Page:The Obligations of the Universities Towards Art.djvu/33

 expression, till Art became a mere collection of tricks, the ashes of which, as a benefaction to the French Academy, Le Brun soon after scraped up from the floor of the defunct Italian schools.

Viollet le Duc proves beyond question that in France, a century before Art arose in Italy, it was cultivated, and attained extraordinary grace and power. I understand him to contend further that by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries certain sculpture decorating the exterior of Notre Dame de Paris, the cathedrals of Amiens and Sens, even excels Michael Angelo's work! The writer is in general such an astute and well-balanced theorist that it seems graceless to refuse to follow him to his end, but surprisingly living and beautiful as are some of the specimens of early statuary that he cites, both as to design and figure-form, they do not warrant comparison with the 'Madonna and Child' at Ghent or the 'Pietà' in St. Peter's. We end his instructive essay by asking what became of this wonderful vitality in early French Art. There was a distinct pause for a century, and then Italian artists were invited by the Court of France, and from that time to this there have arisen in France a few (and only a few) artists with any message of healthy sweetness to the world. Poussin and Watteau were certainly in differing modes among these highly endowed ones.

Thackeray notes the insatiable love of bloodshed which the French artists of his day exhibited; without murder in one form or another no layer on of paint or moulder of clay could hope to win a grand reputation; he extracts from the catalogue of the current salon