NATURE AND CONDITIONS OF ART 8i 



movements, on manners and customs of the people, and on intel- 

 lectual trends — provide excellent insights into the works of art 

 themselves. Despite the keenness of these insights, however, it 

 still remains true that he tends to see works of art — paintings, 

 statues, villas, palaces, and churches — not so much with the eye 

 of an artist or architect, but from the point of view of a social 

 scientist or philosopher. 



Having this wealth of first-hand observation and historical 

 knowledge at his disposal, when he composed his lectures on The 

 Philosophy of Art in Italy, Taine naturally emphasized, in treating 

 the masters of Venetian art especially, 'the condition of mind and 

 manners on which the school depends'. ^ 3 And here we approach 

 the central point of his criticism, for it is precisely by analyzing 

 the characteristics of Italian art objectively and by tracing the social 

 and psychological causes of these characteristics, that Taine helps 

 us to understand why its works are ranked as classics. 



This analysis begins by attempting to define the special quali- 

 ties which make the works of da Vinci, Raphael, Michael 

 Angelo, and Titian great. In their paintings, which, like Greek 

 art, concentrate on the human figure, 'man teaches nature how 

 she might have made him and how she has not accomplished 

 it.' 34 The medievals and moderns provide 'more edification, 

 more pedagogism, more psychology, more interior and domestic 

 peace, more intense reverie, more transcendental metaphysics, 

 or internal emotions' ^ 5 — but not the same vision of human 

 perfection. 



Such 'high art' could only be produced by a certain kind of 

 men, and 'by virtue of national and enduring instincts. The 

 imagination of the Italian is classic, that is to say, Latin, analogous 

 to that of the ancient Greeks and Romans,' ^6 which was sovereign 

 in the kingdom of form. This is true not only of the five or six 

 greatest geniuses of the Renaissance, but also of a large number of 

 other artists, sculptors, and architects, and of 'a crowd of connois- 

 seurs, patrons, and buyers, a vast public forming an escort . . .'^^ 

 This 'native talent', however it may be accounted for, is seen as a 

 permanent force which reaches its highest achievement when 

 conditions are ripe for its development. 



The conditions which Taine finds to have been operative in the 

 Italian Renaissance are three in number: 



First, man was cultivated, that is, there was a certain degree of 

 intellectual culture, such as that described in Castiglione's The 



S.A.J. — 6 



