does not recognize the passion, by reason of the frank human truth with
which it is rendered. He is a man ten times greater than Leonardo;--a
mighty colorist, while Leonardo was only a fine draughtsman in black,
staining the chiaroscuro drawing, like a colored print: he perceived and
rendered the delicatest types of human beauty that have been painted
since the days of the Greeks, while Leonardo depraved his finer instincts
by caricature, and remained to the end of his days the slave of an
archaic smile: and he is a designer as frank, instinctive, and
exhaustless as Tintoret, while Leonardo's design is only an agony of
science, admired chiefly because it is painful, and capable of analysis
in its best accomplishment. Luini has left nothing behind him that is
not lovely; but of his life I believe hardly anything is known beyond
remnants of tradition which murmur about Lugano and Saronno, and which
remain ungleaned. This only is certain, that he was born in the
loveliest district of North Italy, where hills, and streams, and air
meet in softest harmonies. Child of the Alps, and of their divinest
lake, he is taught, without doubt or dismay, a lofty religious creed, and
a sufficient law of life, and of its mechanical arts. Whether lessoned
by Leonardo himself, or merely one of many disciplined in the system of
the Milanese school, he learns unerringly to draw, unerringly and
enduringly to paint. His tasks are set him without question day by day,
by men who are justly satisfied with his work, and who accept it without
any harmful praise, or senseless blame. Place, scale, and subject are
determined for him on the cloister wall or the church dome; as he is
required, and for sufficient daily bread, and little more, he paints what
he has been taught to design wisely, and has passion to realize
gloriously: every touch he lays is eternal, every thought he conceives is
beautiful and pure: his hand moves always in radiance of blessing; from
day to day his life enlarges in power and peace; it passes away
cloudlessly, the starry twilight remaining arched far against the night.

158. Oppose to such a life as this that of a great painter amidst the
elements of modern English liberty. Take the life of Turner, in whom the
artistic energy and inherent love of beauty were at least as strong as in
Luini: but, amidst the disorder and ghastliness of the lower streets of
London, his instincts in early infancy were warped into toleration