Scan 226
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1875
4 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1workers received was considerable. Had it been otherwise, the powers of its Raphael, its Cellini, and last (though not least to the admirers of the Violin), its Stradiuarius would have remained simply dormant. Art, like commerce, is regulated in a great measure by supply and demand. In Raphael's day, sacred subjects were in demand; the Church was his great patron, and thus aided him in bringing forth the gift which nature had implanted within him. In modern times, landscape painting became the favoured subject, particularly in England; the result of which preference has been to place us in the foremost rank in that branch of art. The stage furnishes another instance of the effect that patronage has in bringing forth latent talent. If the history of dramatic art is traced, it will be found that its chief works were written when the taste of an appreciative public could be securely counted upon. As it waned so the writers of merit became rarer, or perhaps it would be more correct to say, the plays produced became less meritorious, the authors being constrained to pander to the prevailing taste.
3As further evidence of the effect of patronage on art, a case in point is found in the fabric of Venetian glass. The Venetians, centuries ago, became famous for their works in glass, and the patronage they enjoyed was world-wide; but their country being thrown into an unsettled condition, capital drifted from it, until the blowing of glass,
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