120 Taste in Art 



repulsive facts that would not admit of the transmutation 

 which the German critic required. The cold clammy heads in 

 all the grim horrors of violent death will haunt us with their 

 murderous tale ; but the general tone of the picture shows that 

 the mind of the artist lept beyond the scaffold, that he dwelt 

 upon the grandeur of patriotic sacrifice, and saw, in a memo- 

 rable execution, one of those incentives to heroism through 

 which the liberty of his country was achieved. An English- 

 man should read Mottley's History of the Netherlands, and 

 Newman's Crimes of the House of Hapsburg to understand 

 the justification which a Belgian artist would feel in plunging 

 into horrors so profound. We agree with Mr. Taylor in think- 

 ing the objections to this picture without reason, but the fact 

 that in this case, the painter needs the justification of history, is 

 sufficient to show how thoroughly the artist should be imbued 

 with Lessing's maxim that " beauty is the highest law of plastic 

 art." 



There is another important picture open to adverse criti- 

 cism upon a widely different ground. It is the " Roman Martyr" 

 of Delaroche, which appears to divide the attention of the public 

 with the far greater picture of " Marie-Antoinette going to 

 the guillotine." In the last work, art criticism finds itself dis- 

 armed, although the Marie-Antoinette of the painter possesses 

 grand attributes which certainly did not belong to the poor 

 victim of that volcanic time, when the wrongs of centuries 

 fairly boiled over in an excited and outraged land. In discuss- 

 ing the " E-oman Martyr," we cannot do better than again 

 have recourse to Mr. Taylor. It is the representation of " a 

 maiden victim of the persecution of Diocletian, whose virgin 

 body, floating in the Tiber, is revealed to those who seek it for 

 interment by the aureole miraculously suspended above the 

 pale face that looks serenely up to heaven from the green 

 water." It is to the aureole that we object, on the ground 

 that a physical miracle of this kind is not a legitimate subject 

 for pictorial art. The general tone of the picture is real and 

 natural ; and this bit of supernatural, not conforming v/ith the 

 laws of the distribution of light, is an eyesore that mars the 

 scene. It is a pretty legend that supernal powers hung their 

 aureole over the dead Christian girl. A line of Tennyson would 

 have made its light live for ever, but the paint brush should 

 have been kept away — it is too gross a tool. 



The selection of subjects is as important as their treatment, 

 and we cannot excuse an artist in portraying horrors, because 

 our disgust is mainly directed against those by whom they were 

 committed. We acquit Gallait on the ground we have men- 

 tioned, but we condemn Gerome for torturing our eyes with the 

 brutalities of the Roman circus. If he had lived at the time 



