Matter and manner cannot really be separated in any vital art. Form and spirit become fused in all its highest, even in all its genuine shapes.
“Sir Galahad”
By G. F. Watts, R.A.
Mr. Chesterton rather steps aside in one place to poke fun at Allegory (as I note literary men are, curiously enough, prone to do), although elsewhere he appears to admit that it has its due place and value in art, and he grows enthusiastic over Mr. Watts’s use of it.
But that is just the crux. Everything is in the artist’s use and treatment.
There is allegory and allegory. In its highest form it is a species of poetry, in its lowest it becomes a catalogue. We may go to Cesare Ripa and get a recipe for the correct make-up of any virtue we wish to symbolize. Fedelta (Fidelity), for instance, is given, “Donna vestita di bianco, colla destra mane tiene una chiave, ed ha alii piedi un cane.” Well, there you are—but it all depends upon the artist whether the emblem represents each item in the crudest form, or becomes a really fine design, full of refinement and inner meaning. To appreciate the allegory of a past age one must be able to read oneself into its spirit. The Allegories of Botticelli seem to belong to a different world from those of Rubens, and appeal to a different mood and even order of mind. I quite agree with Mr. Chesterton that a lady in classical drapery and a cornucopia, or caduceus, would quite inadequately represent modern commerce. (A bull and a bear playing see-saw across the globe would be nearer the mark, perhaps!) But the lady might have a place in a decorative composition, symbolizing things in the abstract, when beauty of treatment is again all-important. The spirit of Spenser’s “Faerie Queene” is more painter-like in allegory (which is always in Spenser perfectly definite) than that of any other writer, and it is perfectly blended with poetic and imaginative feeling, just as in a painted allegory the matter of it should be inseparable from its form.
“Hope”
By G. F. Watts, R.A.