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| Bernardo Bellotto View of Dresden Square with Kreuz Kirche 1751 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Alessandro Magnasco Garden Party in Albaro ca. 1740 oil on canvas Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa |
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| Carlo Bonavia Baia Bay, Naples 1758 oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"Is it not a shame to make two chapters of what passed in going down one pair of stairs? for we are got no farther yet than to the first landing, and there are fifteen more steps down to the bottom; and for aught I know, as my father and my uncle Toby are in a talking humour, there may be as many chapters as steps: –let that be as it will, Sir, I can no more help it than my destiny: –A sudden impulse comes across me – drop the curtain, Shandy – I drop it – Strike a line here across the paper, Tristram – I strike it – and hey for a new chapter.
The deuce of any other rule have I to govern myself by in this affair – and if I had one – as I do all things out of all rule – I would twist it and tear it to pieces, and throw it into the fire when I had done – Am I warm? I am, and the cause demands it –a pretty story! is a man to follow rules – or rules to follow him?
Now this, you must know, being my chapter upon chapters, which I promised to write before I went to sleep, I thought it meet to ease my conscience entirely before I laid down, by telling the world all I knew about the matter at once: Is it not ten times better than to set out dogmatically with a sententious parade of wisdom, and telling the world a story of a roasted horse – that chapters relieve the mind – that they assist – or impose upon the imagination – and that in work of this dramatic cast they are as necessary as the shifting of scenes – with fifty other cold conceits, enough to extinguish the fire which roasted him? – O! but to understand this, which is a puff at the fire of Diana's temple – you must read Longinus – read away – if you are not a jot the wiser by reading him the first time over – never fear – read him again – Avicenna and Licetus read Aristotle's metaphysicks forty time through a-piece, and never understood a single word. – But mark the consequence – Avicenna turned out a desperate writer at all kinds of writing – for he wrote books de omni scribili; and for Licetus (Fortunio) though all the world knows he was born a foetus, of no more than five inches and half in length, yet as he grew to that astonishing height in literature, as to write a book with a title as long as himself – the learned know I mean his Gonopsychanthropologia, upon the origin of the human soul.
So much for my chapter upon chapters, which I hold to be the best chapter in my whole work; & take my word, whoever reads it, is full as well employed, as in picking straws."
– from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (volume 2, chapter 10) by Laurence Sterne, 1759-67
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| Sebastiano Conca Education of Achilles 1727 oil on canvas Prado, Madrid |
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| Bernardo Bellotto View of Piazza della Signoria in Florence 1742 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| Alessandro Magnasco and Clemente Spera Bacchanal among Ruins 1720s oil on canvas Pushkin Museum, Moscow |
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| Hubert Robert Farandole amidst Egyptian Monuments before 1808 oil on canvas Musée d’Art Classique de Mougins |
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| Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg Landscape with Cattle ca. 1767 oil on canvas Dulwich Picture Gallery, London |
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| Bernardo Bellotto View of Pirna, Saxony 1750s oil on canvas Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Alessandro Magnasco Landscape with Shepherds ca. 1718-25 oil on canvas National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo |
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| Hubert Robert The Fire of Rome 1785 oil on canvas Musée d'art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre |
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| Hubert Robert Washerwomen in the ruins of the Colosseum 1760s oil on canvas Brooklyn Museum |
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| Alessandro Magnasco Worshipers at a shrine before 1749 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
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| Antoni Viladomat Summer (from the Four Seasons) ca. 1730-35 oil on canvas Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona |