Their imitation discovering in the one every beauty diffused through Nature, shewing in the other the pitch to which the most perfect Nature can elevate herself, when soaring above the senses, will quicken the genius of the artist, and shorten his discipleship: he will learn to think and draw with confidence, seeing here the fixed limits of human and divine beauty.
Building on this ground, his hand and senses directed by the Greek rule of beauty, the modern artist goes on the surest way to the imitation of Nature. The ideas of unity and perfection, which he acquired in meditating on antiquity, will help him to combine, and to ennoble the more scattered and weaker beauties of our Nature. Thus he will improve every beauty he discovers in it, and by comparing the beauties of nature with the ideal, form rules for himself.
Then, and not sooner, he, particularly the painter, may be allowed to commit himself to Nature, especially in cases where his art is beyond the instruction of the old marbles, to wit, in drapery; then, like Poussin, he may proceed with more liberty; for “a timid follower will never get the start of his leaders, and he who is at a loss to produce something of his own, will be a bad manager of the productions of another,” as Michael Angelo says; Minds favoured by Nature,
Quibus Arte benigna,
Et meliore luto, finxit præcordia Titan,
have here a plain way to become originals.
Thus the account de Piles gives, ought to be understood, that Raphael, a short time before he was carried off by death, intended to forsake the marbles, in order to addict himself wholly to Nature. True antient taste would most certainly have guided him through every maze of common Nature; and whatever observations, whatever new ideas he might have reaped from that, they would all, by a kind of chymical transmutation, have been changed to his own essence and soul.
He, perhaps, might have indulged more variety; enlarged his draperies; improved his colours, his light and shadow: but none of these improvements would have raised his pictures to that high esteem they deserve, for that noble Contour, and that sublimity of thoughts, which he acquired from the ancients.
Nothing would more decisively prove the advantages to be got by imitating the ancients, preferably to Nature, than an essay made with two youths of equal talents, by devoting the one to antiquity, the other to Nature: this would draw Nature as he finds her; if Italian, perhaps he might paint like Caravaggio; if Flemish, and lucky, like Jac. Jordans; if French, like Stella: the other would draw her as she directs, and paint like Raphael.