jaunty in Filippino, preposterously starched and prim in
Mantegna, ludicrously undignified in Signorelli; while mediaeval
stiffness, awkwardness, and absurdity reach their acme perhaps in the
little boys, companions of the Medici children, introduced into Benozzo
Gozzoli's Building of Babel. These are the prosperous townsfolk, among
whom the Renaissance artist is but too glad to seek for models; but
besides these there are lamentable sights, mediaeval beyond words, at
every street corner: dwarfs and cripples, maimed and diseased beggars of
all degrees of loathsomeness, lepers and epileptics, and infinite
numbers of monks, brown, grey, and black, in sack-shaped frocks and
pointed hoods, with shaven crown and cropped beard, emaciated with
penance or bloated with gluttony. And all this the painter sees, daily,
hourly; it is his standard of humanity, and as such finds its way into
every picture. It is the living; but opposite it arises the dead. Let us
turn aside from the crowd of the mediaeval city, and look at what the
workmen have just laid bare, or what the merchant has just brought from
Rome or from Greece. Look at this: it is corroded by oxides, battered by
ill-usage, stained with earth: it is not a group, not even a whole
statue, it has neither head nor arms remaining; it is a mere broken
fragment of antique sculpture,--a naked body with a fold or two of
drapery; it is not by Phidias nor by Praxiteles, it may not even be
Greek; it may be some cheap copy, made for a garden or a bath, in the
days of Hadrian. But to the artist of the fifteenth century it is the
revelation of a whole world, a world in itself. We can scarcely realize
all this; but let us look and reflect, and even we may feel as must have
felt the man of the Renaissance in the presence of that mutilated,
stained, battered torso. He sees in that broken stump a grandeur of
outline, a magnificence of osseous structure, a breadth of muscle and
sinew, a smooth, firm covering of flesh, such as he would vainly seek in
any of his living models; he sees a delicate and infinite variety of
indentures, of projections, of creases following the bend of every limb;
he sees, where the surface still exists intact, an elasticity of skin, a
buoyancy of hidden life such as all the colours of his palette are
unable to imitate; and in this piece of drapery, negligently gathered
over the hips or rolled upon the arm, he sees a magnificent alternation
of large folds and small plai