I often find myself wondering why people are so frequently dissatisfied with their portraits, but I think I have discovered the principal reason--they are not pleased with themselves, and therefore cannot endure a faithful representation. I find it is the same with myself. I cannot bear any portraits of myself, except those of my own painting, where I have had the opportunity of coaxing them, so as to suit my own feelings.
Don't be afraid of splendour of effect; nothing is more brilliant, nothing more radiant than nature. Painting tends to become confused and to lose its power to strike hard. Make things monumental and yet real; set down the lights and the shadows as in reality. Heads which are all in a half-tone flushed with colour from a strong sun; heads in the light, full of air and freshness; these should be a delight to paint.
The first object of a painter is to make a simple flat surface appear like a relievo, and some of its parts detached from the ground; he who excels all others in that part of the art deserves the greatest praise. This perfection of the art depends on the correct distribution of lights and shades called _Chiaro-scuro_. If the painter, then, avoids shadows, he may be said to avoid the glory of the art, and to render his work despicable to real connoisseurs, for the sake of acquiring the esteem of vulgar and ignorant admirers of fine colours, who never have any knowledge of relievo.
Chiaroscuro, to use untechnical language and to speak of it as it is employed by all the schools, is the art of making atmosphere visible and painting objects in an envelope of air. Its aim is to create all the picturesque accidents of the shadows, of the half-tones and the light, of relief and distance, and to give in consequence more variety, more unity of effect, of caprice, and of relative truth, to forms as to colours. The opposite conception is one more ingenuous and abstract, a method by which one shows objects as they are, seen close, the atmosphere being suppressed, and in consequence without any perspective except the linear perspective, which results from the diminution in the size of objects and their relation to the horizon. When we talk of aeriel perspective we presuppose a certain amount of chiaroscuro.