Essays on Art | Page 5

him for lessons pay homage to
him. But, in his "Crucifixion," it is Tintoret himself who pays homage,
and we forget the master in the theme. We may say of Rubens's art, in a
new sense, "C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre." The greatest
art is not magnificent, but it is war, desperate and without trappings, a
war in which victory comes through the confession of defeat.
Man, if he tries to be a god in his art, makes a fool of himself. He
becomes like God, he makes beauty like God, when he is too much
aware of God to be aware of himself. Then only does he not set himself

too easy a task, for then he does not make his theme so that he may
accomplish it; it is forced upon him by his awareness of God, by his
wonder and value for an excellence not his own. So in all the beauty of
art there is a humility not only of conception, but also of execution,
which is mere failure and ugliness to those who expect to find in art the
beauty and finish of nature, who expect it to be born, not made. They
are always disappointed by the greatest works of art, by their
inadequacy and strain and labour. They look for a proof of what man
can do and find a confession of what he cannot do; but that confession,
made sincerely and passionately, is beauty. There is also a serenity in
the beauty of art, but it is the serenity of self-surrender, not of
self-satisfaction, of the saint, not of the lady of fashion. And all the
accomplishment of great art, its infinite superiority in mere skill over
the work of the merely skilful, comes from the incessant effort of the
artist to do more than he can. By that he is trained; by that his work is
distinguished from the mere exclamation of wonder. He is not content
to applaud; he must also worship, and make his offerings in his worship;
and they are the best he can do. It was not only the shepherds who
came to the birth of Christ; the wise men came also and brought their
treasures with them. And the art of mankind is the offering of its wise
men, it is the adoration of the Magi, who are one with the simplest in
their worship--
Wise men, all ways of knowledge past, To the Shepherd's wonder come
at last.
But they do not lose their wisdom in their wonder. When it passes into
wonder, when all the knowledge and skill and passion of mankind are
poured into the acknowledgment of something greater than themselves,
then that acknowledgment is art, and it has a beauty which may be
envied by the natural beauty of God Himself.

Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most famous men in history--as a man
more famous than Michelangelo or Shakespeare or Mozart--because
posterity has elected him the member for the Renaissance. Most great
artists live in what they did, and by that we know them; but what
Leonardo did gets much of its life from what he was, or rather from
what he is to us. Of all great men he is the most representative; we

cannot think of him as a mere individual, eating and drinking, living
and competing, on equal terms with other men. We see him magnified
by his own legend from the first, with people standing aside to watch
and whisper as he passed through the streets of Florence or Milan.
"There he goes to paint the Last Supper," they said to each other; and
we think of it as already the most famous picture in the world before it
was begun. Every one knew that he had the most famous picture in his
brain, that he was born to paint it, to initiate the High Renaissance;
from Giotto onwards all the painters had been preparing for that,
Florence herself had been preparing for it. It makes no difference that
for centuries it has been a shadow on the wall; it is still the most
famous painting in the world because it is the masterpiece of Leonardo.
There was a fate against the survival of his masterpieces, but he has
survived them and they are remembered because of him. We accept
him for himself, like the people of his own time, who, when he said he
could perform impossibilities, believed him. To them he meant the new
age which could do anything, and still to us he means the infinite
capacities of man. He is the Adam awakened whom Michelangelo only
painted; and, if he accomplished but little, we believe in him, as in
mankind, for his promise. If he did not