The Hidden Masterpiece | Page 6

an action of your mind, the
model you copied under a master. You do not search out the secrets of
form, nor follow its windings and evolutions with enough love and
perseverance. Beauty is solemn and severe, and cannot be attained in
that way; we must wait and watch its times and seasons, and clasp it
firmly ere it yields to us. Form is a Proteus less easily captured, more
skilful to double and escape, than the Proteus of fable; it is only at the
cost of struggle that we compel it to come forth in its true aspects. You
young men are content with the first glimpse you get of it; or, at any
rate, with the second or the third. This is not the spirit of the great
warriors of art,--invincible powers, not misled by will-o'-the-wisps, but
advancing always until they force Nature to lie bare in her divine
integrity. That was Raphael's method," said the old man, lifting his
velvet cap in homage to the sovereign of art; "his superiority came from
the inward essence which seems to break from the inner to the outer of
his figures. Form with him was what it is with us,--a medium by which
to communicate ideas, sensations, feelings; in short, the infinite poesy
of being. Every figure is a world; a portrait, whose original stands forth
like a sublime vision, colored with the rainbow tints of light, drawn by
the monitions of an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which
points to the past of its whole existence as the source of its given
expression. You clothe your women with delicate skins and glorious
draperies of hair, but where is the blood which begets the passion or the

peace of their souls, and is the cause of what you call 'effects'? Your
saint is a dark woman; but this, my poor Porbus, belongs to a fair one.
Your figures are pale, colored phantoms, which you present to our eyes;
and you call that painting! art! Because you make something which
looks more like a woman than a house, you think you have touched the
goal; proud of not being obliged to write "currus venustus" or "pulcher
homo" on the frame of your picture, you think yourselves majestic
artists like our great forefathers. Ha, ha! you have not got there yet, my
little men; you will use up many a crayon and spoil many a canvas
before you reach that height. Undoubtedly a woman carries her head
this way and her petticoats that way; her eyes soften and droop with
just that look of resigned gentleness; the throbbing shadow of the
eyelashes falls exactly thus upon her cheek. That is it, and--that is NOT
IT. What lacks? A mere nothing; but that mere nothing is ALL. You
have given the shadow of life, but you have not given its fulness, its
being, its --I know not what--soul, perhaps, which floats vaporously
about the tabernacle of flesh; in short, that flower of life which Raphael
and Titian culled. Start from the point you have now attained, and
perhaps you may yet paint a worthy picture; you grew weary too soon.
Mediocrity will extol your work; but the true artist smiles. O Mabuse!
O my master!" added this singular person, "you were a thief; you have
robbed us of your life, your knowledge, your art! But at least," he
resumed after a pause, "this picture is better than the paintings of that
rascally Rubens, with his mountains of Flemish flesh daubed with
vermilion, his cascades of red hair, and his hurly-burly of color. At any
rate, you have got the elements of color, drawing, and sentiment, --the
three essential parts of art."
"But the saint is sublime, good sir!" cried the young man in a loud
voice, waking from a deep reverie. "These figures, the saint and the
boatman, have a subtile meaning which the Italian painters cannot give.
I do not know one of them who could have invented that hesitation of
the boatman."
"Does the young fellow belong to you?" asked Porbus of the old man.
"Alas, maitre, forgive my boldness," said the neophyte, blushing. "I am

all unknown; only a dauber by instinct. I have just come to Paris, that
fountain of art and science."
"Let us see what you can do," said Porbus, giving him a red crayon and
a piece of paper.
The unknown copied the saint with an easy turn of his hand.
"Oh! oh!" exclaimed the old man, "what is your name?"
The youth signed the drawing: Nicolas Poussin.
"Not bad for a beginner," said the strange being who had discoursed so
wildly. "I see that it is worth while to talk art before you. I don't blame
you for admiring Porbus's saint. It is a