My Friend, M. Belloc, Made The Remark
That The Genius Of Rubens Was Somewhat Restrained In These Pictures,
And Chastened By The Rigid Rules Of The French School, And Hence In
Them He Is More Generally Pleasing.
I should compare Rubens to Shakspeare, for the wonderful variety and
vital force of his artistic power.
I know no other mind he so nearly
resembles. Like Shakspeare, he forces you to accept and to forgive a
thousand excesses, and uses his own faults as musicians use discords,
only to enhance the perfection of harmony. There certainly is some use
even in defects. A faultless style sends you to sleep. Defects rouse
and excite the sensibility to seek and appreciate excellences. Some of
Shakspeare's finest passages explode all grammar and rhetoric like
skyrockets - the thought blows the language to shivers.
As to Murillo, there are two splendid specimens of his style here, as
exquisite as any I have seen; but I do not find reason to alter the
judgment I made from my first survey.
Here is his celebrated picture of the Assumption of the Virgin, which
we have seen circulated in print shops in America, but which appears
of a widely different character in the painting. The Virgin is rising
in a flood of amber light, surrounded by clouds and indistinct angel
figures. She is looking upward with clasped hands, as in an ecstasy:
the crescent moon is beneath her feet. The whole tone of the picture -
the clouds, the drapery, her flowing hair - are pervaded with this
amber tint, sublimated and spiritual.
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