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TWELVE 
 GREAT PAINTINGS 
 
 PERSONAL INTERPRETATIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY TURNER BAILEY 
 
 THE PRANG COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • CHICAGO 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ATLANTA • DALLAS 
 
-3^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 191 3 
 BY HENRY TURNER BAILEY 
 
 THE'PLIMPTON'PRESa 
 NORWOOD-MAS S'U- 8- A 
 
TO 
 
 WILLIAM TORREY HARRIS 
 
 LOVER OF BEAUTY LOVER OF TRUTH 
 
 PHILOSOPHER TEACHER 
 
 MY FRIEND 
 
 7M736 
 
CONTENT 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I Pope Innocent X 9 
 
 Velasquez 
 
 II Spring 13 
 
 Corot 
 
 III Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus 17 
 
 Turner 
 
 IV Creation of Man 2^ 
 
 Michelangelo ____ 
 
 V Saint Barbara 27 
 
 Palma Vecchio 
 
 VI The Mother 31 
 
 Whistler 
 
 VII Judith and the Head of Holofernes 35 
 
 Botticelli 
 
 VIII The Golden Stairs 39 
 
 Burne-Jones 
 
 IX The Sistine Madonna 43 
 
 Raphael 
 
 X The Transfiguration 49 
 
 Raphael 
 
 XI The Assumption 55 
 
 Titian 
 
 XII Pieta 59 
 
 Titian 
 
 [5] 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 A dull uncertain brain^ 
 
 But gifted yet to know 
 
 That God has cherubim who go 
 
 Singing an immortal strain, 
 
 Immortal here below. 
 
 I know the mighty bards, 
 
 I listen when they sing, 
 
 And now I know 
 
 The secret store 
 
 Which these explore 
 
 When they with torch of genius pierce 
 
 The tenfold clouds that cover 
 The riches of the universe 
 
 From God's adoring lover. 
 And if to me it is not given 
 
 To fetch one ingot thence 
 Of that unfading gold of Heaven 
 
 His merchants may dispense. 
 Yet well I know the royal mine, 
 
 And know the sparkle of its ore. 
 Know Heaven's truth from lies that shine, — 
 
 Explored they teach us to explore. 
 
 Emerson 
 
 \6] 
 
INTRODUCTION 1 : ^,j i \/ 
 
 WHAT makes a painting great? Certainly not thie ix^me' 
 of the man who produced it. The name of Rubens is 
 that of a giant in the history of painting, but that name 
 on the thousand canvases where he emblazoned the world, 
 the flesh, and the devil does not make them all great. On 
 the other hand, his Descent from the Cross, in Antwerp Cathedral, would 
 be reckoned great, though the name of the man who painted it were 
 forever unknown. 
 
 A painting is not great merely because it is important in the history 
 of art. Cimabue's Madonna and Christ-child is so significant histori- 
 cally that for once the populace was right when with music and banners 
 it accompanied the picture from the master's studio to Santa Maria 
 Novella ; but it could hardly be included now in a list of the great paint- 
 ings of the world. 
 
 Mere subject is no guarantee of greatness. European galleries con- 
 tain portraits of great men, pictures of epoch-making coronations and 
 victories, saints, and madonnas, crucifixions and heavenly visions, all 
 as unimportant in the realm of painting as the output of the latest 
 amateur; while all the world holds as more precious than rubies the 
 unknown woman called the Fornarina, painted, perhaps, by Piombo. 
 
 Mere technique does not make a picture great. Paul Potter's Bull, 
 in the Museum of The Hague, is a marvel of realism ; the Burgomasters 
 wherewith Franz Hals has shingled many a wall in the municipal 
 museum of Haarlem are miracles of dash; Hans Makart's Abundantia 
 in the New Pinakothek of Munich is a nine days' wonder in color; but 
 all these are as nothing in the presence of Michelangelo's Creation 
 of Man, a painting which is relatively unrealistic, unattractive in 
 handling, and heavy and dull in hue. 
 
 Ruskin says great art is "that which conveys to the mind of the 
 spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest 
 ideas," and he adds, to make his meaning unmistakable, "I call an idea 
 
 It] 
 
great in proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind, and 
 as it more fully occupies, and in occupying exercises and exalts, the 
 faculty by which it is received." We may quarrel with this phrase- 
 ology, regret that Ruskin omitted "feeling," and "delight," and much 
 besides, but if we will read thoughtfully that whole second chapter 
 : .*• of\tlie/Jfirst volume of Modern Painters, on Greatness in Art, we 
 .;.• .-shall,: in the'^nd, I think, be content to accept his definition as a fairly 
 ' -''s'atisfacfdfytest of greatness. 
 
 But inasmuch as what we get from a picture, as from a book, 
 or from nature itself, depends largely upon what we bring to it, no two 
 of us will be affected by the masterpiece in the same way. Titian's 
 Sacred and Profane Love may convey only a small number of small 
 ideas to one mind, while it may convey a large number of lofty ideas 
 to another. Hence it appears that he who explains an old master 
 exposes himself! These self-revelations, however, are not without value: 
 
 "God uses us to help each other so, 
 Lending our minds out.** 
 
 But may not an enthusiast read into a picture thoughts the artist 
 never intended? Yes; possibly. Yet who shall set limits to the inten- 
 tion of an artist, a Watts, for example, or a Leonardo da Vinci? The 
 greatness of his picture may depend upon its power to do that very 
 thing — to "fan the dreams it never brought," — to excite, as well as 
 to convey "the greatest number of the greatest ideas." Are not the 
 marble gods of Greece the greater as works of art for having swayed 
 many generations of men? They satisfied the neighbors of Phidias, 
 enslaved the conquerors of Athens, provoked the Renaissance, inspired 
 Flaxman and Canova, and in these far-away days fed Rodin and Saint 
 Gaudens. They rule forever, eternally beautiful, great even for me, 
 though I worship the Invisible after the manner of my Pilgrim fathers. 
 
 After all, any work of art is great for me that promotes in me the 
 greatest number of ideas which exercise and exalt my spirit; and it is 
 of twelve such masterpieces that I propose to write: not because I feel 
 that I, drinking at such fountains, have exhausted them, but because, 
 having been refreshed there, I would tell others, in the hope that they 
 too may drink from these Castalian springs. 
 
 1*1 
 
 J 
 
TWELVE GREAT PAINTINGS 
 
 I 
 
 POPE INNOCENT X 
 
 By VELASQUEZ 
 
 IN the exhibition of portraits by John S. Sargent, shown in the lead- 
 ing American cities a few years ago, was one picture which attracted 
 universal attention, not only for its astonishing excellence, but for 
 the story commonly reported concerning it. The gentleman who 
 (with his dog) was the subject of this picture asked Sargent for a 
 sitting, so the story ran, and was refused. The artist read the man's 
 character and motives too clearly to be pleased with such a subject. 
 But the man was determined and persistent and would pay any price 
 for the portrait. Sargent refused for a long time; told him he did not 
 care to paint his portrait ; that if he were to paint it, he himself would 
 not like the picture ; but all to no purpose. The man would not be put 
 off. At last, yielding to importunity, Sargent consented, for a fabulous 
 price, to paint the picture. When the portrait was finished, the man 
 was startled, horrified, angered with such a revelation of himself as he 
 saw before him, and refused to accept the picture or to pay the price. 
 True or not, the story was readily accepted as plausible enough by all 
 who saw the portrait. The very soul of the man stood there revealed 
 as at the Last Judgment. One would not have been surprised had that 
 man repeated with the canvas that tragedy of Dorian Gray. 
 
 Revelation of character is the glory of portraiture and the measure 
 of the portrait-painter's power. "Character," said Emerson, "is that 
 which acts directly by presence, and without means." The portrayal 
 of character therefore demands a super-normal insight, and a perfect 
 mastery of technique. If one is to be impressed primarily with the 
 quality of the personality before him, as he looks at the canvas, his mind 
 must not be distracted with paint or the manner of its use. 
 
 [9] 
 
Great portraiture, the adequate portrayal of the individual, is a 
 comparatively modern achievement. As excellent as the Fayum por- 
 traits are, they exhibit that instinctive feeling for the type, for the 
 preconceived ideal, from which the Greek artist could not escape. In 
 Roman art only, under the influence of what some students are pleased 
 to call the Etruscan spirit, does classic painting and sculpture approach 
 the level of true portraiture, and then, apparently, only for a brief period. 
 The art, scarcely risen, suffers an eclipse for more than a thousand years. 
 During those years symbolism had its day. Born again from the cata- 
 combs, symbolism reigned supreme in church, in court, and camp, con- 
 trolling sculpture, mosaic, and illumination, metalry, and emblazonry, 
 until the coming of the prophets of the Renaissance. 
 
 The first attempts at portraiture in the fourteenth century were but 
 little more than colored silhouettes. Giotto's Dante gives us a mere 
 shadow-picture, a profile from which we gather only an impression of 
 the drooping nose and protruding chin. Botticelli, in the fifteenth 
 century, does but little more with Simonetta.^ Perugino advances to a 
 full-front view, but he produces only a colored photograph of the outside 
 of the face. If the spirit is within, it is in a rapture, oblivious of the 
 moment. Almost everybody, in those days, if we are to believe the 
 painters, had "the gazes'* forevermore! When the artist wished to 
 express individual character in a man he usually reverted to a sort of 
 symbolism. Even Raphael's Pope Leo X had to have his cardinal- 
 servants behind him, his missals and jewels before him, and his reading 
 glass in his hand to proclaim his character. There in the midst the 
 body of the Pope sits, evidently posed for the occasion, with not a hint 
 in the face of the real spirit within. 
 
 But with the advent of Titian comes a new power. The spirit 
 within the body is subjected to the will of the painter. At his com- 
 mand a living, thinking, self-revealing soul looks forth from the windows 
 of the face. Before, there was only one observer; now there are two. 
 Titian's Daughter and Caterina Cornaro see those who see them. 
 Ariosto and Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici calmly take the measure of 
 their critics. True portraiture has appeared, and the trappings may 
 now be dispensed with altogether, or relegated to second place. The 
 face reveals the man, reveals him at a supreme moment, a moment 
 when the whole man, past, present, and future, is there incarnate. 
 
 ^ During this century the Van Eycks of the north were far in advance of the Italians in portraiture. 
 [xo] 
 
Such portraiture of the human spirit is almost a miracle. Few indeed 
 have been the men who could perform it every time they saw fit, — 
 Titian, Leonardo, Rembrandt, Holbein, Franz Hals, Van Dyck, Sir 
 Joshua, Ingres, a few more. Others can work the miracle when they 
 have good luck; but often the spirit of the sitter gets away from them 
 and goes off into dreamland in spite of all they can do. 
 
 Within that select circle of the supreme masters of portraiture stands 
 the Spaniard, Velasquez, second to none. And among all his portraits 
 there is, perhaps, none greater than that of Pope Innocent X. 
 
 Giovanni Battista Pamfili, born at Rome in 1574, graduate of the law 
 school at twenty, made Consistorial Advocate by Clement VIII, Nuncio 
 at Naples by Gregory XV, Datary with the Cardinal-Legate to France 
 and Spain by Urban VIII, Titular Latin Patriarch of Antioch, Nuncio at 
 Madrid, Cardinal-Priest of Sant Eusebio, Cardinal, Inquisitor, Pope, 
 is himself here revealed and immortalized by Velasquez. 
 
 Just study that face a while. This was the man who brought the 
 powerful Barbarini to justice for misappropriating public funds, and 
 winked at the same crime in his favorite. Donna Olimpia! This was 
 the man who quarreled with the Duke of Parma over his bad debts and 
 the appointment of a bishop, seized the Duke's stronghold, Castro, and 
 razed its fortifications, humbled the Duke, and then assumed to pay his 
 debts! This was the man (made Pope because he took both sides in the 
 quarrel between Spain and France !) who proved himself hostile to Spain 
 by encouraging a revolt in Naples, and friendly to Spain by refusing to 
 recognize the independence of Portugal; who offended France by con- 
 fiscating the palaces, the wealth, and the emoluments of the Barbarini, 
 and appeased France by reinstating the grafters when Mazarin threatened 
 to send troops into Italy! This is the man who bargained with the 
 Venetians to aid them in wresting Candia from the Turks on condition 
 that he name all appointees to the ecclesiastical sees within Venetian 
 territories, and who filled the sees, but not the Venetian treasury! This 
 is the man who declared null and void those articles in the Peace of 
 Westphalia inimical to the Catholic religion, and who fed the fires of the 
 Jansenist controversy in France! This is the man who "loved justice 
 and lived a blameless life,*' but allowed his brother's widow to make 
 and unmake cardinals, divert public funds, and rob him of his good 
 name. This is the man who humbled dukes and kings, managed states 
 and conclaves, but was secretly managed by a woman who gained from 
 
him all she wished, including the wealth of the papal treasury, and who 
 then refused to provide for his funeral on the ground that she, *' being a 
 poor widow, had not the means." 
 
