Page:The Obligations of the Universities Towards Art.djvu/46

 The custom of appointing gentlemen on committees of public taste, who have gone through no system of education to guard them against false conclusions, is too often disastrous, as has been proved many times over in the treatment of the best sites in London, notably in the case of Trafalgar Square.

You might imagine that the difficulty of selecting the proper artists to execute public works would be overcome by a public competition, as it was in Italian days. The answer is that meretricious art had not then been invented. The umpires had simply to judge between one class of honest workmanship and another. It was easy to prefer Giotto to Cimabue, Ghiberti to Brunelleschi, Michael Angelo to Bandinelli, but even then a love of fixed rule was beginning in dilettanti minds, and when once a receipt had been made for piety of expression, a patent established for grace, and a fashion for display of bravura, no one has since more readily gone astray than the magnates of Italy did. When Guido, the Caracci, Spagnoletto, Murillo, and Carlo Dolci appeared, their works were hailed as of the highest genius.

Evelyn, as a polished English gentleman of his time, best serves our purpose here. He gained great glory by introducing Grinling Gibbons, who, though a consummate wood-carver, was but a designer of the most finicking order. Further, this amateur displayed his taste by declaring, on an inspection of Verrio's pictures at Windsor, that they were 'incomparable'; adding, '"The Resurrection" in the chapel is in my opinion comparable to any painting of the famous Roman master. "The