embroidered, clothed as might be the happy spirits who rejoice in the
eternal light of Paradise. If there be paintings in Heaven, surely they
must resemble those of Fra Angelico.

_Guide de l'Amateur au Musée du Louvre_ (Paris, 1882).




JUDITH

(_SANDRO BOTTICELLI_)

MAURICE HEWLETT


In the days when it was verging on a question whether a man could be at
the same time a good Christian and an artist the chosen subjects of
painting were significant of the approaching crisis--those glaring moral
contrasts in history which, for want of a happier term, we call
dramatic. Why this was so, whether Art took a hint from Politics, or had
withdrawn her more intimate manifestations to await likelier times, is a
question it were long to answer. The subjects, at any rate, were such as
the Greeks, with their surer instincts and saving grace of sanity in
matters of this kind, either forbore to meddle with or treated as
decoratively as they treated acanthus-wreaths. To-day we call them
"effective" subjects; we find they produce shocks and tremors; we think
it braces us to shudder, and we think that Art is a kind of emotional
pill; we measure it quantitatively, and say that we "know what we like."
And doubtless there is something piquant in the quivering produced, for