stament, for he possessed a Bible, which was sold by auction with his
furniture to pay his debts.

This would be enough to justify his choice of subjects and the
composition of his pictures; but the riddle remains unsolved of the
results achieved by an artist whom we cannot conceive of, after all, as
praying before he would paint: like Angelico and Roger van der Weyden.

Be this as it may, he, with the eye of a visionary, with his serious but
fervid art, his genius for concentration, for getting a spot of the
essence of sunlight into the heart of darkness, has accomplished great
results; and in his Biblical scenes has spoken a language which no one
before him had even attempted to lisp.

Is not this picture of the Pilgrims to Emmaus a typical instance of
this? Pull the work to pieces; it ought to seem dull, monotonous,
voiceless. As a composition it is utterly common: we see a sort of
cellar of stone-work, a table facing us, behind which sits Jesus, His
feet bare, His lips colourless, His complexion muddy, His raiment of a
pinkish grey; He is breaking the bread, while, to His right, an apostle,
clutching his napkin, looks at Him, fancies he recognizes Him, and on
the left another disciple, quite sure that he knows Him, clasps his
hands--and this one utters a cry of joy that we can hear! A fourth
figure, with an intelligent profile, sees nothing, but, attentive to his
duties, waits on the guests.

It is a meal of humble folk in a prison; the colours are limited to a
key of sad greys and browns, excepting in the case of the man who twists
his napkin, whose sleeves are thick with a vermilion like red
sealing-wax, while the others might be painted with dust and pitch.

These are the literal facts; but they are not the truth, for everything
is transfigured. The head of Christ is luminous merely by the way He
looks up; a pale radiance fills the room. This Jesus, ugly as He is,
with lips like death, asserts Himself by a gesture, a look of ineffable
beauty, as the murdered Son of a God!

We stand dumfounded, not even trying to understand; for this work,
stamped with transcendent naturalism, is beyond and apart from painting;
no one can copy or reproduce it.

"After Rembrandt," Durtal went on, "there is an irremediable decay of
religious feeling in painting. The seventeenth century has not left a
single picture in which there is a genuine stamp of manly devotion;
excepting, indeed, in Spain at the time when Saint Theresa