r ideal of beauty was altogether effeminate. They
prudishly despised the anatomic study of the human figure, of
landscape and chiaroscuro. Spiritual expression with them was
everything; but it was only the expression of the passive spiritual
faculties of innocence, devotion, meekness, resignation--all good,
but not the whole of humanity. Not that they could be quite
consistent in their theory. They were forced to paint their very
angels as human beings; and a standard of human beauty they had to
find somewhere; and they found one, strange to say, exactly like that
of the old Pagan statues (wings and all--for the wings of Christian
angels are copied exactly from those of Greek Genii), and only
differing in that ascetic and emasculate tone, which was peculiar to
themselves. Here is a dilemma which the worshippers of high art have
slurred over. Where did Angelico de Fiesole get the idea of beauty
which dictated his exquisite angels? We shall not, I suppose, agree
with those who attribute it to direct inspiration, and speak of it as
the reward of the prayer and fasting by which the good monk used to
prepare himself for painting. Must we then confess that he borrowed
his beauties from the faces of the prettiest nuns with whom he was
acquainted? That would be sad naturalism; and sad eclecticism too,
considering that he must have seen among his Italian sisters a great
many beauties of a very different type from that which he has chosen
to copy; though, we suppose, of God's making equally with that of his
favourites. Or did he, in spite of himself, steal a side-glance now
and then at some of the unrivalled antique statues of his country,
and copy on the sly any feature or proportion in them which was
emasculate enough to be worked into his pictures? That, too, is
likely enough; nay, it is certain. We are perfectly astonished how
any draughtsman, at least how such a critic as M. Rio, can look at
the early Italian painters without tracing everywhere in them the
classic touch, the peculiar tendency to mathematic curves in the
outlines, which is the distinctive peculiarity of Greek art. Is not
Giotto, the father of Italian art, full of it in every line? Is not
Perugino? Is not the angel of Lorenzo Credi in Mrs. Jameson's
woodcut? Is not Francia, except just where he is stiff, and soft,
and clumsy? Is not Fra Angelico himself? Is it not just the absence
of this Greek tendency to mathematical forms in the German pain