ith the
bad. But the art of Antiquity was not the evil, it was the good of
Antiquity; it was born of its strength and its purity only, and it was
the incarnation of its noblest qualities. It could not be purified,
because it was spotless; it could not be sanctified, because it was
holy. It could gain nothing from the art of the Middle Ages, alternately
strong in brutal reality, and languid in mystic inanity; the men of the
Renaissance could, if they influenced it at all, influence the antique
only for evil; they belonged to an inferior artistic civilization, and
if we conscientiously seek for the spiritual improvements brought by
them into antique types, we shall see that they consist in spoiling
their perfect proportions; in making necks longer and muscles more
prominent; in rendering more or less flaccid, or meagre or coarse, the
grand and delicate forms of antique art. And when we have examined into
this purified art of the Renaissance, when we have compared coolly and
equitably, we may perhaps confess that, while the Renaissance added
immense wealth of beauty in colour, perspective, and grouping, it took
away something of the perfection of simple lines and modest light and
shade of the antique; we may admit to ourselves that the grandest saint
by Raphael is meagre and stunted; and the noblest Virgin by Titian is
overblown and sensual by the side of the demi-gods and amazons of
antique sculpture.

The antique perfected the art of the Renaissance, it did not corrupt it.
The art of the Renaissance fell indeed into shameful degradation soon
after the period of its triumphant union with the antique; and Raphael's
grand gods and goddesses, his exquisite Eros and radiant Psyche of the
Farnesina, are indeed succeeded but too soon by the Olympus of Giulio
Romano, an Olympus of harlots and acrobats, who smirk and mouth and
wriggle and sprawl ignobly on the walls and ceilings of the dismantled
palace which crumbles away among the stunted willows, the stagnant
pools, and rank grass of the marshes of Mantua. But this is no more the
fault of Antiquity than it is the fault of the Middle Ages; it is the
fault of that great principle of life and of change which makes all
things organic, be they physical or intellectual, germinate, grow,
attain maturity, and then fade, wither, and rot. The dead art of
Antiquity could never have brought the art of the Renaissance to an
untimely end; the art of the Renaissance decayed because it was ma