The Unknown Masterpiece Read Online Free PDF Page A

and because you glance now and then at a naked woman standing on a table, you think you’re copying nature—you call yourselves painters and suppose you’ve stolen God’s secrets! ...Brrr! A man’s not a great poet just because he knows a little grammar and doesn’t violate usage! Look at your saint, Porbus! At first glance she seems quite admirable, but look again and you can see she’s pasted on the canvas—you could never walk around her. She’s a flat silhouette, a cutout who could never turn around or change position. There’s no air between that arm and the background; no space, no depth, yet the thing’s in perfect perspective and the shading correctly observed; for all your praiseworthy efforts, I could never believe this splendid body was animated by the breath of life. If I were to put my hand on that breast, firm and round as it is, it would feel as cold as marble! No, my friend, blood has never flowed under that ivory skin, the veins don’t weave their mesh of crimson dew beneath those transparent temples and that fragrant bosom. Right here there’s something like a pulse, but over here it’s motionless: life is at grips with death in every pore. Here it’s a woman, there a statue, and everywhere else a corpse. Your creation’s unfinished. You’ve managed to put only part of your soul into your precious work. Prometheus’s torch has gone out more than once in your hands, and lots of places in your picture are untouched by the divine fire.”
    “But why has this happened, maître?” Porbus asked the old man deferentially, while the youth with difficulty repressed a strong desire to strike him.
    “Ah, there we have it!” the ancient creature exclaimed. “You’ve wavered between two systems—between drawing and color, between the meticulous phlegm and stern resolve of the old German masters and the dazzling ardor and happy abundance of the Italians. You’ve tried to imitate Holbein and Titian, or Dürer and Veronese, at the same time. It was certainly a magnificent ambition, but what’s happened? You’ve achieved neither the severe charm of the Germans’ dry outlines nor the deceptive illusions of the southerners’ chiaroscuro. Over here, like molten bronze cracking the mold, your rich high colors à la Titian have exploded the austere Dürer contours you poured them into. While here, the lineaments have resisted and throttled the splendid excesses of the Venetian’s palette. Your figure’s neither perfectly drawn nor perfectly painted, and everywhere betrays the traces of this unfortunate vacillation. If you didn’t feel your inspiration was strong enough to fuse these rival styles, you should have confined yourself to one or the other, to achieve that unity which simulates one of the conditions of life. Your truth is all in the interior parts—your contours are false, they fail to encircle the limbs or suggest there is something behind them... Now here there’s truth,” the old man said, pointing to the saint’s throat, “and here,” he continued, indicating the place on the canvas where the shoulder ended. “But here”—returning to the center of her bosom—“everything’s wrong. Let’s not analyze it; it would only drive you to despair.” The old man sat down on a stool, rested his chin on his hands, and fell silent.
    “Maître,” Porbus told him, “I did study that breast from the model; but, alas for us, certain effects which are true in nature cease to be lifelike on canvas...”
    “It’s not the mission of art to copy nature, but to express it! Remember, artists aren’t mere imitators, they’re poets!” the old man exclaimed, interrupting Porbus with a despotic gesture. “Otherwise a sculptor would be set free from all his labors by taking a cast of his model! Well, just try casting your mistress’s hand and setting it down in front of you: you’ll see a horrible corpse utterly unlike the original, and you’ll be forced to rely on the chisel of a man