ch of all these latter we think the most
radiant, the Annunciation on the reliquary of Santa Maria Novella,
would, we believe, if repeatedly compared with this of St. Mark's, in
the end have the disadvantage. The eminent value of the tempera
paintings results partly from their delicacy of line, and partly from
the purity of color and force of decoration of which the material is
capable.

86. The passage, to which we have before alluded, respecting Fra
Angelico's color in general, is one of the most curious and fanciful in
the work:--

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"His coloring, on the other hand, is far more beautiful, although of
questionable brilliancy. This will be found invariably the case in minds
constituted like his. Spirit and Sense act on each other with livelier
reciprocity the closer their approximation, the less intervention there
is of Intellect. Hence the most religious and the most sensual painters
have always loved the brightest colors--Spiritual Expression and a
clearly defined (however inaccurate) outline forming the distinction of
the former class; Animal Expression and a confused and uncertain outline
(reflecting that lax morality which confounds the limits of light and
darkness, right and wrong) of the latter. On the other hand, the more
that Intellect, or the spirit of Form, intervenes in its severe
precision, the less pure, the paler grow the colors, the nearer they
tend to the hue of marble, of the bas-relief. We thus find the purest
and brightest colors only in Fra Angelico's pictures, with a general
predominance of blue, which we have observed to prevail more or less in
so many of the Semi-Byzantine painters, and which, fanciful as it may
appear, I cannot but attribute, independently of mere tradition, to an
inherent, instinctive sympathy between their mental constitution and the
color in question; as that of red, or of blood, may be observed to
prevail among painters in whom Sense or Nature predominates over
Spirit--for in this, as in all things else, the moral and the material
world respond to each other as closely as shadow and substance. But, in
Painting as in Morals, perfection implies the due intervention of
Intellect between Spirit and Sense--of Form between Expression and
Coloring--as a power at once controlling and controlled--and therefore,
although acknowledging its fascination, I cannot unreservedly praise the
Coloring of Fra Angelico."--Vol. iii., pp. 193, 194.

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