narrow and sweeping a judgment? The art of portraiture
certainly did not die with the Venetian painters of 1550, however great
their work; and if there be but "one living painter" who can treat
portrait art like the early Venetians, there are scores of artists who
achieve signal success by other methods of treatment.

At all events, these three men, Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson, worked
with the conviction that art is service. With Victor Hugo, Canova could
have said: "Genius is not made for genius; it is made for men.... Let
him have wings for the infinite provided he has feet for the earth, and
that, after having been seen flying, he is seen walking. After he has
been seen an archangel, let him be still more a brother.... To be the
servant of God in the march of progress--such is the law which regulates
the growth of genius."

They worked and taught by this creed. Thorwaldsen, on first arriving in
Rome, wandered for three years, it is said, among the statues of gods
and heroes, like a man in a dream. The atmosphere of the earlier day
when Titian was employed by the king of Portugal and Raphael by the Pope
to create works of great public importance still lingered and exerted
over Thorwaldsen, and over all artists susceptible to its subtle
influence, a peculiar spell. Its power was revealed in his subsequent
works--the "Christ;" the sculptured groups for tombs in St. Peter's and
in other churches; the poetic reliefs symbolizing "Day" and "Night;"
"Ganymede Watering the Eagle;" the "Three Graces," "Hebe," and many
others.

Among Canova's works his immortal masterpiece is the monumental memorial
group for the tomb of Pope Clement XIII in St. Peter's. The Pope is
represented as kneeling in prayer. The modelling of the entire figure is
instinct with expression. The fine and beautiful hands express reverence
and trust. The countenance is pervaded with that peace only known to the
soul that is in complete harmony with the divine power. The Holy Father
has taken the tiara from his head and it lies before him on the
cushion on which he kneels. Although the entire portrayal of the figure
reveals that devotion expressed in the solemn and searching words of the
church service, "And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord,
ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and living
sacrifice unto thee,"--although it is the very utmost rendering of the
soul to God, it is yet the deliberate, the joyful, the living a