s or Gruenewald; he has none of their harsh
manliness, nor their gloomy energy, nor their tragic turbulence; he only
weeps with the uncomforted grief of a woman. He is a Sister rather than
a Friar-artist; and it is from this loving sensibility, which in the
mystic vocation is more generally peculiar to women, that he has drawn
the pathetic orisons and tender lamentation of his works.

And was it not also in this spiritual nature, so womanly in its
complexion, that he found, under the impulse of the Spirit, the wholly
angelical gladness, the really glorious apotheosis of Our Lord and His
Mother, as he has painted them in this Coronation of the Virgin, which,
after being revered for centuries in the Dominican Church at Fiesole,
has now found shelter and admiration in the little gallery devoted to
the Italian School at the Louvre.

* * * * *

"Your article is very good," said the Abbe Plomb. "But can the
principles of a ritual of colour which you have discerned in Angelico
be verified with equal strictness in other painters?"

"No, if we look for colour as Angelico received it from his monastic
forefathers, the illuminators of Missals, or as he applied it in its
strictest and most usual acceptation. Yes, if we admit the law of
antagonism, the rules of inversion, and if we know that symbolism
authorizes the system of contraries, allowing the use of the hues which
are appropriated to certain virtues to indicate the vices opposed to
them."

"In a word, an innocent colour may be interpreted in an evil sense, and
vice versa," said the Abbe Gevresin.

"Precisely. In fact, artists who, though pious, were laymen, spoke a
different language from the monks. On emerging from the cloister the
liturgical meaning of colours was weakened; it lost its original
rigidity and became pliant. Angelico followed the traditions of his
Order to the letter, and he was not less scrupulous in his respect for
the observances of religious art which prevailed in his day. Not for
anything on earth would he have infringed them, for he regarded them as
a liturgical duty, a fixed rule of service. But as soon as profane
painters had emancipated the domain of painting, they gave us more
puzzling versions, more complicated meanings; and the symbolism of
colour, which is so simple in Angelico, became singularly
abstruse--supposing that they even were constantly faithful to it in
their works--and almost impossible to interpr