 Ambitious idealist and weak sensualist, terrible antagonist and 
 vacillating friend, daring diplomat and slippery partner, virtuous grafter, 
 reforming self-seeker, far-sighted pope and short-sighted man, — is not 
 the whole Italian-Renaissance range of his character mirrored perfectly 
 in his face as he sits there in his sumptuous robes, at seventy-four years 
 of age, in the seat of the blunt and honest Galilean fisherman, Simon 
 Peter? 
 
 Perfectly composed within its space, marvelous in its facile rendering 
 of textures, faultlessly drawn, beautifully colored, and all without the 
 slightest apparent effort, this portrait ranks as one of the supreme pictures 
 of the world. To me it is something more than a faithful portrait of 
 Innocent X. As through the genius of Leonardo, Mona Lisa became the 
 incarnation of the feminine character in all its inscrutable complexity, 
 so through the genius of Velasquez, this Pope has become the incarnation 
 of the masculine character in all its strength and weakness. 
 
 The man who could j)aint a portrait like that was a greater master 
 than his exalted subject! It is said that when the portrait was finished 
 the Pope sent his chamberlain to pay the bill. "The King of Spain, my 
 master," said Velasquez, refusing the money, "always pays me with his 
 own hand." And that same honor was conferred upon the artist by 
 Pope Innocent X. 
 
 [12] 
 
apg™:.^.^^ ^ 
 
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n 
 
 SPRING 
 
 By jean BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT 
 
 i^FTER an address on public art instruction, in a Massachusetts 
 /% town too small to support a hotel, I was to lodge with 
 / % the town hall janitor. "Do you want to go to bed?" he 
 X IL asked abruptly, as we entered his house. "Tm in no hurry," 
 was my reply. "I'm glad of it," said he, "you seem to be 
 my kind, and IVe something I want to show you." He placed before 
 my wondering eyes photographs of every historic building in the state, 
 of every important historic site. He had visited each one himself and 
 had selected the point of view for his camera with astonishing good sense. 
 "Yes, I enjoyed doing all that, of course," he confessed; "but let me 
 show you something I enjoyed more, and am more unhappy over." 
 He handed me another large album, and I began to turn the pages. My 
 astonishment grew with every turn. The first page contained a splendid 
 photograph of a group of willows; the second contained a photograph 
 of willows; willows again on the third page; willows on the fourth; 
 fifth, willows; sixth, willows; willows, willows everywhere. "Now, 
 Mr. Bailey, I want you to tell me why I can't make willows look like 
 that," he said; and he threw down upon the open book a photograph 
 of Corot*s Spring. "I have photographed willows at morning, noon, 
 and night, spring, summer, and fall; I have tried them through mist, 
 and rain, and fog; I have shot at them by sunlight and by moonlight; 
 in calm and storm, blow high and blow low, but I can't for the life of me 
 make willows like Corot's. When I look at his willows, I am a little 
 child again, out doors, under their moving lights and shadows, the little 
 leaves like a lot of minnows, once in a while turning up their shiny sides 
 to the sun. How did he ever do it?" 
 
 We sat by the fire till long past midnight. The wind moaned over 
 the snowbanks around the house, and the house snapped in the grip of 
 the frost, but we were far away in the sunny land of France, with dear 
 
 [13 
 
 i ART % 
 
 DEPARTMENT 
 
papa Corot, of a May morning, listening to his words about the land- 
 scape-painter's day out-of-doors. 
 
 I am the janitor's kind! The picture does for me what it did for him. 
 Whenever I see even a poor print of it I am back to boyhood. It is May. 
 I stand in that blessed nook by the spring in the angle of the orchard 
 wall, the woods behind and the morning itself before me. I am barefoot 
 for the first time again. I feel the soft warm grass of the sloping bank, 
 which has had the sun since dawn. The grass is full of violets blue and 
 white ; the buttercups have budded ; the big plaited leaves of the Indian 
 poke are pushing up through the tangle of last year's hemp weed ; the 
 water from the spring slips noiselessly along through the waving pennons 
 of the green felt and between the stout stems of the marigolds. The 
 jewel weed has sprouted; the fiddle heads are out; the sweet flags are a 
 span high. But what a wondrous green-gold light pours down upon me! 
 The great willows bestow that benediction. There stands a tree just 
 like the large one in the picture, reaching upward to the left in the self- 
 same way; there stands a smaller one just where Corot has placed it, 
 forever cut back by the boys who make whistles; and there stands the 
 third, the giant, just outside the picture at the right, the father willow, 
 we used to call him, immense, old, gray, patriarchal in majesty, respon- 
 sible for that vast, dim shadow that falls in from above. I am sure if I 
 look up that way I shall see the great masses of gray-green swaying slowly 
 against the deep blue, and the little leaves all tremulously happy as they 
 ride together away up there in the sky, where the swallows are darting 
 about and calling to one another. 
 
 The photograph, powerful though it be, is weak in comparison with 
 the original. The painting, which hangs in the Louvre, although only 
 about two by three feet in size, casts its spell over every lover of beauty, 
 and transports him at once to his home in the country, instantly obliter- 
 ates the years, and sets the calendar to May. He is again 
 
 "A happy child; 
 He beholds the blooming wild, 
 And hears in heaven the bluebird sing; 
 'Onward/ he cries, 'your baskets bring, — 
 In the next field is air more mild, 
 And o'er yon hazy crest is Eden's balmier spring.' " 
 
 The whole canvas is bathed in that indescribable color which streams 
 through willows, a glory that might fall through windows of chrysolite. 
 
 [14] 
 
The yellow-green of the sunlit grass fades in the near-by foliage, melts 
 away into the opalescent mist across the still water, and is lost at last 
 in the golden mystery of the distance. Out of that distance comes a 
 hint of rose color; it grows stronger in the upper branches of the trees, 
 announces itself in the flowers of the foreground, warms the garments 
 of the girl who reaches for the leaves, and then becomes a brilliant spark 
 of vermilion in the cap of the kneeling figure. 
 
 As I look long at the canvas, I find myself moving away from my 
 boyhood. I am no longer a child, my spirit begins to look upward with 
 these children, and to reach outward with these long arms of the trees, 
 upward and outward, toward the light. I find there the Infinite, and 
 the eternal spring. 
 
 "AH the trees on all the hills 
 Open their thousand leaves." 
 
 The fresh spears of grass clothe with their beauty mile on mile of upland 
 and meadow; the waters of the pond are populous with new millions of 
 living forms ; the air pulsates with the wings of a billion birds, returned to 
 nest and nurture billions more. The flowers blossom again by trillions. 
 I hear Nature herself laughing and singing, 
 
 "No numbers have counted my tallies. 
 No tribes my house can fill, 
 I sit at the shining fount of life 
 And pour the deluge still." 
 
 The golden-green of the picture is itself the symbol of the indomitable 
 fruitfulness of divine Wisdom. 
 
 But notwithstanding the all-encompassing urge of the spring, some 
 branches in the picture do not burgeon. Across the shimmering hues 
 of the leaves and the mist, they make harsh, dark lines. Spring cannot 
 " Renovate all that high God did first create," in nature nor in life. True 
 
 "Spring still makes spring in the mind 
 When sixty years are told; 
 Love makes anew this throbbing heart 
 And we are never old," 
 
 but there are past failures, sins, disappointments that nothing can repair. 
 The annual return of joyous life but serves to bring into stronger relief 
 their ugly and somber presence. That companion I lost in youth, — 
 
 U5I 
 
"Returned this day the south wind searches. 
 And finds young pines and budding birches; 
 But finds not the budding man." 
 
 That careless word that brought years of heartache to my dearest friend, 
 — She forgave me; God forgave me; but we cannot forget it. There 
 it is, made only uglier by new growths of love. Why did not Corot omit 
 those dead branches? Ah, would the picture have been so true without 
 them.? Would it have been so beautiful? Are not the darks required 
 to make us appreciate the lights? Are not the harsh lines necessary to 
 make us feel the mellow atmosphere and the soft verdure? And in 
 my life? Without that death, when would have sprung up my hope 
 of immortality; without that sin, how could I have known the joy of 
 forgiveness? Yes, I can side with Rabbi Ben Ezra and welcome each 
 rebuff. Yes; in everything I can give thanks, as Paul enjoins; for I 
 perceive that at last "All things work together for good to those who 
 love God " ; even as all things in this picture work together for the best, 
 for those who love beauty. As every detail is bathed in the golden- 
 green of this atmosphere, so am I immersed in the infinite flood of 
 God's abundant life, but I can trace through it all His love. Is that 
 why Corot brings the red into his green world? There are hints of 
 it everywhere in his canvas, but it is there in its fulness only upon the 
 head of the one who kneels, and who reaches out a hand for a flower 
 to give to a little child. 
 
 [i6] 
 

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 ULYSSES DERIDING POLYPHEMUS 
 
 By JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER 
 
 ^kMONG the many happy surprises the National Gallery of 
 / % London gave me, that first ever-memorable visit, years ago, 
 I % none was greater, none more thrilling than this, the vision 
 X m of Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus. I had heard of it, but 
 had never seen it, even in photograph. In that twenty- 
 second room, full of masterpieces by Turner, made so familiar to me 
 by the writings of Ruskin that I could dispense with the guide book, I 
 found my eyes returning more and more frequently to this canvas, and 
 at last resting there alone. And now, whenever I happen to be in 
 London, I feel the tug of this picture more strongly than that of any 
 other object in the city. Westminster with its splendors, St. Paul's 
 with all its majesty, the British Museum with its incalculable wealth 
 of treasure, cannot draw me to itself so quickly. My first fane is the 
 National Gallery, my first shrine the Ulysses. 
 
 In the presence of the original, the magic of the master transports 
 me at once "in Ulysses' red-cheeked ships (some god our guide) into a 
 quiet harbor." Before me at the left I catch the gleam of "the spring 
 of sparkling water flowing from beneath a cave around which poplars 
 grew." At the right are the "beaked and dark-bowed, well-benched 
 ships" of Ulysses' companions, waiting together. The whole ninth book 
 of the Odyssey, in fact the whole Homeric world, lives again. That 
 pierced crag, the rude triumphal arch of some sea god, I've seen off^ 
 Capri; but the wooded slopes beyond, rising upward and away through 
 the mists of the morning to the far peaks lost in crimson cloud, seem to 
 be the land "not held for flocks and tillage, but all unsown, untilled, 
 forevermore, where vines could never die." The trusty comrades of 
 the hero are "in their places at the pins, and sitting in order, smite the 
 foaming water with their oars." The ship is ancient; but to this day 
 in Egypt the sailors may be seen climbing like cats upon the great curved 
 
 \I7\ 
 
spars of the Nile boats as these men climb upon Ulysses' ship. Dolphins 
 still leap beside the ships in Adria, but here the sea nymphs sport 
 among them, with white arms gleaming in the spray beneath the 
 ship's wet bow. Men still see the sun flame upward over the ^gean, 
 but only here are the fiery steeds of Apollo's golden chariot visible to 
 mortal eye. Sea and shore are of this present world, but above them, 
 dim and vast, writhes Polyphemus, "not like a man who lives by bread, 
 but rather like a woody peak of the high hills seen single, clear of 
 others," a part of that other world where the bright gods abide, seen 
 clearest by blind Homer. 
 
 It is this combination of elements from the outer and inner world, 
 this charging of the commonplace with the message of the spirit, that 
 makes all myths, writes all enduring poems, paints all great pictures. 
 Turner in the realm of painting rivals Homer in the realm of words. 
 Into a few dead facts both have infused the ichor of immortality, and 
 "high-born ready Odysseus" lives now in his magic world, audible and 
 visible, forevermore. There he stands, high on the deck of his golden 
 galley, "calling aloud out of an angry heart: 'Cyclops, if ever mortal 
 man asks you the story of the ugly blinding of your eye, say that Odysseus 
 made you blind, the spoiler of cities, Laertes' son, whose home is Ithaca.'"^ 
 Ah, those days of toil with the classics at Brentford school, disappoint- 
 ing as they were to the ambitious barber and his extraordinary son, have 
 borne celestial fruit. 
 
 The composition of the picture is in one respect unique. The great 
 fan of light radiating from the sun at the right, is balanced by a fan of 
 line radiating from the hold of Ulysses' ship at the left. These two fans 
 are perfectly inter-related. Mass is balanced by vista. In the print 
 the sunrise monopolizes the attention; not so in the painting. In the 
 painting Ulysses holds first place, as he ought. This seemingly im- 
 possible primacy of so small a feature is brought about by means of 
 color. As brilliant as the colors of the sunrise are, they are not so bril- 
 liant as Ulysses ! The blues and purples and reds of the picture complete 
 their sequence in the vermilion of his armor; the hues of white, yellow, 
 and orange lead the eye again to the hero and find their climax in his 
 flaming torch. The whole color scheme is focused in this one little spot 
 of absolutely pure color. Ulysses glows like a live coal. 
 
