GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING. 339 



ject of practical art, in these rooms, is that of the evil result- 

 ing from the study of anatomy. It is a statement so audacious, 

 that not only for some time I dared not make it to you, but 

 for ten years, at least, I dared not make it to myself. I saw, 

 indeed, that whoever studied anatomy was in a measure in- 

 jured by it ; but I kept attributing the mischief to secondary 

 causes. It can't be this drink itself that poisons them, I said 

 always. This drink is medicinal and strengthening : I see 

 that it kills them, but it must be because they drink it cold 

 when they have been hot, or they take something else with it 

 that changes it into poison. The drink itself must be good. 

 Well, gentlemen, I found out the drink itself to be poison at 

 last, by the breaking of my choicest Venice glass. I could 

 not make out what it was that had killed Tintoret, and laid 

 it long to the charge of chiaroscuro. It was only after my 

 thorough study of his Paradise, in 1870, that I gave up this 

 idea, finding the chiaroscuro, which I had thought exaggerated 

 was, in all original and undarkened passages, beautiful and 

 most precious. And then at last I got hold of the true clue : 

 " II disegno di Michel Agnolo." And the moment I had dared 

 to accuse that, it explained everything ; and I saw that the 

 betraying demons of Italian art, led on by Michael Angelo, 

 had been, not pleasure, but knowledge ; not indolence, but 

 ambition ; and not love, but horror. 



164. But when first I ventured to tell you this, I did not 

 know, myself, the fact of all most conclusive for its con- 

 firmation. It will take me a little while to put it before you 

 in its total force, and I must first ask your attention to a minor 

 point. In one of the smaller rooms of the Munich Gallery is 

 Holbein's painting of St. Margaret and St. Elizabeth of Hun- 

 gary, standard of his early religious work. Here is a photo- 

 graph from the St. Elizabeth ; and, in the same frame, a 

 French lithograph of it. I consider it one of the most im- 

 portant pieces of comparison I have arranged for you, showing 

 you at a glance the difference between true and false senti- 

 ment. Of that difference, generally, we cannot speak to-day, 

 but one special result of it you are to observe ; the omission, 

 in the French drawing, of Holbein's daring representation of 



