The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1879-09-11
IS Paint Mo-
ICornhlu Magazine. /

There can be no question that great
artists prefer, and are by instinct in
clined, to select great subjects rather
than small ones and it may shrewdly be
expected that the recognized superiority
of such artists as Raphael, Tintorretto,
and Leonardo is due in no small measure
to the superiority of the subjects upon
which they worked. We entertain no
doubt that had the sixteenth century
been a century as truly democratic as
our Own--that is to say, a century IN
which The many We're as influential as
they are now-they would not have en-
couraged the artists we have named to
select for treatment the subjects they, as
a fact, did select. They would have
compelled them to paint something that
came home more directly, and more
strongly to their sympathies.
They were not consulted, and the artist
was left either to his own inspiration
solely, or to his own inspiration sec
onded by suggestions of some Pope
Doge, Emperor, or Podesto, whose tastes
and wishes were pretty similar to his
own. The many were not taken into con-
sultation as to what should be painted; !;
they were only told to admire something
which had already been painted. 1t
never occurred to them, for moment,
that the artist should paint the incidents
of their own daily life. Such an idea
would have savored of intolerable pre-
sumption. Pictures, and such like lux
uries, were not for common folks, but for
holy fathers, crowned heads, municipali-
ties churches, monasteries, and the great
ones of the earth.
Hence, the people who painted the pic
lures painted such as glorified royalty,
extolled heaven, hattered opulent cities,
or drew devout crowds to the foot of
celebrated affairs. The Virgin was being
lifted up to the throne of her Son on the
feet of clouds Or on the wings of angels.
Jehovah was hurting the blasphemer and
the riotous into the eternal abysses of
he'll. Constantine was triumphing over
Maxentius and driving his heretcal le-
gions into the Tiber. Paul was proclaim
ing the Gospel of the carpenters Son to
the self satisfied philosophers of Athens.
st. Francis, st. Dominic, st. Benedict,
each had his crowd of attendant artists,
because at Assist, at Subiaeo, at Monte
Casino, lived powerful patrons in cowl
and tonsure. TO Perugino it mattered
not whether his patron was the head
of the Augustinian friars, or the
spirited corporation which COM
mssloned him to cover the walls
of the Sala del Cambio with
idealized representations of Justice, Tenn
perance and Prudence, personified by
Trajan, Leonidas and Numa Pompilius.
He knew the more he allowed his imagi-
nation to soar the better he should salts
fly his reverend good masters. If he stuck
the portrait of patron into the corner
of an enormous canvas covered with
saints and martyrs, and represented him
as a subordinate and insignificant person.
age, kneeling afar off, and as if praying
excuse for being there at all, the patron
was satisfied. Now, if the patron of an
artist (some master of hounds, or pro-
fessor of omniscience, of the perod) is
painted, it is not as an accessory, but as
principal. paint meW is the order;
"and paint me as like me as you possibly
can. My family do not want work of
imagination. They want me in my best
clothes, and with my favorite smirk, or
in my most commanding attitude"