DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61252#0217
INTRODUCTION.
173
expression of life through sensation, and emotion, and
passion, prevailing over abstract mind, grandeur, and grace.
Spanish art, even in its highest religious form, appeals to
our human sympathies, more than to our intellect or our
veneration; clothes the most awful mysteries of our faith,
as well as the deepest feelings of our nature, in forms the
most familiar, which yet are redeemed from all vulgar asso-
ciation by the intensity and propriety of the expression;
and is stamped throughout with that bigotry, that mysti-
cism, that earnestness of credulity, which, in the 16th and
17th centuries, distinguished the Catholicism of Spain from
the Catholicism of Italy and the Low Countries. Its spirit
is otherwise essentially lyric and dramatic, not like that of
the Florentine or Roman school, epic. When grand—and
both Murillo and Cano are sometimes wonderfully grand-
they are grand in fragments and passages, in single heads
or figures, and through the concentration of all their power,
into some particular effect, some particular sentiment; in
short, through intensity of purpose and feeling; never
or at least very rarely, through nobleness of conception,
correctness of taste, or grandeur of form. What is called
style, is not a characteristic of the Spanish painters. On
the other hand, one of their chief merits, of Murillo espe-
cially, is their wonderful command over the material of
art,—a magic of execution, quite original and peculiar.
When the Italian school was just rising to its height of
excellence, oil painting had been lately invented; the best
among the painters of its golden age were trying experi-
ments. The Spaniards came a century later, and applied
with miraculous effect the technical skill they had learned
from the Dutch and Flemings. It is true they had no tra-
ditional types of form and character on which to improve
and refine, like the Italians; no antiques to study. They
were restricted in the choice of subjects, and a law of the
inquisition forbad the representation of nudity; but they
173
expression of life through sensation, and emotion, and
passion, prevailing over abstract mind, grandeur, and grace.
Spanish art, even in its highest religious form, appeals to
our human sympathies, more than to our intellect or our
veneration; clothes the most awful mysteries of our faith,
as well as the deepest feelings of our nature, in forms the
most familiar, which yet are redeemed from all vulgar asso-
ciation by the intensity and propriety of the expression;
and is stamped throughout with that bigotry, that mysti-
cism, that earnestness of credulity, which, in the 16th and
17th centuries, distinguished the Catholicism of Spain from
the Catholicism of Italy and the Low Countries. Its spirit
is otherwise essentially lyric and dramatic, not like that of
the Florentine or Roman school, epic. When grand—and
both Murillo and Cano are sometimes wonderfully grand-
they are grand in fragments and passages, in single heads
or figures, and through the concentration of all their power,
into some particular effect, some particular sentiment; in
short, through intensity of purpose and feeling; never
or at least very rarely, through nobleness of conception,
correctness of taste, or grandeur of form. What is called
style, is not a characteristic of the Spanish painters. On
the other hand, one of their chief merits, of Murillo espe-
cially, is their wonderful command over the material of
art,—a magic of execution, quite original and peculiar.
When the Italian school was just rising to its height of
excellence, oil painting had been lately invented; the best
among the painters of its golden age were trying experi-
ments. The Spaniards came a century later, and applied
with miraculous effect the technical skill they had learned
from the Dutch and Flemings. It is true they had no tra-
ditional types of form and character on which to improve
and refine, like the Italians; no antiques to study. They
were restricted in the choice of subjects, and a law of the
inquisition forbad the representation of nudity; but they