effect which its presence there produces." So, too, is it with artists of high rank; each has his own merits; each transcends the narrow restrictions of formulas constructed by pedantic criticism, each is the revealer of an undiscovered world of beauty. To Millet belongs the honor of discovering the beauty and pathos of the life of the French peasant. Leonardo is the most thoughtful of all painters, unless it be Albrecht Dürer. The mind and its infinite suggestions are his realm. With Raphael it is beauty and harmony; with Michelangelo it is passion and strength; with him it is thought and feeling thought so deep that voice can never utter it, feelings so sensitively delicate, so preternaturally refined, that they elude our grasp; and he is full of all sorts of curious questionings, of intricate caprices mingled with divine conceptions. No mind of power so versatile and penetrating was ever devoted to artistic effort. G. B. ROSE in Renaissance Masters. |