III. NATURALISM VI. THE NATURE OF GOTHIC 223

Happily the examples of this class are seldom seen in perfection. Salvator Rosa and Caravaggio are the most characteristic: the other men belonging to it approach towards the central rank by imperceptible gradations, as they perceive and represent more and more of good. But Murillo, Zurbaran, Camillo, Procaccini, Rembrandt, and Teniers, all belong naturally to this lower class.¹

§ 55. Now, observe: the three classes into which artists were previously divided, of men of fact, men of design, and men of both, are all of Divine institution; but of these latter three, the last is in nowise of Divine institution. It is entirely human, and the men who belong to it have sunk into it by their own faults. They are, so far forth, either useless or harmful men. It is indeed good that evil should be occasionally represented, even in its worst forms, but never that it should be taken delight in: and the mighty men of the central class will always give us all that is needful of it; sometimes, as Hogarth did, dwelling upon it bitterly as satirists,-but this with the more effect, because they will neither exaggerate it, nor represent it mercilessly, and without the atoning points that all evil shows to a Divinely guided glance, even at its deepest. So then, though the third class will always, I fear, in some measure exist, the two necessary classes are only the first two: and this is so far acknowledged by the general

¹ [Here again, for Salvator, Rembrandt, and Teniers, see General Index. For Murillo and the development of Ruskin’s attitude towards him, see note at Vol.III. p. 635. For Caravaggio, see in Vol. XII. Review of Lord Lindsay’s Christian Art, § 30; and Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. iii. § 12, ch. xvi. § 18. Zurbaran is not elsewhere referred to by Ruskin; for good examples of him, see National Gallery, Nos. 230, 232. For Camillo Procaccini, see Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 202). In one draft of this § 54 the following alternative or footnote to the second paragraph occurs:-

“I do not mean in this general statement to include workmen, such as John Martin, whom I do not regard as painters at all. Martin’s works are merely a common manufacture, as much makeable to order as a tea-tray or a coal-scuttle-such may be made and sold by the most respectable people, to any extent, without the least discredit to their characters. But I speak of men really deserving to be called painters, such as Zurbaran or Salvator; and of works which involve real skill and certain imagery truly, though coarsely terrible.”

For Martin, see Vol. I. p. 243, and Vol. III. pp. 36, 38.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]