Page:Joseph Drew - Art Treasures and their Preservation scan.pdf/5

Rh as a copy in any of their productions, without his special license or consent, and by these means men were stimulated to compete for true excellence. But passing over these art treasures, of which so few examples remain, we come to those with which the world is more familiar, those marvellous conceptions of Raphael, whose works still preserve all their original delicacy and beauty. With very few exceptions, the productions of this prince of painters are in the same perfect state of preservation as when they left the easel, untouched by time and undefaced by the work of restoration. Not only are the paintings themselves in such a high state of preservation, but the colours have such a brilliant hue of freshness, that we can scarcely reconcile their beauty with the fact that three centuries and a half have passed since his great patron, Leo X., stood by his easel watching the facility of his pencil and admiring his work, for even now, the delicate bloom on the cheek of beauty, the harmonious colouring of the draperies, the semi-tones and half-tints, as it were, of the accessories and distances, possess a delicacy and transparency rarely to be found in the productions of other schools. The intrinsic value, however, of the art treasures bequeathed by this glorious painter to posterity does not consist simply in their high state of preservation and delicate work, but in the emotions produced by the contemplation of their conception and beauty; in fact, the effect produced by the study of a really beautiful picture upon the mind is never effaced, it becomes photographed, as it were, upon the imagination, and we can always bring to our remembrance some prominent incident in connection with its composition or general beauty. Raphael, like the Grecian sculptors in the purest era of their art, strove for that ideal beauty which is never to be found in individual nature, and which can only be represented by taking the most beautiful parts of the many to form one, and it is this desire to reach ideal perfection that Sir Joshua Reynolds says "ennobles the painters art and elevates him above those who can only reproduce by the mere exercise of mechanical labour." What we have said of the works of Raphael, as to their perfect state of preservation, applies equally to those of Correggio and to the productions of other schools of the same period; the works of the best masters in the Dutch and Flemish schools are also in the highest state of preservation, forming a very striking contrast to those dilapidated wrecks so frequently found amongst the pictures of our modern men. Now the great question is, where are we to look for the cause of this decadence? Certainly not in the decline of the art. If we could entirely disabuse our minds of that "halo" which schoolmen and enthusiastic art critics have thrown around the works of ancient art, and were to go through this year's exhibition of the Royal Academy, we