Page:Woman in Art.djvu/72

WOMAN IN ART attachments, more or less of the earth, earthy, and more becoming to cherubs than to women. To mankind of our century the angelic in womanhood consists in attributes of soul rather than in featrered [sic] appendages by which

Our souls can neither fly nor go

To reach eternal joys."

There were years that seemed to require a visible manifestation of spirit and sainthood; not having printed examples and precepts, they needed something to stimulate the spirit.

Everything has its place in the economy of human development. Fra Angelico, the last and greatest Renaissance painter of symbols, had less need to characterize his angels with wings than had others, for he expressed the angelic soul in the angels that have immortalized his name. We know the man so well in his handiwork, that it verifies a truism by Ruskin.

"You may read the character of a man as of a nation, in their art. A man may hide from you himself, or misrepresent in every other way, but he cannot in his work; there be sure you have him to the inmost.

"If the work be a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider; if a honeycomb, you know a bee fashioned the perfect cells; a worm-cast is thrown by a worm, and a nest is wreathed by a bird."

There you have the open secret for him who having eyes sees the man or the creature in his work. It is the hallmark of soul, of mind, of instinct.

Fra Angelico had his conception of how an angel of pure love and spirituality might look if in rapt adoration her soul were poured out in praise. His angels, musical and adoring, on the walls of San Marco, must have exerted a sweet and purifying influence on the Brotherhood; even the brilliancy of drapery with gold and silver accessories, such as borders and wings, must have added greatly to the somber walls, otherwise devoid of color and beauty.

Few of the Renaissance painters used brush and pigment according to fancy. Their patrons were almost entirely of the clergy and fraternities. Little was done by way of embellishment on secular subjects till the reign of the Medici in Florence, and Julius II, in Rome. Mythology and meager facts of profane history served as subjects now and then—and some were very profane. Woman was dominant in the art of that period and the reason is obvious.

When we speak of woman as art motif, the implication is that she figured in art expression other than easel pictures, portraits and what we may call literature in art. We have considered her as a motif in sculpture and in Michael 52