scarf twisted round the throat; and this tall, long-necked girl, with
sloping shoulders and still half-developed bosom; are, so to speak,
brother and sister in art, in Pisanello's wonderful genius. The relief
of the two medals is extremely low, so that in certain lights the
effigies vanish almost completely, sink into the pale green surface of
the bronze; the portraits are a mere film, a sort of haze which has
arisen on the bronze and gathered into human likeness; but in this film,
this scarce perceptible relief, we are made to perceive the slender
osseous structure, the smooth, sleek, childish blond flesh and hair, the
delicate, undecided pallor of extreme youth and purity, even as we might
in some elaborate portrait by Velasquez, but with a spring-like
healthiness which Velasquez, painting his lymphatic Hapsburgs, rarely
has.

Such is this Renaissance art of medals, this side branch of the great
realistic portraiture in stone of the Benedettos, Desiderios, and
Rossellinos; a perfect thing in itself; and one which, if we muse over
it in connection with the more important works of fifteenth century
sculpture, will perhaps lead us to think that, as the sculpture of
Antiquity, in its superb idealism, its devotion to the perfect line and
curve of beauty, achieved the highest that mere colourless art can
achieve--thanks to the very purity, sternness, and narrowness of its
sculpturesque feeling--so also, perhaps, modern sculpture, should it
ever re-arise, must be a continuation of the tendencies of the
Renaissance, must be the humbler sister of painting, must seek for the
realistic portrait and begin, perhaps, with the realistic medal.

II.

This kind of realism, where only the model is ugly, while the portrait
is beautiful; which seeks decorative value by other means than the
intrinsic excellence of form in the object represented, this kind of
realism is quite different in sort from the realisms of immature art,
which, aiming at nothing beyond a faithful copy, is content with
producing an ugly picture of an ugly thing. Now this latter kind of
realism endured in painting some time after decorative realism such as I
have described had reached perfection in sculpture. Nor was it till
later, and when the crude scholastic realism had completely come to an
end, that there became even partially possible in painting decorative
realism analogous to what we have noticed in sculpture; while it was not
till after the close