22. Thus the Art of Greece rose, and did service to the people, so long as it was to them the earnest interpreter of a religion they believed in: the Arts of northern sculpture and architecture rose, as interpreters of Christian legend and doctrine: the Art of painting in Italy, not only as religious, but also mainly as expressive of truths of moral philosophy, and powerful in pure human portraiture. The only great painters in our schools of painting in England have either been of portrait--Reynolds and Gainsborough; of the philosophy of social life--Hogarth; or of the facts of nature in landscape--Wilson and Turner. In all these cases, if I had time, I could show you that the success of the painter depended on his desire to convey a truth, rather than to produce a merely beautiful picture; that is to say, to get a likeness of a man, or of a place; to get some moral principle rightly stated, or some historical character rightly described, rather than merely to give pleasure to the eyes. Compare the feeling with which a Moorish architect decorated an arch of the Alhambra, with that of Hogarth painting the "Marriage a la Mode," or of Wilkie painting the "Chelsea Pensioners," and you will at once feel the difference between Art pursued for pleasure only, and for the sake of some useful principle or impression. 23. But what you might not so easily discern is, that even when painting does appear to have been pursued for pleasure only, if ever you find it rise to any noble level, you will also find that a stern search after truth has been at the root of its nobleness. You may fancy, perhaps, that Titian, Veronese, and Tintoret were painters for the sake of pleasure only: but in reality they were the only painters who ever sought entirely to master, and who did entirely master, the truths of light and shade as associated with color, in the noblest of all physical created things, the human form. They were the only men who ever painted the human body; all other painters of the great schools are mere anatomical draughtsmen compared to them; rather makers of maps of the body, than painters of it. The Venetians alone, by a toil almost super-human, succeeded at last in obtaining a power almost super-human; and were able finally to paint the highest visible work of God with unexaggerated structure, undegraded color, and unaffected gesture. It seems little to say this; but I assure you it is much to have _done_ this--so much, that no other men but the Venetians ever did it: none of them ever painted the human body without in some degree caricaturing the anatomy, forcing the action, or degrading the hue.