By her mirror, gowned in white as if
for dreams, she watches life flowing past her, and she knows of no use
to make of it.
INGRES.
Raphael was a great designer, but there are a purity and a passion in
Ingres' line for the like of which we have to go back to the Greeks.
Apelles could not have realised more exquisite simplifications, could
not have dreamed into any of his lost works a purer soul of beauty
than Ingres did into the head, arms, and torso of "La Source". The
line that floats about the muscles of an arm is illusive, evanescent,
as an evening-tinted sky; and none except the Greeks and Ingres have
attained such mystery of line: not Raphael, not even Michael Angelo in
the romantic anatomies of his stupendous creations. Ingres was a
Frenchman animated by the soul of an ancient Greek, an ancient Greek
who lost himself in Japan. There is as much mystery in Ingres' line as
in Rembrandt's light and shade. The arms and wrists and hands of the
lady seated among the blue cushions in the Louvre are as illusive as
any one of Mr. Whistler's "Nocturnes". The beautiful "Andromeda", head
and throat leaned back almost out of nature, wild eyes and mass of
heavy hair, long white arms uplifted, chained to the basalt,--how rare
the simplifications, those arms, that body, the straight flanks and
slender leg advancing,--are made of lines simple and beautiful as
those which in the Venus of Milo realise the architectural beauty of
woman.
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