DECORATION XX. MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT 255

armour both in painting and sculpture: in poetry it is better still,-Homer’s undressed Achilles is less grand than his crested and shielded Achilles,¹ though Phidias would rather have had him naked: in all mediæval painting, arms, like all other parts of costume, are treated with exquisite care and delight; in the designs of Leonardo, Raffaelle, and Perugino, the armour sometimes becomes almost too conspicuous from the rich and endless invention bestowed upon it; while Titian and Rubens seek in its flash, what the Milanese and Perugian sought in its form, sometimes subordinating heroism to the light of the steel, while the great designers wearied themselves in its elaborate fancy.

But all this labour was given to the living, not the dead armour; to the shell with its animal in it, not the cast shell of the beach; and even so, it was introduced more sparingly by the good sculptors than the good painters; for the former felt, and with justice, that the painter had the power of conquering the over prominence of costume by the expression and colour of the countenance, and that by the darkness of the eye, and glow of the cheek, he could always conquer the gloom and the flash of the mail; but they could hardly, by any boldness or energy of the marble features, conquer the forwardness and conspicuousness of the sharp armorial forms. Their armed figures were therefore almost always subordinate, their principal figures draped or naked, and their choice of subject was much influenced by this feeling of necessity. But the Renaissance sculptors displayed the love of a Camilla² for the mere crest and plume. Paltry and false alike in every feeling of their narrowed minds, they attached themselves, not only to costume without the person, but to the pettiest details of the costume itself. They could not describe Achilles, but

¹ [Compare, for instance, the picture of Achilles sitting in his hut taking his pleasure of a loud lyre wherein he was delighting his soul, and singing of the glories of heroes (Il., 9, 186) with Achilles in the armour made by Hephæstus effulgent like bright Hyperion (Il., 19, 398).]

² [Camilla excited admiration for her armour (see Virg. Æn. vii. 813), but it is not said that she was herself vain of it.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]