the beauty: there is also the fact that if you take
one of Velasquez's portraits out of their frame, reconstitute the living
individual, and bid him walk forth in whatsoever light may fall upon
him, you will have something infinitely different from the portrait, and
of which your only distinct feeling will be that a fine portrait might
be made of the creature; whereas it is a matter of complete indifference
whether you see Raphael's Leo X. in the flesh or in his gilded frame.

Whatever may fairly be said respecting the relative value of idealistic
and realistic decorative art is really also connected with this latter
point. Considering that realistic art is merely obtaining beauty by
attention to other factors than those which preoccupy idealistic art,
that the one fulfils what the other neglects--taking the matter from
this point of view, it would seem as if the two kinds of arts were, so
to speak, morally equal; and that any vague sense of mysterious
superior dignity clinging to idealistic art was a mere shred of long
discarded pedantry. But it is not so. For realistic art does more than
merely bring into play powers unknown to idealistic art: it becomes, by
the possession of these powers, utterly indifferent to the intrinsic
value of the forms represented: it is so certain of making everything
lovely by its harmonies of light and atmosphere that it almost prefers
to choose inferior things for this purpose. I am thinking at present of
a picture by I forget what Dutchman in our National Gallery,
representing in separate compartments five besotten-looking creatures,
symbolical of the five senses: they are ugly, brutish, with I know not
what suggestion of detestable temperament in their bloodshot flesh and
vermilion lips, as if the whole man were saturated with his appetite.
Yet the Dutchman has found the means of making these degraded types into
something which we care to look at, and to look at on account of its
beauty; even as, in lesser degree, Rubens has always managed to make us
feel towards his flaccid, veal-complexioned, fish-eyed women, something
of what we feel towards the goddesses of the Parthenon; towards the
white-robed, long-gloved ladies, with meditative face beneath their
crimped auburn hair, of Titian.

Viewed in one way, there is a kind of nobility in the very fact that
such realistic art can make us pardon, can redeem, nay almost sanctify,
so much. But is it right thus to pardon, redeem, and sanctify;