IV. ST. THEODORE THE CHAIR-SELLER 249

many respects, this solidly rich front of Ionic pillars, with the four angels on the top, rapturously directing your attention, by the gracefullest gesticulation, to the higher figure in the centre!

You have advanced another hundred and fifty years, and are in mid-seventeenth century. Here is the “Progresso” of Venice, exhibited to you, in consequence of her wealth, and gay life and advance in anatomical and other sciences.

Of which, note first, the display of her knowledge of angelic anatomy. Sabra, on the rock, just showed her foot beneath her robe, and that only because she was drawing back, frightened; but, here, every angel has his petticoats cut up to his thighs; he is not sufficiently sacred or sublime unless you see his legs so high.

Secondly, you see how expressive are their attitudes,-“What a wonderful personage is this we have got in the middle of us!”

53. That is Raphaelesque art of the finest. Raphael, by this time, had taught the connoisseurs of Europe that whenever you admire anybody, you open your mouth and eyes wide; when you wish to show him to somebody else, you point at him vigorously with one arm, and wave the somebody else on with the other; when you have nothing to do of that sort, you stand on one leg and hold up the other in a graceful line;-these are the methods of true dramatic expression. Your drapery, meanwhile, is to be arranged in “sublime masses,” and is not to be suggestive of any particular stuff!¹

If you study the drapery of these four angels thoroughly, you can scarcely fail of knowing, henceforward, what a bad drapery is, to the end of time. Here is drapery supremely, exquisitely bad; it is impossible, by any contrivance, to get it worse. Merely clumsy, ill-cut clothing, you may see any day; but there is skill enough in this to make it exemplarily execrable. That flabby flutter, wrinkled

¹ [A general reference to the fourth of Reynold’s Discourses: compare above, p. 40.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]