It is only that
the future will be very unlucky in its art.
IV
RAPHAEL
There used to be on the cover of the "Portfolio Monographs" little
medallions of Raphael and Rembrandt, placed there, as the editor, Mr.
Hamerton, has somewhere explained, as portraits of the two most widely
influential artists that ever lived. In the eighteenth century, one
imagines, Rembrandt's presence by the side of Raphael would have been
thought little less than a scandal. To-day it is Raphael's place that
would be contested, and he would be superseded, likely enough, by
Velazquez.
There is no more striking instance of the vicissitudes of critical
opinion than the sudden fall of Raphael from his conceded rank as "the
prince of painters." Up to the middle of the nineteenth century his
right to that title was so uncontested that it alone was a sufficient
identification of him--only one man could possibly be meant. That he
should ever need defending or re-explaining to a generation grown cold
to him would have seemed incredible. Then came the rediscovery of an
earlier art that seemed more frank and simple than his; still later the
discovery of Rembrandt and Velazquez--the romanticist and the
naturalist--and Raphael, as a living influence, almost ceased to exist.
It was but a few years ago that the author of a volume of essays on art
was gravely praised by a reviewer for the purely accidental circumstance
that that volume contained no essay on Raphael; and a little later the
writer of a book on the pictures in Rome "had to confess unutterable
boredom" in the presence of the Stanze of the Vatican.
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