I needed such eyes, and even some such powerful
glasses as would have pierced through the faded and wasted pictures and
shown them at least as I had first seen them. They were then in such
reasonable disrepair as one might expect after three or four centuries,
but in the last thirty years a ruinous waste has set in before which not
only the colors have faded, but the surfaces have crumbled under the
colors; and as yet no man knows how to stop the ravage. I think I have
read that it is caused by a germ; but, if not, the loss is the same, and
until a parasite for the germ is found the loss must go on, and the work
of Giotto, of Be-nozzo Gozzoli, of Memmi, must perish with that of the
Orgagnas, which may indeed go, for all me. Bible stories, miracles,
allegories--they are all hasting to decay, and it can be but a few years
until they shall vanish like the splendors of the dawn which they typify
in art.
In some things the ruin is not altogether to be regretted. It has
softened certain loathsome details of the charnel facts portrayed, and
in other pictures the torment and anguish of the lost souls are no
longer so painful as the old painters ascertained them.
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