242 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

colours, unwearied energy, and to all these gifts the crowning one of quietness of life and mind, while yet his conventcell was at first within view, and afterwards in the centre, of a city which had lead of all the world in Intellect, and in whose streets he might see daily and hourly the noblest setting of manly features.¹ It would perhaps be well to wait until we find another man thus actuated, thus endowed, and thus circumstanced, before we speak of “unduly extolling” the works of Fra Angelico.

73. His artistical attainments, as might be conjectured, are nothing more than the development, through practice, of his natural powers in accordance with his sacred instincts. His power of expression by bodily gesture is greater even than Giotto’s, wherever he could feel or comprehend the passion to be expressed; but so inherent in him was his holy tranquillity of mind, that he could not by any exertion, even for a moment, conceive either agitation, doubt, or fear-and all the actions proceeding from such passions, or, à fortiori, from any yet more criminal, are absurdly and powerlessly pourtrayed by him; while contrariwise, every gesture, consistent with emotion pure and saintly, is rendered with an intensity of truth to which there is no existing parallel; the expression being carried out into every bend of the hand, every undulation of the arm, shoulder, and neck, every fold of the dress and every wave of the hair. His drawing of movement is subject to the same influence; vulgar or vicious motion he cannot represent; his running, falling, or struggling figures are drawn with childish incapability; but give him for his scene the pavement of heaven, or pastures of Paradise, and for his subject the “inoffensive pace”² of glorified souls, or the spiritual speed of Angels,³ and Michael Angelo alone

¹ [For the state of Florence in her prime, see Mornings in Florence, §§ 13, 32, 35.]

² [Paradise Lost, viii. 163:-

“Her silent course advance

With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps

On her soft axle.”]

³ [Compare the passage at the end of Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 332).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]