 The reproduction in black and white, even the best carbon photo- 
 
 * The quotations are from Professor Palmer's fine translation of the Odyssey. 
 [i8] 
 
graph, gives but the faintest echo of the original, for it is, primarily, a 
 masterpiece in color. 
 
 Turner's chief aim seems to have been the conquest of the sky, the 
 representation of the atmosphere under every possible condition. His 
 pictures deal with space, space filled with sunshine, gloom, vapor, mist, 
 cloud, rain; space filled with calm and storm; space exhibiting every 
 possible color in infinite variety. The features of the landscape, modi- 
 fied, moved about, transformed by his opulent imagination, were merely 
 the pegs upon which he hung the splendid robes and veils of color, woven 
 by the fingers of the light upon the loom of air. 
 
 This picture, Ruskin says, marks the beginning of the master's central 
 period of power. The sky is "beyond comparison the finest that exists 
 in Turner's oil paintings." It is wonderful! No words can describe it. 
 If words can help at all one who has not seen the original, the words 
 would be Ruskin's, written in the presence of another picture by the 
 same master, but applicable here: "The whole sky from the zenith to 
 the horizon becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every 
 black bar turns to massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, 
 shadowless crimson and purple and scarlet, and colors for which there 
 are no words in language and no ideas in the mind, — things which can 
 only be conceived while they are visible, — the intense hollow blue of 
 the upper sky melting through it all, showing here deep and pure and 
 lightless, — there modulated by the filmy, formless body of the trans- 
 parent vapor, till it is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold." And 
 Ruskin adds: "There is no connection, no one link of association or 
 resemblance, between those skies and the work of any mortal hand but 
 Turner's." If that statement isn't true, it is so near the truth that the 
 margin is hardly worth an argument. 
 
 But why so much emphasis upon the sky, in a picture of Ulysses? 
 For the same reason that there is so much emphasis upon the sky in the 
 picture of the Old Temeraire. Turner saw his beloved skies as typical. 
 The "Temeraire," a ship of the line, which finished a warrior's career 
 gloriously at the battle of Trafalgar, leading the van in Nelson's division 
 and breaking the line of the combined fleets, was being towed to her 
 last berth by a fiery little steam tug. "There's a fine subject. Turner," 
 said Clarkson Stanfield. Turner made no answer at the time, but the 
 next year exhibited the picture. He saw in the incident the last of the 
 wooden navy. To his mind it was the moment of the sunset of a glorious 
 
 [19] 
 
day in England's naval history. Had he represented the towing at any 
 other time of day, it would have been commonplace enough, its signifi- 
 cance would have been lost; at sunset its meaning was blazoned on the 
 very heavens for all the world to read. 
 
 But the sky in the Ulysses is not a sunset! And to enforce that fact 
 with the dullest observer, Turner has made visible the horses of the sun, 
 leaping upward from the sea. It is sunrise. Why? 
 
 Dr. William T. Harris has said that Turner loved to depict conflict 
 of some sort, conflict between sea and shore, sun and storm, light and 
 darkness, man and the elements, but that he always chose the supreme 
 moment when the war still raged but when the edict had gone forth that 
 the celestial forces should conquer. This picture is a good example. 
 Think of the ten years* war with Troy in which Ulysses had fought. 
 Think of the years of wandering in which he had suffered beyond all 
 other men. Think of the fearful experience through which he had just 
 passed, — the fog, the night, the cave, the horrible nightmare of the 
 monster's meal. But as usual the wit of Ulysses had saved his soul alive. 
 His bright goddess, fair-haired Athena, never failed him at the critical 
 moment. He has outwitted the giant. He has escaped to his ship. He 
 is on his way home. Zeus wills it! The darkness yields. The rowers 
 are at the benches, the sailors man the yards, an off-shore breeze springs 
 up, the sails fill, flags of victory flutter out, the sea nymphs show the 
 channel to the open sea, it is morning! Light has conquered again, 
 — the light of the world, and that finer light that lighteth every man 
 that Cometh into the world. 
 
 I have the finest brown carbon photograph of this picture obtainable, 
 large size, hung where I can see it every time I look up from my desk. 
 From all the pictures ever painted I have selected this for my constant 
 companion. To me it embodies the whole history of the human spirit, 
 past, present, and future, in one supreme vision. Long-tried, royal 
 Odysseus is man in his struggle with nature, man in his warfare with 
 ignorance, the Son of Man in His fight with sin and death, my own best 
 self in its lifelong battle with everything adverse. By the help of his 
 god Ulysses won. Why may not I with the help of mine .? 
 
 [20] 
 
IV 
 
 THE CREATION OF MAN 
 
 By MICHELANGELO 
 
 BY that trick of the mind called by the rhetoricians " synecdoche," 
 the Creation of Man, seen anywhere, in even the poorest print, 
 means to me the whole Sistine Chapel. One glance at the 
 familiar lines and my spirit has leaped the sea. I have escaped 
 from the rattling carriage in the sun-drowned Piazza San Pietro, 
 have passed in safety the watchmen of the flaming garb, and am standing 
 with uncovered head beneath the great dim ceiling. The titanic fresco 
 is of irresistible power. Whoever comes into its presence feels the spell. 
 Having seen it, one can no more forget it than he can forget his first 
 vision of the all-encompassing sky goddess Newt on the ceiling of the 
 Kiosque of Dendera, with the moon and the stars at her breast and the 
 sun rising from her lap. 
 
 The Creation of Man is the fourth panel in the series of nine which 
 constitutes the central portion of the frescoes; or the sixth in the series 
 reckoned in the order in which it was painted. For, as all the world 
 knows, the series was painted backward. Just why the Drunkenness 
 of Noah was chosen as the subject of the last panel, and then painted 
 first, all the world is still discussing. Disgusted with the conditions of 
 his time, stung by the gibe of his enemies (that a sculptor could not 
 paint), and forced to begin the work against his will, what would have 
 been more natural to a man of Michelangelo's temper, than to have seized 
 upon the Drunkenness of Noah as typical of the day, and to have painted 
 that first, and in the style popular at the moment, to beat his jealous 
 rivals at their own game, and to show them what he thought of the whole 
 wretched situation P^ 
 
 However it was, as he worked, his temper seems to have cooled. 
 
 ^ Inasmuch as the whole decoration of the Chapel is intended to review the essentials of the history of 
 Redemption, Michelangelo may have ended his series with the drunkenness of Noah, to show that the very 
 best man, the one worthy of preservation through the flood, needed the Salvation revealed in the Christ, and 
 therefore that all need it. 
 
 [21] 
 
Like any other genuine artist he became more interested in the work 
 itself than in anything else, and proceeded to adapt the treatment of his 
 theme to the expanding vision. What a transition in five panels from 
 the orderly confusion of the Flood to the august simplicity of the Crea- 
 tion ! The critics say that Michelangelo saw his mistake in using so many 
 figures of so small a size and therefore simplified his compositions and 
 enlarged his figures as he proceeded. Indeed! Let the critics meditate 
 on the Creation of Light as given in the account Michelangelo was fol- 
 lowing, and then tell us how he might have represented it in the same 
 style with the Drunkenness of Noah. 
 
 The Creation of Man, or as it is often called, the Creation of Adam, 
 is reckoned as the masterpiece in this masterly series. In it the artist's 
 genius reaches highwater mark. The composition is a unit; it has not 
 two themes, like the Eden panel, but one, and that sun-clear. In some 
 of the other panels the intention of the artist is not evident at sight. 
 Here misunderstanding is impossible. This superb creature on a hilltop, 
 just coming alive, has no rival in the whole range of painting. 
 
 The lines upon which the picture is composed are in themselves of 
 astonishing power. This becomes obvious in a tracing. In the Creator 
 group the curves come into the picture like a rushing mighty wind driving 
 everything before it. The effect of this onset is evident in the Adam 
 group. But the force in the one takes a turn about the head of the 
 Creator and flashes forth on a new path to the fingertip, while the force 
 in the other, just when it seems to have spent itself in the head of Adam, 
 reappears in the feebly outstretched arm and is lost in the drooping hand. 
 The marvel is more marvelous when one realizes that these curves, 
 expressing divine life and human lassitude, both to the very hmits of 
 possibility, are the same ! Like an Athenian vase of the best period, the 
 whole composition is a play upon one line. A single curve, the curve 
 of force, builds the entire design. 
 
 Consider that figure of Adam, propped up by one arm, simply because 
 the elbow happened by good luck to fall vertically beneath the shoulder; 
 that knee raised only because the leg happened to be poised (it might 
 fall either way at any moment) ; the body bent by its own weight ; the 
 heavy head and neck sunken within the shoulders; the lifeless hand; 
 the child-like face where a response to the divine is just beginning to 
 manifest itself; no other painter ever charged a human figure with such 
 a burden of meaning. 
 
 [22] 
 
The figure of the Creator is no less wonderful. Perfectly at rest yet 
 tense with activity, it rides amid its attendants, supported by them yet 
 supporting all. Compare the foot with that of Adam. How living it 
 is ! Compare the Creator's two hands. That upon the shoulder of the 
 cherub is doing something, but its energy is as nothing compared with 
 that outstretched to communicate the electric thrill of life to the newly 
 
 created body. Compare this life-giving hand with Adam's hand. Notice 
 the difference between the two index fingers; between the two thumbs; 
 between the other fingers; between the two wrists. Here are the two 
 most expressive hands in the world within an inch of each other. 
 
 But there is one element in this picture, never mentioned, so far as 
 I know, by any critic; namely, the Spirit of the Creator sent forth in 
 advance to energize the inert body. The record Michelangelo was 
 interpreting read: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
 ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became 
 a living soul." There is nothing here about the "finger of God," although 
 that is mentioned three times elsewhere in the Bible, and always as the 
 instrument of God's power. The Breath of God is mentioned seven 
 times. It symbolizes the divine life manifesting itself without visible 
 embodiment. The gods so manifested themselves to the Greek heroes. 
 The cloud, always closely associated with the wind, is the natural veil 
 of a heavenly visitor. "Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud," said God 
 to Moses. More than fifty times in the Bible the cloud is spoken of as 
 indicating the divine presence. Michelangelo, a reverent and thorough 
 student of the Scriptures, and a keen thinker as well, knew that before 
 the human spirit could even reach out a hand toward God, the breath 
 of the Almighty must already have given it life. ^' He is the essence 
 that inquires!" as Emerson said. Michelangelo himself wrote: 
 
"For love warms not my heart, nor can I rise, 
 Or ope the doors of Grace, who from the skies 
 Might flood my soul . . . 
 
 Rend Thou the veil, dear Lord ! Break Thou that wall . . . 
 Send down Thy promised light to cheer and fall ... 
 
 That I with love may blaze, 
 And free from doubt, my heart feel only Thee!" ^ 
 
 Therefore in this wonderful panel, the Almighty projects himself 
 as a vast cloud, close to the recumbent body. The Creator's head is 
 repeated line for line in this cloudy shape, even to the eye and the flow- 
 ing beard; the open mouth is opposite Adam's head, "breathing into 
 his nostrils" the breath of life. In many a reproduction this shadowy 
 form is hardly visible, but in a good reproduction, such as that in Masters 
 in Art, and especially in the original, it is evident. In the diagrams of 
 the entire ceiling decoration, rendered in line, this face is missing. But 
 how empty that part of the composition appears! The panel, without 
 those few lines, is unbalanced, — the only unbalanced panel in the series. 
 Add them, as in the tracing reproduced herewith, and the composition 
 is complete. Balance is restored at once. The panel has never been 
 retouched; the silhouette cannot have come by accident. It is there 
 because Michelangelo put it there. It is the supreme proof of the insight 
 of the master into the eternal relations between the human and the 
 divine. 
 
