Ribot reproduces Ribera often, but he deals with fewer
externals, fewer effects, taken in the widest sense. Carolus-Duran, the
"swell" portrait-painter of the day, artificial as he may be in the
quality of his mind, nevertheless seeks and attains, first of all, the
sense of an even exaggerated life-likeness in his charming sitters.
They are, first of all, people; the pictorial element takes care of
itself; sometimes even--so overmastering is the realistic tendency--the
plush of the chair, the silk of the robe, the cut of the coat, seems, to
an observer who thinks of the old traditions of Titian, of Raphael, of
Moroni, unduly emphasized, even for realism.
V
One element of modernity is a certain order of eclecticism. It is not
the eclecticism of the Bolognese painters, for example, illustrating the
really hopeless attempt to combine the supposed and superficial
excellences, always dissociated from the essence, of different points of
view. It is a free choice of attitude, rather, due to the release of the
individual from the thraldom of conformity that ruled even during the
romantic epoch.
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