Nor is there place in the art of the painter for works intending to convey satire or irony, for such pictures also mean distortion. Moreover they are merely substitutes for, or adjuncts to, the art of writing. The object of caricature is to present an idea in a more direct and rapid way than it can be expressed in writing, and not specially to exhibit beauty, which is the purpose of the painter. Hogarth's many caricatures are composed of superlative signs of writing, and not of any fine art. Cartoons (as the word is commonly understood) are of the nature of allegory, and may afford scope for the painter, but as they necessarily refer to more or less fleeting conditions of a political or social character, they cannot retain permanent interest.
Allegorical paintings are secondary art when they endeavour to cover more than a moment of time in a single design, or when the allegory is merely a metaphor applying to action. The first variety is rarely seen in modern works, but it was not very uncommon from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, though it was never produced by first-class artists, and seldom indeed by those of the second rank. Quite a number of works of this period, formerly supposed to have an allegorical signification, are now properly identified as rarely represented mythological legends, or historical incidents which have only lately been unearthed,[a] and we may rest assured from internal evidence that many others of the same kind will yet be newly interpreted. A good design cannot be produced from an event in time because the figures in a presumed action must be shown in repose,[b] or else the action appears incongruous and opposed to experience, as when a goddess is overpowered by a personage with the appearance of a human being.[c] In both cases the figures must seem to be falsities. Designs of the first kind can only be properly represented in a sequence of pictures, each indicating a particular action, as in the Marie de' Medici series of Rubens; and those of the second by commonly accepted figures of sacred or mythological history or legend, as where St. Michael and the Dragon typify Good overcoming Evil.
[a] Examples are Lorenzo Costa's Cupid Crowning Isabella d'Este, Giorgione's Adrastus and Hypsipyle, and Piero di Cosimo's Marsyas picture.