‘‘THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART” 239

inherent, instinctive sympathy between their mental constitution and the colour in question; as that of red, or of blood, may be observed to prevail among painters in whom Sense or Nature predominates over Spirit-for in this, as in all things else, the moral and the material world respond to each other as closely as shadow and substance. But, in Painting as in Morals, perfection implies the due intervention of Intellect between Spirit and Sense-of Form between Expression and Colouring-as a power at once controlling and controlled-and therefore, although acknowledging its fascination, I cannot unreservedly praise of Colouring of Fra Angelico.”-Vol. iii. pp. 193, 194.

69. There is much ingenuity, and some truth, here, but the reader, as in other of Lord Lindsay’s speculations, must receive his conclusions with qualification. it is the natural character of strong effects of colour, as of high light, to confuse outlines; and it is a necessity in all fine harmonies of colour that many tints should merge imperceptibly into their following or succeeding ones:-we believe Lord Lindsay himself would hardly wish to mark the hues of the rainbow into divided zones, or to show its edge, as of an iron arch, against the sky, in order that it might no longer reflect (a reflection of which we profess ourselves up to this moment altogether unconscious) “that lax morality which confounds the limits of right and wrong.” Again , there is a character of energy in all warm colours, as of repose in cold, which necessarily causes the former to be preferred by painters of savage subject-that is to say, commonly by the coarsest and most degraded;-but when sensuality is free from ferocity, it leans to blue more than to red (as especially in the flesh tints of Guido), and when intellect prevails over this sensuality, its first step is invariably to put more red into every colour, and so “rubor est virtutis color.” we hardly think Lord Lindsay would willingly include Luca Giordano among his spiritual painters, though that artist’s servant was materially enriched by washing the ultramarine from the brushes with which he painted the Riccardi palace; ¹ nor would he,

¹ [Luca Giordano (1632-1705), of the Neapolitan school, painted the Great Gallery of the Riccardi Palace in Florence. “The quantity of ultramarine employed was so great, that the assistant, who washed the painter’s brushes, is said to have made a large sum by the operation” (Murray’s Handbook for Central Italy, ed. 1864, p. 150).]

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