From a single picture
only, is it absent. It is that one in which Lazarus, the poor man, lying
on a dunghill at the rich man's door, declares that he does not fear
Death, doubtless because he has nothing to lose and his life is
premature death.
Is that stoicist idea of the half-pagan Christianity of the Renaissance
very comforting, and do devout souls find consolation therein? The
ambitious man, the rascal, the tyrant, the rake, all those haughty
sinners who abuse life, and whom Death holds by the hair, are destined
to be punished, without doubt; but are the blind man, the beggar, the
madman, the poor peasant, recompensed for their long life of misery by
the single reflection that death is not an evil for them? No! An
implacable melancholy, a ghastly fatality, overshadows the artist's
work. It resembles a bitter imprecation upon the fate of mankind.
There truly do we find the grievous satire, the truthful picture of the
society Holbein had under his eyes. Crime and misfortune, those are what
impressed him; but what shall we depict, we artists of another age?
Shall we seek in the thought of death the reward of mankind in the
present day? Shall we invoke it as the punishment of injustice and the
guerdon of suffering?
No, we have no longer to deal with Death, but with Life.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25