Paganini | Cartoon Drawing by Johann Peter Lyser
Johann Peter Lyser
(German engraver, journalist, critic, miscellaneous writer; caricaturist,1804-1870)
about Paganini from the magazine "Originalien", 1830
"Paganini is an Italian artist, and an Italian artist will be never sad or misanthrope. If he become that, it is the end of the art. In the character of Paganini there is nothing exalted.
His heart bits with a strong joy of living, it is attached to this land and to all it has to offer. However great the passion for his art is, he does despise nothing, not even things of little importance if they offer enjoyment […].
Paganini is one of the strangest, indeed baroque and certainly greatest phenomena, that cross land for over a century, but there is nothing mysterious about him. He his not like the stormy sea, but he is like the quiet lake.