This is possible to a Mendelssohn in the awful solitude of Beethoven's
"Sonate Pathetique," to a painter in the presence of Leonardo's "Last
Supper," and to a sculptor in the hushed halls of the Vatican.
But that which lifts the true artist above externals, the externals of
his own individual being, crushes the false, to whom the marble and the
paint are in themselves the ultimate.
This train of thought has been suggested by the fact of the dominion
which classic Art has acquired over sculptors, and by the influence of
the sixteenth and seventeenth century schools upon painters. It is due,
however, to our sculptors in Italy that credit should be given them
for having resisted the influence of forms, of the mere letter of the
classic, to a greater extent than the students of any other nation.
Whether or not they have been receptive of the spirit of the antique
remains to be seen.
American painters have been less fortunate. Too often the lessons of the
old masters, and especially those of the earliest, the Puritan Fathers
of Art, have been unheeded; or the rules and practices which served them
temporarily, subject to the phase of the ideal for the time uppermost,
have passed into permanent laws, to be obeyed under all conditions of
Art-utterance.
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