LECTURES
ON
PAINTING.
Printed by A. and R. Spottiswoode,
Printers-Street, London.
HENRY FUSELI ESQR. R.A.
Engraved by R. W. Sievier, from a Miniature by Moses Haughton.
Published May 1, 1820, by T. Cadell & W. Davies, Strand, London.
LECTURES
ON
PAINTING,
DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY,
BY HENRY FUSELI, P.P.
WITH ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS AND NOTES.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, IN THE STRAND,
BOOKSELLERS TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY
AND W. BLACKWOOD, EDINBURGH.
1820.
It cannot be considered as superfluous or assumingto present the reader of the following lectures, witha succinct characteristic sketch of the principaltechnic instruction, ancient and modern, which wepossess: I say, a sketch, for an elaborate and methodicalsurvey, or a plan well digested and strictlyfollowed, would demand a volume. These observations,less written for the man of letters and cultivatedtaste, than for the student who wishes to informhimself of the history and progress of his art, are todirect him to the sources from which my principlesare deduced, to enable him, by comparing my authorswith myself, to judge how far the theory which Ideliver, may be depended on as genuine, or oughtto be rejected as erroneous or false.
The works or fragments of works which wepossess, are either purely elementary, critically historical,biographic, or mixed up of all three. Onthe books purely elementary, the van of which is ledby Lionardo da Vinci and Albert Durer, and the rearby Gherard Lairesse, as the principles which theydetail must be supposed to be already in the student’spossession, or are occasionally interwoven with thetopics of the Lectures, I shall not expatiate, but immediatelyproceed to the historically critical writers;who consist of all the antients yet remaining, Pausaniasexcepted.
We may thank Destiny that, in the general wreckof antient art, a sufficient number of entire andmutilated monuments have escaped the savage rage ofbarbarous conquest, and the still more savage handof superstition, not only to prove that the principleswhich we deliver, formed the body of antient art, butto furnish us with their standard of style. For if wehad nothing to rely on to prove its existence than thehistoric and critical information left us, such is the[v]chaos of assertion and contradiction, such the chronologicconfusion, and dissonance of dates, thatnothing short of a miracle could guide us throughthe labyrinth, and the whole