ains to
acquaint himself with their subject-matter.

When the entire purpose of art was moral teaching, it naturally took
truth for its first object, and beauty, and the pleasure resulting from
beauty, only for its second. But when it lost all purpose of moral
teaching, it as naturally took beauty for its first object, and truth
for its second.

That is to say, in all they did, the old artists endeavored, in one way
or another, to express the real facts of the subject or event, this
being their chief business: and the question they first asked themselves
was always, how would this thing, or that, actually have occurred? what
would this person, or that, have done under the circumstances? and then,
having formed their conception, they work it out with only a secondary
regard to grace or beauty, while a modern painter invariably thinks of
the grace and beauty of his work first, and unites afterwards as much
truth as he can with its conventional graces. I will give you a single
strong instance to make my meaning plainer. In Orcagna's great fresco of
the Triumph of Death, one of the incidents is that three kings,[35]
when out hunting, are met by a spirit, which, desiring them to follow
it, leads them to a churchyard, and points out to them, in open coffins,
three bodies of kings such as themselves, in the last stages of
corruption. Now a modern artist, representing this, would have
endeavored dimly and faintly to suggest the appearance of the dead
bodies, and would have made, or attempted to make, the countenances of
the three kings variously and solemnly expressive of thought. This would
be in his, or our, view, a poetical and tasteful treatment of the
subject. But Orcagna disdains both poetry and taste; he wants the
_facts_ only; he wishes to give the spectator the same lesson that the
kings had; and therefore, instead of concealing the dead bodies, he
paints them with the most fearful detail. And then, he does not consider
what the three kings might most gracefully do. He considers only what
they actually in all probability _would have done_. He makes them
looking at the coffins with a startled stare, and one holding his nose.
This is an extreme instance; but you are not to suppose it is because
Orcagna had naturally a coarse or prosaic mind. Where he felt that
thoughtfulness and beauty could properly be introduced, as in his
circles of saints and prophets, no painter of the Middle Ages is so
grand. I can give you no be