Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere student,
Ennius.
must here acknowledge the superiority of the Flemish art; the painter being really but nature’s mimick, is the more perfect the better he mimicks her.
Ast heic, quem nunc tu tam turpiter increpuisti,
Ennius.
the delicate Van der Werf, whose performances, worth their weight in gold, are the ornaments of royal cabinets only, has made nature inimitable to every Italian pencil; he allures the connoisseur’s eye as well as that of the clown; and, as an English poet says, “that no pleasing poet ever wrote ill,” surely the Flemish painter obtained that applause which was denied to Poussin.
I should be glad to see many pictures as happily fancied, as well composed, as enticingly painted as some of Gherard Lairesse: let me appeal to every unprepossessed artist at Paris, acquainted with the Stratonice, the most eminent, and no doubt the first ranked picture in the cabinet of Mr. de la Boixieres[52].
The subject is of no trivial choice: King Seleucus I.[53] resigned his wife Stratonice, a daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes, to his son Antiochus, whom a violent passion for his mother-in-law had thrown into a dangerous sickness: after many unsuccessful inquiries, the physician Erasistratus discovered the true cause, and found that the only means of restoring the prince’s health, was, the condescension of the father to the love of his son: the King resigned his Queen, and at the same time declared Antiochus King of the East.