Pictures by Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Read

Observe the remarkable difference between Claude and Teniers in their power / of painting vacant space. Claude makes his whole landscape a _plenum: _ the / air is quite as substantial as any other part of the scene. Hence there are / no true distances, and every thing presses at once and equally upon the / eye. There is something close and almost suffocating in the atmosphere of / some of Claude's sunsets. Never did any one paint air, the thin air, the / absolutely apparent vacancy between object and object, so admirably as / Teniers. That picture of the Archers[2] exemplifies this excellence. See / the distances between those ugly louts! how perfectly true to the fact! [1]

But oh! what a wonderful picture is that Triumph of Silenus! [3] It is the / very revelry of hell. Every evil passion is there that could in any way be / forced into juxtaposition with joyance. Mark the lust, and, hard by, the / hate. Every part is pregnant with libidinous nature without one spark of / the grace of Heaven. The animal is triumphing -- not over, but -- in the / absence, in the non-existence, of the spiritual part of man. I could fancy / that Rubens had seen in a vision --