No visible object can be presented without a transparent medium.

No visible object can be presented without a boundary.

No visible object can be presented without colour.

No visible object can be presented without distance.

No visible object can be presented without an instrument.

What follows cannot be learnt, it is born with the painter.

_Nicholas Poussin._


XIV

"In painting, and above all in portraiture," says Madame Cavé in her
charming essay, "it is soul which speaks to soul: and not knowledge
which speaks to knowledge."

This observation, more profound perhaps than she herself was aware, is
an arraignment of pedantry in execution. A hundred times I have said to
myself, "Painting, speaking materially, is nothing but a bridge between
the soul of the artist and that of the spectator."

_Delacroix._


XV