Let us try to discover by what means Rubens has achieved this result. We have mentioned the contrast between the bodies of the Dead and the living figures. It is an illustration of the painter’s power to suggest the physical sense of touch and the feelings in the mind aroused by it. A lesser artist might have conceived this way of presenting the scene, and drawn all the figures in the same positions, making, in fact, the same appeal to the eye, and yet not have affected us in the same way, because he would make no appeal to that other sense of touch, which really in most people is the more easily roused; for people more readily appreciate hard and soft, rough and smooth, stiff and limp, hot and cold, than the colors and shapes and grouping of objects. It is this sense of touch which Rubens had so wonderful a skill in suggesting.
“The Maids of Honor.” by Velaquez.
Look, for example, at the modeling of the shoulders and head of Peter. What strength and bulk and sudden tightening of the muscles, as he turns and holds himself still! The line of the shoulders and the direction of the eyes point us to the Saviour’s head. This has dropped of its own