 But the orthodox Michelangelo went farther yet. God's foreknowl- 
 edge had been affirmed by the church fathers for a thousand years. 
 "With God," they said, "knowing and willing are one." Already the 
 helpmeet for Adam existed in the knowledge and purpose of the Creator. 
 Therefore, in this picture, the Creation of Adam, — nay, the larger title 
 is the better, the Creation of Man, — the master has embodied not only 
 this philosophy, but the thought expressed in the original document: 
 " So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he 
 him, male and female created he them." The account of the creation 
 of Eve comes in another chapter, and Michelangelo has represented that 
 m another panel. But here, in this panel. Eve already exists, next to 
 the heart of God, the most beautiful of all the heavenly attendants, the 
 most interested of all those who weje present "when the morning stars 
 sang together and all the sons of i3qd» shouted for joy." The Heavenly 
 
 1 From Heart-Coldness, by Michelangelo. 
 [24] 
 
Father holds her in reserve for Adam, even as at the very moment this 
 picture was being painted He was holding in reserve, as the spiritual 
 mate of this great-hearted, pure-minded, lonely man himself, the lovely 
 Vittoria Colonna. In a sonnet to her Michelangelo said: 
 
 "I saw no mortal beauty with these eyes 
 
 When perfect peace in thy fair eyes I found; 
 But far within, where all is holy ground, 
 
 My soul felt Love, her comrade of the skies: 
 
 For she was born with God in Paradise." ^ 
 
 The Creation of Man is to me the symbol of the rebirth of the soul, 
 when, heavy with the weight of the physical life with which it is asso- 
 ciated, unconscious of its powers, it is awakened by the divine breath. 
 If then it reaches out, never so feebly, it finds what David promised 
 King Saul, in Browning's immortal verse: 
 
 "A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me, 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!" 
 
 It is to me the symbol of the perpetual relation which exists between 
 the awakened soul and God. On one side the soul, ever conscious of 
 its own weakness, ever re-enforced by the heavenly breath, reaching for- 
 ever, forever craving more of the abounding life; on the other side the 
 loving Father who answers before the human spirit calls, who wills to do 
 for us more than we can ask or think, and of whose purpose it is written, 
 "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart 
 of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him." 
 
 ^ From Celestial Love. Both this and the sonnet previously quoted are from the translation by John 
 Addington Symonds. 
 
 Us] 
 
V 
 
 SAINT BARBARA 
 
 By PALMA VECCHIO 
 
 i^MONG the Golden Legends is that of Saint Barbara, only 
 /% daughter of Dioscorus of Heliopolis, so beautiful, so jealously 
 # % loved by her father, that she was kept in a lofty tower, where 
 J^ ^ the eager eyes of suitors could not reach her. Here in the 
 year 303, reading and dreaming alone, the heavens declared 
 to her the glory of God, and the firmament showed her His handiwork. 
 There was no speech nor language, yet without these was their voice 
 heard by the maiden, and she renounced her father's gods. Having 
 heard a rumor of the wisdom and saintliness of Origen of Alexandria, 
 she managed, during her father's absence from home, to send to that 
 great Christian physician a letter. Upon receipt thereof Origen rejoiced 
 greatly, and replying with his own hand, sent his message by one of his 
 most trusted disciples, disguised as a physician. This man, being wel- 
 comed by Barbara, perfected her conversion, gave her Christian baptism, 
 and returned to his home. Barbara persuaded workmen, constructing 
 a bath-chamber in the tower, to modify the plan they were following to 
 the extent of making a triple window in place of a double one. The 
 reason for this change was demanded by Dioscorus, upon his return. 
 "Know, my father," said Barbara, "that through three windows doth 
 the soul receive light, — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and 
 the Three are One." Enraged by this confession, Dioscorus drew 
 his sword and would have killed his daughter had she not fled to the 
 top of the tower, "where by angels she was wrapt from his view, and 
 carried to a distance." Her place of concealment having been revealed 
 by a shepherd, Barbara was whipped, shut in a dungeon, denounced 
 to the proconsul, the heartless Marcian, who ordered her scourged 
 and horribly tortured. All this having no influence upon the maiden, 
 she was taken to a mountain-side and beheaded by her own father. 
 As her murderer was returning to the city, a fearful tempest broke 
 
 [27] 
 
upon him; "fire fell from heaven and consumed him utterly, not a 
 vestige remaining." 
 
 Such in brief is the story of the young woman who became the patron 
 saint of all such as have to do with fortifications and defensive warfare, 
 — armorers, gunsmiths, and military engineers. " She is invoked against 
 thunder and lightning and all accidents which might arise from explosions." 
 Therefore, when the Bombardieri, the heavy artillery of Venice, 
 wanted an altar-piece for the old church of Santa Maria Formosa, some- 
 where about the year 1575, Saint Barbara was selected as the peculiarly 
 appropriate subject. The execution of the work was entrusted to Jacopo 
 Palma, called II Vecchio, the old, to distinguish him from his grand- 
 nephew. The result is Palma Vecchio's masterpiece, one of the most 
 
 beautiful pictures in all the world. 
 
 The print, reproduced herewith, shows Bar- 
 bara standing upon a pedestal with a cannon 
 at each side. She holds in her hand a palm 
 branch, symbol of victory, and wears the 
 martyr's crown, with its thorns. Behind her 
 rises the fortress tower with its two and three 
 windows, through which is wafted to us across 
 the centuries the dialogue of the Golden Legend. 
 The print shows also the masterly compo- 
 sition of the figure. A tracing of the principal 
 lines, herewith reproduced, reveals the grace of 
 curvature and the perfect balance of the whole. 
 Around a central temperate reversed curve the 
 others are grouped with consummate skill. 
 They spring upward like the lines of some 
 graceful lily, from a point beneath the feet of 
 the saint, now in almost symmetrical pairs, 
 outlining the hips and the shoulders, now in 
 playful reversed curves, tangent to these or 
 crossing them at the most agreeable angles. 
 Strong verticals and horizontals near the base 
 repeat the perpendiculars of the frame; the 
 arching curves of the shoulders and of the 
 
 A tracing of the main lines of com- j^^^^j ^^^iO the cirCUmSCribiug liuc of the tOp 
 position in ralma Vecchio s r ^ • n r •• ri' 
 
 Saint Barbara of the picture. A finer composition 01 line 
 
 [28\ 
 
could not have been produced by Raphael himself. An improvement 
 of this arrangement is inconceivable. 
 
 But the best reproduction in black and white conveys nothing of 
 the wondrous color of the original. Barbara's life was a life of loving 
 renunciation; hence green, the symbol of fruitfulness, of glad service 
 for others, does not appear in the color scheme. All the hues are 
 related to red, the symbol of love, to orange, the symbol of benevo- 
 lence, and to brown, a dull orange, the symbol of renunciation. 
 Her undergarment is of delicate dull orange, her robe of rich red- 
 brown, and her ample mantle of a subdued orange-red. The warm 
 flesh tones of her face, with the red-gold hair rippling over cream- 
 white drapery, are enhanced in beauty by the far-away sky of delicate 
 green-blue with low-lying banks of ivory-colored cloud. The effect is 
 indescribable, exquisite, entrancing. The canvas is warm with such 
 a glow as fills the oldest deepest forests of pine at noonday, when from 
 the soft brown carpet of myriads of thread-like leaves, the light is 
 reflected into the intricate traceries of gray twigs above, making 
 a gentle glory of the gloom, shot through with fragmentary webs of 
 gold. In such a noonday-twilight stands forevermore Saint Barbara. 
 Around her the prayers of many generations have murmured like the 
 far-away music of the pines. 
 
 The lover of beauty in Venice cannot be indifferent to her spell. As 
 Yriarte says, he cannot pass by Santa Maria Formosa without stopping 
 for a moment at least "to pay his devotions to the lovely patroness of 
 the gunnery of the Most Serene Republic." Of superb figure, ripe and 
 rich, with no loss of refinement, with a face of distinguished beauty, 
 "with all the noble serenity of a saint who is yet a woman,'' Barbara 
 stands as the embodiment of Browning's ideal: 
 
 "For pleasant Is this flesh; 
 Our soul in its rose-mesh. 
 
 As the bird wins and sings, 
 Let us cry, 'All good things 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, 
 than flesh helps soul."* 
 
 Here is no medieval saint, attenuated, with upturned eyes longing 
 for death! Barbara embodies the modern ideal of sainthood: perfect 
 
 [29] 
 
health, abounding vitahty, a rehgion that blooms and fruits here and 
 now. She is a saint of the type of Philhps Brooks. 
 
 To me Saint Barbara is the picture of perfect womanhood, perfect 
 physically, intellectually, spiritually. She bears the same relation to 
 all other women ever put upon canvas that the Venus Milo bears to all 
 others ever cut in marble. She constitutes the standard by which all 
 others are measured; she stands alone, without a rival; she reigns 
 supreme, the Queen! 
 
 [30] 
 
f^iv^m-yAmmrA'y^immm^.^^ 
 
 ■myAmm^AmvA^i^.^AmvAVAVA^^^It1 
 
VI 
 
 THE MOTHER 
 
 By JAMES MacNEIL WHISTLER 
 
 IN the midst of the rival beauties of the Luxembourg, gaily over- 
 dressed in splendid paint, or boldly nude in gleaming marble, I 
 suddenly discovered this quiet woman, modestly clothed and in 
 her right mind. She had evidently set her face as a flint. Her 
 eyes looked straight forward; they would not behold a wicked 
 person. She arrested my steps. In life, "the charm of her presence 
 was felt by everyone who came near her." That charm has been im- 
 mortalized in this picture by her immortal son. I lost desire for the 
 company of others, that morning, and stood before the canvas long and 
 long, until now whenever I shut my eyes I can see its subdued grays, 
 its lustrous black, its pale cream and rose, and feel the soothing harmony 
 of its composition, like a full deep soft chord of organ, music flooding 
 all the place with peace. 
 
 This is the "arrangement in gray and black" that the hanging com- 
 mittee of the Royal Academy rejected in 1872 until Sir William Boxhall 
 forced its acceptance on threat of resignation. This is Mr. Whistler's 
 "beautiful pattern of color and of line" of which he wrote to Fantin, 
 "To me it is interesting as a picture of my mother, but what can or 
 ought the public to care about the identity of the subject.?" 
 
 The public never has been greatly interested in mere arrangements 
 of color and of line, and perhaps never will be. The men and women 
 who are sensitive to rhythmic measures will always rejoice in the har- 
 monic relations within this frame, in the rhyming verticals and hori- 
 zontals, in the orderly scale of five low values, in the subtle harmony 
 of analogous tones, in the perfect balance of diverse attractions, in the 
 unassuming but absolute supremacy of the face over everything else; 
 but the mass of men and women who constitute the public will always 
 be interested in this picture primarily because of the subject itself, never 
 
 [31] 
 
suspecting that in these very harmonic relations, to which the artist 
 gave hfelong study, lies the supreme charm of the picture. They are as 
 potent as the drawing and modeling of the face itself in producing the 
 impression which this masterpiece gives, of refinement, dignity, and 
 repose, of perfectly embodied righteous Motherhood. 
 
 This is a picture of Whistler's mother, of the woman who bore him 
 in pain, who nursed him in sickness, who prized his first crude drawings, 
 who taught him his Bible, and brought him up to hate insincerity and 
 sham. She often feared her boy was "not keeping to the straight and 
 narrow way," she never approved of his painting on Sunday, but never- 
 theless she stood by "Jemmie" through evil report and good report, 
 and won from him the admiration of his passionate but locked-up heart. 
 The haughtly, insolent, sharp-tongued author of The Gentle Art of 
 Making Enemies was always "considerate and kind above all to his 
 mother." He escorted her to church on Sunday, called her "Mummy" 
 (his baby name for her) to the end of his days, and hung her picture in 
 his bedroom, where he could see it last at night and first in the morning. 
 When the dealer, Mrs. Noseda, with whom he was forced to place it to 
 raise money during his "hard times," offered it for sale for a hundred 
 pounds. Whistler gave her such an abusive scolding that she became 
 ill! When at last the picture was purchased by the French Government 
 for the Luxembourg, he said, "Of all my pictures I would prefer for 
 The Mother so solemn a consecration." 
 
 What a life this Mother had lived! When in 1842 her husband was 
 called to Russia to build that famous railroad, drawn by the Emperor 
 as everybody knows, straight on the map from city to city, she stayed 
 behind until the children should be a little older. A year later with her 
 four children she made the long journey to join her husband in Europe. 
 One of the precious boys sickened and died on the way and the little 
 body was left at Cronstadt. With what tears and smiles man and wife 
 must have met! For her husband she made that "Little American 
 Home" at Galernaya. In 1848 she was in England with her children. 
 In 1849 she was in Russia again, but without the children. Then her 
 husband died. The Emperor started her on the lonely journey to 
 England, in his own royal barge! But what cared she for the honor 
 with her good man dead in his service ? With an income reduced from 
 ^12,000 a year to ^1,500, she returned to the United States to educate 
 the boys, and to make a home for them at Pomfret, Connecticut. Then 
 
 I32] 
 
"Jemmie" went to West Point, to Paris, to England; and to England 
 she went again, there to share his long struggle for recognition and 
 success. 
 
