sufficient. Have we not the man complete in his work? What more could we
wish?

Jouin, _Chefs-d'oeuvre: Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture_
(Paris, 1895-97).




THE DANCE OF THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS

(_ANDREA DEL SARTO_)

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE


With the majestic and tragic things of art we began, at the landmarks
set by Leonardo and Michael Angelo; and are come now, not quite at
random, to the lyric and elegiac loveliness of Andrea del Sarto. To
praise him would need sweeter and purer speech than this of ours. His
art is to me as the Tuscan April in its temperate days, fresh and tender
and clear, but lulled and kindled by such air and light as fills the
life of the growing year with fire. At Florence only can one trace and
tell how great a painter and how various he was. There only, but surely
there, can the influence and pressure of the things of time on his
immortal spirit be understood; how much of him was killed or changed,
how much of him could not be. There are the first-fruits of his
flowering manhood, when the bright and buoyant genius in him had free
play and large delight in its handiwork; when the fresh interest of
invention was still his, and the dramatic sense, the pleasure in the