These accents are to painting what melody is to the harmonic base, and
more than anything else they decide victory or defeat. A method is of
little account at those moments when the final effect is at hand; one
uses any means, even diabolical invocations, and when the need comes,
when I have exhausted the resources of pigment, I use a scraper,
pumice-stone, and if nothing else serves, the handle of my brush.

_Rousseau._


CXXXVII

The noblest relievo in painting is that which is resultant from the
treatment of the masses, not from the vulgar swelling and rounding of
the bodies; and the noble Venetian massing is excellent in this quality.
Those parts in which there is necessity for salient quality of relief
must be expressed with a certain quadrature, a certain varied grace of
accent like that which the bony ridge develops in beautiful wrists and
ankles, also in some of the tunic-folds that fall behind the arm of the
recumbent Fate over the middle of the figure of the Newlands Titian; and
again in some of the happiest passages in the graceful women of Lodovico
Caracci, and in their vesture folds, _e.g._ the bosom and waist of the
St. Catherine.

Doubtless there is a choice, or design were vain. There must be courage
to _reject_ no less than to _gather_. A man is at liberty to neglect
things that are repugnant to his disposition. He may, if he please, have
nothing to do with thistle or thorn, with bramble or brier....
Nevertheless sharp and severe things are yet dear to some souls. Nor