On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2): A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and LiteratureRuskin, John
General
On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2): A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature
Ruskin, John
Art; Essays; Literature
48. This is mere Bolognese eclecticism in other terms, and those terms
incorrect. We are amazed to find a writer usually thoughtful, if not
accurate, thus indolently adopting the worn-out falsities of our weakest
writers on Taste. Does he--can he for an instant suppose that the
ruffian Caravaggio, distinguished only by his preference of candlelight
and black shadows for the illustration and re-enforcement of villainy,
painted nature--mere nature--exclusive nature, more painfully or
heartily than John Bellini or Raphael? Does he not see that whatever men
imitate must be nature of some kind, material nature or spiritual,
lovely or foul, brutal or human, but nature still? Does he himself see
in mere, external, copyable nature, no more than Caravaggio saw, or in
the Antique no more than has been comprehended by David? The fact is,
that all artists are primarily divided into the two great groups of
Imitators and Suggesters--their falling into one or other being
dependent partly on disposition, and partly on the matter they have to
subdue--(thus Perugino imitates line by line with penciled gold, the
hair which Nino Pisano can only suggest by a gilded marble mass, both
having the will of representation alike). And each of these classes is
again divided into the faithful and unfaithful imitators and suggesters;
and that is a broad question of blind eye and hard heart, or seeing eye
and serious heart, always co-existent; and then the faithful imitators
and suggesters--artists proper, are appointed, each with his peculiar
gift and affection, over the several orders and classes of things
natural, to be by them illumined and set forth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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