comparison that can be of avail. Here, as throughout the operation of the Theoretic faculty, the perception is altogether moral, and instinctive love and clinging to the lines of light. Nothing but love can read the letters, nothing but § 16. Ideal sympathy catch the sound; there is no pure passion form to be that can be understood or painted except by pure- reached only by Love. ness of heart; the foul or blunt feeling will see itself in everything, and set down blasphemies; it will see Baalzebub in the casting out of devils; it will find its God of flies in every alabaster box of precious ointment.1 The indignation of zeal toward God it will take for anger against man; faith and veneration it will miss, as not comprehending; charity it will turn into lust; compassion into pride; every virtue it will go over against, like Shimei, casting dust. But the right Christian mind will, in like manner, find its own image wherever it exists; it will seek for what it loves, and draw it out of all dens and caves, and it will believe in its being, often when it cannot see it, and always turn away its eyes from beholding vanity; and so it will lie lovingly over all the faults and rough places of the human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard, and black, and broken mountain rocks, following their forms truly, and yet catching light for them to make them fair, and that must be a steep and unkindly crag indeed which it cannot cover.

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3

Now of this spirit there will always be little enough in the world, and it cannot be given or taught by men, and so it is of little use to insist on it farther; only I may note some practical points respecting the ideal treatment of human form, which may be of some use. There is not the face, I have said, which the painter may not make ideal if he choose; but that subtle feeling which shall find principles out all of good that there is in any given countenance is not, except by concern for other things than art,

§ 17. Practical

deducible.

1 [The Bible references here are Matthew ix. 34: "But the Pharisees said, He casteth out devils through the prince of the devils." Baalzebub (2 Kings i. 2, 16) was the god of flies. Matthew xxvi. 7-14.]

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2 [Ed. 1 inserts "(nemesis)."]

3 2 Samuel xvi. 13.]

[Psalms cxix. 37.]

to be acquired. But certain broad indications of evil there are which the bluntest feeling may perceive, and which the habit of distinguishing and casting out would both ennoble the schools of art, and lead, in time, to greater acuteness of perception with respect to the less explicable characters of soul beauty.

Those signs of evil which are commonly most manifest on § 18. Expres- the human features are roughly divisible into these sions chiefly de- four kinds; the signs of pride, of sensuality, of fear, structive of ideal character. 1st. and of cruelty. Any one of which will destroy the ideal character of the countenance and body.

Pride.

Now of these, the first, Pride, is perhaps the most destructive of all the four, seeing it is the undermost and original vice of all; and it is base also from the necessary foolishness of it, because at its best, when grounded on a just estimation of our own elevation or superiority above certain others, it cannot but imply that our eyes look downward only, and have never been raised above our own measure; for there is not the man so lofty in his standing or capacity, but he must be humble in thinking of the cloud habitation and far sight of the angelic intelligences above him; and in perceiving what infinity there is of things he cannot know, nor even reach unto, as it stands compared with that little body of things he can reach, and of which nevertheless he can altogether understand not one; not to speak of that wicked and fond attributing of such excellency as he may have to himself, and thinking of it as his own getting, (which is the real essence and criminality of Pride :) * nor of those viler forms of it, founded on false estimation of things beneath us and irrational contemning of them; but,

* The words in parenthesis are false. The criminality of pride is a selfish pleasure in our own pre-eminence, whether it be acknowledged as God's gift or not::-"Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are." 2 The denial of the power of God, as by Nebuchadnezzar, is impiety added to pride. [1883, when the words were first placed in parenthesis.]

1 [For "vice of all," ed. 1 reads, "story of all sin," and in the next line inserts "that is" before "when grounded."]

2 [Luke xviii. 11.]

and modern.

taken at its best, it is still base to that degree that there is no grandeur of feature which it cannot destroy and make despicable, so that the first step towards the ennobling of any face is the ridding it of its vanity; to which aim there cannot be anything more contrary than that principle of § 19. Portraitportraiture which prevails with us in these days, ure, ancient whose end seems to be the expression of vanity throughout, in face and in all circumstances of accompaniment;' tending constantly to insolence of attitude, and levity and haughtiness of expression, and worked out farther in mean accompaniments of worldly splendour and possession; together with hints or proclamations of what the person has done or supposes himself to have done, which if known, it is gratuitous in the portrait to exhibit, and, if unknown, it is insolent in the portrait to proclaim: whence has arisen such a school of portraiture as must make the people of the nineteenth century the shame of their descendants, and the butt of all time.* To which practices are to be opposed both the glorious severity of Holbein, and the mighty and simple modesty of Raffaelle, Titian, Giorgione, and Tintoret, with whom armour does not constitute the warrior, neither silk the dame. And from what feeling the dignity of that portraiture arose is best traceable at Venice, where we find their victorious doges painted neither in the toil of battle nor the triumph of return: nor set forth with thrones and curtains of state, but kneeling, always crownless, and returning thanks to God for His help; or as priests interceding for the nation in its affliction. But this feeling and its results have been so well traced by Rio,† that I need not speak of it farther.

