Chapter X: Section V

THE PRINCIPLES OF TITIAN AND THE VENETIAN SCHOOL.

The Venetian School, founded by Titian, adopted a combination of rich warm browns, yellows, and greens, supported by crimsons, all deep in tone, overspreading two-thirds of the picture, opposed by very rich, almost warm, blues, and animated by a point of white, sometimes accompanied by black in the front of the subject. No violent contrasts are admitted, no crude colours. The white is toned down to assimilate with flesh tints, which are again toned to accord with golden lights, gradually deepening into yellowish browns, and emerging through warm greens to join the blues, which are kept in check by the opposition in some places to rich reddish browns of the same relative shade, so that one shall not be darker than the other; the blue is graduated as it approaches the white, into which it is blended by the interposition of fleshy-coloured tints. The whole aspect of the picture is rich and warm, but subdued. The lights are golden and the shadows brown, with just so much cool green, white, and blue, as shall prevent the picture appearing rusty. But though these tints are called cool, because they are cooler than the rest of the work, as in the style of Cuyp and Both, they must not be cold; but above all it is requisite to take care that they are not crude. White must be toned with yellow or red; blue must incline to purple; and if black be introduced, it must not be _blue_ black. Plate.

CHAPTER II.

SECTION VI.

LUDOVICO CARACCI'S PRINCIPLE.

Ludovico Caracci followed the Venetian school, but subdued the colours of the whole picture, to what Sir Joshua Reynolds calls a "cloistered tone," the effect of a "dim religious light, through storied pane." Neither white nor black are admitted: the deepest shadows do not descend below a rich brown; the brightest lights do not rise above a creamy yellow. The blue is no longer opposed to a brown of the same relative shade, but is introduced in the half-lights, and carefully blended into the shadows, by means of warm reflections, and the interposition of reddish purple shadows. The Chiaroscuro is broader and more tranquil than in the works of the Venetian school. Plate.

CHAPTER II.