Is not art difficult, you will say to me, in such surroundings as
these? Of course it is difficult, but then art was never easy; you
yourselves would not wish it to be easy; and, besides, nothing is
worth doing except what the world says is impossible.
Still, you do not care to be answered merely by a paradox. What
are the relations of the artist to the external world, and what is
the result of the loss of beautiful surroundings to you, is one of
the most important questions of modern art; and there is no point
on which Mr. Ruskin so insists as that the decadence of art has
come from the decadence of beautiful things; and that when the
artist cannot feed his eye on beauty, beauty goes from his work.
I remember in one of his lectures, after describing the sordid
aspect of a great English city, he draws for us a picture of what
were the artistic surroundings long ago.
Think, he says, in words of perfect and picturesque imagery, whose
beauty I can but feebly echo, think of what was the scene which
presented itself, in his afternoon walk, to a designer of the
Gothic school of Pisa - Nino Pisano or any of his men (22):
On each side of a bright river he saw rise a line of brighter
palaces, arched and pillared, and inlaid with deep red porphyry,
and with serpentine; along the quays before their gates were riding
troops of knights, noble in face and form, dazzling in crest and
shield; horse and man one labyrinth of quaint colour and gleaming
light - the purple, and silver, and scarlet fringes flowing over
the strong limbs and clashing mall, like sea-waves over rocks at
sunset.
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