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A Dictionary of Painters and Handbook for Picture Amateurs
A Dictionary of Painters and Handbook for Picture Amateurs Author:Paschal Grousset General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1877 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: OIL PAINTING. I. Originals and Copies. The knowledge necessary for the amateur or connoisseur, of which we intend here to give the general principles, consists, first, in estimating the real value of the artistic merit possessed by the pictures submitted to him (and a natural taste will suffice for this, aided by the continued familiarity with traditional models which may be rapidly acquired); afterwards, and chiefly, in recognising to what epoch, to what country and to what master a picture belongs, whether it be genuine or not, -- an original or a copy. Under the term original may be comprehended every work of imagination, or imitated directly from nature. To pronounce upon the originality of a picture, the connoisseur requires all his clearness, all his experience, especially when the case in point is a doubtful one from the hand of an undoubtedly skilful artist. By copy, we understand the reproduction of an original picture. Naturally, there can be but one kind of original. But amongst copies, many distinctions may be made. There are ' original copies ' or ' replicas' made by the painter himself of the original, who not unfrequently has reproduced it once, twice, or many times, when it has been favourably received by the public. Then come ' studies' made by the pupils under the direction of the master-hand. Then studies made for their instruction, or sometimes merely for pleasure, by rising masters of the first order. Such as, for example, Annibale Caracci, who has left studies after Correggio, and Domenichino after Annibale Caracci ; Rubens after Titian ; Lorenzo di Crcdi afterLeonardo da Vi...« less