properly expressed in plastic form, harmonious and pleasing? And supposing
that the artist should abandon the attempt to exclude ugliness and
discord, pain and confusion, from his representation of the _Dies Irae_,
how could he succeed in setting forth by the sole medium of the human
body the anxiety and anguish of the soul at such a time? The physical
form, instead of being adequate to the ideas expressed, and therefore
helpful to the artist, is a positive embarrassment, a source of weakness.
The most powerful pictorial or sculpturesque delineation of the Judgment,
when compared with the pangs inflicted on the spirit by a guilty
conscience, pangs whereof words may render some account, but which can
find no analogue in writhings of the limbs or face, must of necessity be
found a failure. Still more impossible, if we pursue this train of thought
into another region, is it for the figurative arts to approach the
Christian conception of God in His omnipotence and unity. Christ Himself,
the central figure of the Christian universe, the desired of all nations,
in whom the Deity assumed a human form and dwelt with men, is no fit
subject for such art at any rate as the Greeks had perfected. The fact of
His incarnation brought Him indeed within the proper sphere of the fine
arts; but the religious idea which He represents removed Him beyond the
reach of sculpture. This is an all-important consideration. It is to this
that our whole argument is tending. Therefore to enlarge upon this point
will not be useless.

Christ is specially adored in His last act of love on Calvary; and how
impossible it is to set that forth consistently with the requirements of
strictly plastic art, may be gathered by comparing the passion of S.
Bernard's Hymn to our Lord upon the Cross with all that Winckelmann and
Hegel have so truly said about the restrained expression, dignified
generality, and harmonious beauty essential to sculpture. It is the
negation of tranquillity, the excess of feeling, the absence of