The qualities of material may give
pleasure to the senses; the object embodying these qualities becomes
beautiful only as it is endowed with a significance wakened in the
human spirit. A landscape, says Walter Crane, "owes a great part of
its beauty to the harmonious relation of its leading lines, or to certain
pleasant contrasts, or a certain impressiveness of form and mass, and
at the same time we shall perceive that this linear expression is
inseparable from the sentiment or emotion suggested by that
particular scene." In the appreciation of art, to stop with the
sensuous appeal of the medium is to mistake means for an end.
"Rhyme," says the author of "Intentions," "in the hands of a real
artist becomes not merely a material element of metrical beauty, but
a spiritual element of thought and passion also." An artist's color,
glorious or tender, is only a symbol and manifestation to sense of his
emotion. At first glance Titian's portrait of the "Man with the Glove"
is an ineffable color-harmony. But truly seen it is infinitely more. By
means of color and formal design Titian has embodied here his
vision of superb young manhood; by the expressive power of his
material symbols he has rendered visible his sense of dignity, of
fineness, of strength in reserve. The color is beautiful because his
idea was beautiful. Through the character of this young man as
revealed and interpreted by the artist, the beholder is brought into
contact with a vital personality, whose influence is communicated to
him; in the appreciation of Titian's message he sees and feels and
lives.

The value of the medium resided not in the material itself but in its
power for expression. When language is elaborated at the expense of
the meaning, we have in so far forth sham art. It should be easy to
distinguish in art between what is vital and what is mechanical. The
mechanical is the product of mere execution and calls attention to
the manner. The vital is born out of inspiration, and the living idea
transmutes its material into emotion. Too great an effort at
realization defeats the intended illusion, for we think only of the
skill exercised to effect the result, and the operation of the intellect
inhibits feeling. In the greatest art the medium is least perceived, and
the beholder stands immediately in the presence of the artist's idea.
The material is necessarily fixed and finite; the idea struggles to free
itself from its medium and untrammeled to