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Untitled Article
bpt we are certain , that if many of them are not copies they ought to be . Of the figures of Christ in this collection there are two , and ohly two , such as we wish to see on canvass . In Number 6 , * the Entombment , ' by Ludovico Caracci , a sense of dignity , power , and moral grandeur is excited by the delineation of the dead body Qf the Saviour , which few artists have been able to realize in his
living personation . The form and features are those of one born to command , but to command in gentleness . The corpse looks as if even yet there were a power within it , which * though latent for the moment , could achieve the resumption of vitality . Stretched out , pendent , no expression left save that which has fixed itself on the features so as not to be obliterated even by death , carried in the arms of the Arimathean and the beloved disciple , we
cannot look on that figure without in imagination beholding it erect , 9 mid admiring and obedient crowds , breathing forth the dictates of Wisdom and the law of love , expelling demons , and healing all that were diseased . The broad , dusky , twilight colouring of this painting is in thorough harmony with the subject , and well sustains its simplicity and solemnity . The other ( 24 ) is * Christ bearing his cross , ' by Morales . This is a beautiful incarnation of
passive power . It is the man of sorrows , not the slave of sorrow . Jle bears the cross , he is not crushed by it . The expression of physical suffering is just such as to excite the keenest sympathy , "without that lowering of the victim by which he becomes the object of pity . The complexion is richly and darkly oriental . The other attempts at this loftiest of subjects seem to us to be all of them failures * though in different ways and degrees . Some are
theatrical , some vulgar , others unmeaning . There is a curiously carved crucifixion in ivory , by Benvenuto Cellini ( 18 ) 5 but it might represent any other crucified man : it is an extraordinary work of art , but it is not a Christ . Nor is it strange that even the greatest artists should have so rarely arrived at even tolerable success : the path to it is beset with perils . Some have erred by forgetting altogether that Christ was a Jew , while others have
marked too strongly the Jewish peculiarity , and sunk in it the loftier and universal characteristics of humanity * Some , in striving to embody the benevolence of the character , have missed its dignity , and made him soft and simpering ; while others have only embodied a physical , or perhaps an intellectual , force , which belong to an inferior kind of power , and partake more of energy 4
p , nd bustle than of spiritual agency ; such is the Christ delivering souls from purgatory' ( 29 , by Orazio Farinato ) , who seems like , p . daring adventurer who has got into an enemy ' s castle by a coup de main , and is making quick work of delivering the prisoners , lest they should all be caught by the return o £ its possessor and his troops . Other painters seem to have hud ail their ideas of Christ a bsorbed in the pae noliQu of suflferingr and only make us .
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3 £ < fc Exeter Hall Exhibition of Paintings .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 340, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/52/
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