Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/235

 visit and inspect the paintings of sacred subjects which may stand in the public places of Seville, and if anything objectionable appeared in them, to take them before the Inquisition." His rules, therefore, may properly be received as a fair exponent of the strictures placed upon Art by the Inquisition. In his work upon the Art of Painting, Pacheco censures the nudity of the figures in Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, as well as other things. Thus he says: "As to placing the damned in the air, fighting as they are one with another, and pulling against the devils, when it is matter of faith that they must want the free gifts of glory, and cannot, therefore, possess the requisite lightness or agility—the impropriety of this mode of exhibiting them is self-evident. With regard, again, to the angels without wings and the saints without clothes, although the former do not possess the one and the latter will not have the other, yet, as angels without wings are unknown to us, and our eyes do not allow us to see the saints without clothes, as we shall hereafter—there can be no doubt, that this again is improper. It is moreover, highly indecent and improper, having regard to their nature, to paint angels with beards."

On the general question of how an artist is to acquire sufficient skill in the figure, without exposing himself to risks which the Inspector of the Inquisition is bound to deprecate, Pacheco is somewhat embarrassed. "I seem," he says. "to hear some one asking me, 'Senor Painter, scrupulous as you