the stalk, but embrowned a little, as
Botticelli's flowers always are. Botticelli meant all that imagery to be
altogether pleasurable; and it was partly an incompleteness of
resources, inseparable from the art of that time, that subdued and
chilled it; but his predilection for minor tones counts also; and what
is unmistakable is the sadness with which he has conceived the goddess
of pleasure as the depository of a great power over the lives of men.

I have said that the peculiar character of Botticelli is the result of a
blending in him of a sympathy for humanity in its uncertain condition,
its attractiveness, its investiture at rarer moments in a character of
loveliness and energy, with his consciousness of the shadow upon it of
the great things from which it shrinks, and that this conveys into his
work somewhat more than painting usually attains of the true complexion
of humanity. He paints the story of the goddess of pleasure in other
episodes besides that of her birth from the sea, but never without some
shadow of death in the grey flesh and wan flowers. He paints Madonnas,
but they shrink from the pressure of the divine child, and plead in
unmistakable undertones for a warmer, lower humanity. The same
figure--tradition connects it with Simonetta, the mistress of Giuliano
de' Medici--appears again as Judith returning home across the hill
country when the great deed is over, and the moment of revulsion come,
and the olive branch in her hand is becoming a burthen; as Justice,
sitting on a throne, but with a fixed look of self-hatred which makes
the sword in her hand seem that of a suicide; and again as Veritas in
the allegorical picture of Calumnia, where one may note in passing the
suggestiveness of an accident which identifies the image of Truth with
the person of Venus. We might trace the same sentiment through his
engravings; but his share in them is doubtful, and the object of this
fragment has been attained if I have defined aright the temper in which
he worked.

But, after all, it may be asked, is a painter like Botticelli, a
second-rate painter, a proper subject for general criticism? There are a
few great painters, like Michael Angelo or Leonardo, whose work has
become a force in general culture, partly for this very reason that they
have absorbed into themselves all such workmen as Sandro Botticelli;
and, over and above mere technical or antiquarian criticism, general
criticism may be very well employed in