Fra Lippo Lippi comments freely and quaintly on the absurdity of showing soul by means of bodies so ill-painted that no one can bear to dwell upon them, as on the fallacy involved in all contempt for the earthly life. "He will never believe that the world, with all its life and beauty, is an unmeaning blank. He is sure, 'it means intensely and means good.' He is sure, too, that to reproduce what is beautiful in it is the mission of Art. If anyone objects, that the world being God's work, Art cannot improve on it, and the painter will best leave it alone: he answers that some things are the better for being painted; because, as we are made, we love them best when we see them so. The artist has lent his mind for us to see with. That is what Art means; what God wills in giving it to us."
Nevertheless (he continues) he rubbed out his men and women; and though now, with a Medici for his patron, he may paint as he likes, the old schooling sticks to him.[74] And he works away at his saints, till something comes to remind him that life is not a dream, and he kicks the traces, as he has done now. He ends with a half-joking promise to make the Church a gainer through his misconduct (supposing that the secret has been kept from her), by a beautiful picture which he will paint by way of atonement.
This picture, which he describes very humorously, is that of the Coronation of the Virgin, now in the "Belle Arti" at Florence.[75]
ABT VOGLER is depicted at the moment when this composer of the last century has "been extemporizing on the musical instrument of his invention." His emotion has not yet subsided; and it is that of the inspired musician, to whom harmonized sound is as the opening of a heavenly world. His touch upon the keys has been as potent to charm, as the utterance of that NAME which summoned into Solomon's presence the creatures of Earth, Heaven, and Hell, and made them subservient to his will. And the "slaves of the sound," whom he has conjured up, have built him a palace more evanescent than Solomon's, but, as he describes it, far more beautiful. They have laid its foundations below the earth. They have carried its transparent walls up to the sky. They have tipped each summit with meteoric fire. As earth strove upwards towards Heaven, Heaven, in this enchanted structure, has yearned downwards towards the earth. The great Dead came back; and those conceived for a happier future walked before their time. New births of life and splendour united far and near; the past, the present, and the to-come.