form,
corresponding to the particular psychological attributes of the deity
whom the sculptor had to represent. No deviation from the generalised
type was possible. The Christian God, on the contrary, is a spirit;
and all the emanations from this spirit, whether direct, as in the
person of Christ, or derived, as in the persons of the saints, owe
their sensuous form and substance to the exigencies of mortal
existence, which these persons temporarily and phenomenally obeyed.
Since, then, the sensuous manifestation has now become merely
symbolic, and is no longer an indispensable investiture of the idea,
it may be altered at will in Christian art without irreverence. The
utmost capacity of the artist is now exerted, not in enforcing or
refining a generalised type, but in discovering some new facial
expression which shall reveal psychological quality in a particular
being. Doing so, he inevitably insists upon the face; and having
formed a face expressive of some defined quality, he can hardly give
to the body that generalised beauty which belongs to a Greek nymph or
athlete.

What we mean by the differences between Classic and Romantic art lies
in the distinctions I am drawing. Classicism sacrifices character to
breadth. Romanticism sacrifices breadth to character. Classic art
deals more triumphantly with the body, because the body gains by being
broadly treated. Romantic art deals more triumphantly with the face,
because the features lose by being broadly treated.

This brings me back to Mr. Ruskin, who, in another of his treatises,
condemns Michelangelo for a want of variety, beauty, feeling, in his
heads and faces. Were this the case, Michelangelo would have little
claim to rank as one of the world's chief artists. We have admitted
that the Italians did not produce such perfectly beautiful bodes and
limbs as the Greeks did, and have agreed that the Greeks produced less
perfectly beautiful faces than the Italians. Suppose, then, that
Michelangelo failed in his heads and faces, he, being an Italian, and
therefore confessedly inferior to the Greeks in his bodies and limbs,
must, by the force of logic, emerge less meritorious than we thought
him.

VII

To many of my readers the foregoing section will appear superfluous,
polemical, sophistic--three bad things. I wrote it, and I let it
stand, however, because it serves as preface to what I have to say in
general about Michelangelo's ideal of form. He was essentially a