FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99  
100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   >>   >|  
nt with them. These are not men caught up into the skies, and do not need to be sustained there. The world they inhabit is not earth in heaven, but heaven on earth,--the earth seen in accordance with the purpose of its existence. Giotto's fellow-citizens were struck with the new interest which the language of attitude and gesture and all the familiar details of life acquired in his representation of them. Looking around them, they saw what they had been taught to see, and concluded it was only an unexampled closeness of copying. No doubt Giotto thought so, too,--but had that been all, we should not have heard of it. It is this new interest that has to be accounted for. The charm did not lie in the fact, nor in the reproduction of it in the picture, but in a sudden sense of its value as expression, resting on a still obscurer feeling that herein lay its whole value,--that the actual _is_ not what it seems, still less a pure delusion, but that it is pure _seeming_, so that its phenomenal character is no reproach, but the bond that connects it with reality. Just because it is only "the outward show," and does not pretend to be anything more, what it shows is not "the things that only seem," but the things that are. The attractiveness of beauty is due to the sense of higher affinities in the object; it is finality felt, but not comprehended, so that the form shines with the splendor of a purpose that belongs not to it, but to the whole whereof it is a part. Aristotle makes wonder the forerunner of science. So our admiration of beauty is a tribute paid in advance to the fresh insight it promises. Whether it be called miracle or inspiration, the artist must see his theme as something excellent and singular. This is perhaps that "strangeness" which Lord Bacon requires in all "excellent beauty," the new significance coming direct, and not through reflection, and therefore ineffable and incomparable. That Giotto and his successors went on for two hundred years painting saints and miracles was not because the Church so ordained, nor from any extraordinary devoutness of the artists, but because they still needed an outward assurance that what they did was not the petty triviality it seemed. There must always remain the sense of an ulterior, undeveloped meaning; when that is laid bare, Art has become superfluous, and makes haste to withdraw into obscure regions. For it is only as language that the picture or the statue avails anyt
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99  
100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Giotto
 

beauty

 

picture

 
excellent
 
interest
 
purpose
 

outward

 

things

 

heaven

 

language


Aristotle
 
promises
 

strangeness

 

Whether

 

forerunner

 

whereof

 

shines

 

requires

 

splendor

 

belongs


singular
 

admiration

 

tribute

 
artist
 

advance

 
miracle
 
called
 

inspiration

 

science

 

insight


miracles

 

undeveloped

 
ulterior
 
meaning
 

remain

 
triviality
 

statue

 

avails

 

regions

 

obscure


superfluous

 

withdraw

 
assurance
 

needed

 
incomparable
 
successors
 

ineffable

 

coming

 
direct
 

reflection