pectator any other divinity than that of patience made perfect
through suffering. Angelico's conception of the same subject is higher
and more mystical. He takes the moment when Christ is blindfolded, and
exaggerates almost into monstrosity the vileness of feature and
bitterness of sneer in the questioners, "Prophesy unto us, who is he
that smote thee;" but the bearing of the person of Christ is entirely
calm and unmoved; and his eyes, open, are seen through the binding
veil, indicating the ceaseless omniscience.

This mystical rendering is, again, rejected by the later realistic
painters; but while the earlier designers, with Giotto at their head,
dwelt chiefly on the humiliation and the mockery, later painters dwelt
on the physical pain. In Titian's great picture of this subject in the
Louvre, one of the executioners is thrusting the thorn-crown down upon
the brow with his rod, and the action of Christ is that of a person
suffering extreme physical agony.

No representations of the scene exist, to my knowledge, in which the
mockery is either sustained with indifference, or rebuked by any stern
or appealing expression of feature; yet one of these two forms of
endurance would appear, to a modern habit of thought, the most natural
and probable.

* * * * *

XXXIII.

CHRIST BEARING HIS CROSS.

This design is one of great nobleness and solemnity in the isolation
of the principal figure, and removal of all motives of interest
depending on accessories, or merely temporary incidents. Even the
Virgin and her attendant women are kept in the background; all appeal
for sympathy through physical suffering is disdained. Christ is not
represented as borne down by the weight of the Cross, nor as urged
forward by the impatience of the executioners. The thing to be
shown,--the unspeakable mystery,--is the simple fact, the Bearing of
the Cross by the Redeemer. It would be vain to compare the respective
merits or value of a design thus treated, and of one like Veronese's
of this same subject, in which every essential accessory and probable
incident is completely conceived. The abstract and symbolical
suggestion will always appeal to one order of minds, the dramatic
completeness to another. Unquestionably, the last is the greater
achievement of intellect, but the manner and habit of thought are
perhaps loftier in Giotto. Veronese leads us to perceive the reality
of the act, and Giotto to understand it