* Rather strong, this! but extremely true. All the paragraph is valuable, and its sequel, to the end of the chapter, excellent in general criticism, and, with the slight exceptions noted, the basis of all my critical teaching since. [1883.]

† De la Poésie Chrétienne. Forme de l'Art, chap. viii.2

1 [See Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. ii. ("Roman Renaissance") § 37, where Ruskin refers to this passage and further illustrates it.]

2 [For the reference to the English edition, see note on § 14 above.]

Sensuality.

3

2

That second destroyer of ideal form, the appearance of § 20. Secondly, Sensual character, though not less fatal in its operation on modern art, is more difficult to trace, owing to its peculiar subtlety. For it is not possible to say by what minute differences the right conception of the human form is separated from that which is luscious and foul: for the root of all is in the love and seeking of the painter, who, if of impure and feeble mind, will cover all that he touches with clay staining, as Bandinelli puts a scent of common flesh about his marble Christ, and as many, whom I will not here name, among moderns; but if of mighty mind or pure, may pass through all places of foulness, and none will stay upon him, as Michael Angelo; or he will baptize all things and wash them with pure water, as our own Stothard. Now, so far as this power is dependent on the seeking of the artist, and is only to be seen in the work of good and spiritually-minded men, it is vain to attempt to teach or illustrate it; neither is it here the place to show how it belongs to the representation of the mental image of things, instead of things themselves, of which we are to speak in treating of the imagination; but thus much may here be noted of broad, practical principle, that the purity of flesh painting depends, in very considerable measure, on the intensity and warmth of its colour.* For if it be opaque, and clay cold, and devoid of all the § 21. How connected with im- radiance and life of flesh, the lines of its true purity of colour, beauty, being severe and firm, will become so hard in the loss of the glow and gradation by which nature illustrates

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* I am glad to see how early this great principle of colour, so contrary to the common estimate of it, was known to me, and thus strongly asserted. [1883.]6

1 [Compare with this section, Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vi. § 58.]

2 Ed. Î reads,

66

a foul scent of human flesh . . ."]

3 [See below, sec. ii. ch. iii. § 27,

p. 280.]

4 [For other references to Stothard, whom Ruskin called the Angelico of England, see Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. vi. § 5; Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vi. § 52; Cestus of Aglaia, § 80.]

[Ed. 1 reads less briefly, "to take note of the way in which ."] [So in The Queen of the Air, colour is "the spiritual power of art" (§ 94 n.). Cf. Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xiv. § 42; Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. v. $$ 30-34.]

them, that the painter will be compelled to sacrifice them for a luscious fulness and roundness, in order to give the conception of flesh; which, being done, destroys ideality of form as of colour, and gives all over to lasciviousness of surface; showing also that the painter sought for this, and this only, since otherwise he had not taken a subject in which he knew himself compelled to surrender all sources of dignity. Whereas right splendour of colour both bears out a nobler severity of form, and is in itself purifying and cleansing, like fire; furnishing also to the painter an excuse for the choice of his subject, seeing that he may be supposed as not having painted it but in the admiration of its abstract glory of colour and form, and with no unworthy seeking. But the mere power of perfect and glowing colour will, in some sort, redeem even § 22. And prea debased tendency of mind itself, as eminently vented by its the case with Titian, who, though' often treating base subjects, or elevated subjects basely, as in the disgusting Magdalen of the Pitti Palace, and that of the Barberigo at Venice, yet redeems all by his glory of hue, so that he cannot paint altogether coarsely and with Giorgione, who had more imaginative intellect, the sense of nudity is utterly lost, and there is no need nor desire of concealment any more, but his naked figures move among the trees like fiery pillars, and lie

splendour,

* Nevertheless, he ought not to take subjects needing excuse. [1883.]

1 [Ed. 1 reads, "though of little feeling and often . . ."; and, four lines lower, instead of "more imaginative intellect," ed. 1 reads "nobler and more serious intellect, .."]

2 [The following is Ruskin's note in his Florentine note-book (1845) on Titian's Magdalen in the Pitti :

"This picture may once have been fine, merely as a work of art, but it is now destroyed; a few folds of the hair, here and there, a shadow of the flesh, and the alabaster box with Titianus' in brown letters on it are all that remain. The rest is either picture-dealer, or ground colour with all the glazings off. In consequence the hair looks like a brown mat or like that of a rough Blenheim spaniel; the mass of it, without the slightest grouping or arrangement, is like the pictures of Circassians on the signs of Barbers in Bishopsgate Within. The fleshy and shapeless body is nearly as disgusting. The face of the grossest possible type, and the eyes turned up, as the model turned them when she was ordered to do so, are the crowning sin. The little alabaster vase and brown signature are very delicious; if I had the picture, I would cut them out and burn the rest.'

Titian's pictures in the Barberigo Palace at Venice were at a later date sold to the Emperor of Russia (see Stones of Venice, Venetian index, s. Barberigo).]