Seven Discourses on Art | Page 7

and again that
labour is the only price of solid fame, and that whatever their force of
genius may be, there is no easy method of becoming a good painter.
When we read the lives of the most eminent painters, every page
informs us that no part of their time was spent in dissipation. Even an
increase of fame served only to augment their industry. To be
convinced with what persevering assiduity they pursued their studies,
we need only reflect on their method of proceeding in their most
celebrated works. When they conceived a subject, they first made a
variety of sketches; then a finished drawing of the whole; after that a
more correct drawing of every separate part, heads, hands, feet, and
pieces of drapery; they then painted the picture, and after all re-touched
it from the life. The pictures, thus wrought with such pain, now appear
like the effect of enchantment, and as if some mighty genius had struck
them off at a blow.
But, whilst diligence is thus recommended to the students, the visitors
will take care that their diligence be effectual; that it be well directed

and employed on the proper object. A student is not always advancing
because he is employed; he must apply his strength to that part of the
art where the real difficulties lie; to that part which distinguishes it as a
liberal art, and not by mistaken industry lose his time in that which is
merely ornamental. The students, instead of vying with each other
which shall have the readiest band, should be taught to contend who
shall have the purest and most correct outline, instead of striving which
shall produce the brightest tint, or, curiously trifling endeavour to give
the gloss of stuffs so as to appear real, let their ambition be directed to
contend which shall dispose his drapery in the most graceful folds,
which shall give the most grace and dignity to the human figure.
I must beg leave to submit one thing more to the consideration of the
visitors, which appears to me a matter of very great consequence, and
the omission of which I think a principal defect in the method of
education pursued in all the academies I have ever visited. The error I
mean is, that the students never draw exactly from the living models
which they have before them. It is not indeed their intention, nor are
they directed to do it. Their drawings resemble the model only in the
attitude. They change the form according to their vague and uncertain
ideas of beauty, and make a drawing rather of what they think the
figure ought to be than of what it appears. I have thought this the
obstacle that has stopped the progress of many young men of real
genius; and I very much doubt whether a habit of drawing correctly
what we see will not give a proportionable power of drawing correctly
what we imagine. He who endeavours to copy nicely the figure before
him not only acquires a habit of exactness and precision, but is
continually advancing in his knowledge of the human figure; and
though he seems to superficial observers to make a slower progress, he
will be found at last capable of adding (without running into capricious
wildness) that grace and beauty which is necessary to be given to his
more finished works, and which cannot be got by the moderns, as it
was not acquired by the ancients, but by an attentive and
well-compared study of the human form.
What I think ought to enforce this method is, that it has been the
practice (as may be seen by their drawings) of the great masters in the

art. I will mention a drawing of Raffaelle, "The Dispute of the
Sacrament," the print of which, by Count Cailus, is in every hand. It
appears that he made his sketch from one model; and the habit he had
of drawing exactly from the form before him appears by his making all
the figures with the same cap, such as his model then happened to wear;
so servile a copyist was this great man, even at a time when he was
allowed to be at his highest pitch of excellence.
I have seen also academy figures by Annibale Caracci, though he was
often sufficiently licentious in his finished works, drawn with all the
peculiarities of an individual model.
This scrupulous exactness is so contrary to the practice of the
academies, that it is not without great deference that I beg leave to
recommend it to the consideration of the visitors, and submit it to them,
whether the neglect of this method is not one of the reasons why
students so often disappoint expectation, and being more than boys at
sixteen, become less