ddressing itself to the intelligence, on the one
side, or a merely poetical, or what may be called literary interest,
addressed also to the pure intelligence, on the other;--this is the way
of most spectators, and of many critics, who have never caught sight,
all the time, of that true pictorial quality which lies between (unique
pledge of the possession of the pictorial gift) the inventive or
creative handling of pure line and colour, which, as almost always in
Dutch painting, as often also in the works of Titian or Veronese, is
quite independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject it
accompanies. It is the drawing--the design projected from that peculiar
pictorial temperament or constitution, in which, while it may possibly
be ignorant of true anatomical proportions, all things whatever, all
poetry, every idea however abstract or obscure, floats up as a visible
scene, or image: it is the colouring--that weaving as of just
perceptible gold threads of light through the dress, the flesh, the
atmosphere, in Titian's Lace-girl--the staining of the whole fabric of
the thing with a new, delightful physical quality. This drawing,
then--the arabesque traced in the air by Tintoret's flying figures, by
Titian's forest branches; this colouring--the magic conditions of light
and hue in the atmosphere of Titian's Lace-girl, or Rubens's Descent
from the Cross--these essential pictorial qualities must first of all
delight the sense, delight it as directly and sensuously as a fragment
of Venetian glass; and through this delight only be the medium of
whatever poetry or science may lie beyond them, in the intention of the
composer. In its primary aspect, a great picture has no more definite
message for us than an accidental play of sunlight and shadow for a
moment, on the wall or floor: is itself, in truth, a space of such
fallen light, caught as the colours are caught in an Eastern carpet, but
refined upon, and dealt with more subtly and exquisitely than by nature
itself. And this primary and essential condition fulfilled, we may trace
the coming of poetry into painting, by fine gradations upwards; from
Japanese fan-painting, for instance, where we get, first, only abstract
colour; then, just a little interfused sense of the poetry of flowers;
then, sometimes, perfect flower-painting; and so, onwards, until in
Titian we have, as his poetry in the Ariadne, so actually a touch of
true childlike humour in the diminutive, quaint f