reughel the Elder--a snow-scene in
the wide street of a red brick, high-gabled village--soldiers,
parents, children, all in the stiff, ungraceful Flemish dress of the
sixteenth century, the poor little children, in square trousers and
pinafores, clinging to their mothers' narrow skirts. Oddly enough, it
made the story more real to me than it had ever seemed before, quite
painfully and terribly so, indeed: dispoiled of its usual conventional
character, it became definite, and the very historical inaccuracy
which destroyed the traditional conception made it an historical fact.
We have only to go to Ghent and Bruges to see how the genius and
devout earnestness of the Van Eycks, Van der Heyden and Hemling raise
their pictures above trifling absurdities. It is undeniable that with
many of us the constant presentation to our eyes of the incidents of
our Saviour's life, especially His passion, gives them more reality
than even the most frequent reading of the Bible. This renders the
crucifixion extremely painful, intolerable in powerful pictures. I
knew of an intelligent, sensitive little child who burst into
convulsive sobbing before Tintoretto's great Crucifixion in the Scuola
San Rocco at Venice. In the Belvedere at Vienna there is a picture by
Rubens of the dead Christ in the arms of the usual small group: His
mother is removing with a light, tender touch a thorn which is still
piercing the cold brow. The whole picture is in the same spirit, and I
never could look at it with dry eyes. Yet in Rubens's hands this and
all kindred subjects are generally repulsive. The very early masters
are prone to fix the attention upon some revolting detail of torture
or too material and agonizing exhibition of physical suffering, but
their stiff, hard outlines, absence of perspective and childishness of
composition, with the element of the grotesque which is seldom absent,
take the edge off their effect. Later, when art has advanced, and is
capable of affecting us more deeply, refinement too has advanced:
there is less simplicity, but merely painful detail is subordinated to
general expression and skill of drawing and color. It is where the two
meet, as in Rubens, that the result is most harrowing: the picture I
have just spoken of is the only one of his in which I ever saw any
sign of delicacy or tenderness, any appeal to the deeper and more
exquisite emotions. Nevertheless, by degrees his genius helps one to
surmount his realism. On my fi