. Great pictures, as seen and described by famous writers. l these his charm of touch,his sweetness of execution, his Elysian beauty, melancholygrace, outlived, and blossomed in their dust. Turn fromthat cloistral series to those later pictures, painted when hewas faultless and nothing more; and seeing all thegrowth and all the gain, all the change and all the loss, oneto whom the second was unknown would feel and foreknowhis story and his sorrow. In the cloister, what life andfullness of growing and strengthening genius, what joyoussense of its growth and the fair field before it, whatdramati
. Great pictures, as seen and described by famous writers. l these his charm of touch,his sweetness of execution, his Elysian beauty, melancholygrace, outlived, and blossomed in their dust. Turn fromthat cloistral series to those later pictures, painted when hewas faultless and nothing more; and seeing all thegrowth and all the gain, all the change and all the loss, oneto whom the second was unknown would feel and foreknowhis story and his sorrow. In the cloister, what life andfullness of growing and strengthening genius, what joyoussense of its growth and the fair field before it, whatdramatic delight in character and action! where St. Johnpreaches in the wilderness and the few first listeners aregathered together at his feet, old people and poor, soul-stricken, silent — women with worn still faces, and a spiritin their tired aged eyes that feeds heartily and hungrily onhis words — all the haggard funereal group filled from thefountain of his faith with gradual fire and white-heat ofsoul; or where Salome dances before Herod, an incarnate. Q <3O ^ X ^ DANCE OF THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS 95 figure of music, grave and graceful, light and glad, the songof a bird made flesh, with perfect poise of her sweet slightbody from the maiden face to the melodious feet; notyrannous or treacherous goddess of deadly beauty, but asimple virgin, with the cold charm of girlhood and themobile charm of childhood; as indifferent and innocentwhen she stands before Herodias and when she receives thesevered head of John with her slender and steady hands; apure bright animal, knowing nothing of man, and of lifenothing but instinct and motion. In her mothers matureand conscious beauty there is visible the voluptuous will of aharlot and a queen ; but, for herself, she has neither malicenor pity ; her beauty is a maiden force of nature, capableof bloodshed without bloodguiltiness ; the King hangs uponthe music of her movement, the rhythm of leaping life inher fair fleet limbs, as one who l
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookpublish, booksubjectpainting
