Christopher on p. 209, he will see the conventional
treatment of the rocks on either side the saint. This was the best
thing the artist could do, and probably cost him no little trouble.
Yet there were rocks all around him--little, in fact, else than
rock in those days; and the artist could have drawn them well
enough if it had occurred to him to try and do so. If he could
draw St. Christopher, he could have drawn a rock; but he had an
interest in the one, and saw nothing in the other which made him
think it worth while to pay attention to it. What rocks were to
him, the common occurrences of everyday life were to those who are
generally held to be the giants of painting. The result of this
neglect to kiss the soil--of this attempt to be always soaring--is
that these giants are for the most part now very uninteresting,
while the smaller men who preceded them grow fresher and more
delightful yearly. It was not so with Handel and Shakespeare.
Handel's
"Ploughman near at hand, whistling o'er the furrowed land,"
is intensely sympathetic, and his humour is admirable whenever he
has occasion for it.
Leonardo da Vinci is the only one of the giant Italian masters who
ever tried to be humorous, and he failed completely: so, indeed,
must any one if he tries to be humorous. We do not want this; we
only want them not to shut their eyes to by-play when it comes in
their way, and if they are giving us an account of what they have
seen, to tell us something about this too.
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