ADDRESSES ON DECORATIVE COLOUR 497

of Dante, it would be observed how strongly the evil to be avoided was impressed upon the mind, by being brought prominently before the vision. This could be done to some extent in outline, but not in finished painting. The painter could not represent in detail the long crane’s neck of the glutton, nor place the disgusting wretch upon the swine’s back. By means, however, of a few roughly and freely drawn outlines, something like a representation could be given of these more conspicuous personages in the motley train of the proud and haughty Lucifera.¹ The grotesque was much used in the Middle Ages, and it was a means of conveying truths to the mind which we had ignorantly passed over.²

25. Again, how could spiritual beings be so fitly represented as by outline? To portray spiritual existences with success on the canvas had ever been one of the greatest problems in art; but a solution of the difficulty could be found in the judicious use of outline, nor was it necessary to study anatomy and muscles in order to paint either an angel or a demon. A man of first-rate merit and ability (Stothard),³ but, unfortunately, trammelled by academic rules, had been selected to illustrate Milton, and, among other subjects, to delineate Satan. Look at the result. (The lecturer here exhibited an engraving from the work referred to.) The only idea which the painter had formed of his hero was that he was an extremely muscular man, with a remarkably handsome calf to his leg, and handsome, tight-fitting shoes, to protect his feet from the “burning marle,”⁴ and his steel armour made to bend in and out, in order to show the development of his muscles. Was there ever such an absurdity? Could anybody think for a moment that that was a spirit? But when abstract outline was combined with beautiful colour, the main effects were obtained. The imagination took them up, and suggested to itself something noble which could be conveyed by no other means.

26. Take another illustration. (Ruskin here exhibited two leaves from illuminated MSS. representing the story of St. John the Baptist.) One, he said, was the initial letter of a hymn, and the object was to bring the story prominently before the eye of the reader or the singer to stimulate him in the performance of his duty-to tell all that could be told in the space of a single leaf. It would be seen how the same subject was treated at different periods. The one showed a St. John, seated in a meadow, reading a book, with a lamb by his side-a charming little picture, most elaborately finished; the other a St. John of an earlier date and of rougher execution.⁵ The object of each work was to illustrate the principal events in the life of the forerunner of the Messiah; but in the case of the less laboured work of the earlier period, the story was told by an outlined figure walking upon the kingly head of Herod and the head of Herodias. In one hand the saint bore the representation, not of the mere ordinary lamb, but of the

¹ [Faerie Queene, book i. canto iv.]

² [Ruskin further discusses the concentrated symbolism of grotesques, again illustrating the subject from Spenser, in Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. viii. (see especially § 5).]

³ [For other references to Stothard, see note in Vol. IV. p. 194.]

⁴ [Paradise Lost, i. 292.]

⁵ [The latter of the two illustrations here referred to has been found at Brantwood, and is here given on reduced scale.]

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