On the other hand, such symbolical
representations, under the form of human persons, as Giotto's Virtues
and Vices at Padua, or his Saint Poverty at Assisi, or the series of
the planets in certain early Italian engravings, are profoundly
poetical and impressive. They seem to be something more than mere
symbolism, [99] and to be connected with some peculiarly sympathetic
penetration, on the part of the artist, into the subjects he intended
to depict. Symbolism intense as this, is the creation of a special
temper, in which a certain simplicity, taking all things literally,
au pied de la lettre, is united to a vivid pre-occupation with the
aesthetic beauty of the image itself, the figured side of figurative
expression, the form of the metaphor. When it is said, "Out of his
mouth goeth a sharp sword," that temper is ready to deal directly and
boldly with that difficult image, like that old designer of the
fourteenth century, who has depicted this, and other images of the
Apocalypse, in a coloured window at Bourges. Such symbolism cares a
great deal for the hair of Temperance, discreetly bound, for some
subtler likeness to the colour of the sky in the girdle of Hope, for
the inwoven flames in the red garment of Charity.
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