the world can boast. To these, therefore, we should principally direct
our attention for higher excellences. As for the lower arts, as they
have been once discovered, they may be easily attained by those possessed
of the former.

Raffaelle, who stands in general foremost of the first painters, owes his
reputation, as I have observed, to his excellence in the higher parts of
the art. Therefore, his works in fresco ought to be the first object of
our study and attention. His easel-works stand in a lower degree of
estimation; for though he continually, to the day of his death,
embellished his works more and more with the addition of these lower
ornaments, which entirely make the merit of some, yet he never arrived at
such perfection as to make him an object of imitation. He never was able
to conquer perfectly that dryness, or even littleness of manner, which he
inherited from his master. He never acquired that nicety of taste in
colours, that breadth of light and shadow, that art and management of
uniting light, to light, and shadow to shadow, so as to make the object
rise out of the ground with that plenitude of effect so much admired in
the works of Correggio. When he painted in oil, his hand seemed to be so
cramped and confined that he not only lost that facility and spirit, but
I think even that correctness of form, which is so perfect and admirable
in his fresco works. I do not recollect any pictures of his of this
kind, except perhaps the "Transfiguration," in which there are not some
parts that appear to be even feebly drawn. That this is not a necessary
attendant on oil-painting, we have abundant instances in more modern
painters. Lodovico Caracci, for instance, preserved in his works in oil
the same spirit, vigour, and correctness, which he had in fresco. I have
no desire to degrade Raffaelle from the high rank which he deservedly
holds: but by comparing him with himself, he does not appear to me to be
the same man in oil as in fresco.