(_ββ_) The more essential object, therefore, of Love in the creation of painting will be _Christ._ In other words, with this object Art at once finds itself in the sphere of humanity, a sphere which along with Christ embraces further material in its presentations of the Virgin Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, the disciples, and so forth, and ultimately the common folk who in part are followers of the Gospel, and in part cry out for the crucifixion of its Master and mock Him in His sufferings.
And here once more the already mentioned difficulty confronts us how we are to conceive and depict Christ in his _universality_, when he is presented in the ordinary way of half-length figures or portraits. I must admit that for myself at any rate, the heads of Christ I have seen by Caracci and others and, to take two famous examples, that of Van Eyck, formerly in the Sully Collection and now in the Berlin Museum, and that of Von Hemling, now in Munich, do not give me the entire satisfaction which they ought to do. That of Van Eyck, no doubt, is very imposing in figure, forehead, colour, and general conception, but the mouth and eye wholly fail to express anything that transcends our humanity. The expression is rather that of an inflexible seriousness, which is emphasized by the general type of the form, the parting of the hair, and other traits. And when such heads incline still further in expression and shape towards the specifically human type, and a milder, more yielding and tender aspect is thereby imported, much of their depth and power of impression is very readily lost; and least of all suited to such, as I have already observed, is the beauty of Greek form.