THE MONSTROUS IN ART. 739 



acknowledged art, to show my meaning more clearly, and to give direc- 

 tion to the criticisms which I wish to make. 



The Sistine Madonna of Raphael is without doubt the best and most 

 admired representation of " motherhood " in the whole range of art. 

 I think the experience of most persons who have seen it, even in en- 

 gravings or photographs, will justify the assertion that they are so car- 

 ried away by the beauty and grace of the mother and child, that they 

 do not at first see the host of surrounding angelic heads, nor the two 

 " cherubs " at the bottom of the picture. I allude here only to the 

 latter, which, in my opinion, detract from the grand effect, and intro- 

 duce a disturbing and inferior element which had better been left out. 

 The expression of their faces is innocent, angelic, if you please ; the 

 attitudes are graceful, natural, and childlike ; nevertheless, they are 

 unnecessary, impossible creatures, and are, if anything, six-limbed or 

 hexapod vertebrates, when, as naturally formed children, they would 

 have been just as symbolic, though quite as insignificant and useless. 

 Though their parts, separately, exist in nature, as a combination they 

 are impossible, and therefore, except as misplaced symbols, not artistic. 



In this connection I would remark that, in my opinion, man has 

 never imagined, and can never imagine, any symbolic form in art or 

 poetry not suggested by his surroundings ; there are ugly things enough 

 and beautiful things enough in nature to suggest any forms represented 

 by art ; but a compound of man and bird or beast or insect could never 

 be suggested as a whole, without a previous knowledge of the parts. 



It is not a very great step from the Aphrodite and Eros of the early 

 Greeks (not the sensual Yenus and Cupid of the later Greeks and the 

 Romans), by which they represented all that was tender and lovable in 

 woman, to the Virgin and Child. The step is still less from Cybele or 

 Rhea, the wife of Saturn and the mother of Jupiter or Jove, whose name 

 was in Greek Theotohos, in Latin Deipara, meaning the " mother of 

 God " ; Jove, the king of the gods, suggests in name as well as attributes 

 the Hebrew Jehovah. The Madonna, it seems to me, is simply an 

 evolution from pagan mythology to Christian art. 



In some old religious paintings angels are represented as winged 

 heads, without body or limbs. Now, these artists painted better than 

 they knew ; for, according to the acknowledged principles of philosophi- 

 cal and comparative anatomy, the anterior limbs, whether arms, wings, 

 legs, or fins, are appendages to the occipital or posterior vertebra of the 

 skull ; in the fish, in fact, the pectoral fins, the anterior limbs, are at- 

 tached by bony connection to the back part of the skull. But, though 

 winged heads are anatomically legitimate, physiologically we can not 

 understand the action or the origin of any muscles sufficiently powerful 

 to move the head, to say nothing of the other incongruities, especially 

 of the union of human hair, face, and skin with the feathers of a bird. 

 As pure symbols these are acceptable for the infancy of the human race, 

 but are not therefore to be perpetuated by the moderns. Mother Goose 



