Botticelli - Page 2

All the
universe you have is the universe you have within.

Old Walt Whitman, when he saw the wounded soldier, exclaimed, "I am
that man!" And two thousand years before this, Terence said, "I am a
man, and nothing that is human is alien to me."

I know just why Professor Lautner believes that Rembrandt never
could have painted a picture with a deep, tender, subtle and
spiritual significance. Professor Lautner averages fairly well, he
labors hard to be consistent, but his thought gamut runs just from
Bottom the weaver to Dogberry the judge. He is a cauliflower--that
is to say, a cabbage with a college education.

Yes, I understand him, because for most of the time I myself am
supremely dull, childishly dogmatic, beautifully self-complacent.

I am Lautner.

Lautner says that Rembrandt was "untaught," and Donnelly said the
same of Shakespeare, and each critic gives this as a reason why the
man could not have done a sublime performance. Yet since "Hamlet"
was never equaled, who could have taught its author how? And since
Rembrandt at his best was never surpassed, who could have instructed
him?

Rembrandt sold his wife's wedding-garments, and spent the money for
strong drink.

The woman was dead.

And then there came to him days of anguish, and nights of grim,
grinding pain. He paced the echoing halls, as did Robert Browning
after the death of Elizabeth Barrett when he cried aloud, "I want
her! I want her!". The cold gray light of morning came creeping into
the sky. Rembrandt was fevered, restless, sleepless. He sat by the
window and watched the day unfold. And as he sat there looking out
to the east, the light of love gradually drove the darkness from his
heart. He grew strangely calm--he listened, he thought he heard the
rustle of a woman's garments; he caught the smell of her hair--he
imagined Saskia was at his elbow. He took up the palette and brushes
that for weeks had lain idle, and he outlined the "Christ at
Emmaus"--the gentle, loving, sympathetic Christ--the worn,
emaciated, thorn-crowned, bleeding Christ, whom the Pharisees
misunderstood, and the soldiers spat upon.

Don't you know how Rembrandt painted the "Christ at Emmaus"? I do. I
am that man.

Shortly after Sandro Botticelli had painted that distinctly pagan
picture, "The Birth of Venus," he equalized matters, eased
conscience and silenced the critics, by producing a beautiful
Madonna, surrounded by a circle of singing angels. Yet George Eliot
writes that there were wiseacres who shook their heads and said:
"This Madonna is the work of some good monk--only a man who is
deeply religious could put