[3] The parrot perched on it is removed, which may be done without altering the curve, as the bird is set where its weight would not have bent the wood.
[4] The largest laurel spray in the background of the “Susanna,” Louvre—reduced to about a fifth of the original. The drawing was made for me by M. Hippolyte Dubois, and I am glad it is not one of my own, lest I should be charged with exaggerating Veronese’s accuracy.
This group of leaves is, in the original, of the life-size; the circle which interferes with the spray on the right being the outline of the head and of one of the elders; and, as painted for distant effect, there is no care in completing the stems:—they are struck with a few broken touches of the brush, which cannot be imitated in the engraving, and much of their spirit is lost in consequence.
[5] The longest in “Apollo and the Sibyl,” engraved by Boydell. (Reduced one-half.)
[6] The foreshortening of the bough to the right is a piece of great audacity; it comes towards us two or three feet sharply, after forking, so as to look half as thick again as at the fork;—then bends back again, and outwards.
[7] Hobbima. Dulwich Gallery, No. 131. Turn the book with its inner edge up.
[8] Their change from groups of three to groups of two, and then to single thorns at the end of the spray, will be found very beautiful in a real shoot. The figure on the left in Plate 52 is a branch of blackthorn with its spines (which are a peculiar condition of branch, and can bud like branches, while thorns have no root nor power of development). Such a branch gives good practice without too much difficulty.
CHAPTER IX.