 When her son asked her to sit for this portrait, how surprised she 
 was! How she blushed and refused! How happy she was within, and 
 how hesitant without! How embarrassed when at last she consented, 
 just to please her boy! Can you not see the little drama enacting again? 
 Only her best black dress would be equal to such an occasion; only her 
 best lace cap, only her best lace handkerchief. Then she let her foolish 
 boy place the chair where he pleased, and she took her seat before him. 
 The tired feet, that had traveled over half the world with him, were 
 placed decently together on the low footstool; the old hands, worn with 
 a life of hard work, were folded in the lap, half hidden in the handker- 
 chief. She thought they were not beautiful any more, like the hands of 
 the fine ladies whom he had been painting of late. The shoulders, bent 
 with the burden of life, were rested against the back of the stiff chair. 
 What use had she, Scotch by birth and Puritan by training, for the 
 luxurious ease of a modern rocker! 
 
 There she sits, alone in her clean orderly room. There is no husband 
 now for whose return to prepare; there are no children now whose toys 
 must be picked up, whose twisted clothing must be straightened out 
 before the morrow. The house is still. On the wall are only pictures, 
 symbols of her memories ; behind her, pictures known only to herself, — 
 we judge of their presence by the corner of a frame; by her side the 
 picture of the present Chelsea, her English home, which we can make 
 out but dimly; before her the dark curtain, which hides the future 
 from her eyes as well as ours. 
 
 But what a dear old face! Refined, strong, sensitive, "with an 
 intense pathos of significance, and tender depth of expression," as Swin- 
 burne said, the record of a long brave life of loyal devotion to duty, of 
 self-forgetful service of God and man. 
 
 There she sits, all alone, waiting; her eyes beholding the land that 
 is afar off. Of the old school in manner, a little old-fashioned in dress, 
 a little troubled by the laxity of her son's ways, a little embarrassed by 
 the prominence into which he has forced her, but with the eye of faith 
 undimmed and the native force of her will unabated, that is Whistler's 
 Mother. I gaze at her face until I know what was in Walt Whitman's 
 heart when he wrote, 
 
 [33] 
 
"Young women are beautiful, 
 But old women are more beautiful." 
 
 I look at her until my heart warms. Old memories come creeping back 
 to me. I must have seen that face somewhere; I must have known 
 that woman. Suddenly my throat tightens, my eyes swim with tears. 
 Ah! that is the portrait of my Mother, too; God bless her. 
 
 i34\ 
 
VII 
 JUDITH WITH THE HEAD OF HOLOFERNES 
 
 By BOTTICELLI 
 
 IF some fairy were to bid me choose from among the paintings of 
 Sandro Botticelli that which I liked best, to be my very own, 
 I would say at once, the Judith. It is a little painting, about a 
 square foot of canvas, in the Uffizi Gallery; but to me it is one of 
 the great pictures. 
 The story of Judith is to be found in the Apocryphal book of Judith, 
 dating from about the second century b.c. Briefly it is this: The 
 King of Assyria, angered because the western provinces of his empire 
 refused to help him in subduing Babylonia, swore to avenge himself on 
 all mankind, and sent his chief general, Holofernes, to **lick up the face 
 of the earth," from the Black Sea to the River of Egypt. This avenging 
 army was appallingly successful until it came to Bethulia at the pass 
 of the hill country of Judea. The men of this little city, backed by the 
 whole Jewish nation, recently returned from the Babylonian captivity, 
 refused, in the name of Jehovah, to yield to the arrogant Assyrian. But 
 the invaders cut off the water supply of the town and waited hilariously 
 for famine to do its fearful work. In those days arose Judith, a young 
 widow, wealthy, beautiful, devout. "O Lord God of my father Simeon," 
 she prayed, "the Assyrians are multiplied in their power: . . . break 
 down their stateliness by the hand of a woman." Then putting on 
 "her garments of gladness" she "decked herself to allure the eyes of all 
 men that should see her," and taking with her a single maidservant and 
 a parcel of provisions, went boldly to the Assyrian camp. Her beauty 
 and her winning words brought her quickly to the tent of Holofernes 
 himself, where in the course of the next three days she accomplished all 
 she desired. "Her sandals ravished his eyes, her beauty took his mind 
 prisoner, and the falchion passed through his neck!" Giving his head 
 to her servant, she passed safely out of the Assyrian camp and came to 
 the gate of Bethulia very early in the morning. By her advice the 
 
 [3S] 
 
Jewish armies fell at once upon their enemies, who, for lack of leader- 
 ship, were thrown into confusion, routed, despoiled, and slaughtered. 
 Judith, hailed as Deliverer, was given a veritable triumph at Jerusalem. 
 Thereafter, though receiving offers of marriage from numberless princes, 
 she lived single, true to her first love, managed her estates successfully, 
 freed her maidservant, "increased more and more in honor, and waxed 
 old in her husband's house, being a hundred and five years old" when 
 she died in peace. "Judith," said Ruskin, is "the mightiest, purest, 
 brightest type of high passion in severe womanhood offered to our human 
 memory." 
 
 This is the Judith that Botticelli alone of all the painters offers to 
 our human vision. Here she is returning with the light of the old 
 moon silvering her violet garments of gladness, while the east brightens 
 to the day of victory. She walks gracefully, without haste, the breeze 
 of the morning fluttering her robes and playing with her golden hair; in 
 one hand the avenging sword, in the other the olive branch prophetic of 
 the peace to be. 
 
 This picture shows me first the contrast between the free-born and 
 the slave. Compare the pose of Judith with that of her maid! Com- 
 pare the lines of the two figures beneath the draperies, — body, arm, 
 leg. In one see 
 
 "The grace of God made manifest in curves," 
 
 in the other the stiffness and angularity of an unresponsive frame. 
 Compare the two feet (one with enlarged joints, too deformed to be 
 revealed, the other too beautiful to be hidden); the two nearer hands 
 (one holding the sword-hilt, the other clutching the dress) ; the two more 
 distant hands; the two necks; the two heads; the two faces, feature by 
 feature. Were ever queen and peasant more perfectly displayed? 
 
 But the face of Judith is the supreme attraction. To this all the 
 lines of composition conspire to lead the eye. "When a man is true 
 at the heart he sanctifies his weaknesses into virtues," exclaims Ruskin, 
 when commenting on this painting in his Mornings in Florence. That 
 falling pose of the head, so unhappy in many of Botticelli's figures, that 
 look of dreamy abstraction, so out of place in the Pallas, are here the 
 very touches needed to perfect the picture. Reread the book of Judith 
 and then ask how else this face should be interpreted. At this moment 
 of success when the visit to the camp is ended — a bad dream — and she 
 
 [36] 
 
returns to home and sanctuary, will men believe her story? Will God 
 forgive her lies? And that good man, Manasses, three years dead, her 
 husband-lover, dearer now than ever to her heart, does he know aught 
 of this? These garments that made glad the captain of the host were 
 the garments that he loved ! ^ Would he approve ? And so, unconscious 
 of her beauty, joyless in her triumph, forgetful of the ghastly horror near 
 at hand, and of the tumult in the fortress-camp below, she moves along 
 the rocky path that leads her to Bethulia, "so utterly a woman." 
 
 In one respect this high-born maiden and her slave are equal. From 
 first to last they serve a higher will, the slave the will of Judith, Judith 
 the will of God. Right or wrong, they do what seems their duty at the 
 time. Can any loyal soul do less? Can any loving soul do more? In 
 following this ancient story one cannot but admire this serving-maid, 
 who speaks not once through it all but perfectly performs. Homely, 
 awkward, so obtuse that she does not even keep step with her mistress, 
 her eyes are riveted upon her to obey her slightest nod. What wonder 
 that she won the love of Judith and at last her freedom. Immortal like 
 her mistress, her reward is the highest that Love can offer to Devotion: 
 "His servants shall serve Him, and they shall see His face forevermore." 
 
 Judith and her maid are Loyalty incarnate, types of those who through 
 self-sacrificing devotion to duty, to the inner voice, to the vision, achieve 
 victories for themselves and for their fellowmen, and thereby are workers 
 together with God. 
 
 "Stainless soldier on the walls, 
 Knowing this, — and knows no more, — 
 Whoever fights, whoever falls, 
 Justice conquers evermore, 
 Justice after as before, — 
 And he who battles on her side, 
 God, though he were ten times slain. 
 Crowns him victor glorified, 
 Victor over death and pain." 
 
 See the book of Judith, Chapter x, verse 3. 
 
 [37] 
 
VIII 
 THE GOLDEN STAIRS 
 
 By sir EDWARD BURNE-JONES 
 
 I FELL in love with the Golden Stairs at first sight, and in photo- 
 graph, where nothing appeared golden but the silence of those 
 graceful maidens. For months the print hung in my study where 
 I could see it every time I looked up. I was told that the picture 
 was designed in 1872, actually begun in 1876, and finished in 1880. 
 Eight years of brooding! Thrice was it named, — The King's Wedding, 
 Music on the Stairs, The Golden Stairs. After all what matters life- 
 history or name? The thing is beautiful. Isn't that sufficient excuse 
 for being ? But I could not resist its invitation. The picture challenged 
 me perpetually to discover a meaning in those orderly arrangements of 
 line and austerities of composition. Burne-Jones, bred in the atmosphere 
 of learning and religion, dedicated to the church, a poet in thought and a 
 symbolist by nature, could not have spent eight years on a meaningless 
 design! It must carry a message of some sort from his heart to mine. 
 
 I searched every square inch of its surface. I found a procession 
 without beginning and without end, coming from above, descending, 
 careless of perspective, a narrow unguarded stairway of marble, and 
 disappearing within a darkened room. In the upper part of the picture 
 doves are making love to one another in the sunshine, two swallows 
 have found a home for themselves beneath the eaves, and roses 
 bloom on the wall. In the lower part a laurel stands by an open 
 door. At first the maidens look forward, at last they all look back- 
 ward. Some are pensive, some are anxious, some dream, some are 
 sad; only one is joyous, and her joy swims upon the top of fear. 
 Some are crowned with flowers, some wear mourning, sprays of cypress 
 have fallen on the stairs. Many have musical instruments — perhaps 
 all — but only two or three are playing, and these with the spirit 
 far away. One maiden listens to sounds from the darkened room, 
 two maidens talk together pleasantly, three whisper to one another, 
 
 [39] 
 
fearfully. All look alike, and yet are different; each seems free, but 
 
 is held fast in the severe lines of the design. 
 Turn the picture and see how sharply defined 
 those lines are. The curve of the stairs, A, 
 is completed by the edges of the robes. This 
 curve is echoed by another, B, which binds the 
 upper maidens to those below, and then, to 
 make assurance doubly sure, a third great 
 curve, C, binds these two together. Not a 
 I feature is out of place; every spot and line, 
 every fold and surface helps define the har- 
 mony of pattern. The King's Wedding.? 
 then a most solemn one! Music on the 
 Stairs? then most inadequate music! The 
 Golden Stairs.? One cannot think of stairs 
 while the mysterious procession is descending! 
 No; the picture has a deeper meaning. It is 
 a symbol of something vast and rich. What 
 is its message? 
 One red-letter day on an express train in 
 
 Montana I heard Dr. William T. Harris interpret Emerson's Days: 
 
 "Daughters of time, the hypocritic Days, 
 Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, 
 And marching single in an endless file, 
 Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 
 To each they offer gifts after his will; 
 Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. 
 I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp. 
 Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 
 Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 
 Turned and departed silent. I, too late. 
 Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.'* 
 
 Since that time the Golden Stairs has been to me another poem on 
 the Days, divinely beautiful. In Emerson's vision the Days offer gifts 
 to man and pass judgments on his choices; ^ in the vision of Burne- 
 Jones the Days are a procession of Memories. 
 
 * Compare Paul, " Every man's work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it. If any 
 man's work abide, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss." 
 See I Corinthians xxxii : 10-15. 
 
 
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How true to my own experiences the poem-picture is! As I review 
 my life I see its Days, daughters of father Time, marching single in an 
 endless file, coming, I know not whence, except from God above, and 
 going, I know not whither, except through the dark portal of the tomb. 
 In youth I looked forward. Those were the days when the blue sky 
 brought heaven near, and the gay flowers bloomed, and I made love 
 like the doves, and furnished my nest like the swallow. Then came a 
 day when I was conscious that shades of the prison house were closing 
 about my spirit, and I heard a voice. 
 
 Just heard, ^ 
 
 From some far shore, 
 The final chorus sounding. 
 
