or are the signs of instantly or continually operative
affections; for though it is conceivable that spirit should suffer, it
is inconceivable that spiritual frame should retain like the stamped
inelastic human clay, the brand of sorrow past, unless fallen.

"His face,
Deep scars of thunder had entrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek."

Yet so far forth the angelic ideal is diminished, nor could this be
suffered in pictorial representation.

Sec. 17. Anatomical development how far admissible.

Again, such muscular development as is necessary to the perfect beauty
of the body, is to be rendered. But that which is necessary to strength,
or which appears to have been the result of laborious exercise, is
inadmissible. No herculean form is spiritual, for it is degrading the
spiritual creature to suppose it operative through impulse of bone and
sinew; its power is immaterial and constant, neither dependent on, nor
developed by exertion. Generally, it is well to conceal anatomical
development as far as may be; even Michael Angelo's anatomy interferes
with his divinity; in the hands of lower men the angel becomes a
preparation. How far it is possible to subdue or generalize the naked
form I venture not to affirm, but I believe that it is best to conceal
it as far as may be, not with draperies light and undulating, that fall
in with, and exhibit its principal lines, but with draperies severe and
linear, such as were constantly employed before the time of Raffaelle. I
recollect no single instance of a naked angel that does not look boylike
or child-like, and unspiritualized; even Fra Bartolomeo's might with
advantage be spared from the pictures at Lucca, and, in the hands of
inferior men, the sky is merely encumbered with sprawling infants; those
of Domenichino in the Madonna del Rosario, and Martyrdom of St. Agnes,
are peculiarly offensive, studies of bare-legged children howling and
kicking in volumes of smoke. Confusion seems to exist in the minds of
subsequent painters between Angels and Cupids.

Sec. 18. Symmetry. How valuable.

Farther, the qualities of symmetry and repose are of peculiar value in
spiritual form. We find the former most earnestly sought by all the
great painters in the arrangement of the hair, wherein no loosely
flowing nor varied form is admitted, but all restrained in undisturbed
and equal ringlets; often, as in the infant Christ