Part 16 (2/2)
254 Now it is not possible for Christian men to live thus, except under a fever of insanity I have before, in my lectures on Prudence and Insolence in art, deliberately asserted to you the logical accuracy of the ter in the power or possession of a betraying spirit; and the definite sign of such insanity is delight in witnessing pain, usually accoloats over or plays with physical uncleanness or disease, and always by a nized for demoniacal power sopleasure in s[BS] Now, in the allery of the Brera at Milan, there is an elaborate study of a dead Christ, entirely characteristic of early fifteenth century Italian madman's work It is called--and was presented to the people as--a Christ; but it _is_ only an anatohastly dead body, with the soles of the feet set straight at the spectator, and the rest foreshortened It is either Castagno's or Mantegna's,--in no; but I have not looked at the picture for years, and am not sure at this moment It does not matter a strahich: it is exactly characteristic of the na, Lionardo da Vinci, and Michael Angelo, polluted their ith the science of the sepulcher,[BT] and degraded it with presumptuous and paltry technical skill Foreshorten your Christ, and paint Him, if you can, half putrefied,--that is the scientific art of the Renaissance
255 It is iuish always the beginner of things from the establisher To the poulterer's son, Pollajuolo, re insane contest the only subject of art; but the two _establishers_ of anatoelo You hear of Lionardo chiefly because of his Last Supper, but Italy did not hear of hiht _her_ to worshi+p Lionardo--but the Battle of the Standard
V
_Fragments on Holbein and others_
256 Of Holbein's St Elizabeth, remember, she is not a perfect Saint Elizabeth, by any means She is an honest and sweet German lady,--the best he could see; he could do no better;--and so I come back to my old story,--no man can do better than he sees: if he can reach the nature round him, it is well; he may fall short of it; he cannot rise above it; ”the best, in this kind, are but shadows”
Yet that intense veracity of Holbein is indeed the strength and glory of all the northern schools They exist only in being true Their work a by it They cannot dream of what is not They make fools of themselves if they try
Think how feeble even Shakspere is when he tries his hand at a Goddess;--women, beautiful and womanly, as many as you choose; but who cares what his Minerva or Juno says, in the masque of the Tempest? And for the painters--when Sir Joshua tries for a Madonna, or Vandyke for a Diana--they can't even _paint_! they becoies in the Louvre, or at modern French heroics, or German pietisether, are not worth one De Hooghe of an old wo we northerns can do is to find out what is fact, and insist on it: mean fact it may be, or noble--but fact always, or we die
257 Yet the intensest form of northern realization can be matched in the south, when the southerns choose There are two pieces of ani in the Sistine Chapel unrivaled for literal veracity The sheep at the well in front of Zipporah; and afterwards, when she is going away, leading her children, her eldest boy, like every one else, has taken his chief treasure with hi It is a little sharp-nosed white fox-terrier, full of fire and life; but not strong enough for a long walk So little Gershoer” because his father had been a stranger in a strange land,--little Gersho on the top of a large bundle to ht eyes out, above his hand, with a little roguish glea's expression,--that he has been barking at Moses all theand has nearly put him out of temper:--and without any doubt, I can assert to you that there is not any other such piece of ani in the world,--so brief, intense, vivid, and absolutely balanced in truth: as tenderly drawn as if it had been a saint, yet as humorously as Landseer's Lord Chancellor poodle
258 Oppose to--
Holbein's Veracity--Botticelli's Fantasy
” Shade ” Color
” Despair ” Faith
” Grossness ” Purity
True Fantasy Botticelli's Tree in hellespontic Sibyl Not a real tree at all--yet founded on intensest perception of beautiful reality So the swan of Clio, as opposed to Durer's cock, or to Turner's swan
The Italian power of abstraction into one e--Holbein's death is only literal He has to split his death into thirty different deaths; and each is but a skeleton But Orcagna's death is one--the power of death itself There ht_, as in execution
259 What then, we have to ask, is a man _conscious of_ in what he sees?
For instance, in all Cruikshank's etchings--however slight the outline--there is an intense consciousness of light and shade, and of local color, _as a part_ of light and shade; but none of color itself
He holly incapable of coloring; and perhaps this very deficiency enabled hi
Bewick--snow-pieces, etc _Gray_ predo out in patterns of birds;--yet so uncultivated, that he engraves the brown birds better than pheasant or peacock!
For quite perfect consciousness of color io
VI
_Final notes on light and shade_