He knows what a fact may hold (whether
Raphael knew, you may judge by his portrait, behind us there, of Tommaso
Inghirami); bad his fancy hovers above it, as Anal hovered above the
sleeping prince. There is only one Raphael, bad an artist may still be
an artist. As I said last night, the days of illumination are gone;
visions are rare; we have to look long to see them. But in meditation we
may still cultivate the ideal; round it, smooth it, perfect it. The
result--the result," (here his voice faltered suddenly, and he fixed his
eyes for a moment on the picture; when they met my own again they were
full of tears)--"the result may be less than this; but still it may be
good, it may be _great_!" he cried with vehemence. "It may hang
somewhere, in after years, in goodly company, and keep the artist's
memory warm. Think of being known to mankind after some such fashion as
this! of hanging here through the slow centuries in the gaze of an
altered world; living on and on in the cunning of an eye and hand that
are part of the dust of ages, a delight and a law to remote generations;
making beauty a force and purity an example!"
"Heaven forbid," I said, smiling, "that I should take the wind out of
your sails! But doesn't it occur to you that, besides being strong in
his genius, Raphael was happy in a certain good faith of which we have
lost the trick? There are people, I know, who deny that his spotless
Madonnas are anything more than pretty blondes of that period enhanced by
the Raphaelesque touch, which they declare is a profane touch.
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