“It is a great error on their part.
“What is commonly called ugliness in nature can in art become full of great beauty.
“In the domain of fact we call ugly whatever is deformed, whatever is unhealthy, whatever suggests the idea of disease, of debility, or of suffering, whatever is contrary to regularity, which is the sign and condition of health and strength: a hunchback is ugly, one who is bandy-legged is ugly, poverty in rags is ugly.
Sebastian, Fool of Philip IV
By Velasquez
“Ugly also are the soul and the conduct of the immoral man, of the vicious and criminal man, of the abnormal man who is harmful to society; ugly the soul of the parricide, of the traitor, of the unscrupulously ambitious.
“And it is right that beings and objects from which we can expect only evil should be called by such an odious epithet. But let a great artist or a great writer make use of one or the other of these uglinesses, instantly it is transfigured: with a touch of his fairy wand he has turned it into beauty; it is alchemy; it is enchantment!
“Let Velasquez paint Sebastian, the dwarf of Philippe IV. He endows him with such a touching gaze that we instantly read in it all the painful secret of this poor afflicted creature, forced, for his livelihood, to lower his human dignity, to become a plaything, a living bauble. And the more poignant the martyrdom of the conscience lodged in this grotesque body, the more beautiful is the artist’s work.
“Let François Millet represent a peasant resting for a moment as he leans on the handle of his hoe, a wretched man worn by fatigue, baked by the sun, as stupid as a beast of burden dulled by blows—he has only to put into the expression of this poor devil a sublime resignation to the suffering ordained by Destiny, to make this creature of a nightmare become for us the great symbol of all Humanity.
“Let Beaudelaire describe a festering corpse, unclean, viscid, eaten by worms, and let him but imagine his beloved mistress under this frightful aspect, and nothing can equal in splendor his picture of this terrible juxtaposition of beauty which we could wish eternal and the atrocious disintegration which awaits it.