he beauty
(and this is the distinguishing point of what I must call realistic
decorative art) does not exist necessarily in the plain human being: he
merely affords the beginning of a pattern which the artist may be able
to carry out. A person may have in him the making of a really beautiful
bust and yet be ugly; just as the same person may afford a subject for a
splendid painting and for an execrable piece of sculpture. The wrinkles
and creases in a face like that of Benedetto da Maiano's Mellini would
probably be ugly and perhaps disgusting in the real reddish, flaccid,
discoloured flesh; while they are admirable in the solid and
supple-looking marble, in its warm and delicate bistre and yellow.
Material has an extraordinary effect upon form; colour, though not a
positive element in sculpture, has immense negative power in
accentuating or obliterating the mere line. All form becomes vague and
soft in the dairy flaccidness of modern ivory; and clear and powerful in
the dark terra cotta, which can ennoble even the fattest and flattest
faces with its wonderful faculty for making mere surface markings, mere
crowsfeet, interesting. Thus also with bronze: the polished, worked
bronze, of fine chocolate burnish and reddish reflections, mars all
beauty of line; how different the unchased, merely rough cast, greenish,
with infinite delicate greys and browns, making, for instance, the head
of an old woman like an exquisite withered, shrivelled, veined autumnal
leaf. It is moreover, as I have said, a question of combination of
surface and light, this art which makes beautiful busts of ugly men. The
ideal statue of the Greeks intended for the open air; fit to be looked
at under any light, high or low, brilliant or veiled, had indeed to be
prepared to look well under any light; but to look well under any light
means not to use any one particular relation of light as an ally; the
surface was kept modestly subordinated to the features, the features
which must needs look well at all moments and from all points of view.
But the Renaissance sculptor knew where his work would be placed; he
could calculate the effect of the light falling invariably through this
or that window; he could make a fellow-workman of that light, present
for it to draw or to obliterate what features he liked, bid it sweep
away such or such surfaces with a broad stream, cut them with a deep
shadow, caress their smooth chiselling or their rough grainings, mark as
wi