 I remember the day of my first bereavement, when my arm seemed 
 bound with crepe. I remember the day when at last I dropped the 
 cypress spray of a great sorrow and my spirit sang again. I have had 
 my days of joy, of doubt, of fear, of dream; I remember days that stand 
 apart from all others. I remember one group of days so crowded with 
 happy experiences that I cannot now assign to each day its due. I 
 know that now I am beginning to look backward; my thoughts are too 
 ready to fall into the formulas with which age begins to preach: "When 
 I was young, — ah, in those days, — we used to do so differently!" 
 The days of my youth seem as near and as real to me as yesterday; in 
 fact the early days loom larger than to-day, as Burne-Jones suggests. 
 I know, too, that there will come a day when my head shall wear the 
 laurel wreath of the victor, or go crownless through the narrow portal 
 of the grave. I see now that while each day I felt free to play or to keep 
 silent as seemed good to me at the moment, I was not wholly free. Each 
 day formed a part of a whole I did not plan and could not know. I 
 realize that any day I might have met with accident through care- 
 lessness or wilfulness, but that I have been kept from falling by some 
 gracious Providence that will continue to guide my steps to the end. 
 I admit that I have been an unprofitable servant. Many a day, with 
 the fair gift of God in my hand, I have made no music; many a day 
 I have communed with my own sad heart when I should have cheered 
 my neighbor in his grief. But on the whole, life has been good, — the 
 stair has been golden. 
 
 After twenty years with this picture in photograph only, I saw the 
 
 [41] 
 
original painting. The stairs are golden indeed! The whole canvas 
 burns with the soft, subdued radiance of an Indian summer afternoon, 
 when all the earth seems waiting for a revelation. As I sat long before 
 it, something of the peace that passes understanding stole upon my 
 spirit, a peace that glowed with joy when I discovered that the lowly 
 portal did not give entrance to a darkened room, as I had thought, but 
 to a hall whose golden roof was upheld by polished shafts of precious 
 marble. Perhaps, at last, what seemed to me the iron grating of a tomb 
 may prove to be the pillars in the temple of my God. 
 
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IX 
 
 THE SISTINE MADONNA 
 
 By RAPHAEL SANZIO 
 
 /T the Royal Gallery of Dresden in a small room, alone, is the 
 i Sistine Madonna. Its setting is an altar-like structure, upon 
 % the base of which a quotation from Vasari identifies the 
 m. picture and gives us his opinion of it : " For the Black Monks 
 of San Sisto in Piacenza, Raphael painted a picture for the 
 high altar, showing Our Lady with St. Sixtus and St. Barbara — truly 
 a work most excellent and rare." For nearly four centuries now, Vasari's 
 opinion has been the verdict of the world. 
 
 At first glance the picture seems small — the forms are less than 
 life size — and to eyes educated by the Gran' Duca and the Madonna 
 of the Chair, it appears rather dull in color. Against a background of 
 blue-gray, becoming warmer toward the center of the picture, stands 
 the Virgin. The upper portion of her robe is pink, deepening to red in 
 the shades, over a vest of violet-gray. The lower portion is blue over a 
 skirt of red. The scarf thrown over the shoulder is cream-white. The 
 veil flowing from behind the head is a warm gray. Saint Sixtus is clothed 
 in yellow and orange brocade, lined with red, flung over ^ soft under- 
 garment of ivory white. Saint Barbara's sleeves are of yellow and orange 
 changeable silk with blue between the elbow and the shoulder. Her 
 skirt is gray; the mantle is yellow-green. The clouds beneath are of 
 a warm gray. The curtains are dull green, and the green is repeated, 
 with red, in the wings of the cherubs. The larger areas of green, blue, 
 and gray seem to give a dominance to the cooler colors; but presently 
 one discovers that the colors are more subdued and the contrasts softer 
 than usual, and that the whole canvas is suffused with the dim green- 
 golden light of a forest glade in September. In consequence the unity 
 of the whole is much greater in the original than in the reproductions. 
 No one would ever think of being satisfied with a circle cut from the 
 upper part of the picture, except in photograph. 
 
 [43] 
 
Occasionally some critic is pleased to pick flaws in this masterpiece. 
 An American painter, whose works were greater in his own eyes than in 
 the eyes of his contemporaries, used to enjoy saying contemptuously 
 that certain of his acquaintances were in the " Sistine-Madonna stage of 
 art appreciation." Just what he meant by that he never condescended 
 to explain. The picture is by one whom the Blashfields rank "in the 
 art pf composition, the greatest master of the modern world;" by one 
 whom Berenson declares to have been "endowed with a visual imagina- 
 tion which has never been rivaled for range, sweep, and sanity;" by one 
 in whose art, according to Symonds, "thought, passion, and emotion, 
 became living melody." 
 
 The Sistine Madonna, "the sublimest lyric of the art of Catholicity," 
 in the opinion of Liibke, "is and will continue to be the apex of all 
 religious art." To me it is just that, the apex of all religious art. It 
 rises out of the realm of the particular and temporal into the realm of 
 the universal and eternal. It embodies in visible loveliness the things 
 that abide ; it sets forth in inimitable beauty the attitude of the human 
 spirit towards "the Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness." 
 
 Sixtus is the embodiment of hope. A man of mature years, seeing 
 clearly the needs of his fellowmen, and knowing well his own limitations, 
 he looks to the Divine for aid. Raphael has represented him kneeling 
 devoutly at the moment when by gesture and voice he is calling the atten- 
 tion of the new-born Saviour of the world to the needs of the vast congre- 
 gation which the drawing of the curtain has just revealed. His attitude 
 is the attitude of the Psalmist: "Our hope is only in thee." It is the 
 attitude of Peter: "Help, Lord, or we perish." Is not that the attitude 
 of thoughtful men everywhere to-day? The reformer looks to Him who 
 said, "All ye are brethren;" the teacher of ethics to Him who gave the 
 golden rule; the student to Him who said, "Ye shall know the truth, 
 and the truth shall make you free." The eyes of all who suffer turn 
 involuntarily to the One who invited the weary and heavy laden to 
 come to Him and rest. The hope of mankind for a larger and more 
 abundant life is in God as revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Saint Barbara is the embodiment of love. In the face of love there 
 is no question, no doubt. Love need not even look above. "My 
 beloved is mine and I am his," that is enough. But love must look 
 around : " Behold if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." 
 The one immediate possible object of affectionate service for Saint 
 
 [44] 
 
Barbara is this pair of cherubs who seem to have strayed away from 
 the celestial host in the sky and are lost, in abstraction at least. 
 Love would be of some comfort to somebody at once, for Love hears a 
 voice that says, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
 these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." While hope sees the need 
 and looks above for help, love sees the need and looks around for oppor- 
 tunity. Love goes to work, enduring all things, and in women sometimes 
 never failing even when the task is hopeless. 
 
 Raphael, " the supreme assimilator of all and every material that was 
 fitted to the purposes of art," did not despise the traditional symbolism of 
 colors. Sixtus loves, hence his robe has a red lining; over this runs an 
 ordered pattern in yellow and orange, the symbols of thoughtful wisdom 
 and benevolence. He wishes the good, as he sees it, for all; he will ask 
 divine aid, but there his activity ends. In Barbara's robes the yellow and 
 orange, the wisdom and benevolence, flood together indiscriminately, and 
 over this is flung a mantle of green, the symbol of fruitfulness, of that 
 outflowing love that does not rest satisfied without manifesting itself con- 
 stantly in good deeds. "Not every one that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, 
 shall enter into the kingdom, but he that doeth the will of my Father." 
 This involves a degree of self-renunciation, hence her skirt is gray. The 
 ideal love is love without weakness ; the love that is just, as well as generous, 
 hence Barbara's arm wears blue, the badge of truth and justice. 
 
 Mary is faith incarnate. What a face she has! How beautiful! 
 And for delicate suggestion of deep emotion it has but one superior in 
 the whole range of art, namely, that beardless face of the Christ by 
 Leonardo. A blind, unintelligent faith fears nothing, because it knows 
 nothing; an informed faith may have the assurance of certainty, but 
 then it ceases to be faith, having passed over into knowledge. In true 
 faith there lurks forever the question, the uncertainty, the possibility 
 of doubt. That is the secret of the look in Mary's face. 
 
 "We have but faith; we cannot know; 
 For knowledge is of things we see.'* 
 
 There come moments of bitter experience when every human soul 
 exclaims with Tennyson : 
 
 "I falter where I firmly trod, 
 
 And falling with my weight of cares 
 
 Upon the great world's altar stairs 
 
 That slope through darkness up to God, 
 
 r^5i 
 
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope 
 
 And gather dust and chaff, and call 
 
 To what I feel is Lord of all. 
 And faintly trust the larger hope." 
 
 • For the instant of revelation which Raphael has depicted, even Mary, 
 with the Hving pledge of infinite love in her arms, tastes the bitterness 
 of this cup that the Father presses to the lips of human faith in its every 
 Gethsemane. The prophecy of Simeon is fulfilled, yea, the sword has 
 pierced her own soul also; but her eyes turn not away. Faith would 
 not be faith that could not suffer and endure. Mary's experience has 
 been the experience of the faithful in every age. Her attitude is typical 
 of the attitude our race has maintained towards the Son of Mary for 
 nineteen hundred years. We question, yet believe; we see the worst, 
 yet trust the best. Men regret the bloody history of Christ's religion, 
 they neglect His church, they will not have this man to reign over them, 
 and yet from their beds of pain they reach out eager hands to touch His 
 seamless dress for healing, and over their dead bodies they would have 
 repeated the august words, "I am the resurrection and the life." Mary 
 is the faith of the world, pondering all these things in its heart, pierced 
 through with many sorrows, yet with passionate tenderness still holding 
 the Christ of God in its arms. 
 
 But after all, the supreme thing in the picture is the Child. Place 
 side by side all the faces of the infant Christ ever painted, and arrange 
 them in the order of physical beauty, of intellectual promise, of spiritual 
 possibility, or of suggestion of the Divine, and in every case this face 
 would have to be placed first. Scores of times Raphael had tried to do 
 the impossible, to paint the face of the divine-human child ; in this, his 
 last attempt, he succeeded. ^ There is in this face all the deep implying 
 of beautiful infant faces everywhere, but in addition it carries something 
 of that nature which merited the distinction of being hailed as " chiefest 
 among ten thousand and altogether lovely," and was given the unique 
 honor of being called the only begotten Son of God. 
 
 But why that startled look, that look of painful surprise, that look of 
 fear, in this divine little face? 
 
 Interpreters of the picture have always said that the curtains were 
 
 ^This type of face, perfected by Raphael, has been accepted by other painters as conclusive. It is 
 this child grown to twelve years of age that Hoffman shows us in the midst of the doctors in the temple, 
 and it is this same child grown to splendid manhood that appears in his Christ and the Rich Young Ruler. 
 
 [46] 
 
drawn apart that we might have the vision. Undoubtedly that is true; 
 but at the same time, Mary and her Son, coming from the glory unspeak- 
 able, are given a sudden vision of mankind. This superhuman child 
 sees before him not only the kneeling congregation to which Sixtus calls 
 his attention, but the vast multitude behind and beyond it. He sees his 
 own future. He sees Rachel weeping for her children, the first to suffer 
 in His name; the thousands enduring the tortures inflicted by pagan 
 Rome; the millions dying in the religious crusades, wars, and massacres 
 of "Christian history*' during fifteen hundred years. What wonder 
 that the child who had been called the bringer of goodwill to men and 
 the Prince of Peace, should be appalled at such a vision, and pierced 
 with sudden fear. "He is wounded by our transgressions, and the 
 chastisement of our peace is upon Him." ^ 
 
 As I sat there, in that quiet room in the Royal Gallery, so much alone, 
 gazing at this greatest of religious pictures, I realized as never before 
 the universality of its appeal. Generations of pilgrims from all countries 
 have bowed before it, in silence, in admiration, and in tears. Who of 
 them all has not found by bitter experience, like Sixtus, that his hope is 
 in God alone? Who has not felt with Barbara that love to God must 
 show itself in service to others? Who has not memories of supreme 
 moments when the faith of Mary was his, and he could exclaim with one 
 of old, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him*' ? And who has not 
 in some open hour shared the vision of this divine child, and realized with 
 crushing certainty that the way to victory is ever the way of the cross ? 
 
 "Our little systems have their day, 
 
 They have their day and cease to be," 
 
 but one stubborn belief endures forever in the heart of mankind, the 
 belief that some intimate relation exists between humanity and God. 
 Perhaps some day all the world will see that that relation — a relation 
 revealed in Christianity and summed up in the words. Faith, Hope, 
 Love, and Sacrifice, — is as beautiful as Raphael has made it appear 
 in the Sistine Madonna. All the seers of the race justify Raphael in 
 placing beyond his manifestation of these four things that abide, a 
 background where angel faces smile amid the infinite splendors of heaven. 
 
 ^ So far as I know, Dr. William T. Harris was the first to suggest this adequate interpretation of the 
 child's face. Personally, at least, I have to thank him for this insight. 
 
