[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sia,—May I as a painter express the strongest possible opposition to the statement made by Mr. McCarthy concerning the portrayal of the unclothed human figure M art ? According to him, " man, being what he is, cannot look upon such presentation without having the sexual passion stirred within him."
Does Mr. McCarthy really mean .that, when .he enters- the Sistine Chapel and turns his eyes upward to the vault, and looks at one of the, greatest spiritual revelations ever, made by man, he has _only sexual passion stirred within him ? Surely he will not admit such depredation for himself or anyone else. He might as well find immorality in the -fugues of Sebastian Bach.
Again, is sexual passion all he sees in those soul-shaking figures that Michelangelo carved for the Medicean, tombs, where the form of every limb seems burdened with messages of time and eternity ? In the universe of Michelangelo's creation the baser 'passions do not exist, and yet he expressed himself through the beauty of the human body, which he was able to use as no one else for the expression of that aesthetic beauty which joins hands with the spiritual. Because base natures use form basely we must not condemn those who use it for the noblest ends.
Men of letters and of science can no doubt defend them- selves in this degrading return to the Index Expurgatorius. One thing, however, must be remembered by the obscurantists, if Irishmen insist on drawing down the blinds and putting up the shutters of the mind, they will inevitably darken the soul, and young Ireland will be delivered over in the future, as in the past, to the reign, not of the saints, but of the gunmen.—I am, Sir, &c., H. STRACHEY. Stormy Mead, Somerset.
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