Part 9 (1/2)

You never saw her like before Never will again, now that Gainsborough is dead No photography,--no science,--no industry, will touch or reach for an instant this _super_-naturalness You will look vainly through the summer fields for such a child ”Nor up the lawn, nor by the wood,”

is she Whence do you think this marvelous charhs? This only you may practically ascertain, as surely as that a floill die if you cut its root away, that you cannot alter a single touch in Gainsborough's ithout injury to the whole Half a dozen spots, owns of these other children whom I first showed you, will not make the smallest difference to them; nor a lock or two more or less in their hair, nor a dimple or two more or less in their cheeks But if you alter one wave of the hair of Gainsborough's girl, the child is gone Yet the art is so subtle, that I do not expect you to believe this It looks so instinctive, so easy, so 'chanceux,'--the French word is better than ours Yes, and in their er Designer than he ith hi was done

145 I proceed to take a more definite instance--this Greek head of the Lacinian Juno The design or appointing of the forms now entirely prevails over the resemblance to Nature No real hair could ever be drifted into these wild lines, which mean the wrath of the Adriatic winds round the Cape of Storlier or prettier than Gainsborough's child--(and you know already what I think about it, that no Greek Goddess was ever half so pretty as an English girl, of pure clay and tenified and is to the do art

146 I will go back another five hundred years, and place an Egyptian beside the Greek divinity The rese law has become all The lines are reduced to an easily counted nuement is little more than a decorative sequence of pleasant curves cut in porphyry,--in the upper part of their contour following the outline of a woman's face in profile, over-crested by that of a hawk, on a kind of pedestal But that the sign-engraver meant by his hawk, Immortality, and by her pedestal, the House or Tavern of Truth, is of little i to take the sarcophagus for his place of rest

147 How ested to us by these transitions! Is beauty contrary to law, and grace attainable only through license? What we gain in language, shall we lose in thought? and in e add of labor, et its ends?

Not so

Look at this piece of Sandro's work, the Libyan Sibyl[AH]

It is as ordered and norh's It retains the ion; it is invested with the joy of neakened childhood

Mind, I do not expect you--do not wish you--to enjoy Botticelli's dark engraving as h's aerial sketch; for due co But there is enough even in this copy of the Florentine plate to show you the junction of the ters in it--of prophecy, and delight

148 Will these ters, do you suppose, be united in the same manner in the contemporary Northern art? That Northern school is ive you, as type of the interland--not Holbein, but Botticelli I aious temper remains unconquered by the doctrines of the Reformation Botticelli hat Luther wished to be, but could not be--a refor in the Church: his ht of beauty, and yet remain prophetic But it was far otherwise in Germany There the Reformation of manners became the destruction of faith; and art therefore, not a prophecy, but a protest It is the chief work of the greatest Protestant who ever lived,[AI] which I ask you to study withhad developed itself during the introduction of three new--(practically and vitally new, that is to say)--elements, into the minds of men: elements which briefly may be expressed thus:

1 Classicism, and Literary Science

2 Medicine, and Physical Science[AJ]

3 Reforious Science

And first of Classicism

You feel, do not you, in this typical work of Gainsborough's, that his subject as well as his picture is 'artless' in a lovely sense;--nay, not only artless, but ignorant, and unscientific, in a beautiful way? You would be afterwards re the effect produced on her face--if you were to ask this little lady to spell a very long word? Also, if you wished to kno o in forty-nine, you would perhaps wisely address yourself elsewhere On the other hand, you do not doubt that _this_ lady[AK]

knows very well how o in forty-nine, and is more Mistress of Arts than any of us are Masters of them

150 You have then, in the one case, a beautiful sinorance; in the other, a beautiful artfulness, and a wisdo, love But you know also that we norance; and, as I fear too many of us in competitive effort feel, beconorance, therefore, is not evil absolutely; but, innocent, ood absolutely; but, guilty, may be hateful

So, therefore, when I now repeat my former statement, that the first main opposition between the Northern and Southern schools is in the simplicity of the one, and the scholarshi+p of the other, that statement may imply sometimes the superiority of the North, and sometimes of the South You may have a heavenly simplicity opposed to a hellish (that is to say, a lustful and arrogant) scholarshi+p; or you norance opposed to a divine and disciplined wisdo in both cases; but evil to good, as the casebefore Raphael's arabesques in the Loggias of the Vatican, I wrote down in , the inventory, of the small portion of that infinite wilderness of sensual fantasy which happened to be opposite me It consisted of a woin's breasts, with stus, the whole changing at the waist into a goat's body, which ended below in an obelisk upside-down, to the apex at the bottoraceful chains, an altar, and two bunches of grapes

Now you know in a n'--beautifully struck with free hand, and richly gradated in color,--that the e of art and literature: that he knew all about Egyptian sphinxes, and Greek Gorgons; about Egyptian obelisks, and Hebrew altars; about Herrapes

You know also--or ought to know, in an instant,--that all this learning has done hi than any of these things, since they were to be used by hiht in arless trunks, and obelisks upside-down, has been the last effort of his expiring sensation, in the grasp of corrupt and altogether victorious Death And you have thus, in Gainsborough as co siainst an ie

152 But, next, let us consider the reverse conditions

Let us take instance of contrast between faultful and treacherous ignorance, and divinely pure and fruitful knowledge

In the place of honor at the end of one of the roolish Academician, announced as a representation of Moses sustained by Aaron and Hur, during the discoe of the Pentateuch, there is no other scene (in which the visible agents are ht to reach even a distant approximation to the probabilities of the fact One saw in a moment that the painter was both powerful and siht for a vital conception, and had originally and earnestly read his text, and formed his conception And one saw also in aor hearing his Bible, as he ht have chanced on a dra of the character of Moses,--nothing of his law,--nothing of the character of Aaron, nor of the nature of a priesthood,--nothing of theto represent, of the teents, or of its relations to modern life

153 On the contrary, in the fresco of the earlier scenes in the life of Moses, by Sandro Botticelli, you know--not 'in a e cannot be so obtained; but in proportion to the discretion of your own reading, and to the care you give to the picture, you _uarded learning; here a Master indeed, at whose feet you may sit safely, who can teach you, better than in words, the significance of both Moses' law and Aaron's ministry; and not only these, but, if he chose, could add to this an exposition as cohest philosophies both of the Greek nation, and of his own; and could as easily have painted, had it been asked of him, Draco, or Numa, or Justinian, as the herdsman of Jethro