To expect obvious
morality of any artist is confessedly absurd. It is not the artist's
province to preach, or even to teach, except by remote suggestion. Yet
the mind of the artist may be highly moralised, and then he takes rank
not merely with the ministers to refined pleasure, but also with the
educators of the world. He may, for example, be penetrated with a just
sense of humanity like Shakspere, or with a sublime temperance like
Sophocles, instinct with prophetic intuition like Michelangelo, or
with passionate experience like Beethoven. The mere sight of the work
of Pheidias is like breathing pure health-giving air. Milton and Dante
were steeped in religious patriotism; Goethe was pervaded with
philosophy, and Balzac with scientific curiosity. Ariosto, Cervantes,
and even Boccaccio are masters in the mysteries of common life. In all
these cases the tone of the artist's mind is felt throughout his work:
what he paints, or sings, or writes, conveys a lesson while it
pleases. On the other hand, depravity in an artist or a poet
percolates through work which has in it nothing positive of evil, and
a very miasma of poisonous influence may rise from the apparently
innocuous creations of a tainted soul. Now Correggio is moralised in
neither way--neither as a good nor as a bad man, neither as an acute
thinker nor as a deliberate voluptuary. He is simply sensuous. On his
own ground he is even very fresh and healthy: his delineation of
youthful maternity, for example, is as true as it is beautiful; and
his sympathy with the gleefulness of children is devoid of
affectation. We have then only to ask ourselves whether the defect in
him of all thought and feeling which is not at once capable of
graceful fleshly incarnation, be sufficient to lower him in the scale
of artists. This question must of course be answered according to our
definition of the purposes of art. There is no doubt that the most
highly organised art--that which absorbs the most numerous human
qualities and effects a harmony between the most complex elements--is
the noblest. Therefore the artist who combines moral elevation and
power of thought with a due appreciation of sensual beauty, is more
elevated and more beneficial than one whose domain is simply that of
carnal loveliness. Correggio, if this be so, must take a comparatively
low rank. Just as we welcome the beautiful athlete for the radiant
life that is in him, but bow before the personality of Sophocles,