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'make an introspection into my own mind, and into ' that Idea of Beauty, which I have formed in my own imagination. I have likewise created there the con'trary Idea of Deformity and Ugliness; but I leave 'the consideration of it till I paint the Devil, and in 'the mean time shun the very thought of it as much as possibly I can, and am even endeavouring to blot 'it wholly out of my remembrance.' There was not any lady in all antiquity who was mistress of so much beauty, as was to be found in the Venus of Gnidus, made by Praxiteles, or the Minerva of Athens, by Phidias, which was therefore called the Beautiful Form. Neither is there any man of the present age equal in the strength, proportion, and knitting of his limbs, to the Hercules of Farnese, made by Glycon; or any woman who can justly be compared with the Medicean Venus of Cleomenes. And upon this account the noblest Poets and the best Orators, when they desire to celebrate any extraordinary beauty, are forced to have recourse to statues and pictures, and to draw their persons and faces into comparison: Ovid, endeavouring to express the beauty of Cyllarus, the fairest of the Centaurs, celebrates him as next in fection to the most admirable statues :

Gratus in ore vigor, cervix, humerique, manusque,
Pectoraque, artificum laudatis proxima signis.

A pleasing vigour his fair face expressed;
His neck, his hands, his shoulders, and his breast,
Did next in gracefulness and beauty stand,
To breathing figures of the Sculptor's hand.

In another place he sets Apelles above Venus.

Si Venerem Cois nunquam pinxisset Apelles,
Mersa sub æquoreis illa lateret aquis.

per

Thus varied:

One birth to seas the Cyprian Goddess ow'd,
A second birth the Painter's art bestow'd:
Less by the seas than by his pow'r was given;

They made her live, but he advanced to heaven.

"The Idea of this Beauty is indeed various, according to the several forms which the Painter or Sculptor would describe: as one in strength, another in magnanimity; and sometimes it consists in cheerfulness, and sometimes in delicacy, and is always diversified by the sex and age.

"The beauty of Jove is one, and that of Juno another Hercules and Cupid are perfect beauties, though of different kinds; for beauty is only that which makes all things as they are in their proper and perfect nature, which the best Painters always choose, by contemplating the forms of each. We ought

farther to consider, that a picture being the representation of a human action, the Painter ought to retain in his mind the examples of all affections and passions; as a Poet preserves the idea of an angry man, of one who is fearful, sad, or merry; and so of all the rest; for it is impossible to express that with the hand, which never entered into the imagination. In this manner, as I have rudely and briefly shown you, Painters and Sculptors choosing the most elegant natural beauties, perfectionate the Idea, and advance their art, even above Nature itself, in her individual productions, which is the utmost mastery of human performance.

"From hence arises that astonishment, and almost adoration, which is paid by the knowing to those divine remains of antiquity. From hence Phidias, Lysippus, and other noble Sculptors, are still held in veneration; and Apelles, Zeuxis, Protogenes, and

other admirable Painters, though their works are perished, are and will be eternally admired; who all of them drew after the ideas of perfection; which are the miracles of Nature, the providence of the Understanding, the exemplars of the Mind, the light of the Fancy; the sun, which from its rising, inspired the statue of Memnon, and the fire which warmed into life the image of Prometheus; it is this which causes the Graces and the Loves to take up their habitations in the hardest marble, and to subsist in the emptiness of light and shadows. But since the Idea of Eloquence is as inferior to that of Painting as the force of words is to the sight, I must here break off abruptly; and having conducted the reader, as it were, to a secret walk, there leave him in the midst of silence to contemplate those ideas which I have only sketched, and which every man must finish to himself."

In these pompous expressions, or such as these, the Italian has given you his idea of a Painter; and though I cannot much commend the style, I must needs say, there is somewhat in the matter: Plato himself is accustomed to write loftily, imitating, as the critics tell us, the manner of Homer; but surely that inimitable Poet had not so much of smoke in his writings, though not less of fire. But in short, this is the present genius of Italy. What Philostratus tells us, in the poem of his Figures, is somewhat plainer, and therefore I will translate it almost word for word: "He who will rightly govern the Art of Painting ought, of necessity, first to understand human nature. He ought likewise to be endued with a genius to express the signs of their passions whom he represents, and to make the dumb as it were to speak: he must yet further understand what is contained in the constitution of the cheeks, in the temperament of the eyes,

able to paint

in the naturalness (if I may so call it) of the eyebrows; and in short, whatsoever belongs to the mind and thought. He who thoroughly possesses all these things will obtain the whole, and the hand will exquisitely represent the action of every particular person; if it happens that he be either mad or angry, melancholic or cheerful, a sprightly youth or a languishing lover in one word, he will be whatsoever is proportionable to any one. And even in all this there is a sweet error without causing any shame for the eyes and mind of the beholders being fastened on objects which have no real being, as if they were truly existent, and being induced by them to believe them so, what pleasure is it not capable of giving? The ancients, and other wise men, have written many things concerning the symmetry, which is in the art of Painting: constituting as it were some certain laws for the proportion of every member; not thinking it possible for a Painter to undertake the expression of those motions which are in the mind without a concurrent harmony in the natural measure: for that which is out of its own kind and measure is not received from Nature, whose motion is always right. On a serious consideration of this matter, it will be found, that the Art of Painting has a wonderful affinity with that of Poetry, and there is betwixt them a certain common imagination. For, as the Poets introduce the Gods and Heroes, and all those things which are either majestical, honest, or delightful; in like manner, the Painters, by the virtue of their outlines, colours, lights, and shadows, represent the same things and persons in their pictures." Thus, as convoy ships either accompany or should accompany their merchants, till they may prosecute the rest of their voyage without danger; so Philostratus has brought

me thus far on my way, and I can now sail on without him. He has begun to speak of the great relation betwixt Painting and Poetry, and thither the greatest part of this discourse, by my promise, was directed. I have not engaged myself to any perfect method, neither am I loaded with a full cargo: it is sufficient if I bring a sample of some goods in this voyage. It will be easy for others to add more when the commerce is settled: for a treatise, twice as large as this, of Painting, could not contain all that might be said on the parallel of these two Sister-Arts. I will take my rise from Bellori before I proceed to the Author of this Book.

The business of his Preface is to prove, that a learned Painter should form to himself an idea of perfect Nature. This image he is to set before his mind in all his undertakings, and to draw from thence, as from a storehouse, the beauties which are to enter into his work thereby correcting Nature from what actually she is in individuals, to what she ought to be, and what she was created. Now as this idea of perfection is of little use in Portraits, or the resemblances of particular persons, so neither is it in the characters of Comedy and Tragedy, which are never to be made perfect, but always to be drawn with some specks of frailty and deficience; such as they have been described to us in history, if they were real characters; or such as the Poet began to show them, at their first appearance, if they were only fictitious, or imaginary. The perfection of such stage characters consists chiefly in their likeness to the deficient faulty Nature, which is their original; only (as it is observed more at large hereafter) in such cases there will always be found a better likeness and a worse, and the better is constantly to be chosen; I mean in Tragedy, which represents the figures of the highest form among mankind: thus,