Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/212

 It is ever anatomy, an execution, a flaying scene; always some suffering, never an action of the hero, never an interest in the scene before you; always something for the fancy, some excitement accruing from without. Nothing but deeds of horror or convulsive sufferings, malefactors or fanatics, alongside of whom the artist, in order to save his art, invariably slips in a naked boy or a pretty damsel, as a spectator, in every case treating his spiritual heroes as little better than lay figures (Gliedermanner) on which to hang some beautiful mantle with its folds. In all there is nothing that suggests a human notion. Scarcely one subject in ten that ever ought to have been painted, and that one the painter has chosen to view from any but the right point of view.

Guido's great picture in the Church of the Mendicants is all that painting can do, but, at the same time, all that absurdity could task an artist with. It is a votive piece. I can well believe that the whole consistory praised it, and also that they devised it. The two angels, who were fit to console a Psyche in her misery, must here …

The St. Proclus is a beautiful figure, but the others—bishops and popes! Below are heavenly children playing with attributes. The painter, who had no choice left him, laboured to help himself as best he could. He exerted himself merely to show that he was not the barbarian. Two naked figures by Guido, a St. John in the Wilderness, a Sebastian—how exquisitely painted, and what do they say? The one is gaping and the other wriggling.

Were I to contemplate history in my present ill humour, I should say, faith revived art, but superstition immediately made itself master of it, and ground it to the dust.

After dinner, seeming somewhat of a milder temper, and less arrogantly disposed than in the morning, I