s still). And are we to suppose there is no nobility in Rubens'
masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with his large human
rendering of it, Gentleman though he was, by birth, and feeling, and
education, and place; and, when he chose, lordly in conception also? He
had his faults, perhaps great and lamentable faults, though more those
of his time and his country than his own; he has neither cloister
breeding nor boudoir breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in
missals or annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in
him, that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's court,
knight's camp, or peasant's cottage. On the other hand, a man trained
here in England, in our Sir Joshua school, will not and cannot allow
that there is any art at all in the technical work of Angelico. But he
is just as wrong as the other. Fra Angelico is as true a master of the
art necessary to his purposes, as Rubens was of that necessary for his.
We have been taught in England to think there can be no virtue but in a
loaded brush and rapid hand; but if we can shake our common sense free
of such teaching, we shall understand that there is art also in the
delicate point and in the hand which trembles as it moves; not because
it is more liable to err, but because there is more danger in its error,
and more at stake upon its precision. The art of Angelico, both as a
colorist and a draughtsman, is consummate; so perfect and beautiful,
that his work may be recognised at any distance by the rainbow-play and
brilliancy of it: However closely it may be surrounded by other works of
the same school, glowing with enamel and gold, Angelico's may be told
from them at a glance, like so many huge pieces of opal lying among
common marbles. So again with Giotto; the Arena chapel is not only the
most perfect expressional work, it is the prettiest piece of wall
decoration and fair color, in North Italy.

Now there is a correspondence of the same kind between the technical and
expressional parts of architecture;--not a true or entire
correspondence, so that when the expression is best, the building must
be also best; but so much of correspondence as that good building is
necessary to good expression, comes before it, and is to be primarily
looked for: and the more, because the manner of building is capable of
being determinately estimated and classed; but the expressional
character not so: we can at once determine the true value