Note 4 — II CARDUCCI AND THE CLASSIC REALISM

“Doubtless the great painters saw, first and before all things, the human being; but in this being they saw the race, and they could not discern the race without disengaging the vague ideal which struggles in it, which exists even in inferior creatures, unknown to themselves and yet consubstantial with their blood. The languor and, at the same time, the strength of this land of mountains, whose feet are bathed by the waters of fever-breeding marshes, the mysticism and the wildness of the compatriots of St. Francis of Assisi, the dreamy melancholy inspired by the contemplation of sleeping lakes—all those traits, elaborated by the working of heredity through centuries, Perugino saw more clearly than any one else, but he had only to detect them. He divined them instinctively in the outline of the cheek, the colour of the eye, the turn of the head. It is in this interpretation, at once humble and sympathetic, that the veritable imitation of nature consists, in which all is soul, even, and above all the form—a soul which seeks itself, disguises itself at times and even debases itself, but a soul nevertheless and one that reveals itself only to the soul.”