Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/292

258 It is the privilege of the painter that he can give the rein to his craving for endless elaboration of details (perhaps one ought to say, that he can comply with the most impossible demands of an ignorant donor) without sacrificing the general effect. The sight of this multitude of details fatigues us no more than the sight of reality itself. We only notice them if our attention has been directed to them, and we soon lose sight of them, so that they serve only to heighten effects of colouring or perspective.

When the same boundless passion for details is displayed in literature, the effect is quite different. In the first place, literature proceeds in another way; it sets itself to enumerate all the ideas and all the objects which the mind of the poet associates with his subject. Most of the authors of the fifteenth century are singularly prolix. They do not know the value of omission, they fill the canvas of their composition with all the details that present themselves, but without giving, as does painting, an accurate image of their particular features—they confine themselves to enumerating them. It is a strictly quantitative method, whereas that of painting is qualitative.

Another difference between the two modes of expression proceeds from the fact that the relation between the essential and the accidental is not the same in both. In painting we can hardly distinguish between principal and accessory elements. Everything is essential. The principal subject may be of no interest to the spectator or in his opinion badly rendered, without the work losing its charm, on that account. Unless the religious sentiment preponderates over æsthetic appreciation, the spectator before the altar-piece of the Lamb will regard with as much, perhaps with more profound emotion, the flowery field of the principal scene, the procession of adorers of the Lamb, the towers behind the trees in the background, as the central figures of the composition in their august divinity. His glance will stray from the rather uninteresting figures of God, the Virgin, and Saint John the Baptist, to those of Adam and Eve, to the portraits of the donors, to the charming perspective of the sunlit street and the little brass kettle with the towel. He will hardly ask if the mystery of the Eucharist has here found its most