I am never tired of looking at Titian's pictures; they possess such extreme breadth, which to me is so delightful a quality. In my opinion there never will, to the end of time, arise a portrait-painter superior to Titian. Next to him in this kind of excellence is Raphael. There is this difference between Raphael and Titian: Raphael, with all his excellence, possessed the utmost gentleness; it was as if he had said, "If another person can do better, _I_ have no objections." But Titian was a man who would keep down every one else to the uttermost; he was determined that the art should come in and go out with himself; the expression in all the portraits of him told as much. When any stupendous work of antiquity remains with us--say, a building or a bridge--the common people cannot account for it, and they say it was erected _by the devil_. Now I feel this same thing in regard to the works of Titian;--they seem to me as if painted by a devil, or at any rate from inspiration; I cannot account for them.
Raphael, to be plain with you--for I like to be candid and outspoken--does not please me at all. In Venice are found the good and the beautiful; to their brush I give the first place; it is Titian that bears the banner.
Perhaps some day the world will discover that Rembrandt is a much greater painter than Raphael. I write this blasphemy--one to make the hair of the Classicists stand on end--without definitely taking a side; only I seem to find as I grow older that the most beautiful and most rare thing in the world is truth.
Let us say, if you will, that Rembrandt has not Raphael's nobility. Yet perhaps this nobility which Raphael manifests in his line is shown by Rembrandt in the mysterious conception of his subjects, in the profound naïveté of his expressions and gestures. However much one may prefer the majestic emphasis of Raphael, which answers perhaps to the grandeur inherent in certain subjects, one might assert, without being stoned by men of taste--I mean men whose taste is real and sincere--that the great Dutchman was more a born painter than the studious pupil of Perugino.