I can merely say in self-defence that, on
the outside, Santa Maria sopra Minerva no more promised an inner beauty
than Il Gesu, which is the most baroque church in Rome, without the
power of coming together for a unity of effect which baroque churches
sometimes have. It is a tumult of virtuosity in painting, in scuplture,
in architecture. Statues sprawl into frescoed figures at points in the
roof, and frescoed figures emerge in marble at others. Marvels of riches
are lavished upon chapels and altars, which again are so burdened with
bronze gilded or silver plated, and precious stones wrought and
unwrought, that the soul, or if not the soul the taste, shrinks dismayed
from them. Execution in default of inspiration has had its way to the
last excess; there is nothing that it has not done to show what it can
do; and all that it has done is a triumph of misguided skill and power.
But it would be a mistake for the spectator to imagine that anything has
been done from the spirit in which he receives it; everything is the
expression of devoted faith in the forms that the art of the time
offered.
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