256. On all the general principles of Art, Mr. Tyrwhitt and I are absolutely at one; but he has often the better of me in his acute personal knowledge of men and their ways. When we differ in our thoughts of things, it is because we know them on contrary sides; and often his side is that most naturally seen, and which it is most desirable to see. There is one important matter, for instance, on which we are thus apparently at issue, and yet are not so in reality. These lectures show, throughout, the most beautiful and just reverence for Michael Angelo, and are of especial value in their account of him; while the last lecture on Sculpture,[16] which I gave at Oxford, is entirely devoted to examining the modes in which his genius failed, and perverted that of other men. But Michael Angelo is great enough to make praise and blame alike necessary, and alike inadequate, in any true record of him. My friend sees him as a traveler sees from a distance some noble mountain range, obscure in golden clouds and purple shade; and I see him as a sullen miner would the same mountains, wandering among their precipices through chill of storm and snow, and discerning that their strength was perilous and their substance sterile. Both of us see truly, both partially; the complete truth is the witness of both.
257. The notices of Holbein, and the English whom he painted (see especially the sketch of Sir Thomas Wyatt in the sixth lecture), are to my mind of singular value, and the tenor of the book throughout, as far as I can judge—for, as I said, much of it treats of subjects with which I am unfamiliar—so sound, and the feeling in it so warm and true, and true in the warmth of it, that it refreshes me like the sight of the things themselves it speaks of. New and vivid sight of them it will give to many readers; and to all who will regard my commendation I commend it; asking those who have hitherto credited my teaching to read these lectures as they would my own; and trusting that others, who have doubted me, will see reason to put faith in my friend.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] Preface to the above-named book, by the Rev. St. John Tyrwhitt. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1872.—Ed.
[16] See Mr. Ruskin's pamphlet on "The Relation of Michael Angelo to Tintoret," being (although separately printed) the seventh lecture of the course (1872) published as Aratra Pentelici—Ed.
ART SCHOOLS OF MEDIÆVAL CHRISTENDOM.[17]
A PREFACE.
258. The number of British and American travelers who take unaffected interest in the early art of Europe is already large, and is daily increasing; daily also, as I thankfully perceive, feeling themselves more and more in need of a guidebook containing as much trustworthy indication as they can use of what they may most rationally spend their time in examining. The books of reference published by Mr. Murray, though of extreme value to travelers, who make it their object to see (in his, and their, sense of the word) whatever is to be seen, are of none whatever, or may perhaps be considered, justly, as even of quite the reverse of value, to travelers who wish to see only what they may in simplicity understand, and with pleasure remember; while the histories of art, and biographies of artists, to which the more earnest student in his novitiate must have recourse, are at once so voluminous, so vague, and so contradictory, that I cannot myself conceive his deriving any other benefit from their study than a deep conviction of the difficulty of the subject, and of the incertitude of human opinions.