X

COLOUR AND THE VENETIAN SCHOOL¹

1. THE disposition of artists, otherwise of equal imaginative and moral power, to address themselves severally to the representations of material or of spiritual phenomena, is chiefly dependent on the degree in which they possess the faculty of colour. To a man incapable of seeing colour all the most subtle expressions of human emotion are invisible: the dimness of love in the eyes, or the blush of joy, or hectic of shame, on the cheek, and the harmonies of tender or weather-tried colour which express past conditions of life on the features are simply invisible to them. Even forms are unintelligible which are expressed only by gradations of hue, and the round of a lip which God has graduated with violet and rose colour is resolved by the eyes inaccessible to colour into a crude and plaster-like form, rounded only by so much grey as exists for one compound in the violet.*

2. Therefore, practically great sculptors neglect the face, and great painters the body. If a sculptor pays much attention to the face, he is nearly certain to interest himself chiefly in the lower passions which contort the features; while if a painter greatly interests himself in the body, he is as certain to neglect the highest conditions of beauty both in face

* It is almost impossible for a colourist to conceive the real aspect of the face, blotched as it must be by uncomprehended shade, to persons who cannot distinguish green from red; and it has been proved in recent art examinations that this is the case with one person out of seven, while less total deprivation of the faculty of colour is common to a large number of the students. The choice of sculptures or painting as a means of expression is regulated in countries where painting has been once developed, chiefly by the possession of this faculty. No man was ever a sculptor who could have been a painter, except at periods where both arts are in their infancy. Michael Angelo is the exception in whom the gift of colour existed, but not in perfection, and who remains a sculptor only because his ambition provoked him to contend with the masters of antiquity, who had left no frescoes to be rivalled. But all great painters can carve, as a matter of course, if they choose. Giotto’s sculpture is more subtle than Niccolo Pisano’s, and Orcagna’s than any of the later Pisa school.

¹ [This Appendix is printed from the same collection of MSS. which have supplied Appendices i.-viii. The sheets here given are noted by Ruskin, “Fésole. Now to be used for ‘St. Mark’s Rest.’” They were written for the intended continuation of The Laws of Fésole.]

455

[Version 0.04: March 2008]