oreshorten
your Christ, and paint Him, if you can, half putrefied,--that is the
scientific art of the Renaissance.

255. It is impossible, however, in so vast a subject to distinguish
always the beginner of things from the establisher. To the poulterer's
son, Pollajuolo, remains the eternal shame of first making insane
contest the only subject of art; but the two _establishers_ of anatomy
were Lionardo and Michael Angelo. You hear of Lionardo chiefly because
of his Last Supper, but Italy did not hear of him for that. This was not
what brought _her_ to worship Lionardo--but the Battle of the Standard.

V.

_Fragments on Holbein and others._

256. Of Holbein's St. Elizabeth, remember, she is not a perfect Saint
Elizabeth, by any means. She is an honest and sweet German lady,--the
best he could see; he could do no better;--and so I come back to my old
story,--no man can do better than he sees: if he can reach the nature
round him, it is well; he may fall short of it; he cannot rise above it;
"the best, in this kind, are but shadows."

* * * * *

Yet that intense veracity of Holbein is indeed the strength and glory of
all the northern schools. They exist only in being true. Their work
among men is the definition of what is, and the abiding by it. They
cannot dream of what is not. They make fools of themselves if they try.
Think how feeble even Shakspere is when he tries his hand at a
Goddess;--women, beautiful and womanly, as many as you choose; but who
cares what his Minerva or Juno says, in the masque of the Tempest? And
for the painters--when Sir Joshua tries for a Madonna, or Vandyke for a
Diana--they can't even _paint_! they become total simpletons. Look at
Rubens' mythologies in the Louvre, or at modern French heroics, or
German pietisms! Why, all--Cornelius, Hesse, Overbeck, and David--put
together, are not worth one De Hooghe of an old woman with a broom
sweeping a back-kitchen. The one thing we northerns can do is to find
out what is fact, and insist on it: mean fact it may be, or noble--but
fact always, or we die.

257. Yet the intensest form of northern realization can be matched in
the south, when the southerns choose. There are two pieces of animal
drawing in the Sistine Chapel unrivaled for literal veracity. The sheep
at the well in front of Zipporah; and afterwards, when she is going
away, leading her children, her