"So far did the heathens carry their notions of ideal beauty, that they
taxed Demetrius with being too natural, and Dionysius they reproached as
but a painter of men. Lysippus himself upbraided the ordinary sculptors
of his day, for making men such as they were in nature, and boasted of
himself, that he made men as they ought to be. Phidias copied his
statues of Jupiter and Pallas from forms in his own soul, or those which
the muse of Homer supplied. Seneca seems to wonder, that, the sculptor
having never beheld either Jove or Pallas, yet could conceive their
divine images in his mind; and another eminent ancient says, that 'the
fancy more instructs the painter than the imitation; for the last makes
only the things which it sees, but the first makes also the things which
it never sees.' Such were also, in the fulness of time and study, the
ideas of the most distinguished moderns. Alberti tells us, that 'we
ought not so much to love the likeness as the beauty, and to choose from
the fairest bodies, severally, the fairest parts.' Da Vinci uses almost
the same words, and desires the painter to form the idea for himself;
and the incomparable Raphael thus writes to Castiglione concerning his
Galatea: 'To paint a fair one, it is necessary for me to see many fair
ones; but because there is so great a scarcity of lovely women, I am
constrained to make use of one certain idea, which I have formed in my
own fancy.' Guido Reni approaches still closer to the pure ideal of the
great Christian School of Painting, when he wishes for the wings of an
angel, to ascend to Paradise, and see, with his own eyes, the forms and
faces of the blessed spirits, that he might put more of heaven into his
pictures.

"Of the heaven which the great artist wished to infuse into his works,
there was but little in painting, when it rose to aid religion in Italy.
The shape was uncooth, the coloring ungraceful, and there was but the
faint dawn of that divine sentiment, which in time elevated Roman art to
the same eminence as the Grecian. Yet all that Christianity demanded
from Art, at first, was readily accomplished: fine forms, and delicate
hues, were not required for centuries, by the successors of the
Apostles; a Christ on the Cross; the Virgin lulling her divine Babe in
her bosom; the Miracle of Lazarus; the Preaching on the Mount; the
Conversion of St. Paul; and the Ascension--roughly sculptured or
coarsely painted, perhaps by the unskilful hands of