PAOLO VERONESE.
1. The Nuptials of Cana.
2. The Feast of Levi the Publican.
3. The Madonna, St. Jerome, &c.
4. The Martyrdom of St. George.
5. Jupiter launching his Thunder on the Crimes.
6. Christ carrying his Cross.
7. The Crucifixion.
8. The Pilgrims of Emaus.
The two first, the third, and last of these pictures, are perhaps the fullest models of that ornamental style by which a great critic has discriminated the Venetian from the rest of Italian styles,—"monsters to the man of native taste, who looks for the story, for propriety, for national, unartificial costume,—mines of information to the student and the masters of art." The most technic comprehension of a magnificent whole, and supreme command over the infinite variety of its parts, equal suavity, energy, and ease of execution, go hand in hand with the most chaotic caprice in the disposition and the most callous tyranny over the character of the subject. Whatever relates to the theory of colours, of solid, middle, and aërial tints, to the opposition of hues warm or cold, and the contrast of light and dark masses, is poised here with prismatic truth; the whole is a scale of music. It is more by following the order of nature and of light in the disposition of the whole, that Paolo attained that illusion, which approaches to deception, than by the attempt of making fac similes of the parts. He knew that dark, juicy, and absorbent colours come forward, that white recedes, and that the middle parts partake of both, and hence, uniting the two extremes by the intermediate tint, he obtained that superior harmony on which the Venetian school rests its superiority of colour, and which Rubens sought with unequal success in the capricious disposition of a nosegay or a bunch of flowers.