Note 2 — WHERE ARE WE IN ART?

Is it possible to conceive the Madonna di San Sisto painted under such conditions? The cold chill of the indifferent public would have reacted on the artist, and quenched the fire of his inspiration. The picture was intended to be the incarnation of the religious feeling of the whole Christian world, in the divine expression of the infant Christ gazing into futurity, with those rapt, far-seeing eyes,—in the holy mother, who carries him so reverently, yet with such power and purity in her look and bearing. It was honoured sympathetically by all who had the joy of seeing it borne as a banner through a great city as an act of the highest worship; not cut up into little morsels and set on a fork by every man who can write smart articles for a penny paper, bestowing a little supercilious praise and much wholesome advice on Holman Hunt and Tennyson, on Stevens2 and Street alike.