In our modern art we have indeed lost sight of one great principle
which regulated that of the middle ages, namely, that chiaroscuro and
colour are incompatible in their highest degrees. Wherever chiaroscuro
enters, colour must lose some of its brilliancy. There is no _shade_
in a rainbow, nor in an opal, nor in a piece of mother-of-pearl, nor
in a well-designed painted window; only various hues of perfect
colour. The best pictures, by subduing their colour and
conventionalising their chiaroscuro, reconcile both in their
diminished degrees; but a perfect light and shade cannot be given
without considerable loss of liveliness in colour. Hence the supposed
inferiority of Tintoret to Titian. Tintoret is, in reality, the
greater colourist of the two; but he could not bear to falsify his
light and shadow enough to set off his colour. Titian nearly strikes
the exact mean between the painted glass of the 13th century and
Rembrandt; while Giotto closely approaches the system of painted
glass, and hence his compositions lose grievously by being translated
into black and white.

But even this chiaroscuro, however subdued, is not without a peculiar
charm; and the accompanying engravings possess a marked superiority
over all that have hitherto been made from the works of this painter,
in rendering this chiaroscuro, as far as possible, together with the
effect of the local colours. The true appreciation of art has been
retarded for many years by the habit of trusting to outlines as a
sufficient expression of the sentiment of compositions; whereas in all
truly great designs, of whatever age, it is never the outline, but the
disposition of the masses, whether of shade or colour, on which the
real power of the work depends. For instance, in Plate III. (The Angel
appears to Anna), the interest of the composition depends entirely
upon the broad shadows which fill the spaces of the chamber, and of