It is the beauty of the Theseus--
light and yet massive; and light not in spite of its masses, but on
account of the perfect disposition of them. I do not care for grace
in man, woman, or animal, which is obtained (as in the old German
painters) at the expense of honest flesh and blood. It may be all
very pure, and unearthly, and saintly, and what not; but it is not
healthy; and, therefore, it is not really High Art, let it call
itself such as much as it likes. The highest art must be that in
which the outward is the most perfect symbol of the muward; and,
therefore, a healthy soul can be only exprest by a healthy body; and
starved limbs and a hydrocephalous forehead must be either taken as
incorrect symbols of spiritual excellence, or as--what they were
really meant for--symbols of certain spiritual diseases which were in
the Middle Age considered as ecclesiastical graces and virtues.
Wherefore I like pagan and naturalist art; consider Titian and
Correggio as unappreciated geniuses, whose excellences the world will
in some saner mood rediscover; hold, in direct opposition to Rio,
that Rafaelle improved steadily all his life through, and that his
noblest works are not his somewhat simpering Madonnas and somewhat
impish Bambinos (very lovely though they are), but his great, coarse,
naturalist, Protestant cartoons, which (with Andrea Mantegna's
Heathen Triumph) Cromwell saved for the British nation.
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