The male forms of Rubens are the brawny pulp of slaughtermen, his females are hillocks of roses: overwhelmed muscles, dislocated bones, and distorted joints are swept along in a gulph of colours, as herbage, trees and shrubs are whirled, tossed, or absorbed by vernal inundation.
The female forms of Rembrandt are prodigies of deformity; his males are the crippled produce of shuffling industry and sedentary toil.
The line of Vandycke is balanced between Flemish corpulence and English slenderness.
Sebastian Bourdon, sublime in his conceptions, filled classic ground and eastern vests with local limbs and Gallic actors.
Poussin renounced his national character to follow the antique; but could not separate the spirit from the stone.
152. The imitator seldom mounts to the investigation of the principles that formed his model; the copier probably never.
153. Many beauties in art come by accident, that are preserved by choice.
Coroll.—Neither the froth formed on the mouth of Jalysus' hound by a lucky dash from the sponge of Protogenes, nor the modern experiments of extracting composition from an ink-splashed wall, are relatives of the beauties alluded to in this aphorism.