is to roufe the attention of the world by a Prodromus concerning the coiners of Cyzicum.

What a number of reproaches might you have escaped, had you fubmitted your Effay to the judgment of these gentlemen! they were pleased to acquaint me with their objections, and I fhould be forry, for your honour, to fee them published.

Among other objections, the firft is furprized at your paffing by the two Angels, in your description of the Raphael in the royal cabinet at Dresden; having been told, that a Bolognese painter, in mentioning this piece, which

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vode p. 37.

which he saw at St. Sixtus's at Piacenza, breaks into these terms of admiration: O!

what Angels of Paradife! by which he fuppofes thofe Angels to be the most beautiful figures of the picture.

The fame person would reproach you for having described that picture in the manner of Raguenet".

The fecond concludes the beard of Laocoon to be as worthy of your attention as his contracted belly: for every admirer of Greek works, fays he, muft pay the fame refpect to the beard of Laocoon, which father Labat paid to that of the Moses of Michael Angelo.

This learned Dominican,

Qui mores hominum multorum vidit & urbes,

has, after fo many centuries, drawn from

a Lettere d'alcuni Bolognefi, Vol. I. p. 159.

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Compare a description of a St. Sebaftian of Beccafumi, another of a Hercules and Antæus of Lan

franc, &c. in Raguenet's Monumens de Rome, Paris, 12mo.

this

this very ftatue an evident proof of the true fashion in which Mofes wore his own individual beard, and whofe imitation muft, of course, be the diftinguishing mark of every true Jew.

There is not the leaft fpark of learning, fays he, in your remarks on the Peplon of the three vestals: he might perhaps, on the very inflection of the veil, have discovered to you as many curiofities as Cuper himself found on the edge of the veil of Tragedy in the Apotheofis of Homer *.

We also want proof of the vestals being

• Labat voyage en Espagne & en Ital. T.III. p.213. "Michel Ange étoit auffi favant dans l'antiquité que dans l'anatomie, la sculpture, la peinture, et "l'architecture; et puifqu'il nous a representé Moyfe " avec une fi belle et fi longue barbe, il eft fûr, et "doit paffer pour conftant, que le prophete la por"toit ainfi; et par une confequence neceffaire les "Juifs, qui pretendent le copier avec exactitude, et "qui font la plus grande partie de leur religion de ❝ l'obfervance des usages qu' il a laissé, doivent avoir « de la barbe comme lui, ou renoncer à la qualité "de Juifs."

Apotheof. Homeri, p. 81, 82.