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X 
 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION 
 By RAPHAEL 
 
 WHILE the "authorities" are deciding whether bitter par- 
 tisanship in Roman society in the year 15 17, or an intense 
 professional rivalry, or the authority or the generosity of 
 Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, was originally responsible for 
 the Transfiguration, we may be thankful to Raphael for 
 the picture itself. Vasari says Raphael executed it with his own hand, 
 "and laboring at it continually, he brought it to the highest perfection. 
 By the common consent of all artists," Vasari adds, **it is declared to 
 be the most worthily renowned, the most excellent, the most divine." 
 The Blashfields say that "criticism in general for two hundred years 
 repeated after Vasari that the Transfiguration is the greatest of all pic- 
 tures." At the present time the consensus of competent opinion does 
 not place the picture quite so high ; but it must be counted always among 
 the pictures of the highest rank. 
 
 The Transfiguration was designed by Raphael as a decoration for the 
 cathedral at Narbonne, as the Assumption was designed by Titian as a 
 decoration for the church of the Frari. Hence he does not hesitate to 
 suggest on one canvas three worlds, as Titian did, nor to bring together 
 as have other great decorators, events in reality far apart. ^ 
 
 The upper portion of the picture presents an event which took place, 
 according to the most reputable authorities, on Mount Hermon (9500 
 feet high), while the lower part illustrates an incident which is supposed 
 
 ^ Strictly speaking, a decoration differs from a picture. A picture has one center of interest; a decora- 
 tion may have several centers. A picture is confined to one incident and to one moment of time; a decoration 
 may recount several incidents and eliminate the time element entirely. Michelangelo's Holy Family is a 
 painting; his Temptation and Expulsion panel is a decoration. Titian's Flora is a painting; his Assumption 
 is a decoration. Guido Reni's Saint Sebastian is a picture; his Aurora, a decoration. Abbey's Holy Grail 
 "decorations" in the Boston Public Library are pictures. Chavannes' "picture," the Sacred Grove, in the 
 Sorbonne, Paris, is a decoration. Pictures are not, legitimately, decorations. The two have been inex- 
 tricably confused in the practice and discussion of painting. A recognition of this fundamental distinction 
 would have obviated volumes of words about the composition of masterpieces. 
 
 I49] 
 
to have occurred about the same time near Caesarea PhiHppi, a place 
 some twelve miles distant.^ With the insight and skill of genius, Raphael 
 has brought these together, and added besides the figures of Giuliano de' 
 Medici, the father of the cardinal for whom the picture was painted, and 
 the cardinal's uncle, "Lorenzo the Magnificent," in the guise of Saint 
 Julian and Saint Lawrence, messengers pro tern. 
 
 "It is safe to aflfirm," says Dr. Harris, "that there is scarcely a picture 
 in existence in which the individualities are more strongly marked by 
 internal essential characteristics." 2 ^ 
 
 The suppliants are an astonishing family group. The center of this 
 group is the boy, actually "possessed;" his father — a man evidently 
 predisposed to insanity — is supporting and restraining him; behind the 
 father stands his brother, the boy's uncle, whose features and gestures 
 show him to be a simpleton; at this man's right stands his sister, also 
 a weak-minded person. The boy's mother, her fair Grecian face worn 
 with her long trial, kneels at his right ; beyond her is her brother, and in 
 the shade of the mountain, her father. In the foreground kneels her 
 beautiful sister, "noble in attitude and proportions." 
 
 In the group of the disciples the characters are equally unmistakable. 
 At the left is Judas, scornfully impatient with the whole situation, and 
 next him James the Less ; below him sits Philip, suggesting the advisability 
 of going for the Master. The man with the book, symbol of human 
 wisdom, is Andrew; beyond him Jude, looking at the demoniac's father, 
 points to the mount. Leaning forward, intently studying the boy, is 
 Thomas. Next him sits Simon, regretting, by the gesture of his left hand, 
 the absence of the Master. Beyond these, next the foot of the moun- 
 tain, Bartholomew, pointing to the demoniac, discusses the situation 
 with Matthew. 
 
 In the group on the mountain-top James kneels, completely over- 
 come ; Peter is trying to look upward through his fingers ; John gracefully 
 shields his face with his hand. At the left above James appears Elijah 
 the fearless prophet, and at the right above John, Moses the peerless 
 law-giver, with his "tables of stone." Central, dominating the whole, 
 soars the figure of the Christ, looking calmly into the face of the Infinite. 
 
 Speaking of the arrangement of the picture, the Blashfields say, 
 
 ^ See Mark ix: 2-29. Compare also Matthew xvii: 1-21 and Luke ix: 28-42. 
 
 * See Notes on Raphael's Transfiguration, by Dr. William T. Harris, in his Journal of Speculative 
 Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 53, to which article I am greatly indebted. 
 
 [50] 
 

 "Here as always Raphael has proved himself a consummate master of 
 composition; . . . only Raphael could have designed the picture." A 
 rough tracing of the principal lines gives a suggestion of the pattern. 
 
 From the graceful central figure at the top, long radiating curves seem 
 to sweep outward to every part of the canvas. The lines of first impor- 
 tance in all the figures are related to these curves. In the tracing, the 
 full lines indicate this primary series. The original drawings of Raphael 
 afford ample evidence that this thinking 
 in curves, this linking of little to large, 
 this feeling for unity through flow of line, 
 is a chief characteristic of the master. 
 
 A subordinate series of radiating lines, 
 in the lower part of the picture indicated 
 in the tracing by dotted lines, directs 
 the eye unmistakably to the figure of 
 secondary importance, that of the 
 demoniac. 
 
 From the head of the Christ an out- 
 ward influence seems to move, in ripples, 
 as from an object plunged into still water. 
 These concentric curves cutting the fan 
 of the first series everywhere at right 
 angles, suggested in the tracing by the 
 lighter dotted lines, determine the atti- 
 tude of the arms in the central figure, the positions of the heads and 
 of the skirts of the robes in the companion figures, and the locations 
 of all objects upon the mountain-top. The outermost curve in this 
 series runs through the groups of figures in the foreground. 
 
 How skilfully all the heads are disposed upon this network! Each 
 seems to have been free to take any position or attitude it pleased, 
 yet each is in exactly the right place to enhance the beauty of pattern. 
 The same is true of every limb, of every fold of drapery, of every spot 
 of light and dark in the picture. 
 
 I cannot believe that the "lines which cross one another roughly," 
 the "harsh and conflicting colors and dark shadows" of the lower part 
 of the picture, are to be charged up against Julio Romano or any other 
 than the great master himself. Raphael was embodying an idea in 
 this decoration, he was not making a pleasing colored photograph from 
 
 
 ISi] 
 
nature. That idea was this : the interpenetration of the visible and the 
 invisible; the perpetual co-existence of the puzzle of human experience 
 with the ecstacy of divine communion. How else could he have expressed 
 better the perplexity, the anguish, the helplessness of ignorant sinful 
 humanity, than by the use of "lines which cross one another roughly" 
 and of " harsh and conflicting colors ** ? How else could he have secured 
 the proper introduction to the scene above? Only by contrast could 
 the glory of the transfiguration have been revealed. 
 
 The antithesis is sharpest, of course, between the demoniac and the 
 Christ, — the boy possessed and the man transfigured. The boy has 
 the gestures of the whirling dervishes of the East, one hand protesting 
 against the earthly and all that is below, the other appealing to the 
 heavenly and all that is above. His face hints of a sudden glimpse of 
 the divine power manifesting itself above him, for "the devils also believe 
 and tremble." 
 
 To the upper part of the canvas everything below directs the atten- 
 tion. As a spray of sea-moss spreads and floats in water, so the figure 
 of the Christ floats in the wondrous air; the toes, the fingers, the locks 
 of hair, the garments, all aid in giving this effect of buoyancy. From his 
 body a golden glory radiates with the force of a breeze, flattening the 
 garments of the apostles and fluttering the robes of the prophets. 
 
 But the face of the Master is the supreme attraction. Upturned, 
 enraptured, flushed with immortal youth, charged with joy unspeakable, 
 flooded with eternal peace, glorious with the palpitating colors of heaven 
 itself, it is more beautiful than any other face ever drawn by mortal 
 hand. It is the face of that divine child of the Sistine, matured, perfected, 
 transfigured. 
 
 How the greatest turn to the Christ at last ! Titian, princely favorite 
 of emperors and kings, rich with all the world could bestow, at ninety- 
 nine paints his Pieta, himself stripped of all his wealth and honors, interro- 
 gating on his knees the dead Christ. Michelangelo, superhuman genius, 
 at eighty-nine, lonely, heart-broken, almost blind, sculptures the dead 
 Christ, himself as Joseph of Arimathea, sympathetic helper of the stricken 
 Mother and the other Mary. Raphael — ah, how different, and yet how 
 similar ! At thirty-seven, on the crest of the wave of popularity, having 
 surpassed all others in the painting of human beauty, he essays the 
 Divine. To whom else shall he come if not to the Christ transfigured ? 
 Working day after day, striving to see that face, to make it appear again 
 
 [52] 
 
as it appeared on Hermon, the fatal fever comes upon him. Yearning 
 for the vision of the Master, the silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl 
 is broken; his own fair spirit ascends into the unspeakable glory where 
 His servants serve Him and they see His face. 
 
 To me this picture reflects the whole of life, life as it is to-day. The 
 mystery of evil, the tragedy of ignorance, the impotence of the will; 
 and along with all that the balm of beauty, the sweetness of sympathy 
 and friendship, the ever present possibility of communion with God. 
 Whenever I look at it the splendid words of one of America's greatest 
 seers ring and echo in my ears: 
 
 "From imperfection's murkiest cloud, 
 Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, 
 One flash of heaven's glory. 
 
 To fashion's, custom's discord, 
 To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies, 
 Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard, 
 From some far shore the final chorus sounding. 
 
 Is it a dream? 
 
 Nay but the lack of it the dream, 
 
 And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream, 
 
 And all the world a dream." 
 
 [S3] 
 
XI 
 
 THE ASSUMPTION 
 By TITIAN 
 
 THE greatest paintings are in one way like the greatest books. 
 Who ever mastered the Dialogues of Plato, or Kant's Critique, 
 at the first reading? Who ever felt satisfied with his first 
 reading of the Divina Commedia, or of the immortal Faust ? 
 When I once mentioned to Dr. William T. Harris the diffi- 
 culties I had encountered in Hegel's Aesthetics, he exclaimed with a 
 reassuring smile, "Ah, that is one of the great books; at about the thir- 
 teenth reading it begins to yield its juice!" 
 
 The Assumption seems to me a work of this kind. When I first saw 
 it I wrote in my notebook, "It disappoints me." When I had seen it 
 again I wrote, "The composition of the picture and its light and shade 
 are of course admirable." Ten years after my first sight of it I saw it 
 for the third time, and went into its presence day after day. Then I 
 wrote, "Taine is right. * Venetian art centers in this work, and perhaps 
 reaches its climax.' It is certainly one of the supreme masterpieces of 
 the world." 
 
 The Assumption is a large picture, so placed in the Academy of Venice 
 that one sees it first across a long gallery and through an archway; the 
 sight-seers coming and going before it seem a part of the crowd in the 
 lower portion of the canvas, while above them all floats the brilliant, 
 life-sized figure of the Virgin. "To this central point in the picture 
 Titian invites us by all the arts of which he is a master." ^ And he is 
 master of all the arts known to the painter.^ 
 
 The picture deals with three realms: the realm of the earth, the 
 realm of the air, and the realm of heaven ; and these three are so inter- 
 
 ^ From a description in Crowe and Cavalcaselle's History of Painting in North Italy. 
 
 * See Ruskin's The Two Paths, Lecture II, The Unity of Art. The colors of the picture seem too 
 intense and its contrasts too sharp for perfect beauty, as it stands here in the Academy, but it was painted 
 originally for the high altar in the great, dimly lighted church of the Frari, and no doubt there, in its place, 
 as it came from the hand of the master, it was supremely beautiful, "incapable of any improvement whatever." 
 
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related that the picture is a unit. The central realm is in touch with 
 the lower through its lowest cherubs and the upward reaching men, and 
 with the upper through the encircling cherubs, the ascending Virgin, 
 and the condescending Father. It is in harmony with the lower through 
 its shadows, and in harmony with the upper through its lights. It is in 
 sympathy with the lower through its intense activity, and in sympathy 
 with the upper through its cloudless joy. In the original the color forms^ 
 a fourth bond. The contrasting hues of blue and orange, yellow and 
 purple, red and green, most brilliant in the central realm, are subdued 
 to the rich deep glooms of red and purple in the lower realm, and 
 softened to the serene glow of green and yellow in the upper realm. 
 
