k skies. You may not at first like the
Tuscan best; and why she is the best, though both are noble, again I
must defer explaining to next lecture. But now turn back to Bewick's
Venus, and compare her with the Tuscan Venus of the Stars, (Plate II.);
and then here, in Plate VI., with the Tuscan Venus of the Seas, and the
Greek Venus of the Sky. Why is the English one vulgar? What is it, in
the three others, which makes them, if not beautiful, at least
refined?--every one of them 'designed' and drawn, indisputably, by a
gentleman?

I never have been so puzzled by any subject of analysis as, for these
ten years, I have been by this. Every answer I give, however plausible
it seems at first, fails in some way, or in some cases. But there is
the point for you, more definitely put, I think, than in any of my
former books;--at present, for want of time, I must leave it to your own
thoughts.

163. II. The second influence under which engraving developed itself, I
said, was that of medicine and the physical sciences. Gentlemen, the
most audacious, and the most valuable, statement which I have yet made
to you on the subject of practical art, in these rooms, is that of the
evil resulting from the study of anatomy. It is a statement so
audacious, that not only for some time I dared not make it to you, but
for ten years, at least, I dared not make it to myself. I saw, indeed,
that whoever studied anatomy was in a measure injured by it; but I kept
attributing the mischief to secondary causes. It _can't_ be this drink
itself that poisons them, I said always. This drink is medicinal and
strengthening: I see that it kills them, but it must be because they
drink it cold when they have been hot, or they take something else with
it that changes it into poison. The drink itself _must_ be good. Well,
gentlemen, I found out the drink itself to be poison at last, by the
breaking of my choicest Venice glass. I could not make out what it was
that had killed Tintoret, and laid it long to the charge of chiaroscuro.
It was only after my thorough study of his Paradise, in 1870, that I
gave up this idea, finding the chiaroscuro, which I had thought
exaggerated, was, in all original and undarkened passages, beautiful and
most precious. And then at last I got hold of the true clue: "Il disegno
di Michel Agnolo." And the moment I had dared to accuse that, it
explained everything; and I saw that the betraying demons of Italian
art, led on by Michael Ange