The death of Eugene Delacroix cuts the last bond between the great
artistic epoch which commenced with the Bellini and that which had its
beginning with the nineteenth century, epochs as diverse in character as
the Venice of 1400 and the Paris of 1800. In him died the last great
painter whose art was moulded by the instincts and traditions that made
Titian and Veronese, and the greatest artist whose eyes have opened on
the, to him, uncongenial and freezing life of the nineteenth century. In
our time we have a new ideal, a new and maybe a higher development of
intellectual art, and as great a soul as Titian's might to-day reach
farther towards the reconciled perfections of graphic art: but what he
did no one can now do; the glory of that time has passed away,--its
unreasoning faith, its wanton instinct, revelling in Art like children
in the sunshine, and rejoicing in childlike perception of the pomp and
glory which overlay creation, unconscious of effort, indifferent to
science,--all gone with the fairies, the saints, the ecstatic visions
which framed their poor lives in gold. Only, still reflecting the glory,
as eastern mountains the sunken sun, came a few sympathetic souls
kindling into like glow, with faint perception of what had passed from
the whole world beside.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197