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Untitled Article
feel the pain they paint , while the opposite error has led to his adornment with the common-place attributes of pictorial divinity * , presenting an apotheosis which belongs neither to Christendom nor Heathendom * Perfect painting and theological truth come to the same point in reference to the person of Christ . All that can be done , and all that can be wished , " is to pourtray such a form and lineaments as shall excite the associations of humanity trained to
the highest degree of wisdom and moral excellence , and endowed with supernatural power . When the painter endeavours to g <> beyond this , he shows on canvass that which has often existed in life—nature struggling against orthodoxy . He cannot paint art incarnate God , on the Christian notion of Deity : all that he can produce is a Heathen divinity . The senseless colours and the unyielding canvass protest against the incongruous dogma of his theology , and refuse to take even from the hand of genius ks false and unnatural inscription .
The Saviour in infancy is & not less difficult subject , perhaps more so , than the mature Christ , the crucified , or the glorified Christ . In the man , the assumed physical indications of Godhead , and those of prophetic inspiration , are , to a certain extent , the same . Those of the latter , being bounded by human intelligence , cannot be thrown back upon childhood except in an inferior de ^ gree ; -but orthodoxy requires that those of the former should be ^
as complete in the baby as in the man . On that theory , the child in the manger , or on Mary ' s lap , is an incarnate God ; and Christ working miracles , transfigured on Mount Tabor , or on the throne of judgment , is no more . Accordingly , most of the infant Christs « re full of incongruities . Sometimes we have a miniature Jove or Hercules : sometimes a little old man , holding up his two fingers , and giving the blessing like a Pope . Avoiding
this , which is an attempt to paint what cannot be painted , or indeed exist , artists exhibit the opposite extreme of painting that which it is not worth while to paint at all , and which , with the associations of the subject , can only produce disappointment to the spectator , viz . —the common appearances of common human infancy . A child , sleeping or crying , dandled on the knee ,
grasping at cherries or apples , can have little to recommend it to the contemplation either of taste or devotion . An inspired child may be delineated ; there is a beautiful instance of it in the young St . John , of Mengs ( No . 59 ) , but still this is no more than a child inspired , and does not accord with the peculiarity of the Saviour ' s character . The association which the artist should aim
most strongly to call up ought to be , not that of the common forms and accidents of infancy , nor of inspiration infusing premature ^ wisdom , and dictating oracles , nor , as we have already shown , of divine incarnation , but of what is properly called holiness , some ^ thing pure , separated from the common lot , and devoted to a peculiar work , and yet that peculiar work one of Sympathy and
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Exeter Sail Exhibition of Paintings . B 4 l
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 341, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/53/
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