any
that have that reputation will be found here, but rather to bring
together those that have produced a powerful impression on great minds.
Consequently, when the reader is disturbed at the omission of some
world-famous painting, I beg him to remember my plan and blame the great
writers instead of me for neglecting his favourite.

My task has not been a light one. A few words of rapturous admiration
are constantly to be met with in the pages of art-lovers, but a
sympathetic study of a single work is rarely found. General comment of a
given artist's work is also plentiful, while discriminating praise of
individual canvases is scanty. The literary selection has, therefore,
involved a great deal of research.

From time to time the relative popularity of painters shifts strangely,
but no matter what inconstant fashion may dictate, or what may be the
cult of the hour, certain paintings never lose their prestige, but
annually attract as many pilgrims as Lourdes or Fusi-San.

Of modern painters I have only included Turner and Rossetti.

It is interesting to compare the example I have chosen from Rossetti
with Leonardo's "Monna Lisa." Pater has admirably brought out, without
dwelling too much upon it, the charm that is eternal in her face as well
as the fantastic imagination of the great artist who created her for all
time. He says: "The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten
thousand experiences, is an old one.... Certainly Lady Lisa might stand
as the embodiment of the _old_ fancy, the symbol of the _modern_ idea."
In a similar sense Lilith the siren, the Lorelei, the eternal
enchantress, in her modern robe, is the embodiment of a _new_ fancy, the
symbol of the _ancient_ idea; and just here across four centuries the
thoughts of two great artists meet.

The types of beauty and women in this book offer no little suggestion to
the fancy. From Botticelli's "La Bella Simonetta," and Raphael's "La
Fornarina," through all the periods of painting the model has been a
great influence upon the painter's work, and upon this point nearly
every essayist and critic represented in these pages dwells. In many of
the essays, such as Pater's on Botticelli, and Swinburne's on Andrea del
Sarto, the author strays away from the painting to talk of the painter,
but in doing this he gives us so thoroughly the spirit of that painter
that a fuller light is thrown upon the picture before us.

I have included a few criticisms by modern