I don't know why I say
"but"; he is quite typical of the world's art-training: Christianity may
get hold of the names and dictate the subjects, but the artist-breed
carries a fairly level head through it all, and, like Pater's Mona Lisa,
draws Christianity and Paganism into one: at least, wherever it reaches
perfect expression it has done so. Some of the distinctly primitives are
different; their works inclose a charm which is not artistic. Fra
Angelico, after being a great disappointment to me in some of his large
set pictures in the Academia and elsewhere, shows himself lovely in fresco
(though I think the "crumb" element helps him). His great Crucifixion is
big altogether, and has so permanent a force in its aloofness from mere
drama and mere life. In San Marco, the cells of the monks are quite
charming, a row of little square bandboxes under a broad raftered
corridor, and in every cell is a beautiful little fresco for the monks to
live up to. But they no longer live there now: all that part of San Marco
has become a peep-show.
I liked being in Savonarola's room, and was more susceptible to the
remains of his presence than I have been to Michel Angelo or anyone
else's. Michel Angelo I feel most when he has left a thing unfinished;
then one can put one's finger into the print of the chisel, and believe
anything of the beauty that might have come out of the great stone
chrysalis lying cased and rough, waiting to be raised up to life.
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