246 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

della Francesca, Perugino and their compeers, were still existing, charming the eye, elevating the mind, and warming the heart. Now alas! few comparatively and fading are the relics of those great and good men. While Dante’s voice rings as clear as ever, communing with us as friend with friend, theirs is dying gradually away, fainter and fainter, like the farewell of a spirit. Flaking off the walls, uncared for and neglected save in a few rare instances, scarce one of their frescoes will survive the century, and the labours of the next may not improbably be directed to the recovery and restoration of such as may still slumber beneath the whitewash and the daubs with which the Bronzinos and Zuccheros ‘et id genus omne’ have unconsciously sealed them up for posterity-their best title to our gratitude.-But why not begin at once? at all events in the instances numberless, where merely whitewash interposes between us and them.

“It is easy to reply-what need of this? They-the artists-have Moses and the prophets, the frescoes of Raphael and Michael Angelo-let them study them. Doubtless,-but we still reply, and with no impiety-they will not repent, they will not forsake their idols and their evil ways-they will not abandon Sense for Spirit, oils for fresco-unless these great ones of the past, these Sleepers of Ephesus, arise from the dead. ... It is not by studying art in its perfection-by worshipping Raphael and Michael Angelo exclusively of all other excellence-that we can expect to rival them, but by re-ascending to the fountain-head-by planting ourselves as acorns in the ground those oaks are rooted in, and growing up to their level-in a word, by studying Duccio and Giotto that we may paint like Taddeo di Bartolo and Masaccio, Taddeo di Bartolo and Masaccio that we may paint like Perugino and Luca Signorelli, Perugino and Luca Signorelli that we may paint like Raphael and Michael Angelo. And why despair of this, or even of shaming the Vatican? For with genius and God’s blessing nothing is impossible.

“I would not be a blind partizan, but, with all their faults, the old masters I plead for knew how to touch the heart. It may be difficult at first to believe this; like children, they are shy with us-like strangers, they bear an uncouth mien and aspect-like ghosts from the other world, they have an awkward habit of shocking our conventionalities with home truths. But with the dead as with the living all depends on the frankness with which we greet them, the sincerity with which we credit their kindly qualities; sympathy is the key to truth-we must love, in order to appreciate.”-iii. p. 418.

79. These are beautiful sentences; yet this let the young painter of these days remember always, that whomsoever he may love, or from whomsoever learn, he can now no more

takes the chill off horror, the edge off wit, and the bloom off beauty. In all artistical points he is utterly valueless, neither drawing nor expression being ever preserved by him. Giotto, Benozzo, or Ghirlandajo are all alike to him; and we hardly know whether he injures most when he robs or when he redresses.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]