[65] Compare on this point Claude's "Isaac and Rebecca," No. 12.
[66] This anecdote is a modern counterpart of that of Protogenes, the rival of Apelles, who worked continuously, we are told, during the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius Poliorcetes, notwithstanding that the garden in which he painted was in the middle of the enemy's camp. Demetrius, unsolicited, took measures for the painter's safety, and when he was told that one of the masterpieces by Protogenes was in a part of the town exposed to assault, he changed his plan of operations.
[67] "If you live in London you may test your progress accurately by the degree of admiration you feel for the leaves of vine round the head of the Bacchus in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne" (Elements of Drawing, p. 82). Another technical beauty referred to in the same book (p. 77 n.) is "the points of light on the white flower in the wreath of the dancing child-faun." Similarly, "the wing of the cupid in Correggio's picture (10) is focused to two little grains of white at the top of it." Elsewhere Ruskin calls attention to "the leaves which crown the Bacchus, and the little dancing faun: every turn of the most subtle perspective, and every gradation of colour, is given with the colossal ease and power of the consummate master" (Academy Notes, 1855, p. 22).
[68] Ruskin's analysis of Rubens's technical method, which is here omitted as foreign to the scope of this handbook, will be found in his review of Eastlake's History of Oil Painting, now reprinted in On the Old Road, i. §§ 98-136.
[69] "The conditions of art in Flanders—wealthy, bourgeois, proud, free,—were not dissimilar to those of art in Venice. The misty flats of Belgium have some of the atmospheric qualities of Venice. As Van Eyck is to the Vivarini, so is Rubens to Paolo Veronese. This expresses the amount of likeness and difference" (Symonds: Renaissance, iii. 265 n).
[70] See, for a further instance of this, what is said of Rubens's landscapes below, under 66.
[71] Dr. Elisabeth Denio, in her monograph on Poussin (1899), adduces good reason for altering the commonly accepted date 1594 to 1593.
[72] See Lanzi, i. 477, and a paper by Mr. R. Heath in the Magazine of Art for September 1877, where Poussin's theory is illustrated from his pictures in the Louvre. English readers may be reminded that Poussin is particularly well represented in the Dulwich Gallery.
[73] Elsewhere Ruskin says of Poussin, "Whatever he has done has been done better by Titian." Also, "the landscape of Nicolo Poussin shows much power, and is usually composed and elaborated on right principles, but I am aware of nothing that it has attained of new or peculiar excellence; it is a graceful mixture of qualities to be found in other masters in higher degrees. In finish it is inferior to Leonardo's, in invention to Giorgione's, in truth to Titian's, in grace to Raphael's" (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 14).
[74] "He feared the fascinations of colour, and once wrote from Venice that he must flee from a place where they lured him too much. He did not know how needless was the alarm" (Sir F. Burton).