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Untitled Article
No hostility to the sacredrecord , even when *» ost * fo *» l ^ dtid malignant , ever produced a caricature of the Jewish chieftain $ o de- ^ grading * and : disgusting . There is but a single point ia the picture on which the eye can rest without offence . A child is seen hauling along with a rope the wretched , impotent and loathsome figure by which Sampson is ( not burlesqued , for
burlesque implies humour , but ) worse than brutalized ; and * the young thing has a look of innocent wonder at his power over the once dreaded destroyer of men and warriors , and seems slightly fearful of putting forth his little artn for a long pull and a strong pull , lest he should drag the monster upon himself , and be entangled in . his ^ rasp . That innocent face takes off something of the soul's sickness at finding : itself in such a tabernacle- of
corruption . Nor can we see the morality of ' David with the head of Goliah / ( No . 32 ) , which is a vile version , notwithstanding all his failings , of the shepherd boy , bard ; and hero ^ making him a vulgar Jew boy , who had herded with troops of city varlets , with eyes bent on mischief , instead of tending flocks among the
mountains , and watching * the heavens as * they declared the glory of God . * It would have been a degrading personification , even had he borne on his shoulders the head of the lion as a trophy of ; his , first recorded act of heroism ; but when to the physical power required for the defeat of the strong , there was added a feeling-of exultation at the downfall of the man who had defied the
armies of the living God / religious triumph would give an elevated expression to the features far different from that we are censuring , and which belongs rather to the low-lived mastery of a young prize-fighter , than the sublime power of an inspired hero . There is another picture in the collection which leaves the same unsatisfactory impression : it is not a little assisted by the ilUdirected praise lavished upon it in the catalogue- —we allude to the Magdalen ( No . 74 ) . In their well-intended , but really inde * cent , comment upon its arrangement , they have done more to
introduce improper associations than all the undisguised love * liness of the Magdalens of Correggio , Spagnoletto , or Albano * oould ever have tended to create . Sadly do we lack the ' grace and softness of Guido , ' which our critics of the catalogue affect to discover . We do not recollect to have seen a Magdalen of hie
painting : his creations are so pure , that they seem to us to be beings who had never erred , and who stood * in no need of re ^ pentance or forgiveness . If he poiartrays suffering , if is from some external cause acting upon the body Or mind , and totally independent of any guilty deeds ' on the ! purt of the RufFereiyr-his are portraitures of the most elevated hdmanity *^ -what man may become rather than wh »! t m > an ia , and thereby lite fulfils oho of the noblest purposes of his art . ; There are twd separate stfciea of feeling in the history of a Magdalen , which an . artist might select
Untitled Article
EwUrltQU Exhibition of 'Paintings . 8 i 9
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 343, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/55/
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