IV. PRE-RAPHAELITISM 145

1500, this entire system was changed. Instead of the life of Christ, men had, for the most part, to paint the lives of Bacchus and Venus; and if you walk through any public gallery of pictures by the “great masters,” as they are called, you will indeed find here and there what is called a Holy Family, painted for the sake of drawing pretty children, or a pretty woman; but for the most part you will find nothing but Floras, Pomonas, Satyrs, Graces, Bacchanals, and Banditti. Now, you will not declare-you cannot believe-that Angelico painting the life of Christ, Benozzo painting the life of Abraham, Ghirlandajo painting the life of the Virgin, Giotto painting the life of St. Francis,¹ were worse employed, or likely to produce a less healthy art, than Titian painting the loves of Venus and Adonis, than Correggio painting the naked Antiope, than Salvator painting the slaughters of the Thirty Years’ War?² If you will not let me call the one kind of labour Christian, and the other unchristian, at least you will let me call the one moral, and the other immoral, and that is all I ask you to admit.

123. Now observe, hitherto I have been telling you what you may feel inclined to doubt or dispute; and I must leave you to consider the subject at your leisure. But henceforward I tell you plain facts, which admit neither of doubt nor dispute by any one who will take the pains to acquaint himself with their subject-matter.

When the entire purpose of art was moral teaching, it naturally took truth for its first object, and beauty, and the pleasure resulting from beauty, only for its second. But when it lost all purpose of moral teaching, it as naturally took beauty for its first object, and truth for its second.

¹ [For Angelico’s series of frescoes illustrating the Life of Christ, see Vol. IV. p. 100; for Benozzo Gozzoli’s Life of Abraham, ibid., pp. xxxi., 316; Ghirlandajo’s Life of the Virgin is the series of frescoes in S. Maria Novella (see Mornings in Florence, ch. ii.); for Giotto’s Life of St. Francis (at Assisi), see numerous references in Fors Clavigera, e.g., Letters 41, 45, and 48.]

² [One of Titian’s many pictures of Venus and Adonis is in the National Gallery, No. 34; to Correggio’s “Antiope” (in the Louvre) Ruskin refers below, p. 472, and in Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. v. § 4; vol. v. pt. vi. ch. v. § 5, ch. x. § 5, pt. vii. ch. iv. § 6 n.; for Salvator’s battle-pieces, see Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 201 and n.).]

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