INSTRUCTIONS
FOR THE
CONNOISSEUR.
——Non, si quid turbida Roma
Elevet, accedas: examenve improbum in illa
Castiges trutina: nec te quæsiveris extra.
Nam Romæ est Quis non?——
You call yourself a Connoisseur, and the first thing you gaze at, in considering works of art, is the workmanship, the delicacy of the pencilling, or the polish given by the chissel.——It was the idea however, its grandeur or meanness, its dignity, fitness, or unfitness, that ought first to have been examined: for industry and talents are independent of each other. A piece of painting or sculpture cannot, merely on account of its having been laboured, claim more merit than a book of the same sort. To work curiously, and with unnecessary refinements, is as little the mark of a great artist, as to write learnedly is that of a great author. An image anxiously finished, in every minute trifle, may be fitly compared to a treatise crammed with quotations of books, that perhaps were never read. Remember this, and you will not be amazed at the laurel leaves of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, nor at the net held by Adams’s statue of water at Potzdam: you will only be convinced that workmanship is not the standard which distinguishes the antique from the modern.
Be attentive to discover whether an artist had ideas of his own, or only copied those of others; whether he knew the chief aim of all art, Beauty, or blundered through the dirt of vulgar forms; whether he performed like a man, or played only like a child.