260 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



vivid colour sensations without having learned to distinguish 

 them from what else pleases them in pictures. There is an 

 interesting volume by Professor Taine on the Dutch school, 

 containing a valuable historical analysis of the influences which 

 formed it ; but full of the gravest errors, resulting from the 

 confusion in his mind between colour and tone, in conse- 

 quence of which he imagines the Dutch painters to be colour- 

 ists. 



26. It is so important for you to be grounded securely in 

 these first elements of pictorial treatment, that I will be so 

 far tedious as to show you one more instance of the relative 

 intellectual value of the pure colour and pure chiaroscuro 

 school, not in Dutch and Florentine, but in English art. Here 

 is a copy of one of the lost frescoes of our Painted Chamber 

 of Westminster ; fourteenth-century work, entirely conceived 

 in colour, and calculated for decorative effect. There is no 

 more light and shade in it than in a Queen of Hearts in a 

 pack of cards ; all that the painter at first wants you to see is 

 th^t the young lady has a white forehead, and a golden crown, 

 and a fair neck, and a violet robe, and a crimson shield with 

 golden leopards on it ; and that behind her is a clear blue 

 sky. Then, farther, he wants you to read her name, " Debon- 

 nairete," which, when you have read, he farther expects you 

 to consider what it is to be debonnaire, and to remember 

 your Chaucer's description of the virtue : 



She was not brown, nor dun of hue, 

 But white as siiowe, fallen new, 

 With eyen glad, and browes bent, 

 Her hair down to her heeles went, 

 And she was simple, as dove on tree, 

 Full debonnair of heart was she. 



27. You see Chaucer dwells on the color just as much as 

 the painter does, but the painter has also given her the Eng- 

 lish shield to bear, meaning that good-humour, or debonnair- 

 ete, cannot be maintained by self-indulgence ; only by forti- 

 tude. Farther note, with Chaucer, the " eyen glad," and brows 

 " bent " (high-arched and calm), the strong life (hair down to 



