238 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

who pass and repass in the twilight of that solemn corridor, need not the adjuration inscribed beneath:-

“Virginis intactae cum veneris ante figuram

Praetereundo cave ne sileatur Ave.”*

We in general allow the inferiority of Angelico’s fresco to his tempera works; yet even that which of all these latter we think the most radiant, the Annunciation on the reliquary of Santa Maria Novella,¹ would, we believe, if repeatedly compared with this of St. Mark’s in the end have the disadvantage. The eminent value of the tempera paintings results partly from their delicacy of line, and partly from the purity of colour and force of decoration of which the material is capable.

68. The passage, to which we have before alluded, respecting Fra Angelico’s colour in general, is one of the most curious and fanciful in the work:-

“His colouring, on the other hand, is far more beautiful, although of questionable brilliancy. This will be found invariably the case in minds constituted like his. Spirit and Sense act on each other with livelier reciprocity the closer their approximation, the less intervention there is of Intellect. Hence the most religious and the most sensual painters have always loved the brightest colours-Spiritual Expression and a clearly defined (however inaccurate) outline forming the distinction of the former class; Animal Expression and a confused and uncertain outline (reflecting that lax morality which confounds the limits of light and darkness, right and wrong) of the latter. On the other hand, the more that Intellect, or the spirit of Form, intervenes in its severe precision, the less pure, the paler grow the colours, the nearer they tend to the hue of marble, of the bas-relief. We thus find the purest and brightest colours only in Fra Angelico’s pictures, with a general predominance of blue, which we have observed to prevail more or less in so many of th Semi-Byzantine painters, and which, fanciful as it may appear, I cannot but attribute, independently of mere tradition, to an

* The upper inscription Lord Lindsay has misquoted-it runs thus:-

“Salve Mater Pietatis

Et Totius Trinitatis

Nobile Triclinium.”²

¹ [For this picture (now in the Museum of San Marco), see Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 263 and n.). It is the one of which Ruskin made the pencil sketch engraved as the frontispiece to Modern Painters, vol. v.]

² [Lord Lindsay (iii. 177) gives the second line as “Eternae Trinitatis.”]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]