The collectors of Gerard Dows and
Hobbimas may be passed by with a smile; and the affectations of
Walpole and simplicities of Vasari[48] dismissed with contempt or with
compassion. But very different men from these have held precisely the
same language; and, one amongst the rest, whose authority is
absolutely, and in all points, overwhelming.
There was probably never a period in which the influence of art over
the minds of men seemed to depend less on its merely _imitative_
power, than the close of the thirteenth century. No painting or
sculpture at that time reached more than a rude resemblance of
reality. Its despised perspective, imperfect chiaroscuro, and
unrestrained flights of fantastic imagination, separated the artist's
work from nature by an interval which there was no attempt to
disguise, and little to diminish. And yet, at this very period, the
greatest poet of that, or perhaps of any other age, and the attached
friend of its greatest painter,[49] who must over and over again have
held full and free conversation with him respecting the objects of his
art, speaks in the following terms of painting, supposed to be carried
to its highest perfection:
Qual di pennel fu maestro, e di stile
Che ritraesse l'ombre, e i tratti, chi' ivi
Mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile?
Morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi:
Non vide me' di me, chi vide il vero,
Quant' io calcai, fin che chinato givi.
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