The same is true
of sculpture and all pictorial art; men will turn from the greatest
masterpiece of the chisel or the brush to look at a living woman.
And you, great sculptor,--so, you gave
A score of years to Art, her slave,
And that's your Venus, whence we turn
To yonder girl that fords the burn!
I was once seated in the square room in the gallery at Dresden that
holds the most famous picture in the world, Rafael's Sistine Madonna.
A number of tourists were in the place, and we were all gazing
steadfastly at the immortal Virgin, when a pretty, fresh-colored
young American girl entered the room. Every man's head twisted away
from the masterpiece of art, and every man's eyes stared at the
commonplace stranger, because she was alive! I was much amused, and
could not help thinking of Browning's lines.
This doctrine, that Life is greater than Art, is repeated by
Browning in _Cleon_, and it forms the whole content of Ibsen's last
drama, _When We Dead Awaken_.
The lover's reasoning at the close of Browning's poem, that
rejection may be better for him because now he has an unrealised
ideal, and that the race itself is better than the victor's garland,
reminds us of Lessing's noble saying, that if God gave him the
choice between the knowledge of all truth and the search for it, he
would humbly take the latter.
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