e done, which, if known, it is gratuitous in the
portrait to exhibit, and if unknown, it is insolent in the portrait to
proclaim; whence has arisen such a school of portraiture as must make
the people of the nineteenth century the shame of their descendants, and
the butt of all time. To which practices are to be opposed both the
glorious severity of Holbein, and the mighty and simple modesty of
Raffaelle, Titian, Giorgione, and Tintoret, with whom armor does not
constitute the warrior, neither silk the dame. And from what feeling the
dignity of that portraiture arose is best traceable at Venice, where we
find their victorious doges painted neither in the toil of battle nor
the triumph of return, nor set forth with thrones and curtains of state,
but kneeling always crownless, and returning thanks to God for his help,
or as priests, interceding for the nation in its affliction. Which
feeling and its results have been so well traced out by Rio,[40] that I
need not speak of it farther.

Sec. 21. Secondly, Sensuality.

Sec. 22. How connected with impurity of color.

Sec. 23. And prevented by its splendor.

Sec. 24. Or by severity of drawing.

That second destroyer of ideal form, the appearance of sensual
character, though not less fatal in its operation on modern art, is more
difficult to trace, owing to its peculiar subtlety. For it is not
possible to say by what minute differences the right conception of the
human form is separated from that which is luscious and foul: for the
root of all is in the love and seeking of the painter, who, if of impure
and feeble mind, will cover all that he touches with clay staining, as
Bandinelli puts a foul scent of human flesh about his marble Christ, and
as many whom I will not here name, among moderns; but if of mighty mind
or pure, may pass through all places of foulness, and none will stay
upon him, as Michael Angelo, or he will baptize all things and wash them
with pure water, as our own Stothard. Now, so far as this power is
dependent on the seeking of the artist, and is only to be seen in the
work of good and spiritually-minded men, it is vain to attempt to teach
or illustrate it, neither is it here the place to take note of the way
in which it belongs to the representation of the mental image of things,
instead of things themselves, of which we are to speak in treating of
the imagination; but thus much may here be noted of broad, practical
principle, that the purity of fles