212 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

heaven mantles the Madonna with its depth, and falls around her like raiment, as she sits beneath the throne of the Sistine Judgment?¹ It is in sensuality that the visible world about us is girded with an eternal iris?²-is there pollution in the rose and the gentian more than in the rocks that are trusted to their robing?-is the sea-blue a stain upon its water, or the scarlet spring of day upon the mountains less holy than their snow? As well call the sun itself, or the firmament, sensual, as the colour which flows from the one, and fills the other.

44. We deprecate this rash assumption, however, with more regard to the forthcoming portion of the history, in which we fear it may seriously diminish the value of the author’s account of the school of Venice, than to the part at present executed.³ This is written in a spirit rather sympathetic than critical, and rightly illustrates the feeling of early art, even where it mistakes, or leaves unanalyzed, the technical modes of its expression. It will be better, perhaps, that we confine our attention to the accounts of the three men who may be considered as sufficient representatives not only of the art of their time, but of all subsequent; Giotto, the first of the great line of dramatists, terminating in Raffaelle; Orcagna, the head of that branch of the contemplative school which leans towards sadness or terror, terminating in Michael Angelo; and Angelico, the head of the contemplatives concerned with the heavenly ideal, around whom may be grouped first Duccio, and the Sienese, who preceded him, and afterwards Pinturiccio,⁴ Perugino, and Leonardo da Vinci.

¹ [For other references to “The Last Judgment” by Michael Angelo, see Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 281).]

² [Compare Deucalion, ch. vii., “The Iris of the Earth.”]

³ [“The three volumes now published,” said Lord Lindsay in his “Advertisement” to vol. i., “comprise a portion only of my projected work on Christian Art.” They did not touch on the Venetian school, but no further volumes were published. Lord Lindsay’s chapters, it should be noted, are called “Letters.”]

⁴ [For references to Pinturicchio, see below, “Notes on the Louvre,” p. 453; and compare Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. pp. 138, 254 n., 331), and Stones of Venice, vol. iii. (Vol. XI. p. 14).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]