When explained according to this tendency of the painter to express a subject only by the brilliance and obscurity of objects, the Night Watch has, so to speak, no more secrets for us.  Everything that might have made us hesitate is made clear.  Its qualities have their raison d’etre; and we even come to comprehend its errors.  The embarrassment of the practitioner as he executes, of the designer as he constructs, of the painter as he colours, of the costumer as he attires, the inconsistency of the tone, the amphibology of the effect, the uncertainty of the time of day, the strangeness of the figures, their flashing apparition in deep shadow,—­all this results here by chance from an effect conceived contrary to probability, and pursued in spite of all logic, not at all necessary, and with the following purpose:  to illuminate a real scene with unreal light, that is to say, to clothe a fact with the ideal character of a vision.  Do not seek for anything beyond this audacious project that mocked the painter’s aims, clashed with received ideas, set up a system in opposition to customs, and boldness of spirit in opposition to manual dexterity; and the temerity of which certainly did not cease to spur him on until the day when I believe insurmountable difficulties revealed themselves, for, if Rembrandt resolved some of them, there are many that he could not resolve.

    Maitres d’Autrefois (Paris, 1876).

THE RAPE OF HELEN

(BENOZZO GOZZOLI)

COSMO MONKHOUSE

Though the patronage of art had shifted partly from the Church to the great magnates, especially the great commercial princes like the Medici at Florence, her influence was still paramount, and though secular subjects were not uncommon, the vast majority of paintings executed for patrons, whether clerical or lay, were still religious in subject.  It is not therefore, surprising that among the artists of the Fifteenth Century, many of whom were monks and all Church painters, we find a distinct cleavage dividing artists whose aim was to break away from all traditions—­realists—­classicists—­in a word, reformers, from artists who clung tenaciously to the old ideals, and whose main aim was still the perfection of devotional expression.

[Illustration:  THE RAPE OF HELEN.
        Gozzoli.]

It was to the former class that Benozzo Gozzoli belonged, pupil though he was of Fra Angelico.  Although his special quality may be partly discerned in the altar-piece that hangs above his master’s predella, in the strongly marked character of the saints, and perhaps more in the carefully studied goldfinches, there was little scope in such a subject for the exercise of his imagination or the display of his individuality.  It is different with the little panel opposite, The Rape of Helen (No. 591), in which he has depicted