DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61252#0216
172
THE SUTHERLAND GALLERY.
I can understand preferences, but I have no sympathy
with exclusive predilections in art. I know there are
amateurs who affect to despise, others who do really despise
and dislike the Spanish school. All who have cultivated
a decided taste for the spiritual and ideal painters, and the
grand designers of the second period of Italian art, and in
particular the cognoscenti learned in the classical produc-
tions of the cinque-cento school, are disgusted by the want
of style in the Seville painters.
On the other hand, the “ general”—the public—to whom
Gian Bellini, and Perugino, and Michael Angelo, and even
Raphael, are “ caviare,” adore the popular and intelligible
beauties of Murillo; can understand the spirit and truth of
Velasquez, and feel all 'the gloomy pathos of Ribera or
Zurbaran.
But however tastes may differ, there is one point of view
under which the Spanish school is interesting to every re-
flecting mind—its nationality.
It is true that the productions of Dutch and Flemish art
bear also the stamp of nationality; that is, they reflect truly
the manners, the costume, the exterior and household
existence of a commercial, comfort-loving people; but the
Spanish school is national in a far profounder sense. The
basis of Dutch art, whatever may be the subject treated, is
the mere imitation of life through the visible and actual.
The basis of Italian art, from its earliest aspirations to its
latest aberrations, is still the classical; it is Greece and
Rome over and over again, modified more or less by the
religious and intellectual spirit of the age, and the indivi-
dual character of the painter; but the basis of Spanish art
is the Gothic and the Moorish, fused together by a fervid but
gloomy spirit of Catholicism. In Flemish art, the predo-
minant external impress is given by the real; in Italian
art by the ideal; in Spanish art by the human. I can find
no other word by which to convey what I mean here—the
THE SUTHERLAND GALLERY.
I can understand preferences, but I have no sympathy
with exclusive predilections in art. I know there are
amateurs who affect to despise, others who do really despise
and dislike the Spanish school. All who have cultivated
a decided taste for the spiritual and ideal painters, and the
grand designers of the second period of Italian art, and in
particular the cognoscenti learned in the classical produc-
tions of the cinque-cento school, are disgusted by the want
of style in the Seville painters.
On the other hand, the “ general”—the public—to whom
Gian Bellini, and Perugino, and Michael Angelo, and even
Raphael, are “ caviare,” adore the popular and intelligible
beauties of Murillo; can understand the spirit and truth of
Velasquez, and feel all 'the gloomy pathos of Ribera or
Zurbaran.
But however tastes may differ, there is one point of view
under which the Spanish school is interesting to every re-
flecting mind—its nationality.
It is true that the productions of Dutch and Flemish art
bear also the stamp of nationality; that is, they reflect truly
the manners, the costume, the exterior and household
existence of a commercial, comfort-loving people; but the
Spanish school is national in a far profounder sense. The
basis of Dutch art, whatever may be the subject treated, is
the mere imitation of life through the visible and actual.
The basis of Italian art, from its earliest aspirations to its
latest aberrations, is still the classical; it is Greece and
Rome over and over again, modified more or less by the
religious and intellectual spirit of the age, and the indivi-
dual character of the painter; but the basis of Spanish art
is the Gothic and the Moorish, fused together by a fervid but
gloomy spirit of Catholicism. In Flemish art, the predo-
minant external impress is given by the real; in Italian
art by the ideal; in Spanish art by the human. I can find
no other word by which to convey what I mean here—the