, with the inlaid pattern of Juno's robe below, exists in the art
of any country. _Si sic omnia!_--but I know nothing else equal to it
throughout the entire works of Rubens.

49. See, then, how the picture divides itself. In the fleshly
baseness, brutality and stupidity of its main conception, is the Dutch
part of it; that is Rubens' own. In the noble drawing of the dead body
and of the birds you have the Phidias-Greek part of it, brought down
to Rubens through Michael Angelo. In the embroidery of Juno's robe you
have the Daedalus-Greek part of it, brought down to Rubens through
Veronese. In the head of Iris you have the pure Northern-Gothic part
of it, brought down to Rubens through Giorgione and Titian.

50. Now, though--even if we had given ten minutes of digression--the
lessons in this picture would have been well worth it, I have not, in
taking you to it, gone out of my own way. There is a special point for
us to observe in those dark peacocks. If you look at the notes on the
Venetian pictures in the end of my "Stones of Venice," you will find
it especially dwelt upon as singular that Tintoret, in his picture of
"The Nativity," has a peacock without any color in it. And the reason
of it is also that Tintoret belongs, with the full half of his mind,
as Rubens does, to the Greek school. But the two men reach the same
point by opposite paths. Tintoret begins with what Venice taught him,
and adopted what Athens could teach: but Rubens begins with Athens,
and adopts from Venice. Now if you will look back to my fifth
Lecture[9] you will find it said that the colorists can always adopt
as much chiaroscuro as suits them, and so become perfect; but the
chiaroscurists cannot, on their part, adopt color, except partially.
And accordingly, whenever Tintoret chooses, he can laugh Rubens to
scorn in management of light and shade; but Rubens only here and
there--as far as I know myself, only this once--touches Tintoret or
Giorgione in color.

[Footnote 9: "Lectures on Art" (the Inaugural Course, 1870), Sec. 138.]

51. But now observe farther. The Greek chiaroscuro, I have just told
you, is by one body of men pursued academically, as a means of
expressing form; by another, tragically, as a mystery of light and
shade, corresponding to--and forming part of--the joy and sorrow of
life. You may, of course, find the two purposes mingled: but pure
formal chiaroscuro--Marc Antonio's and Leonardo's--is inconsistent
with color, and tho