gold on his fIgures.
[This was done with naivete by the early painters, and is really very
effective in the pictures of Gentile da Fabriano--that Paul Veronese of
the fifteenth century--as the reader will confess if he has seen the
"Adoration of the Magi," in the Florence Academy; but it could not be
tolerated now]. Our applause is greatly determined by our sense of
difficulty overcome, and to stick gold on a picture is an avoidance of
the difficulty of painting it.

Truth of presentation has an inexplicable charm for us, and throws a
halo round even ignoble objects. A policeman idly standing at the
corner of the street, or a sow lazily sleeping against the sun, are not
in nature objects to excite a thrill of delight, but a painter may, by
the cunning of his art, represent them so as to delight every
spectator. The same objects represented by an inferior painter will
move only a languid interest; by a still more inferior painter they may
be represented so as to please none but the most uncultivated eye. Each
spectator is charmed in proportion to his recognition of a triumph over
difficulty which is measured by the degree of verisimilitude. The
degrees are many. In the lowest the pictured object is so remote from
the reality that we simply recognise what the artist meant to
represent. In like manner we recognise in poor novels and dramas what
the authors mean to be characters, rather than what our experience of
life suggests as characteristic.

Not only do we apportion our applause according to the degree of
versimilitude attained, but also according to the difficulty each
involves. It is a higher difficulty, and implies a nobler art to
represent the movement and complexity of life and emotion than to catch
the fixed lineaments of outward aspect. To paint a policeman idly
lounging at the street corner with such verisimilitude that we are
pleased with the representation, admiring the solidity of the figure,
the texture of the clothes, and the human aspect of the features, is so
difficult that we loudly applaud the skill which enables an artist to
imitate what in itself is uninteresting; and if the imitation be
carried to a certain degree of verisimilitude the picture may be of
immense value. But no excellence of representation can make this high
art. To carry it into the region of high art, another and far greater
difficulty must be overcome; the man must be represented under the
strain of great emotion, and we must rec