2. The plastic presentment of form, which is as much a constituent feature of the Ideal as it is of the essentially homogeneous character of its content, and the way these two aspects are fused together, render necessary an inquiry into the relation obtaining between the ideal representation of art and Nature. For this external aspect and its embodiment is closely associated with that which we generally call Nature. In this connection we once more come upon that old and ever-renewed and still unsettled dispute, whether the representation of art should follow the objects of Nature as they appear strictly to sense, or should rather ennoble and illumine them. The right of Nature, the rule of beauty, the Ideal and the truth of Nature--with indefinite conceptions such as these arguments for and against may be bandied about for ever. A work of art, we are told, should unquestionably be natural, but there is such a thing as a mean or ugly Nature, we must not of course imitate _that_; on the other hand--and so our disputants wrangle on and never come to a satisfactory conclusion.
In recent times the opposition between the Ideal and Nature has once more been emphasized and received an exceptional significance through the writings of Winckelmann. Winckelmann's enthusiasm, as already pointed out[280], was first awakened by his study of the antique and its ideal forms. This insight into the peculiar excellence of classic art he thoroughly mastered and only ceased from his labours after making all that he had learned through his study of such masterpieces famous throughout Europe. From this recognition, however, originated a kind of craze for ideal representation, which, despite all its belief in the discovery of beauty, was really a relapse into flatness, absence of vitality, and superficiality. It is this kind of emptiness more particularly in the art of painting, which Herr von Rumohr had before him in the polemical writings I have already noticed.
The theory of art has to solve this difficulty. As for its interest, on the practical side of art, we shall do well to pass it wholly by. We may formulate principles as we please for mediocrity and the talents that express it, the result is always the same. Whether our theory is a distorted one or unexceptionable all we shall get is something commonplace or weak. At the same time Art and more particularly painting has unquestionably received a stimulus other than that we have deprecated from this very quest of so-called Ideals; and, through the renewed interest thereby excited in old Italian and German painters, has at least made an effort to secure a profounder and more vital content in its work.