Quotation from: Italian Hours

Written by: Henry James


Here in Siena are a couple of dozen scattered frescoes and three
or four canvases; his masterpiece, among others, an harmonious
Descent from the Cross. I wouldn't give a fig for the equilibrium
of the figures or the ladders; but while it lasts the scene is
all intensely solemn and graceful and sweet--too sweet for so
bitter a subject. Sodoma's women are strangely sweet; an
imaginative sense of morbid appealing attitude--as notably in the
sentimental, the pathetic, but the none the less pleasant,
"Swooning of St. Catherine," the great Sienese heroine, at San
Domenico--seems to me the author's finest accomplishment. His
frescoes have all the same almost appealing evasion of
difficulty, and a kind of mild melancholy which I am inclined to
think the sincerest part of them, for it strikes me as
practically the artist's depressed suspicion of his own want of
force. Once he determined, however, that if he couldn't be strong
he would make capital of his weakness, and painted the Christ
bound to the Column, of the Academy. Here he got much nearer and
I have no doubt mixed his colours with his tears; but the result
can't be better described than by saying that it is, pictorially,
the first of the modern Christs. Unfortunately it hasn't been the
last.

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