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An Analytical Inquiry Into the Principles of Taste
An Analytical Inquiry Into the Principles of Taste Author:Richard Payne Knight Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: epigrammatic point, the simple purity of Xe- nophon, Ceesar, and Swift; and condemning in others the very style which he employs, we can scarcely believe that he... more » knew, at the time of writing, how widely the taste, which he had acquired by habit, differed from the judgment which he exercised under the influence of authority. Both Michel Angelo and Bernini were enthusiastic in their admiration, or at least in their applauses, of the Grecian style of sculpture; but nevertheless Michel Angelo and Bernini were, in opposite ways, the great corruptors of this pure style; the one having expanded it into the monstrous and extravagant, and the other sunk it into effeminacy and affectation. The late Sir Joshua Reynolds expressed, throughout his life, the most unqualified admiration for the works of Michel Angelo; while both in his writings and conversation he affected to undervalue those of Rembrandt, though he never attempted to imitate the former, but formed his own style of colouring and execution entirely from the latter; for whose merits he had the justest feeling, while he had none at all for those of the other, as his own collection abundantly proved; for the pictures which it contained of the Dutch master were all genuine and good, while those attributed to the Florentine were spurious and below criticism. Jflis feeling was just, though his judgment was wrong; and so far he was the reverse of Michel Angelo and Bernini, whose judgment was true while their feelings were false. As the vices, however, of both these celebrated artists were more enthusiastically admired, in their respective ages, than ever the merits of either Rembrandt or Reynolds were, it may reasonably be doubted whether they dictated to, or complied with, the taste of their contemporaries: either supposition equally...« less