The Madonna of the Future | Page 8

further utterance, "is a gentleman who says to Nature in the person of a
beautiful girl, 'Go to, you are all wrong! Your fine is coarse, your bright
is dim, your grace is gaucherie. This is the way you should have done
it!' Is not the chance against him?"
He turned upon me almost angrily, but perceiving the genial savour of
my sarcasm, he smiled gravely. "Look at that picture," he said, "and
cease your irreverent mockery! Idealism is THAT! There's no
explaining it; one must feel the flame! It says nothing to Nature, or to
any beautiful girl, that they will not both forgive! It says to the fair
woman, 'Accept me as your artist friend, lend me your beautiful face,
trust me, help me, and your eyes shall be half my masterpiece!' No one
so loves and respects the rich realities of nature as the artist whose
imagination caresses and flatters them. He knows what a fact may hold
(whether Raphael knew, you may judge by his portrait, behind us there,
of Tommaso Inghirami); bad his fancy hovers above it, as Anal
hovered above the sleeping prince. There is only one Raphael, bad an

artist may still be an artist. As I said last night, the days of illumination
are gone; visions are rare; we have to look long to see them. But in
meditation we may still cultivate the ideal; round it, smooth it, perfect it.
The result-- the result," (here his voice faltered suddenly, and he fixed
his eyes for a moment on the picture; when they met my own again
they were full of tears)--"the result may be less than this; but still it may
be good, it may be GREAT!" he cried with vehemence. "It may hang
somewhere, in after years, in goodly company, and keep the artist's
memory warm. Think of being known to mankind after some such
fashion as this! of hanging here through the slow centuries in the gaze
of an altered world; living on and on in the cunning of an eye and hand
that are part of the dust of ages, a delight and a law to remote
generations; making beauty a force and purity an example!"
"Heaven forbid," I said, smiling, "that I should take the wind out of
your sails! But doesn't it occur to you that, besides being strong in his
genius, Raphael was happy in a certain good faith of which we have
lost the trick? There are people, I know, who deny that his spotless
Madonnas are anything more than pretty blondes of that period
enhanced by the Raphaelesque touch, which they declare is a profane
touch. Be that as it may, people's religious and aesthetic needs went
arm in arm, and there was, as I may say, a demand for the Blessed
Virgin, visible and adorable, which must have given firmness to the
artist's hand. I am afraid there is no demand now."
My companion seemed painfully puzzled; he shivered, as it were, in
this chilling blast of scepticism. Then shaking his head with sublime
confidence--"There is always a demand!" he cried; "that ineffable type
is one of the eternal needs of man's heart; but pious souls long for it in
silence, almost in shame. Let it appear, and their faith grows brave.
How SHOULD it appear in this corrupt generation? It cannot be made
to order. It could, indeed, when the order came, trumpet-toned, from
the lips of the Church herself, and was addressed to genius panting with
inspiration. But it can spring now only from the soil of passionate
labour and culture. Do you really fancy that while, from time to time, a
man of complete artistic vision is born into the world, that image can
perish? The man who paints it has painted everything. The subject
admits of every perfection--form, colour, expression, composition. It
can be as simple as you please, and yet as rich; as broad and pure, and

yet as full of delicate detail. Think of the chance for flesh in the little
naked, nestling child, irradiating divinity; of the chance for drapery in
the chaste and ample garment of the mother! think of the great story
you compress into that simple theme! Think, above all, of the mother's
face and its ineffable suggestiveness, of the mingled burden of joy and
trouble, the tenderness turned to worship, and the worship turned to
far-seeing pity! Then look at it all in perfect line and lovely colour,
breathing truth and beauty and mastery!"
"Anch' io son pittore!" I cried. "Unless I am mistaken, you have a
masterpiece on the stocks. If you put all that in, you will do more than
Raphael himself did. Let me know when your picture is finished, and
wherever in the wide world I may be, I