any great work of sacred art which is not as precious in colour as in all other qualities (unless indeed it be a Crucifixion of Fra Angelico in the Florence Academy, which has just been glazed, and pumiced, and painted, and varnished by the picture cleaners until it glares from one end of the gallery to the other); only the pure white light and delicate hue of the idealists, whose colours are by preference such as we have seen to be the most beautiful in the chapter on Purity, are carefully to be distinguished from the golden light and deeppitched hue of the school of Titian, whose virtue is the grandeur of earthly solemnity, not the glory of heavenly rejoicing.

§ 16. Ideal form of the body itself;

of what variety

susceptible.

But leaving these accessary circumstances, and touching the treatment of the bodily form, it is evident, in the first place, that whatever typical beauty the human body is capable of possessing must be bestowed upon it when it is to be understood as And therefore those general proportions and types bottom. The drawing of the faces is most delicate, all stippled and crosshatched rapidly and freely, not flat painted; the dark sunk eyes of the Madonna, are all painted with strokes that run round them, apparently without much drawing; the effect comes out on retiring.

spiritual.

"The colour of the whole far richer and deeper than Raffaelle, almost worthy of Titian. All come dark against sky. The distance peculiarly simple, level, and quiet, one cross only seen on the top of a knoll, and a few trees nearer. Still, as in the avoidance of all violent grief or passion, there is infinite grandeur on the one hand, so on the other, there is a certain degree of coldness, and in these three pictures of Perugino I feel it especially. They say here that the one in the Tribune is of his first manner and this of the Albizzi in his very finest. Raffaelle has seldom done anything so fine as the St. Joseph for grace and purity, going beyond it only in intenseness of expression." This fresco was originally painted for a church in Florence, and is thus referred to by Vasari (ii. 316, Bohn's ed. 1871) :—

"Pietro likewise received a commission to paint a figure representing the Dead Saviour, with the Madonna and San Giovanni, above the steps leading to the side door of San Pietro Maggiore, and this he executed in such a manner that, exposed as it is to wind and weather, it has nevertheless maintained such freshness as to have the appearance of being but just finished by the hand of the master."

The Florentine editor of Vasari (1832-1838) states that "when the Church, which had shown symptoms of decay from the year 1784, was entirely demolished, the fresco was placed by the Senator Albizzi in a small chapel of his palace, where it still remains.' Eastlake, in his Materials for a History of Oil Painting, 1847 (ii. 126), adds that "from a document obligingly communicated by the present inheritor of the picture, it appears that the artist received a hundred gold crowns for it from Luca degl' Albizzi.” As that individual was exiled in 1478, Eastlake gives 1476-1477 as the date of the work. The fresco is mentioned in guide-books of some years later than 1847 as being still to be seen in the Casa Albizzi.]

which are deducible from comparison of the nobler individuals of the race, must be adopted and adhered to; admitting among them not, as in the human ideal, such varieties as result from past suffering, or contest with sin, but such only as are consistent with sinless nature, or are the signs of instantly or continually operative affections; for though it is conceivable that spirit should suffer, it is inconceivable that spiritual frame should retain, like the stamped inelastic human clay, the brand of sorrow past, unless fallen:

"His face

Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care

Sat on his faded cheek."1

Yet so far forth the Angelic idea is diminished, nor could this be suffered in pictorial representation.

admissible.

Again, such muscular development as is necessary to the perfect beauty of the body is to be rendered. But that which is necessary to strength, or which tomical develop§ 17. Anaappears to have been the result of laborious ment, how far exercise, is inadmissible. No herculean form is spiritual, for it is degrading the spiritual creature to suppose it operative through impulse of bone and sinew; its power is immaterial and constant, neither dependent on, nor developed by, exertion. Generally it is well to conceal anatomical development as far as may be; even Michael Angelo's anatomy interferes with his divinity; in the hands of lower men the angel becomes a preparation. How far it is possible to subdue or generalize the naked form I venture not to affirm; but I believe that it is best to conceal it, as far as may be, not with light and undulating draperies, that fall in with and exhibit its principal lines, but with severe and linear draperies, such as were constantly employed before the time of Raffaelle. I recollect no single instance of a naked angel that does not look boylike or childlike, and unspiritualized; even Fra Bartolomeo's might with advantage be spared from the pictures at Lucca: and, afterwards, the sky is merely encumbered with sprawling infants; those of Domenichino in

1 [Paradise Lost, i. 600.]

the Madonna del Rosario, and Martyrdom of St. Agnes,' are peculiarly offensive, studies of bare-legged children howling and kicking in volumes of smoke. Confusion seems to exist in the minds of subsequent painters between angels and Cupids.

§ 18. Symmetry, how valuable.

Farther, the qualities of symmetry and repose are of peculiar value in spiritual form. We find the former most earnestly sought by all the great painters in the arrangement of the hair,' wherein no loosely flowing nor varied form is admitted, but all restrained in undisturbed and equal ringlets; often, as in the infant Christ of Fra Angelico, supported on the forehead in forms of sculpturesque severity. The angel of Masaccio, in the Deliverance of Peter, grand both in countenance and motion, loses much of his spirituality because the painter has put a little too much of his own character into the hair, and left it disordered.

§ 19. The influence of Greek art, how

dangerous.

