Another room is devoted to the works of Guido. One or two of the Ecce
Homo are much admired. To me they are, as compared with my conceptions
of Jesus, more than inadequate. It seems to me that, if Jesus Christ
should come again on earth, and walk through a gallery of paintings,
and see the representations of sacred subjects, he would say again, as
he did of old in the temple, "Take these things hence!"
How could men who bowed down before art as an idol, and worshipped it
as an ultimate end, and thus sensualized it, represent these holy
mysteries, into which angels desired to look?
There are many representations of Christ here, set forth in the guide
book as full of grace and majesty, which, any soul who has ever felt
his infinite beauty would reject as a libel. And as to the Virgin
Mother, one's eye becomes wearied in following the countless catalogue
of the effeminate inane representations.
There is more pathos and beauty in those few words of the Scripture,
"Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother," than in all these
galleries put together. The soul that has learned to know her from the
Bible, loving without idolizing, hoping for blest communion with her
beyond the veil, seeking to imitate only the devotion which stood by
the cross in the deepest hour of desertion, cannot be satisfied with
these insipidities.
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