Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 40, February, 1861 | Page 7

a series of remarkable pictures. There are among these the specimens of portraiture, a few landscapes, and a number of ideal, or, as they have been called, historical works. Of these last named there is somewhat to be said; and those to which we shall refer are selected for the purpose of illustrating principles, rather than for that of description. These are all associated with history. There are three representations of Venus, and several renderings of Scriptural subjects.
If these pictures are valuable, they are so in virtue of elements which can be appreciated. To present these elements to the world, to appeal to those who can recognize them, is, it is fair to assume, the object of exposition. Not merely praise, but the more wholesome meed of justice, is the desire of a true artist; and as we deal with such a one, we do not hesitate to speak of his works as they impress us.
First of all, in view of the artist's skill as a painter, it is well to regard the external of his work. Here, in both Scriptural and mythological subjects, there is little to condemn. The motives have been bravely and successfully wrought out; the work is nobly, frankly done. The superiority of methods which render the texture and quality of objects becomes apparent. There is no attempt at illusion; yet the representation of substances and spaces is faultless,--as, for instance, the sky of the "Venus leading forth the Trojans." Nor have we seen that chaste, pearly lustre of the most beautiful human skin so well rendered as in the bosom of the figure which gleams against the blue.
But there is a pretension to more than technical excellence in the mythological works; there is a declaration of physical beauty in the very idea; in both these and the Scriptural there is an assumption of historical value.
While we believe that the problem of physical beauty can be solved and demonstrated, and the representations of Venus can be proved to possess or to lack the beautiful, we choose to leave now, as we should be compelled to do after discussion, the decision of the question to those who raise it. It is of little avail to prove a work of art beautiful,--of less, to prove it ugly. Spectators and generations cannot be taken one by one and convinced. But where the operation of judgment is from the reasoning rather than from the intuitive nature, facts, opinions, and impressions may exert healthful influences.
The Venus of Page we cannot accept,--not because it may be unbeautiful, for that might be but a shortcoming,--not because of any technical failure, for, with the exception of weakness in the character of waves, nothing can be finer,--not because it lacks elevated sentiment, for this Venus was not the celestial,--but because it has nothing to do with the present, neither is it of the past, nor related in any wise to any imaginable future.
The present has no ideal of which the Venus of the ancients is a manifestation. Other creations of that marvellous Greek mind might be fitly used to symbolize phases of the present. Hercules might labor now; there are other stables than the Augean; and not yet are all Hydras slain. Armor is needed; and a Vulcan spirit is making the anvil ring beneath the earth-crust of humanity. But Venus, the voluptuous, the wanton,--no sensuousness pervading any religion of this era finds in her its fitting type and sign. She, her companions, and her paramours, with the magnificent religion which evolved them, were entombed centuries ago; and no angel has rolled the stone from the door of their sepulchre. They are dead; the necessity which called the Deistic ideal into existence is dead; the ideal itself is dead, since Paul preached in Athens its funeral sermon.
As history of past conditions, no value can be attached to representations produced in subsequent ages. In this respect all these pictures must be false. The best can only approximate truth. Yet his two pictures of Scriptural subjects--one from the remoteness of Hebrew antiquity, the other from the early days of Christianity--are most valuable even as history: not the history of the flight from Egypt, nor that of the flight into Egypt, but the history of what these mighty events have become after the lapse of many centuries.
Herein lies the difference between Mythology and Christianity: the one arose, culminated, and perished, soul and body, when the shadow of the Cross fell athwart Olympus; the other is immortal,--immortal as is Christ, immortal as are human souls, of which it is the life. No century has been when it has not found, and no century can be when it will not find, audible and visible utterance. The music of the "Messiah" reveals the relation of its age to the great central