326 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



Jo-day, then, our task is to examine the peculiar characters 

 of the Design of the Northern Schools of Engraving, as af- 

 fected by these great influences. 



143. I have not often, however, used the word ' design,' and 

 must clearly define the sense in which I now use it. It is 

 vaguely used in common art-parlance ; often as if it meant 

 merely the drawing of a picture, as distinct from its colour ; 

 and in other still more inaccurate ways. The accurate and 

 proper sense, underlying all these, I must endeavour to make 

 clear to you. 



' Design ' properly signifies that power in any art-work 

 which has a purpose other than of imitation, and which is 

 ' designed/ composed, or separated to that end. It implies 

 the rejection of some things, and the insistance upon others, 

 with a given object.* 



Let us take progressive instances. Here is a group of 

 prettily dressed peasant children, charmingly painted by a 

 very able modern artist not absolutely without design, for 

 he really wishes to show you how pretty peasant children can 

 be, (and, in so far, is wiser and kinder than Murillo, who 

 likes to show how ugly they can be) ; also, his group is agree- 

 ably arranged, and its component children carefully chosen. 

 Nevertheless, any summer's day, near any country village, you 

 may come upon twenty groups in an hour as pretty as this ; 



* If you paint a bottle only to amuse the spectator by showing him 

 how like a painting may be to a bottle, you cannot be considered, hi art- 

 philosophy, as a designer. But if you paint the cork flying out of the 

 bottle, and the contents arriving in an arch at the mouth of a recipient 

 glass, you are so far forth a designer or signer ; probably weaning to 

 express certain ultimate facts respecting, say, the hospitable disposition 

 of the landlord of the house ; but at all events representing the bottle 

 and glass in a designed, and not merely natural, manner. iN'ot merely 

 natural nay, in some sense non-natural, or supernatural. .And all 

 great artists show both this fantastic condition of mind in their work, 

 and show that it has arisen out of a communicative or didactic purpose. 



They are the Sign-painters of God. 



I have added this note to the lecture in copying my memoranda of it 

 here at Assisi, June 9th, being about to begin work in the Tavern, or 

 Tabernaculum, of the Lower Church, with its variously significant four 

 g*eat ' signs. ' 



