in the work of his hands. This agitation, this perpetual delay, give him an air of weariness and ennui. To others he seems to be aiming at an impossible effect, to do something that art, that painting, can never do. Often the expression of physical beauty at this or that point seems strained and marred in the effort, as in those heavy German foreheads—too heavy and German for perfect beauty.
For there was a touch of Germany in that genius which, as Goethe said, had 'müde sich gedacht,' thought itself weary. What an anticipation of modern Germany, for instance, in that debate on the question whether sculpture or painting is the nobler art[1]. But there is this difference between him and the German, that, with all that curious science, the German would have thought nothing more was needed; and the name of Goethe himself reminds one how great for the artist may be the danger of over-much science; how Goethe, who, in the Elective Affinities and the first part of 'Faust,' does transmute ideas into images, who wrought many such transmutations, did not invariably find the spell-word, and in the second part of 'Faust' presents us with a mass of science which has no
- ↑ How princely, how characteristic of Lionardo, the answer, 'Quanto più, un' arte porta seco fatica di corpo, tanto più è vile!'
