rce of feeling, increase
after the age of twenty-five. By Fra Angelico, who drew always in fear
and trembling, dexterous execution had been from the first repudiated;
he neither needed nor sought technical knowledge of the form, and the
inspiration, to which his power was owing, was not less glowing in youth
than in age. The inferiority traceable (we grant) in this Madonna
results not from its early date, but from Fra Angelico's incapability,
always visible, of drawing the head of life size. He is, in this
respect, the exact reverse of Giotto; he was essentially a miniature
painter, and never attained the mastery of muscular play in the features
necessary in a full-sized drawing. His habit, almost constant, of
surrounding the iris of the eye by a sharp black line, is, in small
figures, perfectly successful, giving a transparency and tenderness not
otherwise expressible. But on a larger scale it gives a stony stare to
the eyeball, which not all the tenderness of the brow and mouth can
conquer or redeem.

84. Further, in this particular instance, the ear has by accident been
set too far back--(Fra Angelico, drawing only from feeling, was liable
to gross errors of this kind,--often, however, more beautiful than other
men's truths)--and the hair removed in consequence too far off the brow;
in other respects the face is very noble--still more so that of the
Christ. The child _stands_ upon the Virgin's knees,[9] one hand raised
in the usual attitude of benediction, the other holding a globe. The
face looks straightforward, quiet, Jupiter-like, and very sublime, owing
to the smallness of the features in proportion to the head, the eyes
being placed at about three-sevenths of the whole height, leaving
four-sevenths for the brow, and themselves only in length about
one-sixth of the breadth of the face, half closed, giving a peculiar
appearance of repose. The hair is short, golden, symmetrically curled,
statuesque in its contour; the mouth tender and full of life: the red
cross of the glory about the head of an intense ruby enamel, almost fire
color; the dress brown, with golden girdle. In all the treatment Fra
Angelico maintains his assertion of the authority of abstract
imagination, which, depriving his subject of all material or actual
being, contemplates it as retaining qualities eternal only--adorned by
incorporeal splendor. The eyes of the beholder are supernaturally
unsealed: and to this miraculous vision whatever is of th