might flippantly compare to sausage, or a Flemish smoothness, indicating
Calvaert's influence. More than this, Guercino possessed a harmony of
tones peculiar to himself, and strongly contrasted with Guido's
silver-gray gradations. Guido's coloring, at its best, often reminds one
of olive branches set against a blue sea and pale horizon in faintly
amber morning light. The empurpled indigoes, relieved by smouldering
Venetian red, which Guercino loved, suggest thunder-clouds, dispersed,
rolling away through dun subdued glare of sunset reflected upward from
the west. And this scheme of color, vivid but heavy, luminous but
sullen, corresponded to what contemporaries called the Terribilita of
Guercino's conception. Terribleness was a word which came into vogue to
describe Michelangelo's grand manner. It implied audacity of
imagination, dashing draughtsmanship, colossal scale, something demonic
and decisive in execution.[233] The terrible takes in Guercino's work
far lower flights than in the Sistine Chapel. With Michelangelo it
soared like an eagle; with Guercino it flitted like a bat. His brawny
saints are ponderous, not awe-inspiring.

[Footnote 233: But the men who used the word failed to perceive that
what justified these qualities in Michelangelo's work was piercing,
poignant, spiritual passion, of which their age had nothing.]

Yet we feel that the man loved largeness, massiveness, and volume; that
he was preoccupied with intellectual problems; planning deeply, and
constructing strongly, under conditions unfavorable to spiritual
freedom.

Guercino lived the life of an anchorite, absorbed in studies, unwived,
sober, pious, truthful, sincere in his commerce with the world,
unaffectedly virtuous, devoted to his art and God. Some of his pictures
bring forcibly before our minds the religious _milieu_ created by the
Catholic Revival. I will take the single instance of a large
oil-painting in the Bolognese Gallery. It represents the reception of a
Duke of Aquitaine into monastic orders by S. Bernard. The knightly
quality of the hero is adequately portrayed; his piety is masculine. But
an accessory to the main subject of the composition arrests attention. A
monk, earnestly pleading, emphatically gesticulating, addresses himself
to the task of converting a young squire. Perugino, or even Raphael,
would have brought the scene quite otherwise before us. The Duke's
consecration would of course have occupied a commanding place in