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Margaritone, full of years and labours, went one day to visit the studio of a
young painter who had lately settled in the town. He noticed in the studio a
freshly painted Madonna, which, although severe and rigid, nevertheless, by a
certain exactness in the proportions and a devilish mingling of light and
shade, assumed an appearance of relief and life. At this sight the artless and
sublime worker of Arezzo perceived with horror what the future of painting
would be. With his brow clasped in his hands he exclaimed:
"What things of shame does not this figure show forth! I discern in it the end
of that Christian art which paints the soul and inspires the beholder with an
ardent desire for heaven. Future painters will not restrain themselves as does
this one to portraying on the side of a wall or on a wooden panel the cursed
matter of which our bodies are formed; they will celebrate and glorify it.
They will clothe their figures with dangerous appearances of flesh, and these
figures will seem like real persons. Their bodies will be seen; their forms
will appear through their clothing. St. Magdalen will have a bosom. St. Martha
a belly, St. Barbara hips, St. Agnes buttocks; St. Sebastian will unveil his
youthful beauty, and St. George will display beneath his armour the muscular
wealth of a robust virility; apostles, confessors, doctors, and God the Father
himself will appear as ordinary beings like you and me; the angels will affect
an equivocal, ambiguous, mysterious beauty which will trouble hearts. What
desire for heaven will these representations impart? None; but from them you
will learn to take pleasure in the forms of terrestrial life. Where will
painters stop in their indiscreet inquiries? They will stop nowhere. They will
go so far as to show men and women naked like the idols of the Romans. There
will be a sacred art and a profane art, and the sacred art will not be less
profane than the other."
"Get ye behind me, demons," exclaimed the old master. For in prophetic vision
he saw the righteous and the saints assuming the appearance of melancholy
athletes. He saw Apollos playing the lute on a flowery hill, in the midst of
the Muses wearing light tunics. He saw Venuses lying under shady myrtles and
the Danae exposing their charming sides to the golden rain. He saw pictures of
Jesus under the pillar's of the temple amidst patricians, fair ladies,
musicians, pages, negroes, dogs, and parrots. He saw in an inextricable
confusion of human limbs, outspread wings, and flying draperies, crowds of
tumultuous Nativities, opulent Holy Families, emphatic Crucifixions. He saw
St. Catherines, St. Barbaras, St. Agneses humiliating patricians by the
sumptuousness of their velvets, their brocades, and their pearls, and by the
splendour of their breasts. He saw Auroras scattering roses, and a multitude
of naked Dianas and Nymphs surprised on the banks of retired streams. And the
great Margaritone died, strangled by so horrible a presentiment of the
Renaissance and the Bolognese School.
Read next: BOOK III - THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE#CHAPTER VII - MARBODIUS
Read previous: BOOK III - THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE#CHAPTER V - THE ARTS: THE PRIMITIVES OF PENGUIN PAINTING
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