Excerpt from The History of Painting From the Fourth to the Early Nineteenth Century, Vol. 2 of 2<br><br>As he himself experienced nothing sad, so his art is one of sunny joyfulness. As his life was passed without storms, without catastrophes, so he never painted thrill ing or convulsive pictures. Even when the subject is terrible, or violently dramatic, he remains mild and soft, pleasing and friendly. As his portrait has more a typical than an individual effect, so in his paintings everything individual is either eliminated or changed into the typical. As he never had conflicts either with his employers or with his assistants, but was as pliant and lovable in obeying as in giving orders, so there are no dissonances in his art. Everything that is hard and angular in nature is softened and rounded; and not only the individual forms but the composition moves in pliant, rhythmic lines. As his own life was a beautiful harmony, so his paintings fuse the gay many-sided ness of life into soft harmonies in which no movement or fold of drapery disturbs the pleasing unison.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.