ABSTRACT
To the Keeper of the MUSEUM. SIR, M.De Piles is one of the most judicious Authors on the Art of Painting. He has added to his Treatise on that Subject a very curious Paper, which he calls The Ballance of the Painters. He divides the whole Art of Painting into four Heads: Composition, Design or Drawing, Colouring, and Expression; under each of which he assigns the Degree of Perfection which the several Masters have attained. To this End he first settles the Degree of sovereign Perfection, which has never been attain’d and which is beyond even the Taste or Knowledge of the best Criticks at present; this he rates as the twentieth Degree. The nineteenth Degree is the highest of which the human Mind has any Com-prehension, but which has not yet been expressed or executed by the greatest Masters. The eighteenth is that to which the greatest Masters have actually attained; and so downwards according to their comparative Genius and Skill. Monsieur de Piles makes four Columns of his four chief Articles or
Parts of Painting; and opposite to the Names of the great Masters writes their several Degrees of Perfection in each Article. The Thought is very ingenious, and had it been executed with Accuracy and a just Rigour of Taste, would have been of the greatest use to the Lovers of that noble Art. But we can hardly expect that any Man should be exactly right in his Judgment through such a Multiplicity of the most delicate Ideas.
