218. So I bought this Madonna,[J] which was the prettiest thing I saw: and it will enable me to tell you why this modern art is, indeed, so little to be studied, even at its best. I think you will all like the plate, and you ought to like it; but observe in what its beauty consists. First, in very exquisite line engraving: against that I have nothing to say, feeling the greatest respect for the industry and skill it requires. Next, in a grace and severity of action which we all are ready to praise; but this is not the painter's own bestowing; the trick of it is learned from Memling and Van Eyck, and other men of the northern religious school. The covering of the robe with jewels is pleasing to you; but that is learned from Angelico and John Bellini; and if you will compare the jewel-painting in the John Bellini (Standard No. 5), you will find this false and formal in comparison. Then the face is much dignified by having a crown set on it--which is copied from the ordinary thirteenth century form, and ill done. The face itself is studied from a young German mother's, and is only by the painter's want of skill made conventional in expression, and formal in feature. It would have been wiser and more difficult to have painted her as Raphael or Reynolds would, with true personal resemblance, perfected in expression.
219. Nevertheless, in its derivative way, this is very lovely. But I wish you to observe that it is derivative in all things. The dress is derivative; the action, derivative: above all, the conception is derivative altogether, from that great age of Christian chivalry, which, in art and thought alike, surpassed the Greek chivalry, because it added to their enthusiasm of patriotism the enthusiasm of imaginative love, sanctified by this ruling vision of the Madonna, as at once perfect maid and perfect mother.
And your study of the art of the middle ages must begin in your understanding how the men of them looked on Love as the source of all honour, as of life; and how, from the least thing to the greatest, the honouring of father and mother, the noble esteem of children, and the sincere respect for race, and for the courtesies and prides that graced and crowned its purity, were the sources of all their virtue, and all their joy.
