Bacchus is standing by,

Ariadne, Tintoretto actually applies a disability of his art for the purpose. Venus is shown in a horizontal position in the air, placing a crown of stars upon the head of Ariadne. and the form of the goddess floats just at the back of him, the lower side of her hip being on a level with the top of his head. Seeing that the head is covered with a profusion of vine leaves, it is impossible for the artist to indicate, or the observer to recognize, that the goddess does not actually touch the head of Bacchus, and she apparently balances herself upon his head while crowning Ariadne, the artist having been careful to place the centre of gravity of her figure over the apparent point of contact. A similar kind of illusion is provided by Burne-Jones, whose Angel of the Annunciation is upright in midair near the ground, but her feet seem to find support on the branches of a shrub.b Rossetti, in the same subject, shows the Angel with his feet wrapped in flames, the weight being thus apparently removed. The design seems bizarre, perhaps because of the absence of an expression of surprise which one would expect to see on the countenance of the Virgin at so extraordinary a phenomenon. 73 Schwind also uses a disability of his art for an illusion in his Phantom of the Forest. She moves near the ground away from the spectator with such rapidity that her robe, a simple rectangular piece of drapery, has opened out wide from the front, and hides her figure from the shoulders down, so that from the point of

a Ducal Palace, Venice.

c Schack Gallery, Munich.

b Tate Gallery, London.

view of the observer she may, or may not, be touching the ground as she moves.

How slight the apparent support need be, is indicated in Bouguereau's Aurora and Twilight. Each figure is represented by a nude woman holding a light scarf, the first rapidly, and the second slowly, skimming the surface of a stream of water with soft touches of the feet, and yet there is no anomaly that strikes the mind. A still more daring device is used by Battistello, though quite successfully. He places two wingless putti in the air, but one holds up the other, and this action seems to sustain them both. Another amazing design is from the hand of A. P. Roll, who shows a nude man in the air clutching another, and apparently struggling to pull him down, yet the action seems perfectly natural."

a Adoration of the Shepherds, San Martino, Naples. b Design for the Petit Palais, Paris.

NOTES

NOTE I. PAGE 2

Ir is usual and proper to distinguish three kinds of beauty in painting, namely, of colour, of form, and of expression. But form must be defined by tones, and colour without form is meaningless: hence in the general consideration of the painter's art, it is convenient to place form and colour together as representing the sensorial element of beauty. Nevertheless colour and form are not on the same plane in regard to sense perception. Harmony of colour is distinguished involuntarily by nerve sensations, but in the case of harmony of form there must be a certain consideration before its æsthetic determination. The recognition of this harmony commonly appears to be instantaneous, but still it is delayed, the delay varying with the complexity of the signs, that is to say, with the quality of the beauty.

NOTE 2. PAGE 2

Benedetto Croce, the inventor of the latest serious æsthetic system, talks of the "science of art," but he says a:

Science-true science, is a science of the spirit-Philosophy. Natural sciences spoken of apart from philosophy, are complexes of knowledge, arbitrarily abstracted and fixed.

It is perhaps needless to say that Croce's æsthetic system, like all the others, collapses on a breath of inquiry. On the purely philosophical side of it, further criticism is unnecessary, and its practical outcome from the point of view of art is not far removed from the amazing conclusions of Hegel. From the latter philosopher we learn that an idol in the form of a stone pillar, or an animal set up by the primitive races, is higher art than a drama by Shakespeare, or a portrait by Titian, because it represents the Idea (Hegel's unintelligible abstraction— see Note 5), while Croce tells us that "the art of savages is not inferior, as art, to that of civilized peoples, provided it be correlated to the impressions of the savages." Clearly if this be so, we are not surprised to learn from Croce that Aristotle "failed to discern the true nature of the aesthetic." Nevertheless, whatever be the outcome of Croce's arguments, his system is at least more plausible than that of either Hegel or Schopenhauer, for while these two invent highly improbable abstractions upon which to base their systems, Croce only gives new functions to an old and reasonable abstraction.

NOTE 3. PAGE 3

The writer does not mean to suggest that these systems are set up for the purpose of being knocked down: he desires only to indicate surprise that in new works dealing with the perception of beauty, it is considered necessary to restate the old æsthetic theories and to point out their drawbacks, albeit the fatal objections to them are so numerous that there is always fresh ground available for destructive criticism. The best of the recent works on the subject that have come under the notice of the writer, is E. F. Carritt's review of the present position in respect of æsthetic systems. Though profound, he is