For my part, I wish Raphael
had painted the "Transfiguration" in this style, at the same time
preserving his breadth and grandeur of design; nor do I believe that
there is any real impediment to the combination of the two styles, except
that no possible space of human life could suffice to cover a quarter
part of the canvas of the "Transfiguration" with such touches as Gerard
Douw's. But one feels the vast scope of this wonderful art, when we
think of two excellences so far apart as that of this last painter and
Raphael. I pause a good while, too, before the Dutch paintings of fruit
and flowers, where tulips and roses acquire an immortal bloom, and grapes
have kept the freshest juice in them for two or three hundred years.
Often, in these pictures, there is a bird's-nest, every straw perfectly
represented, and the stray feather, or the down that the mother-bird
plucked from her bosom, with the three or four small speckled eggs, that
seem as if they might be yet warm. These pretty miracles have their use
in assuring us that painters really can do something that takes hold of
us in our most matter-of-fact moods; whereas, the merits of the grander
style of art may be beyond our ordinary appreciation, and leave us in
doubt whether we have not befooled ourselves with a false admiration.
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