first shape, or
at most by the second or the third that appears. Not thus wrestle the
victors, the unvanquished painters who never suffer themselves to be
deluded by all those treacherous shadow-shapes; they persevere till
Nature at the last stands bare to their gaze, and her very soul is
revealed.

"In this manner worked Rafael," said the old man, taking off his cap to
express his reverence for the King of Art. "His transcendent greatness
came of the intimate sense that, in him, seems as if it would shatter
external form. Form in his figures (as with us) is a symbol, a means of
communicating sensations, ideas, the vast imaginings of a poet. Every
face is a whole world. The subject of the portrait appeared for him
bathed in the light of a divine vision; it was revealed by an inner
voice, the finger of God laid bare the sources of expression in the past
of a whole life.

"You clothe your women in fair raiment of flesh, in gracious veiling
of hair; but where is the blood, the source of passion and of calm, the
cause of the particular effect? Why, this brown Egyptian of yours, my
good Porbus, is a colorless creature! These figures that you set before
us are painted bloodless fantoms; and you call that painting, you call
that art!

"Because you have made something more like a woman than a house, you
think that you have set your fingers on the goal; you are quite proud
that you need not to write _currus venustus_ or _pulcher homo_ beside
your figures, as early painters were wont to do and you fancy that you
have done wonders. Ah! my good friend, there is still something more to
learn, and you will use up a great deal of chalk and cover many a canvas
before you will learn it. Yes, truly, a woman carries her head in just
such a way, so she holds her garments gathered into her hand; her eyes
grow dreamy and soft with that expression of meek sweetness, and even
so the quivering shadow of the lashes hovers upon her cheeks. It is all
there, and yet it is not there. What is lacking? A nothing, but that
nothing is everything.

"There you have the semblance of life, but you do not express its
fulness and effluence, that indescribable something, perhaps the soul
itself, that envelopes the outlines of the body like a haze; that
flower of life, in short, that Titian and Rafael caught. Your utmost
achievement hitherto has only brought you to the starting-point. You
might now perhaps begin to do excellent work, but you grow weary all