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"As a confirmation of its great excellence, and of the impression which it leaves on the minds of elegant spectators, our great Lyric Poet, when he conceived that sublime idea of the indignant Welch Bard, acknowledged that though many years had intervened, he had warmed his imagination with the remembrance of this noble figure of Parmegiano."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Author

Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Work Title

A Discourse Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy [Discourses on Art]

Place of Publication

London

Publisher

Printed by Thomas Cadell

Date

December 10, 1790; 1791

Metaphor

"As a confirmation of its great excellence, and of the impression which it leaves on the minds of elegant spectators, our great Lyric Poet, when he conceived that sublime idea of the indignant Welch Bard, acknowledged that though many years had intervened, he had warmed his imagination with the remembrance of this noble figure of Parmegiano."

Metaphor in Context

I Have strongly inculcated in my former Discourses, as I do in this my last, the wisdom and necessity of previously obtaining the appropriated instruments of the Art, in a first correct design, and a plain manly colouring, before any thing more is attempted. But by this I would not wish to cramp and fetter the mind, or discourage those who follow (as most of us may at one time have followed) the suggestion of a strong inclination: something must be conceded to great and irresistible impulses: perhaps every Student must not be strictly bound to general methods, if they strongly thwart the peculiar turn of his own mind. I must confess, that it is not absolutely of much consequence whether he proceeds in the general method of seeking first to acquire mechanical accuracy, before he attempts poetical flights, provided he diligently studies to attain the full perfection of the style he pursues; whether like Parmegiano, he endeavours at grace and grandeur of manner before he has learned correctness of drawing, if like him he feels his own wants, and will labour, as that eminent Artist did, to supply those wants; whether he starts from the East or from the West, if he relaxes in no exertion to arrive ultimately at the same goal. The first public work of Parmegiano is the St. Eustachius, in the church of St. Petronius in Bologna, and done when he was a boy; and one of the last of his works is the Moses breaking the tables, in Parma. In the former there is certainly something of grandeur in the outline, and in the conception of the figure, which discovers the dawnings of future greatness, of a young mind impregnated with the sublimity of Michael Angelo, whose stile he here attempts to imitate, though he could not then draw the human figure with any common degree of correctness. But this same Parmegiano, when in his more mature age he painted the Moses, had so completely supplied his first defects, that we are at a loss which to admire most, the correctness of drawing, or the grandeur of the conception. As a confirmation of its great excellence, and of the impression which it leaves on the minds of elegant spectators, our great Lyric Poet, when he conceived that sublime idea of the indignant Welch Bard, acknowledged that though many years had intervened, he had warmed his imagination with the remembrance of this noble figure of Parmegiano.
(pp. 11-13)