If I
Ventured To Describe That Attitude, There Would Be A Fine
Howl - But There The Venus Lies, For Anybody
To gloat
over that wants to - and there she has a right to lie,
for she is a work of
Art, and Art has its privileges.
I saw young girls stealing furtive glances at her; I saw
young men gaze long and absorbedly at her; I saw aged,
infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest.
How I should like to describe her - just to see what a holy
indignation I could stir up in the world - just to hear
the unreflecting average man deliver himself about my
grossness and coarseness, and all that. The world says
that no worded description of a moving spectacle is
a hundredth part as moving as the same spectacle seen
with one's own eyes - yet the world is willing to let its
son and its daughter and itself look at Titian's beast,
but won't stand a description of it in words.
Which shows that the world is not as consistent as it
might be.
There are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure
thought - I am well aware of that. I am not railing
at such. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that
Titian's Venus is very far from being one of that sort.
Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it
was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong.
In truth, it is too strong for any place but a public
Art Gallery. Titian has two Venuses in the Tribune;
persons who have seen them will easily remember which one I am
referring to.
In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures
of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction - pictures
portraying intolerable suffering - pictures alive
with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful
detail - and similar pictures are being put on the canvas
every day and publicly exhibited - without a growl from
anybody - for they are innocent, they are inoffensive,
being works of art. But suppose a literary artist ventured
to go into a painstaking and elaborate description
of one of these grisly things - the critics would skin
him alive. Well, let it go, it cannot be helped;
Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost hers.
Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores
and the consistencies of it - I haven't got time.
Titian's Venus defiles and disgraces the Tribune, there is
no softening that fact, but his "Moses" glorifies it.
The simple truthfulness of its noble work wins the heart
and the applause of every visitor, be he learned or ignorant.
After wearying one's self with the acres of stuffy,
sappy, expressionless babies that populate the canvases
of the Old Masters of Italy, it is refreshing to stand
before this peerless child and feel that thrill which tells
you you are at last in the presence of the real thing.
This is a human child, this is genuine. You have seen him
a thousand times - you have seen him just as he is here
- and you confess, without reserve, that Titian WAS a Master.
The doll-faces of other painted babes may mean one thing,
they may mean another, but with the "Moses" the case
is different.
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