Mola Quotes

Gainsborough was never in Italy, and to atone in some measure for the injury which that negligence might prove to him, he was in the habit of borrowing, and sometimes purchasing, works of that school as objects of study. One day, finding him attentively examining the fine picture of Mola that represents 'Jupiter and Leda' from which it was with difficulty he could be parted, we inquired what it was that so particularly caught his attention. 'It is this manner of painting' replied the modest artist 'which I shall never attain, for Mola appears to have made it his own by patent.' (Thomas Gainsborough)