Elements of Art, a Poem in Six Cantos: With Notes and a Preface, Including Strictures on the State of the Arts, Criticism, Patronage, and Public Taste

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Miller, 1809 - Aesthetics - 400 pages

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Page 12 - ... talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed labour: nothing is to be obtained without it. Not to enter into metaphysical discussions on the nature or essence of genius, I will venture to assert that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a disposition eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects similar to those which some call the result of natural powers.
Page 194 - Such faults may be said to be the ebullitions of genius; but at least he had this merit, that he never was insipid, and whatever passion his works may excite, they will always escape contempt. What I have had under consideration is the...
Page 202 - ... which is shown in composing such an infinite number of figures, or the art of the distribution of the light and shadow, the freedom of hand, the facility with which it seems to be performed, and what is still more extraordinary, the correctness and admirable taste of drawing of figures fore-shortened, in attitudes the most difficult to execute, we must pronounce this picture to be one of the greatest efforts of genius that ever the art has produced.
Page 156 - But each man's secret standard in his mind, That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness, This who can gratify ? for who can guess...
Page 193 - the great sublime they draw," and rave like methodists, of inward lights, and enthusiastic emotions, which, if you cannot comprehend, you are set down as un-illumined by the grace of criticism, and excluded from the elect of Taste.
Page 280 - ... material disadvantage: the Hours, for instance, as represented by Julio Romano, giving provender to the horses of the Sun, would not strike the imagination more forcibly from their being coloured with the pencil of Rubens, though he would have represented them more naturally: but might he not possibly, by that very act, have brought them down from the celestial state to the rank of mere terrestrial animals ? In these things, however, I admit there will always be a degree of uncertainty.
Page 15 - It is of no use to prescribe to those who have no talents ; and those who have talents will find methods for themselves — methods dictated to them by their own particular dispositions, and by the experience of their own particular necessities.
Page 12 - Vouet; but as he soon excelled him, so he differed from him in every part of the art. Carlo Maratti succeeded better than those I have first named, and I think owes his superiority to the extension of his views ; beside his master Andrea Sacchi, he imitated Raffaelle, Guido, and the Caraccis. It is true, there is nothing very captivating in Carlo Maratti ; but this proceeded from a want which can not be completely supplied; that is, want of strength of parts. In this certainly men are not equal ;...
Page 65 - And kept unconquer'd and uncivilized ; Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold, We still defied the Romans, as of old. Yet some there were, among the sounder few Of those who less presumed and better knew, 720 Who durst assert the juster ancient cause, And here restored wit's fundamental laws. Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell, ' Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.
Page 325 - ... a circumstance in placing the model, though to some it may appear trifling. It is better to possess the model with the attitude you require, than to place him with your own hands : by this means it happens often that the model puts himself in an action superior to your own imagination. It is a great matter to be in the way of accident...

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