 But each part of the picture has an individuality peculiarly its own. 
 Below, the astonished and perplexed apostles yearn and pray and argue, 
 in their darkness. Only one, John the beloved, who had cared for Mary 
 since the crucifixion, is at peace and understands. In the realm of the 
 air, illuminated by a light like the shining of the sun at noonday, the 
 ascending Mary stands amid a brilliant and joyous throng of cherubs. 
 In the face of Mary only is there a trace of anything but pure delight. 
 In the upper part of the picture the Almighty, a cherub and a seraph, 
 without mirth, but charged with an intensity of purpose, an all-consum- 
 ing fire of good-will, float in the glory that excelleth, as serene as a cloud 
 in the white east at dawn. In form the Nameless One is an embodied 
 intelligence; in symbolic color an embodied grace. He seems immedi- 
 ately conscious of everything, directly in control of all. At the very 
 moment he would welcome the Madonna he listens to the adoring seraph, 
 and restrains the cherub eager to crown the brow of Mary with the 
 wreath of immortality. From behind these upper figures a glory so 
 deep and intense that the eye cannot fathom it streams in from the 
 infinite spaces, and breaks in circling waves of celestial faces upon the 
 realm of air. 
 
 But after all Mary is the supreme attraction. Physically perfect, 
 robed in beauty, a cloud beneath her feet, she is borne upward, but not 
 by the whirlwind that carried Elijah above, nor by the angels that trans- 
 ported the body of Moses from Nebo to the sky. A hint of the whirl- 
 wind is here in the swirling robes; a hint of the angelic power is there 
 in the festoon of cherubs; but Mary ascends through spiritual attrac- 
 tions; she rises because her spirit responds again to the divine voice. In 
 her girlhood she replied, "Behold, the Handmaid of the Lord;" in her 
 
 [S6] 
 
prime she answers, "Behold, I come; lo, I delight to do Thy will." 
 Thus she is drawn from earth to heaven ; from pain through song to peace ; 
 from the mysteries of the life where we see through a glass darkly, to the 
 revelations of the life where we see eye to eye and know as we are known. 
 But look at the face of Mary. She has forgotten her friends below; 
 she is oblivious to the flood of life and love about her; she does not see 
 the wreath and crown above her head. There is for her one supreme 
 attraction, to us invisible; on that her eyes are fastened, toward that 
 she lifts her hands. That which was a light is becoming a face, — the 
 sweet face she kissed at Bethlehem, the brave face she loved in Nazareth, 
 the face she could not endure on Calvary, the face she had seen last above 
 the clouds on Olivet, now transfigured with eternal glory, — the face 
 of her own beloved Son. As the blessed truth dawns upon her faithful 
 heart, a wonder of surprise, a vanishing sorrow, the unspeakable yearning 
 of a mother's love, an inconceivable joy too intense for smiles or tears, 
 mingle and throb and tremble in her own wondrous, fearless, upturned face. 
 
 "First a peace out of pain, 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 
 And with God be at rest." 
 
 Who else but her Son of all the hosts of heaven could give her perfect 
 welcome to the Father's house .? 
 
 Whether we accept Ligouri's account of this "Glory of Mary" or 
 not, we must accept Titian's vision of it. He has shown us the glorifica- 
 tion of a great soul. 
 
 " From the misty shores of midnight, 
 
 Touched with splendors of the moon, 
 To the singing tides of heaven, 
 
 And the light more clear than noon, 
 Passed a soul that grew to music 
 
 Till it was with God in tune." 
 
 Titian saw a triumph like that which Henry Van Dyke saw in the 
 passing of Tennyson. But as the Madonna transcends the Laureate, so 
 Titian's rich full-organ harmony transcends Van Dyke's sweet melody. 
 Both, however, have the same message. It is the thrilling message of 
 Easter. 
 
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 %* y 
 ^"j^ 
 
XII 
 
 THE PIETA 
 
 By TITIAN 
 
 G£SU Cristo morto in gremho alia Madre: such is the piteous 
 title of this picture in the sweet Itahan tongue, "Dead in 
 the Lap of His Mother." "Poignant in its impression and 
 pathetic in its suggestiveness, this grand canvas," say the 
 Blashfields, "almost a monochrome, is in a way one of 
 the most powerful pictures which the wonderful century-old painter 
 created." By means of it Titian was to have purchased a burial 
 place in the church of the Frari; but the monks quarreled with 
 him and willed that he should be buried in the Pieve of Cadore. 
 When he died, however, slain by the plague which decimated Venice 
 in the summer of 1576, the laws established to guard against con- 
 tamination were set aside, and the Serene Republic buried its great- 
 est citizen in the church of the Frari. The Pieta was intended to 
 complete his trilogy of decorative pictures for that Pantheon of 
 Venice: The Madonna of Ca Presaro — the infant Christ in his 
 Mother's arms; The Pieta — the dead Christ in his Mother's arms; 
 and The Assumption — the Mother ascending to the welcoming arms of 
 the living Christ in glory. 
 
 Before beginning a study of the picture itself, in the Academia of 
 Venice, it is well to recall certain facts concerning the man who 
 painted it. 
 
 Born of a noble family; in training from his ninth year under such 
 men as Zuccato, the Bellinis, and Giorgione; a persistent student; ever 
 the companion of the most celebrated men of his time, musicians, 
 poets, prelates, princes, kings; successful, wealthy, honored above all 
 others; of perfect health, he had practised his art without interruption 
 for almost ninety years. What a preparation! Moreover, Titian's 
 aim in all his work had been Adequacy, — as Claude Phillips puts it, 
 "To give the fullest and most legitimate expression to the subjects 
 
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which he presented," or, as Hegel would say, to give in each case 
 the best possible "embodiment of the idea." Thus equipped this 
 supreme painter of the Renaissance approached this supreme subject, 
 the very crux of Christianity, the event upon whose issue the hopes 
 and fears of all the years are centered, the sine qua non of the Chris- 
 tian faith. 
 
 With the unfailing insight of the artist, Titian saw the significance 
 of the death and resurrection of Christ. He recognized it as the very 
 foundation of the church. This canvas, therefore, reflects perfectly the 
 most orthodox theology of revealed religion, and the painter's own atti- 
 tude toward it. 
 
 "In the primitive language of religion and art, the very smallest 
 tracery had a meaning; every leaf, every rudely carved animal spoke 
 in mystic language of some great truth in religion." ^ Events con- 
 spired to gather all the wealth of ancient symbolism. Classic and Chris- 
 tian, into Italy and to give it special potency in Italian art. Titian, 
 perfectly familiar with all this, has here given an example of its "fullest 
 and most legitimate expression." 
 
 The central feature of the picture, filling nearly the whole back- 
 ground, is a solid structure ^ built of hewn stone,^ typical of the church.^ 
 To make the meaning unmistakable, the mosaic decoration in the hollow 
 of the niche is the pelican tearing open her breast to feed her young with 
 her own blood,^ adopted by the early church fathers as a symbol of 
 redemption. The enormous keystone of the arch, into which the lines 
 of the pediment run,^ is triple, three in one.^ The character of this "chief 
 stone" is still further defined by the triangular ornament upon the cen- 
 tral portion, the triangle being a very ancient symbol of the God of Truth, 
 Beauty, and Goodness. Beneath the keystone are five guttae, recalling 
 the five wounds of the cross. » On either side angels with trumpets 
 announce and invite, as the church is commanded to do." The monu- 
 mental figures at left and right, "Moses" and " Helespontio," represent 
 the old covenant and the new i° — the Law with its rod of correction and 
 its tables of stone,^^ and Grace with her symbolic cross ; ^^ or Works and 
 Faith, without either of which the religious life is meaningless.^^ Both 
 
 ^ Leader Scott in The Cathedral Builders, chapter on Comacine Ornamentation in the Lombard Era. 
 ' Matthew xvi: i8. • Ephesians ii: 21. " Hebrews viii: 7-13. 
 
 ' I Peter ii: 5. ^ I John v: 7. " Exodus xxxii: 15, 16. 
 
 * Revelation iii: 12. " Psalm xxii: 16; John xix: 34. " Romans v: 2. 
 
 ^ John vi: 53-56. • Revelation xiv: 6; xxii: 7 " James ii: 17, 18. 
 
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the old covenant and the new » required the suppression and control 
 of the appetites and passions, the animal nature,^ hence the heads of 
 angry wild beasts adorn the pedestals. 
 
 Turning now to the central group, Titian's reason for placing Mary, 
 with the dead Christ in her lap, within the niche, is self-evident; that 
 Mother and Son are enshrined in the church, the very heart of its being. 
 "Christianity," said Carlyle, "is the Worship of Sorrow." 
 
 The Hope of Israel is dead. A little cherub at the left, on the side 
 of the Old Covenant, guards the symbolic urn of ashes, symbol of the 
 mortal body; another above, on the side of the New, carries the torch 
 of life, symbol of the immortal spirit.' Mary Magdalene, beautiful 
 even in her grief, the most active of those who mourned,* calls anxiously 
 for sympathy and help.^ It is the darkest moment in the history of 
 the world. Hence all the tones of the picture are deep, somber, charged 
 with gray and black. But how pure they are! Was there ever any- 
 where another blue like this in Mary's robe.? The whole picture is in 
 twilight, every face is sad save one, the face of Faith. 
 
 The lines of composition in the design, as well as the dull colors, have 
 been cited as a proof of Titian's failing power! This long sweeping curve 
 from the head of Moses downward to the right, leading nowhere; that harsh 
 line of the cross ; the horizontals of the foreground, barring entrance to the 
 eye. — But these do lead the eye somewhere. They lead it to that tile set 
 against the base of the pedestal of Faith. And why to that .? Examine it 
 and see. On that tile is Faith's prophetic vision drawn in miniature.* The 
 key to the situation is the supreme act of omnipotent Love. Through 
 deep waters a strong man bears an unconscious one in his arms; he is 
 nearing the shore where kneel two faithful men in thankful adoration.' 
 The Mater Dolorosa sees only the dead Christ. The repentant Magda- 
 lene feels only her loss and need. Titian leads us to see beyond; he 
 shows to us the Father, carrying the Son in death, and beyond and above 
 that picture on the tile, he shows us the solid structure of the Christian 
 Faith that is to be, crowned with the fruitful vine, and crystal glasses, 
 symbols at once of the Christ himself,^ of that most precious sacrament, 
 the eucharist,'* and of the new wine of the Father's kingdom. i» 
 
 ^ Titian's inscription, " Helespontio," probably echoes the old Greek myth, and here probably means, 
 the baptized one. 
 
 * Romans vi: 12, 13. ' Lamentations i: 12. ' John xv: 1-5. 
 
 * Ecclesiastes xii: 7. • Psalm xvi: 10. • I Corinthians xi: 25, 26. 
 
 * John xx: l. ' Isaiah xliii: 2. ^ Matthew xxvi: 29. 
 
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But what means this figure in the foreground, this old man with but 
 a single coarse robe about his kneeling figure? 
 
 Do you recall that portrait of Titian painted by himself at eighty- 
 five, now hanging in the Prado of Madrid? *'The mood does not seem 
 to be one of reminiscence, but rather of grave anticipation," says Miss 
 Hurll. "The painter gazes absently into space as if piercing beyond the 
 veil which separates this world from the next." That full high forehead, 
 that strong nose, the ear far back, the trim white beard are not only in 
 that portrait; they are here! Here is Titian himself, his villa forgotten, 
 his gorgeous robes laid aside; stripped of wealth, careless of praise or 
 blame, on his knees, an old man, he interrogates the dead Christ. 
 
 Do you remember that wonderful last work of Michelangelo's behind 
 the high altar of the cathedral of Florence, left unfinished by the master ? 
 That, too, is a Pieta, the dead Christ in his Mother's arms. The Magda- 
 lene is there also, and behind them, one hand helping to hold the body 
 of Jesus and the other supporting the sad Mary, stands an aged man 
 Joseph of Arimathea? Yes; but the face is the face of Michelangelo! 
 Old, half-blind, disappointed, bereaved, at the last this towering genius 
 of the Renaissance turned to the Lord and Master of us all: 
 
 "Mid weariness and woe I find some cheer 
 In thinking of the past when I recall 
 My weakness and my sins, and reckon all 
 The vain expense of days that disappear. . . . 
 , . . What man shall venture to maintain 
 That pity will condone our long neglect ? 
 Still from Thy blood poured forth we know full well 
 How without measure was Thy martyr's pain, 
 How measureless the gifts we dare expect." ^ 
 
 In thankfulness for that hope, what else could Michelangelo, the man 
 of good works, do, but offer his help to his Lord in the hour of His 
 deepest need ? 
 
 And what could Titian do in his last hour but turn to that same divine 
 Friend ? His attitude seems to say, 
 
 "'Nothing in my hands I bring; 
 
 Naked, come to Thee for dress; 
 Helpless, look to Thee for grace.* 
 
 * From the 77th Sonnet of Michelangelo. 
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O, thou Mighty One, this cannot be the end for Thee! There must 
 be something for such as Thee beyond the tragedy of death. Is there 
 aught for me?" 
 
 This picture, left unfinished, is the last prayer of the Prince of Painters : 
 *'Lord, remember me when thou comest into Thy kingdom." 
 
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