VALUE OF THE STUDY OF ART. 211 



" The august mysteries of the Christian dogma, the poetry of 

 the Old and of the New Testament, the triumphant deaths of mar- 

 tyrs, the miracles of saints and their infinite charity — these things 

 which the middle ages failed to put into clear and intelligible words 

 are fully rendered in sculpture. The work of the chisel is large and 

 firm. Difficulties are not sought, nor are they feared. Whatever 

 be the material, the form is sure. To understand how superior 

 the plastic is to the literary work, and to measure the distance, 

 compare the Amiens statue with the portraits the authors of the 

 Mysteries endeavor to draw of the Son of God. ' What can be 

 more flat than these poor verses, which are nevertheless of the six- 

 teenth century? The authors had good intentions and an appre- 

 hension of what should be done, but they were betrayed by the lan- 

 guage in which they wrote. The sculptors of the thirteenth cen- 

 tury, on the contrary, who possessed fully the grammar of their 

 art, expressed all they felt, and have left us the most divine images 

 of Jesus Christ in existence.' * 



" Italy of the Renaissance is quite unintelligble to any one who 

 has not measured the place held by art in the preoccupations not 

 only of artists who practice it, but of all men of all conditions — of 

 princes, nobles, tradesmen, and of citizens of most humble occu- 

 pations. ISTo one in any rank is without a passionate love for plas- 

 tic beauty. This love was Italy's life and Italy's death. She died 

 of it, because all her sap was consumed in satisfying it. It made 

 her indifferent to her dismemberment, to the hard yoke of her 

 tyrants, to the loss of her political liberties, and of her independ- 

 ence. But, at the same time, it constituted the intensity of her 

 life which w^as exhausted and renewed again in the ardor with 

 which she pursued her ideal and in her endeavors to realize it under 

 all its aspects. Let him who would wish to obtain an exact idea 

 of this condition reside for a while in Mantua, in Parma, in Sienna, 

 in Florence, or in any other less-known city which nevertheless 

 had its local school of art, its architects, its sculptors, its painters, 

 some of whom, though they only worked for their native city, were 

 not far from manifesting genius. f 



" The written history of the seventeenth century and its rich 

 literature can not alone give an idea of the situation occupied by 

 Louis XIV in .Europe when he was admired, imitated, or rather 

 servilely copied, as pre-eminently the type of the modern king even 

 by those who hated him the most. After two centuries, have we 



* E. Male. Revue Universitaire, Third Annee, 1. i, p. 15. 



f Raphael's Madonnas save the reputation of the papal see of the sixteenth century, for 

 pontiffs who cherished such pure and gentle representations could not have been so corrupt 

 as Luther's partisans assert. 



