Yes, at the heart of this work of Watteau’s, I do not know what slow and vague harmony murmurs behind those laughing words; I do not know what musical and sweetly contagious sorrow is diffused throughout these gallant fetes.  Like the fascination of Venice, I do not know what veiled and sighing poetry in low tones holds here the charmed spirit.  The man has passed across his work; and this work you come to regard as the play and distraction of a suffering thought, like the playthings of a sick child who is now dead....

But let us speak of that masterpiece of French masterpieces, that canvas which has held a distinguished place on one of the walls of the salon carre for fifty years, L’Embarquement de Cythere.

Observe all that ground lightly coated with a transparent and golden varnish, all that ground covered with rapid strokes of the brush lightly laid on with a delicate touch.  Notice that green of the trees shot through with red tones, penetrated with quivering air, and the vaporous light of autumn.  Notice the delicate water-colour effect of thick oil, the general smoothness of the canvas, the relief of this pouch or hood; notice the full modelling of the little faces with their glances in the confused outlines of the eye and their smiles in the suggested outlines of the mouth.  The beautiful and flowing sweep of the brush over those decolletages, the bare flesh glowing with voluptuous rose among the shadows of the wood!  The pretty crossings of the brush to round a neck!  The beautiful undulating folds with soft breaks like those which the modeller makes in the clay!  And the spirit and the gallantry of touch of Watteau’s brush in the feminine trifles and headdresses and finger-tips,—­and everything it approaches!  And the harmony of those sunlit distances, those mountains of rosy snow, those waters of verdurous reflections; and again those rays of sunlight falling upon robes of rose and yellow, mauve petticoats, blue mantles, shot-coloured vests, and little white dogs with fiery spots.  For no painter has equalled Watteau in rendering beautifully coloured objects transfigured by a ray of sunlight, their soft fading and that kind of diffused blossoming of their brilliancy under the full light.  Let your eyes rest for a moment on that band of pilgrims of both sexes hurrying, beneath the setting sun, towards the galley of Love that is about to set sail:  there is the joyousness of the most adorable colours in the world surprised in a ray of the sun, and all that haze and tender silk in the radiant shower involuntarily remind you of those brilliant insects that we find dead, but with still living colours, in the golden glow of a piece of amber.

This picture, the Embarquement de Cythere, is the wonder of wonders of this master.

    L’Art du Dix-huitieme Siecle (3d ed., Paris, 1880).

THE SISTINE MADONNA