Than is man's body both for power and forme
Whiles it is kept in sober government.
But none than it more foul and indecent
Distempered through misrule and passions bace."

Sec. 25. Degrees of descent in this respect: Rubens, Correggio, and Guido.

Sec. 26. And modern art.

Of these last, however, with whom ideality is lost, there are some
worthier than others, according to that measure of color they reach, and
power they possess, whence much may be forgiven to Rubens, (as to our
own Etty,) less, as I think, to Correggio, who with less apparent and
evident coarseness has more of inherent sensuality, wrought out with
attractive and luscious refinement, and that alike in all subjects, as
in the Madonna of the Incoronazione, over the high altar of San Giovanni
at Parma, of which the head and upper portion of the figure, now
preserved in the library, might serve as a model of attitude and
expression to a ballet figurante:[42] and again in the lascivious St.
Catherine of the Giorno, and in the Charioted Diana, (both at Parma,)
not to name any of his works of aim more definitely evil. Beneath which
again will fall the works devoid alike of art and decency, as that
Susannah of Guido, in our own gallery, and so we may descend to the
absolute clay of the moderns, only noticing in all how much of what is
evil and base in subject or tendency, is redeemed by what is pure and
right in hue, so that I do not assert that the purpose and object of
many of the grander painters of the nude, as Titian for instance, was
always elevated, but only that we, who cannot paint the lamp of fire
within the earthen pitcher, must take other weapons in our left hands.
And it is to be noted, also, that in climates where the body can be more
openly and frequently visited by sun and weather, the nude both comes to
be regarded in a way more grand and pure, as necessarily awakening no
ideas of base kind, (as pre-eminently with the Greeks,) and also from
that exposure receives a firmness and sunny elasticity very different
from the silky softness of the clothed nations of the north, where every
model necessarily looks as if accidentally undressed; and hence from the
very fear and doubt with which we approach the nude, it becomes
expressive of evil, and for that daring frankness of the old men, which
seldom missed of human grandeur, even when it failed of holy feeling, we
have substituted a mean, ca