IV. ST. MARK’S 125

of this world, causing them to fall into strange distresses and doubts, and often leading them into what they themselves would confess to be errors in understanding, or even failures in duty. I do not say that these men may not, many of them, be in very deed nobler than those whose conduct is more consistent; they may be more tender in the tone of all their feelings, and farther-sighted in soul, and for that very reason exposed to greater trials and fears, than those whose hardier frame and naturally narrower vision enable them with less effort to give their hands to God and walk with Him.¹ But still, the general fact is indeed so, that I have never known a man who seemed altogether right and calm in faith, who seriously cared about art; and when casually moved by it, it is quite impossible to say beforehand by what class of art this impression will on such men be made. Very often it is by a theatrical commonplace, more frequently still by false sentiment. I believe that the four painters who have had, and still have, the most influence, such as it is, on the ordinary Protestant Christian mind, are Carlo Dolci, Guercino, Benjamin West, and John Martin. Raphael, much as he is talked about, is, I believe in very fact, rarely looked at by religious people; much less his master,² or any of the truly great religious men of old. But a smooth Magdalen of Carlo Dolci with a tear on each cheek, or a Guercino Christ or St. John, or a Scripture illustration of West’s, or a black cloud with a flash of lightning in it of Martin’s, rarely fails of being verily, often deeply, felt for the time.³

§ 59. There are indeed many very evident reasons for this; the chief one being that, as all truly great religious painters have been hearty Romanists, there are none of their works

¹ [See Genesis v. 24.]

² [In a letter to the Times on the National Gallery in 1847, Ruskin refers to the “shallow materialism” of the view that “the works of Perugino were of no value but as they taught Raphael” (Arrows of the Chace, 1880, i. 63). It was only in 1856 that a picture by Perugino was acquired for the Gallery: see Notes on the Turner Gallery, 1856 (Appendix).]

³ [For other references to Carlo Dolci, see Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 91); for Guercino, see Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 203); for Martin, see Vol. I. p. 243, Vol. III. pp. 36, 38 n. Two “Scripture illustrations,” by Benjamin West, belong to the National Gallery-No. 131, “Christ Healing the Sick,” now at Nottingham, and No. 132, “The Last Supper,” now at Glasgow.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]