At The Same Time, There Can Be No Doubt That Modern Italian Art Is
In Many Respects As Bad As It Was Once Good.
I will confine myself
to painting only.
The modern Italian painters, with very few
exceptions, paint as badly as we do, or even worse, and their
motives are as poor as is their painting. At an exhibition of
modern Italian pictures, I generally feel that there is hardly a
picture on the walls but is a sham - that is to say, painted not
from love of this particular subject and an irresistible desire to
paint it, but from a wish to paint an academy picture, and win
money or applause.
The same holds good in England, and in all other countries that I
know of. There is very little tolerable painting anywhere. In
some kinds, indeed, of black and white work the present age is
strong. The illustrations to "Punch," for example, are often as
good as anything that can be imagined. We know of nothing like
them in any past age or country. This is the one kind of art - and
it is a very good one - in which we excel as distinctly as the age
of Phidias excelled in sculpture. Leonardo da Vinci would never
have succeeded in getting his drawings accepted at 85 Fleet Street,
any more than one of the artists on the staff of "Punch" could
paint a fresco which should hold its own against Da Vinci's Last
Supper. Michael Angelo again and Titian would have failed
disastrously at modern illustration.
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