The Conservative. (M'connelsville, Ohio) 1866-1871, 1870-09-02
Seleetre MiseeIIanp.
THE POWER OF A oHILD's FACE.
pr REY. 7. pa WIZ TALMAaR

He wants to see Poussin and Cofregeio as
certainly as Ben Lomond and the Spiugen
Pass.
If he happen frst to look in upon the
picture-gailery of Holyrood, where the
faces of o hundred Scottish kings are hung,
his first feeling viii be one of gladness thst
they are all dead, for such another villain
oRs brood of faces no man ever 1ooked
upon. Such eyes, such mouths, such
noses, would confound any rogues- gallery
in any CITY. We believe the whole gallery
a slander by Flemish master, and that
Scotland never had any such afro
cious men or women TO rule over her. We
say, nothing against homely features IN the
abstract. Amy man has an inaienable
right to carry such nose as he viii. That
is a right patent on the face of it Lord
Wellington had hooked nose, and Thaek-
eray 8 turn-up nose, and Robert Bruce a
nose all over the face: but to have nose
that looks as if intended to be thrust into
everybody else's business, or to be stuck
M in scorp. or to blossom with dlsslpa-
tions. or to snuff at the cause of virtue
we protest against any mans right to carry
such an infamous probosciss We are GER
tain that no such looking faces as we see
in Holyrood ought to have been perpetuated
bya master. Let the extinct species OF
such megatheriums never hear the clang OF
the crowbar. 1t is not fair that the Royal
College of Surgeons should keep the cancer
Of which Napoleon died. There should be
no immortality of cancers.
But.no one can forget Che place, or the
day, orsthe hour, when he first gaZed on q
genuine work of one of the old masters
We had seen for years pieces of canvas
which pretended to have come from Italy
or Germany, and to be three or four hum
dred wears old. The chief glory of them
was that they were cracked, and vrlnkled,
and dull, and inexplicable, and had great
antiquity of varnish, immensity of daub,
and infnity of botch. The great-grand-
father of the exhibitor got the heirloom
from a Portuguese peddler, who was
wrecked at Venice in the middle ef the last
century, and went ashore just as one OF the
% descendants of the celebrated Braggadecla
Thundergusto, of the fourteenth century,
was hard up for money, and must have
drink or die.
But find in my diary this record:
June 30th, 1870, at two O'Clock P. m >
in the National Gallery of Scotland, l first
saw Titan.
July 9th. 1870, at ten minutes of three
O'Clock, in the National Gallery Of England,
first saw sMurillo.'
1t seemed to require sacred subject to
Gallon the genius of the old masters. On
secular themes they often fail. They
knew not, as do the moderns, how to pl1ck
up plant from the earth and make II i've
on canvas. Delmonlco, for the adornment
of a shoulder of bacon, with his knife cuts
out of a red beet rose more natural than
the foreet-ue-not of old SigiSmond Hol-
bein, or the lily by Lo Spagna. Their bat
tie pieces are a Cincinnati slaughter-house.
Their cupid scenes are merely nursery of
babies that rush out from the bath-tub
into TIE hall before their mother has time
to dress them. The masters failed with
fiddle, but shook the earth wltha dIapason.
Give them "Crucifxion," or 'Judg-
ment," and they triumph.
Indeed. when men paint or write or net
from the heart, they are potent. By the
time that thought, starting from the ar
lists brain. can come down through the
neck into the shoulder, and through the
right arm to the fingers, and of the finger
TIPS to the point of the pencil, it has lost
its momentum, and languishes on the can
vas: but a thought that starts from the
brain, and streams to the heart, there to be
taken with strong throb, and as by the
stroke OF piston, forced through the arm
to the canvas, arrives unspent and re-
doubled. The old masters succeeded not
in depicting what they thought so-well as
in what they felt Thoughts are often
hard, and green, and tough, till the warm
sunshine of the heart ripens them.
Most of the ancient artists tried their;
hand at the Virgin and the Child always
evidencing their own nationality In the
tyle of infantils beauty selected. The
Dutch school gives Dutch child, the Ro--
man school Roman child, the Spanish
sehooi a Spanish child Rubens Christ
was not born at Bethlehem, but at Ant
werp. And as parents are not apt to un-
deryalue their children, it is probable that
they took the model which sat In their own
nursery. gathering around it their own
ideal of the infant Jesus. Francesca Tao
conf represents the holy Child as very
thoughtful, young philosopher
at one year of age, with
verv red hair. Vivarini gives US startled
child. Duccio paints for us child Wrap-
ned up in admiration of its mother. But
Io Spagna gives us the LOOK OF q glad child
that would romp if it were not afraid of
humping out of the picture. Why not
glad child The. burdens had not yet
rolled over on him. Those were good days
to him. Joseph and Mary walked ana
trudged. but ne always had SOFT carnage
to ride in that of his mothers bosom. ne
had enoughto wear, for he was wrapped
Ia swaddling clothes. He probably had
enough to eat, for mothers IN those days
were not pinched to death with corsets and
so the child need not 60 outside oflts moth
er's arms for abundant supply.
But any pleasant afternoon when the
children OF New York are out taking an air
ing, could find score. of infant faces
more like Jesus than any have seen on
ancient canvas Perhaps, after while, an
American artist will give Us the Virgin and
the Child. It would be more apt to be
impartial than that of.any of the aneients.
They put Their own nationality into the
picture. and it was q German Christ, or a
Venetian Christ, or q Tuscan Christ; but
the American, having in him the blood OF
many lands, and in his face commingbDg
of the{eatures of all nations, when he gives
Us upon canvas Mary and the Child, it
will be q worlds affection bending over q
worlds Christ.
Not only in the Madonnas, but in nearly
all the chief pictures, the painters show
their liking for children. You see child
peeping out somewhere. 1t there IS no
other way 10 get him into the picture, Faul
Veronese will slide him down Ia the shape
of cAerub on plank Of sunbeams.
You would hardly expect children IN
haDndolB 8 r1SteE auu oOuu 7hOo1AAb S-1O
Lame Man. You expect that the majesty
of the scene will crowd out all familiarities
You would say that children ought to get
out of the way when such exciting work is
Going on. There lies lamem his hand
in the hand of the apostle. The sufferer
looks up with face that has an
cuish seorched into every feature; for
though born 9 cripple, he had never
got used to it. No man that ever saw
before wanted SO much to get we'll Hls
twisted foot no human doctor could
sfraighten. The muscles that bound 1t on
the wrong side might have been cut, but
the muscles on the other side would not
have drawn it back to the right place.
There lay the helpless, distorted foot,
making its dumb prayer Yonder is an
other deformed beggar hobbling up. II
Peter is successful with the first case, this
lame man would like to have his limbs
looked at. Still, he is not anxious. He is
angry with the world and angry with heav.
en-. His manner seems to say: .tHeT