It would seem that he had revolted with such fury from
the meagre, pale, cadaverous outlines of womankind painted by his
predecessors, the Van Eyks, whose women resembled potato sprouts grown
in a cellar, that he altogether overdid the matter in the opposite
direction. His exuberant soul abhors leanness as Nature abhors a
vacuum; and hence all his women seem bursting their bodices with
fulness, like overgrown carnations breaking out of their green
calyxes. He gives you Venuses with arms fit to wield the hammer of
Vulcan; vigorous Graces whose dominion would be alarming were they
indisposed to clemency. His weakness, in fact, his besetting sin, is
too truly described by Moses: -
"But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked;
Thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick,
Thou art covered with fatness."
Scornfully he is determined upon it; he will none of your scruples;
his women shall be fat as he pleases, and you shall like him
nevertheless.
In this Medici gallery the fault appears less prominent than
elsewhere. Many of the faces are portraits, and there are specimens
among them of female beauty, so delicate as to demonstrate that it was
not from any want of ability to represent the softer graces that he so
often becomes hard and coarse.
