e palate, the roughest wine of
mysticism; but at least it was not the mawkish syrup of the early
Cologne painters.

"Ah! that mystical breath by which the soul of the artist becomes
incorporate in the colour on a canvas, in the lines of carved stone, in
written words, and speaks to the souls of those who can understand! How
few have had it!" thought Durtal, closing his notes of travel. In
Germany it may be seen in the very bunglers among painters; in Italy,
setting aside Angelico, whose works reveal his saintly spirit and are
the coloured image of his secret soul, and his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli,
the last of the Mediaeval painters; if we also except his precursors:
Cimabue, the survivors of the rigid Byzantines, Giotto--who thawed those
fixed and puzzling figures, Orcagna, Simone di Martino, Taddeo
Gaddi--all the very early painters--how much dexterous trickery do we
find among the great painters, mimicking the religious note, and
producing a deceptive imitation by sheer sham.

"The Italians of the Renaissance, above all others, excelled in this
spurious piety, and those are comparatively rare who, like Botticelli,
were honest enough to confess that their Virgins were Venuses and their
Venuses Virgins.

"The Berlin gallery, where he is to be seen in some exquisite and
triumphant examples, shows this very plainly; we see the two versions of
the type side by side.

"First we have a wonderful Venus, nude, with pure gold hair brought
round her body by one hand, standing out in her white flesh against a
black background, gazing with limpid grey eyes, liquid with the colour
of stagnant water, and edged with lids like a young rabbit's--pink lids;
she must have wept much, and her disconsolate look, her drooping
attitude, suggest some far-away thought of the unsatisfied weariness of
the senses and the intolerable unrest of horrible desires that nothing
can satisfy.

"And not far away is a Virgin, very like her--indeed her very self, with
her sensitive, slightly upturned nose, her lips like a folded
clover-leaf, her brackish eyes, her pink lids, her golden hair, her
greenish complexion, her strongly-moulded frame and large hands. The
countenance is the same, fretful and weary; it is evident that the same
model sat for both. They are both purely pagan. For the Venus, well and
good! But the Virgin!

"It may be added that in this picture a row of torch-bearing angels
makes the result, if possible, even less Christian, for the