rner, where light
never comes that comes to all. The dramatic power and Flemish skill in
portraiture of the man are, however, very visible, even in the
darkness. No painter of his century approached him in animated
grouping and powerful physiognomizing. Dignified, noble, powerful, and
natural, he is the exact counterpart of Fra Angelico, among the
_Quattrocentisti_. Two great, distinct systems,--the shallow,
shrinking, timid, but rapturously devotional, piously sentimental
school, of which Beato Angelico was _facile princeps_, painfully
adventuring out of the close atmosphere of the _miniatori_ into
the broader light and more gairish colors of the actual, and falling
back, hesitating and distrustful; and the hardy, healthy, audacious
naturalists, wreaking strong and warm human emotions upon vigorous
expression and confident attitude;--these two widely separated streams
of Art, remote from each other in origin, and fed by various rills, in
their course through the century, were to meet in one ocean at its
close. This was then the fulness of perfection, the age of Angelo and
Raphael, Leonardo and Correggio.

VIII.

SAN MARCO.

Fra Beato Angelico, who was a brother of this Dominican house, has
filled nearly the whole monastery with the works of his
hand. Considering the date of his birth, 1387, and his conventual
life, he was hardly less wonderful than his wonderful epoch. Here is
the same convent, the same city; while instead merely of the works of
Cimabue, Giotto, and Orgagna, there are masterpieces by all the
painters who ever lived to study;--yet imagine the snuffy old monk who
will show you about the edifice, or any of his brethren, coming out
with a series of masterpieces! One might as well expect a new
Savonarola, who was likewise a friar in this establishment, to preach
against Pio Nono, and to get himself burned in the Piazza for his
pains.

In the old chapter-house is a very large, and for the angelic Frater a
very hazardous performance,--a Crucifixion. The heads here are full
of feeling and feebleness, except those of Mary Mother and Mary
Magdalen, which are both very touching and tender. There is, however,
an absolute impotence to reproduce the actual, to deal with groups of
humanity upon a liberal scale. There is his usual want of
discrimination, too, in physiognomy; for if the seraphic and
intellectual head of the penitent thief were transferred to the
shoulders of the Saviour in exchange for his own