ll this accord with the same writer's
favourite theory that all beauty, all grandeur, and all excellence
consist in an approximation to that central form or habitual idea
of mediocrity, from which every deviation is so much deformity and
littleness? Michael Angelo's figures are raised above our diminutive
race of beings, yet they are confessedly the standard of sublimity in
what regards the human form. Grandeur, then, admits of an exaggeration
of our habitual impressions; and 'the strong, marked, and peculiar
character which Michael Angelo has at the same time given to his works'
does not take away from it. This is fact against argument. I would
take Sir Joshua's word for the goodness of a picture, and for its
distinguishing properties, sooner than I would for an abstract
metaphysical theory. Our artist also speaks continually of high and low
subjects. There can be no distinction of this kind upon his principle,
that the standard of taste is the adhering to the central form of each
species, and that every species is in itself equally beautiful. The
painter of flowers, of shells, or of anything else, is equally elevated
with Raphael or Michael, if he adheres to the generic or established
form of what he paints: the rest, according to this definition, is a
matter of indifference. There must therefore be something besides the
central or customary form to account for the difference of dignity, for
the high and low style in nature or in art. Michael Angelo's figures, we
are told, are more than ordinarily grand; why, by the same rule, may
not Raphael's be more than ordinarily beautiful, have more than ordinary
softness, symmetry, and grace?--Character and expression are still less
included in the present theory. All character is a departure from the
common-place form; and Sir Joshua makes no scruple to declare that
expression destroys beauty. Thus he says:

'If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty _in its most perfect
state,_ you cannot express the passions, all of which produce distortion
and deformity, more or less, in the most beautiful faces.'

He goes on: 'Guido, from want of choice in adapting his subject to his
ideas and his powers, or from attempting to preserve beauty where it
could not be preserved, has in this respect succeeded very ill. His
figures are often engaged in subjects that required great expression;
yet his Judith and Holofernes, the daughter of Herodias with the
Baptist's head, the Andromeda, a