JOHN AB EYCK.
If these be the works of John ab Eyck, there is not only an additional proof, that he could not be the inventor of oil-painting, but likewise that, for near a century after him, the colour of the Flemings continued in the same retrograde taste which checked the Italian design, from the time of Lorenzo Ghiberti to that of Leonardo da Vinci. The pictures here exhibited as the works of Hemelinck, Metsis, Lucas of Holland, Albert Durer, and even Holbein, are inferior to those which are ascribed to Eyck, in colour, execution, and taste. Compared with their composition, the pictures of Andrea Mantegna are nearly reduced to apposition; and the draperies of the three figures on a gold ground, especially that of the middle figure, could not be improved in simplicity or elegance by the taste of Raphael himself. These three figures, indeed, are in a style far superior to the rest; but even these, whether we consider each figure individually, or relatively with each other, their masses, depth, and relief, cannot be surpassed by those which are ascribed to the German, Dutch, and Flemish masters of the succeeding century. The three heads of God the Father, the Virgin, and St. John the Baptist, are not inferior in roundness, force, or sweetness, to the heads of Leonardo da Vinci, and possess a more positive principle of colour; the harmony of chiar' oscuro, at which Leonardo aimed, admitted of no variety of tints than what might be obtained by the gradation of two colours. His carnations appear to have been added by glazing; such is the head of Mona Lisa.