Faldoni, parts 2796 - 2799

 2796. Before I say anything about the Pre-Raphaelites, I have to say right out that I can’t stand any of their paintings, and I find them all to be irritating. For some reason, I can’t guess what it was, the painters of that period were obsessed with kind of saccharine sentimentality that makes my skin crawl to look at.

  2797. I will try to restrict myself to just talking about the subject, which is the small details in oil paintings, but you may notice some sarcasm creeping into my comments, but I have been honest and have stated at the beginning why this might be.

 2798. All paintings from the earliest times have contained a certain degree of fine little details. Even in very ancient portraits, such as on the death masks the Egyptians put on their mummies, you can find the painters attempting to indicate things like eyelashes, and facial hair, and even age spots. Then as now, artists were always praised for the degree of resolution they were capable of achieving in their works.

2799. But those little details are very difficult and time consuming, and have the nasty habit of making a picture look comical and ridiculous if they are not done just right. So a painter might attempt to render certain age spots or birth marks in a portrait only to get the color slightly wrong and have people say, “Did ketchup splash on this face?”