uarded forms of speech.
But not so with Art. The brush may still deal freely with any subject;
however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze sarcasm at every
pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see what this last generation has
been doing with the statues. These works, which had stood in innocent
nakedness for ages, are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one of them.
Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can help noticing
it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. But the comical thing
about it all, is, that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallid
marble, which would be still cold and unsuggestive without this sham and
ostentatious symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blooded paintings which do
really need it have in no case been furnished with it.

"At the door of the Ufizzi, in Florence, one is confronted by statues of
a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulated grime--they
hardly suggest human beings--yet these ridiculous creatures have been
thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious
generation. You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallery
that exists in the world.... and there, against the wall, without
obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the
vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses--Titian's Venus. It
isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no, it is the
attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe the
attitude, there would be a fine howl--but there the Venus lies, for
anybody to gloat over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie,
for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls
stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long and absorbedly
at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic
interest. How I should like to describe her--just to see what a holy
indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear the unreflecting
average man deliver himself about my grossness and coarseness, and all
that.

"In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures of blood, carnage,
oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures portraying intolerable suffering
--pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful
detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas every day and
publicly exhibited--without a growl from anybody--for they are innocent,
they are inoffensive, being works of art