Then the third attribute of the best art is that it compels you to think of the spirit of the creature, and therefore of its face, more than of its body.
And the fourth is that in the face you shall be led to see only beauty or joy;—never vileness, vice, or pain.
Those are the four essentials of the greatest art. I repeat them, they are easily learned.
1. Faultless and permanent workmanship.
2. Serenity in state or action.
3. The Face principal, not the body.
4. And the Face free from either vice or pain.
221. It is not possible, of course, always literally to observe the second condition, that there shall be quiet action or none; but Bellini's treatment of violence in action you may see exemplified in a notable way in his St. Peter Martyr. The soldier is indeed striking the sword down into his breast; but in the face of the Saint is only resignation, and faintness of death, not pain—that of the executioner is impassive; and, while a painter of the later schools would have covered breast and sword with blood, Bellini allows no stain of it; but pleases himself by the most elaborate and exquisite painting of a soft crimson feather in the executioner's helmet.
222. Now the changes brought about by Michael Angelo—and permitted, or persisted in calamitously, by Tintoret—are in the four points these:
1st. Bad workmanship.