106 ON THE RELATION OF ART 



shall not be surprised to find that it was not great poetry, nor 

 yet great literature of any kind, but such plastic art as I have 

 described which rose to the highest eminence among them. 

 I, for one, am unable to believe that the glory of their plastic 

 and technical art, unrivalled as it is in modern days, could 

 have been attained without noble qualities in the nation. It 

 is my deliberate opinion that so vigorous a manifestation of 

 the human spirit is impossible in wholly somnolent or 

 putrescent stages of the human consciousness. In spite, 

 therefore, of public and private immorality, apparent on the 

 surface of the nation at that period, there must have been 

 present solid and splendid virtues also, if not precisely virtues 

 of the sort which men of our epoch are wont to praise. 



When we regard Italian society during the years when this 

 art flourished, we shall find that it lacked cohesion, but that 

 it abounded in salient personalities. It had not the force and 

 toughness of an organised state. On the other hand, it was 

 not animated with a religious enthusiasm, like Islam in its 

 epoch of expansion. Yet it bred individuals of Cellini's stamp, 

 captains like Giovanni de' Medici and the Strozzi, popes of 

 the calibre of Julius II., scholars as world-famous as Poliziano, 

 thinkers like Bruno and Sarpi, despots of the force of Cosimo 

 de' Medici, saint-like souls of the purity of Carlo Borromeo 

 and Filippo Neri, gentlemen fit to rank with Castiglione, well- 

 tempered spirits of the kith of Contarini, free-lances of the 

 intellect as keen as Aretino. It bred them, not singly, but by 

 hundreds. The atmosphere in which thought lived and moved 

 and had its being was as warm with them. That atmosphere, 

 uncondensed indeed into a fixed and steady medium, but 

 floating, turbid, circumambient, diversified, was precisely what 

 art needs to thrive in. Compare it with the atmosphere of 

 middle-class respectability, of modern conformity to one lax 

 rule of conduct, of the average decency for which contemporary 

 evening papers clamour ! It is clear that art, of the sort 

 which the Italians produced, has little chance here. Being 

 bound to present the stuff of human thought and emotion 

 under sensuous forms, seeking ever fresh manifestations for 



