Brantome, who came a good half-century later, is a
bungling critic by his side, because governed by lasciviousness and not
by a sense of beauty.
Description of Human Life
Among the new discoveries made with regard to man, we must reckon, in
conclusion, the interest taken in descriptions of the daily course of
human life.
The comical and satirical literature of the Middle Ages could not
dispense with pictures of everyday events. But it is another thing,
when the Italians of the Renaissance dwelt on this picture for its own
sake--for its inherent interest-- and because it forms part of that
great, universal life of the world whose magic breath they felt
everywhere around them. Instead of and together with the satirical
comedy, which wanders through houses, villages, and streets, seeking
food for its derision in parson, peasant, and burgher, we now see in
literature the beginnings of a true _genre, _long before it found any
expression in painting. That _genre _and satire are often met with in
union, does not prevent them from being wholly different things.
How much of earthly business must Dante have watched with attentive
interest, before he was able to make us see with our own eyes all that
happened in his spiritual world. The famous pictures of the busy
movement in the arsenal at Venice, of the blind men laid side by side
before the church door, and the like, are by no means the only
instances of this kind: for the art, in which he is a master, of
expressing the inmost soul by the outward gesture, cannot exist without
a close and incessant study of human life.
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