3

Of repose, and its exalting power, I have already said enough for our present purpose, though I have not insisted on the peculiar manifestation of it in the Christian ideal as opposed to the Pagan. But this, as well as all other questions relating to the particular development of the Greek mind, is foreign to the immediate inquiry, which therefore I shall here conclude, in the hope of resuming it in detail after examining the laws of beauty in the inanimate creation; always, however, holding this for certain, that of whatever kind or degree the shortcoming may be, it is not possible but that shortcoming should be visible in every Pagan conception, when set beside Christian: and believing, for my own part, that there is not only deficiency, but such difference in kind as must make all Greek

1 [See Vol. III. p. 184.]

2 [On the subject of the treatment of hair in art, see Ariadne Florentina, § 219; and Catalogue of the Educational Series, note on No. 50.]

3 [One of the frescoes in the Brancacci chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, where also is the "Tribute Money" referred to at p. 323 n.; the "Liberation of Peter" is now generally attributed to Filippino Lippi.]

4 [An intention not carried out in Modern Painters, nor very systematically elsewhere, but see next note.]

conception full of danger to the student in proportion to his admiration of it; as I think has been fatally seen in its effects on the Italian schools, when its pernicious element first mingled with their solemn purity, and recently in its influence on the French historical painters; neither can I, from my present knowledge, fix upon an ancient statue which expresses by the countenance any one elevated character of soul,' or any single enthusiastic self-abandoning affection, much less any such majesty of feeling as might mark the features for supernatural. The Greek could not conceive a spirit; he could do nothing without limbs; his God is a finite God, talking, pursuing, and going journeys;* if at any time he was touched with a true feeling of the unseen powers around § 20. Its scope, him, it was in the field of poised battle; for there how limited." is something in the near coming of the shadow of death, something in the devoted fulfilment of mortal duty, that reveals the real God, though darkly. That pause on the field of Platea was not one of vain superstition; the two white figures that blazed along the Delphic plain, when the earthquake and the fire led the charge from Olympus, were more than sunbeams

2

* I know not anything in the range of art more unspiritual than the Apollo Belvedere; the raising of the fingers of the right hand in surprise at the truth of the arrow is altogether human, and would be vulgar in a prince, much more in a deity. The sandals destroy the divinity of the foot, and the lip is curled with mortal passion.3

1

66 ["I have not loved the arts of Greece," said Ruskin, as others have" (Lectures on Art, § 111). He devoted, however, a good deal of study to them, as may be seen more especially in The Queen of the Air and Aratra Pentelici, and in scattered references elsewhere in his writings. He always held, however-a view which some other students are not likely to share, at least without large exceptions-that "Greek sculpture was essentially drрóowños;--independent, not only of the expression, but even of the beauty of the face. Nay, independent of its being so much as seen" (Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret). So again, "The Greek, as such, never expresses personal character" (Aratra Pentelici, § 193); and cf. Queen of the Air, §§ 161-177.]

2 [See Plutarch: : Aristides, c. 17 ad fin.; Herodotus, 9, 60. The Lacedæmonians finding themselves alone and fiercely attacked offered sacrifice. For a while the sacrifices were not favourable, and many fell or were wounded during the interval. At last Pausanias, looking towards the temple of Hera of the Plataans, invoked the goddess, praying that they might not be disappointed of their hopes, and the omens changed.]

3[For other references to the Apollo Belvedere, see preceding volume, pp. 118, 608, 627.]

on the battle dust; the sacred cloud, with its lance light and triumph singing, that went down to brood over the masts c Salamis, was more than morning mist among the olives: and yet what were the Greek's thoughts of his God of Battle No spirit power was in the vision:* it was a being of clay strength, and human passion, foul, fierce, and changeful; of penetrable arms, and vulnerable flesh. Gather what we may of great from Pagan chisel or Pagan dream, and set it beside the orderer of Christian warfare, Michael the Archangel: not Milton's "with hostile brow and visage all inflamed; not even Milton's in kingly treading of the hills of Paradise; not Raffaelle's with the expanded wings and brandished spear; but Perugino's with his triple crest of traceless plume unshaken in heaven, his hand fallen on his crossleted sword, the truth girdle binding his undinted armour; God has put His power upon him, resistless radiance is on his limbs; no lines are there of earthly strength, no trace on the divine features of earthly anger; trustful, and thoughtful, fearless, but full of love, incapable except of the repose of eternal conquest, vessel and instrument of Omnipotence, filled like a cloud with the victor light, the dust of principalities and powers

3

* This sentence of course refers to Mars, not Pallas. The false bias of the general statement is enough corrected in the "Queen of the Air." [1883.]

1 [Olympus is here apparently a slip for Parnassus, unless it is meant only for heaven. See Herodotus, 8, 37: "When the Persians had advanced near the temple of Athena at Delphi, at that moment thunder fell on them from heaven, and two crags, broken away from Parnassus, bore down upon them with a loud crash, and killed many of them, and a loud cry and a war-shout issued from the temple. . . . Those of the barbarians who returned, as I am informed, declared that besides these they saw other miraculous things, for that two heavy-armed men, of more than human stature, followed them slaying and pursuing them."]

2 [See Herodotus, 8, 65. A few days before the battle a phantom procession was seen going to Eleusis. A cloud of dust was seen, and a voice arose from it—the voice of the mystic Bacchus. Then the dust arose in a cloud, which was raised aloft and was borne towards Salamis to the encampment of the Greeks.]

66

3 [Paradise Lost, vi. 260, and see xi. 238-250.]

4 In the Louvre.]

5 The description seems to have been written from the figure of Michael in the Assumption of the Virgin" in the Accademia at Florence (for a photographic reproduction, see p. 82 of G. C. Williamson's Perugino). For another reference to the picture, see above, p. 84 n. The National Gallery Perugino (No. 288)—with a similar figure (except that there is no triple crest)—was not acquired till 1856.]