And it is, again, impossible to
overrate the difference between such a social condition, and that of
the artists of to-day, struggling to occupy a position of equality in
wealth with the noblesse,--paid irregular and monstrous prices by an
entirely ignorant and selfish public; and competing with each other to
supply the worst article they can for the money.
[Footnote 1: The giving of knighthood to Jacopo della Quercia for his
lifelong service to Siena was not the elevation of a dexterous workman,
but grace to a faithful citizen.]
I never saw anything so impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in any
country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a
"harmony in pink and white" (or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish,
and which had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub--it
had no pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two
hundred and fifty guineas.
80. In order to complete your broad view of the elements of social
power in the thirteenth century, you have now farther to understand the
position of the country people, who maintained by their labour these
three classes, whose action you can discern, and whose history you can
read; while, of those who maintained them, there is no history, except
of the annual ravage of their fields by contending cities or nobles;--
and, finally, that of the higher body of merchants, whose influence was
already beginning to counterpoise the prestige of noblesse in Florence,
and who themselves constituted no small portion of the noblesse of
Venice.
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