To reconcile Drama with Dream, Cimabue's task was comparatively an easy
one. But to reconcile Sense with--I still use even this following word
reverently--Nonsense, is not so easy; and he who did it first,--no
wonder he has a name in the world.
I must lean, however, still more distinctly on the word "domestic." For
it is not Rationalism and commercial competition--Mr. Stuart Mill's"
other career for woman than that of wife and mother "--which are
reconcilable, by Giotto, or by anybody else, with divine vision. But
household wisdom, labour of love, toil upon earth according to the law
of Heaven--these are reconcilable, in one code of glory, with
revelation in cave or island, with the endurance of desolate and
loveless days, with the repose of folded hands that wait Heaven's time.
Domestic and monastic. He was the first of Italians--the first of
Christians--who _equally_ knew the virtue of both lives; and who
was able to show it in the sight of men of all ranks,--from the prince
to the shepherd; and of all powers,--from the wisest philosopher to the
simplest child.
For, note the way in which the new gift of painting, bequeathed to him
by his great master, strengthened his hands. Before Cimabue, no
beautiful rendering of human form was possible; and the rude or formal
types of the Lombard and Byzantine, though they would serve in the
tumult of the chase, or as the recognized symbols of creed, could not
represent personal and domestic character.
Pages:
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56