is usual to hear portraiture opposed to the
pursuit of ideality, and yet we find that no face can be ideal which is
not a portrait. Of this general principle, however, there are certain
modifications which we must presently state; let us first, however,
pursue it a little farther, and deduce its practical consequences.

Sec. 14. Instances among the greater of the ideal Masters.

These are, first, that the pursuit of idealism in humanity, as of
idealism in lower nature, can be successful only when followed through
the most constant, patient, and humble rendering of actual models,
accompanied with that earnest mental as well as ocular study of each,
which can interpret all that is written upon it, disentangle the
hieroglyphics of its sacred history, rend the veil of the bodily temple,
and rightly measure the relations of good and evil contending within it
for mastery,[39] that everything done without such study must be shallow
and contemptible, that generalization or combination of individual
character will end less in the mending than the losing of it, and,
except in certain instances of which we shall presently take note, is
valueless and vapid, even if it escape being painful from its want of
truth, which in these days it often in some measure does, for we indeed
find faces about us with want enough of life or wholesome character in
them to justify anything. And that habit of the old and great painters
of introducing portrait into all their highest works, I look to, not as
error in them, but as the very source and root of their superiority in
all things, for they were too great and too humble not to see in every
face about them that which was above them, and which no fancies of
theirs could match nor take place of, wherefore we find the custom of
portraiture constant with them, both portraiture of study and for
purposes of analysis, as with Leonardo; and actual, professed,
serviceable, hardworking portraiture of the men of their time, as with
Raffaelle, and Titian, and Tintoret; and portraiture of Love, as with
Fra Bartolomeo of Savonarola, and Simon Memmi of Petrarch, and Giotto of
Dante, and Gentile Bellini of a beloved imagination of Dandolo, and with
Raffaelle constantly; and portraiture in real downright necessity of
models, even in their noblest works, as was the practice of Ghirlandajo
perpetually, and Masaccio and Raffaelle, and manifestly of the men of
highest and purest ideal purpose, as again, Giotto, and