The Glassyness (If I May Be Allowed The Expression) Of The Surface, Throws, In My Opinion, A False Light On Some Parts Of The Picture; And When You Approach It, The Joinings Of The Pieces Look Like So Many Cracks On Painted Canvas.

Besides, this method is extremely tedious and expensive.

I went to see the artists at work, in a house that stands near the church, where I was much pleased with the ingenuity of the process; and not a little surprized at the great number of different colours and tints, which are kept in separate drawers, marked with numbers as far as seventeen thousand. For a single head done in Mosaic, they asked me fifty zequines. But to return to the church. The altar of St. Peter's choir, notwithstanding all the ornaments which have been lavished upon it, is no more than a heap of puerile finery, better adapted to an Indian pagod, than to a temple built upon the principles of the Greek architecture. The four colossal figures that support the chair, are both clumsy and disproportioned. The drapery of statues, whether in brass or stone, when thrown into large masses, appears hard and unpleasant to the eye and for that reason the antients always imitated wet linen, which exhibiting the shape of the limbs underneath, and hanging in a multiplicity of wet folds, gives an air of lightness, softness, and ductility to the whole.

These two statues weigh 116,257 pounds, and as they sustain nothing but a chair, are out of all proportion, inasmuch as the supporters ought to be suitable to the things supported.

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