Scientifically speaking, we can regard every discovery of style analysis as a
hypothesis and erect airy structures with the intuitively discovered data, con-
fident that documents and signatures, to which we aspire with the help of the
provisional structure, will later give a greater solidity to the whole.

Unlike the copper-plate in engraving, the creative personality does not
produce commensurably equal works. Therefore it is the problematic task of
the connoisseur to perceive in the one production the productive power as a
whole with all its potentialities, so that any further work will be recognized
as a result of this particular power.

Various things can be deduced from such a concept. There is little ad-
vantage in recording and learning by heart all the characteristics of a work of
art, because it is not in the least likely that all of them will recur in a second
work. We must distinguish between what is necessary for the author and what
is accidental--and only effective in the one case--such as size and subject-
matter. It is not advisable to scrutinize too intently. It is a good thing to
examine in rapid sequence as many works by a master as are accessible, and
then to gather and assimilate the impressions away from the monuments. This
is the best way to harmonize the versatility of the critic with the potential
abilities of the creative personality.

My essays cannot serve directly as a guide to connoisseurship, and could
not do so even if they were more successful and detailed in the characterization.
Indirectly--and this is the extent of the modest hope that sustains me--they
may facilitate and intensify the study and the enjoyment of the originals. The
ability to attribute and check attributions will then follow automatically from
study and enjoyment. Yes, from enjoyment!

Many art historians, it is true, make it their ambition to exclude pleasure
from art, in which, for obvious reasons, some of them succeed all too well.
They are embarrassed and afraid that representatives of the more strictly
disciplined sister sciences will not regard them as equals but will suspect
them of an entertaining or frivolous occupation. Reasoning based on calcula-
tions and measurements is presented as the true method. A dry approach
stands high in favour. Abstruseness, involved terminology, which makes the
reading of art-historical books such torture, derives from that very ambition.
Sometimes there are depths, but so obscure as to be worthless for the reader,
generally all is shallow but cunningly troubled so as to suggest depths.

-vi-