Chapter 50 - Page 2

itself look at Titian's beast, but won't stand
a description of it in words. Which shows that the world is not as
consistent as it might be.

There are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure thought--I
am well aware of that. I am not railing at such. What I am trying to
emphasize is the fact that Titian's Venus is very far from being one of
that sort. Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it was
probably refused because it was a trifle too strong. In truth, it is too
strong for any place but a public Art Gallery. Titian has two Venuses in
the Tribune; persons who have seen them will easily remember which one I
am referring to.

In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures of blood,
carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures portraying intolerable
suffering--pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out in
dreadful detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas every
day and publicly exhibited--without a growl from anybody--for they
are innocent, they are inoffensive, being works of art. But suppose
a literary artist ventured to go into a painstaking and elaborate
description of one of these grisly things--the critics would skin him
alive. Well, let it go, it cannot be helped; Art retains her privileges,
Literature has lost hers. Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the
wherefores and the consistencies of it--I haven't got time.

Titian's Venus defiles and disgraces the Tribune, there is no softening
that fact, but his "Moses" glorifies it. The simple truthfulness of
its noble work wins the heart and the applause of every visitor, be he
learned or ignorant. After wearying one's self with the acres of stuffy,
sappy, expressionless babies that populate the canvases of the Old
Masters of Italy, it is refreshing to stand before this peerless child
and feel that thrill which tells you you are at last in the presence of
the real thing. This is a human child, this is genuine. You have seen
him a thousand times--you have seen him just as he is here--and you
confess, without reserve, that Titian WAS a Master. The doll-faces of
other painted babes may mean one thing, they may mean another, but
with the "Moses" the case is different. The most famous of all the
art-critics has said, "There is no room for doubt, here--plainly this
child is in trouble."

I consider that the "Moses" has no equal among the works of the Old
Masters, except it be the divine Hair Trunk of Bassano. I feel sure that
if all the other Old Masters were lost and only these two preserved, the
world would be the gainer by it.

My sole purpose in going to Florence was to see this immortal "Moses,"
and by good fortune I