The draperies of both are characteristic, and unite subordination with dignity, but their colour is chosen with more judgment by Domenichino; the imbrowned gold and ample folds of the robe of the administering priest are more genial than the cold blue, white and yellow on the priest of his master; in both, perhaps, the white draperies on the foreground figures have too little strength for the central colours, but it is more perceived in Carracci than in Domenichino.
The forms of the saint in Carracci are grander and more ideal than in the saint of Domenichino; some have even thought them too vigorous: both, in my opinion, are in harmony with the emotion of the face and expression of either. The eagerness that animates the countenance of the one may be supposed to spread a momentary vigour over his frame. The mental dereliction of countenance in the other with equal propriety relaxes and palsies the limbs which depend on it.
The colour of Carracci's saint is much more characteristic of fleshy though nearly bloodless substance than that chosen by his rival, which is withered, shrivelled, leathery in the lights, and earthy in the shades; but the head of the officiating priest in Domenichino, whether considered as a specimen of colour independent of the rest or as set off by it, for truth, tone, freshness, energy, is not only the best Domenichino ever painted, but perhaps the best that can be conceived.
FOOTNOTES
[88] A miracle means an act performed by virtue of an unknown law of Nature.
[89] The form, but not the soul, of Julio's composition has been borrowed by Rubens, or the master of the well-known picture in the gallery of Dulwich college. Few can be unacquainted with the work of Vandyke, spread by the best engravers of that school. The picture of Rembrandt is the chief ornament of the collection in the garden-house of the Schönborn family, in one of the suburbs of Vienna: has been etched on a large scale, and there is a copy of it in the gallery at Cassel. A circumstantial account of it may be found in the Eighth Letter, vol. iii. of Kütner's Travels.