perfection."[143]

[Illustration: THE RESURRECTION

Drawing (about 1540). Louvre.]

If instead of Michelangelo with his ardent faith and that warmth of
enthusiasm which sweeps along his idealism and makes of the Divine Idea
as he conceives it a living being to whom he passionately desires to
unite himself we should take, I do not say a sceptic or an atheist, but
a sincere believer after the manner of the Council of Trent, a Vasari or
a Zucchero, then God will be to them not a source of love and ecstasy,
but the principle of reason. The reason of the wise--behold the
beginning and the end of art. A hundred years after Michelangelo,
Poussin was to bind all art in obedience to this principle. He applied
all its natural resources to the rendering of one idea. With him the
attention is confined to the idea of the work--that is the principal
thing. The abstract idea is more important than the form; thought alone
is spontaneous; all the rest--life, expression, colour--is determined by
the logic of reason. The subject regulates the composition and
determines the centre of interest and the groupings of the picture; it
indicates the character of the people, their moral aspect and,
consequently, their exterior, for the two are bound together. It
determines the character of the landscape, which must bear a logical
relationship to the scene; it presides even over the execution of the
work. The manner of painting is imposed by the subject to be treated; it
will be Phrygian or Dorian or Lydian, according to whether the idea is
gentle or serious or sad. In this way everything is logical and
calculated. Michelangelo's mystical ardour toward divine perfection at
least left him his impetuous liberty of feeling. Poussin no longer left
anything to chance. His reason commanded and his hand obeyed. If I name
him here it is because he was both the end and the climax of artistic
intellectualism. At least Poussin left on his work the impress of his
great intelligence. His system rests on this idea, and with him the idea
was clear and powerful. But what would it be in the hands of men of
mediocre talent? The number of artists who either think for themselves,
or express with new force the ideas of others, is infinitesimal.
Moreover, the ideal is ordinarily to them merely an emphatic rendering
of a vague conception of perfection which they have been taught. Under
pretext of an intellectual ideal they deform nature; they leave it
little by littl