PAINTED PICTURES AND THE MIND'S EYE. A CCORDING , to a great
Italian archaeologist, Professor Lanciani, recent excavations in Rome have die covered an early Christian church whose wall paintings include portraits both of St. Peter and St. Paul—Portraits "realistic in style, perfectly characterized and certainly painted with the help of portraits from life." Till we ow more it is idle to speculate about his conten- tion; on the other hand, it is impossible but that the curiosity of the dullest Christian should be fired. Strong and unbroken traditions exist as to the appearance of the two apostles, and the earliest representations display strongly marked and invariable types. So far as St. Pad is concerned, the tradition can be traced to The Acts of Paul and Thecla, a book which most scholars consider was written no later than the middle of the second century, and which was very popular in the Early Church, though declared by St. Jerome to be apocryphal. These Acts tell of "a certain man named Onesiphorus," who went out to meet Paul. He had heard from Titus what he was like, " but had not seen him in the flesh, but only in the spirit." He went along the road to Lystra and "stood waiting for him, and he saw Paul coming, a man small• in size, bald- headed, bandy-legged, well-built, with eyebrows meeting, rather long-nosed, full of grace. For sometimes he seemed like a man and sometimes he had the coun- tenance of an angel. And Paul, seeing Onesiphorus, smiled, and Onesiphorus said, Hail, 0 servant of the Blessed God."
Such a word-picture as this is convincing and could hardly have been invented, but it is one which inevitably raises in the mind of the reader a misgiving. Should we not be sadly disappointed if our passionate desire to know the features of the great and inspired men of the past were fulfilled. It is so unlikely, for instance, that a painted portrait of St. Paul would give the" grace "and magnetism which made men say he had the face of an angel—and so likely that all we should see would be the face of a Jew. Probably that was all that appeared to the eyes of the Roman authorities, and though a poor Christian painter might have seen much more, that is all he would probably be able to give. It is thinkable, no doubt, that the tradition of St. Luke may. be true and that the beloved physician may have painted the apostle, but even then we must suppose the evangelist to wield an inspired brush, as well as pen, if he was to add greatly to our knowledge of St. Paul. Should we not be a little afraid lest any pictures of the apostles should impress too distinctly upon our minds the physical peculiarities of their race ? What would Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton say ? The work and the personality of all the world's greatest men can scarcely be said to belong to any race or time, and it is possible that that immortal work might be somewhat defaced by the sudden imprint upon it of its author's mortal similitude.
It is to all Englishmen a regret that we have no real idea of what Shakespeare looked like. The existing pictures tell us almost nothing. The fates have been hard on us. We know far more about Dante's face than we do about Shakespeare's. If it were possible that Holbein could have lived another half century, and a portrait by him could be suddenly discovered and its genuineness proved, would we not all be ready to stand a poll-tax if we could buy it for the nation ? Suppose we were faced with the choice of a great portrait or another great play, which should we choose ? Surely, if we really want to know more about Shakespeare and his genius there can be no doubt. But it may be said the answer depends on whether the chooser is an artist or a man of letters. We think not, because the portrait would not shed more light upon Shakespeare than it shed upon the artist. It would not, if it were a great picture, be solely concerned with Shake- speare; and the critic who looked upon it solely as an interpretation would not be a critic. We should all be wild to see it, and all true lovers of Shakespeare would be disappointed. If only, like Michelangelo, he could have portrayed himself ! If we could find a really good word portrait by Ben Jonson—a real confession of his full mind about Shakespeare—it would tell us more. The picture we make in our mind's eye—the vision, that is, which we get of men when their words have become part of the stuff of our minds—changes as we change. The Shakespeare we saw as boys was not the Shakespeare we see in middle life, but about a portrait, a good convincing portrait, there is something " once and for all." How much do the portraits of the great men of thought who are lately dead add to our knowledge of them ? What about Wordsworth or Darwin or Browning ? Will our grand- • children appraise their greatness better by gazing upon their features ? Are the verdicts of history much affected by pictures ? Sometimes, no doubt, they are. The Stuarts owe an immense debt to their painters, but the Stuarts were not men of thought. How much does Lincoln owe to his representations ? It is too soon to say. Can we imagine even caring to go to look at a portrait of Pepys I On the other hand, Johnson's face is, as it were, an illu- minating illustration—always before our eyes when we read Boswell.
To compare small things with large and fact with fiction, no one nowadays not a child wants to read an illustrated novel. Even Thackeray's own pictures add little except to the worth of an edition. The old novels are brought out from time to time with new pictures attached to them, but those who love Miss Austen and Fanny Burney, not to mention greater names further back, never look at them. Some child newly from school may be persuaded to read by them, or persuaded to turn over the leaves of an acceptable gift-book, and that is all.
If our descendants in the far future want to know what the prominent men and the great crowds of this generation were like they will probably be able to see them at the nearest educational cinema, unless, indeed, our present civilization, with all its many inventions, is doomed. It is possible, however, that public taste will have changed. To-day we have a horror of anachronisms, but in a people with no genuine love of history and no historic memory that may not last. Shakespeare must. have known, just as well as we know, that his Thanes were Elizabethans and his Italians Englishmen. He was not concerned with "the accident of birth." The Italian painters of the Renaissance knew just as well as Holman Hunt knew that the Palestinian and Italian landscapes were different and that Scriptural scenes were ill-staged in Florentine houses. However, they did not care. They thought environment was of little importance where the things common to human nature were concerned, and that the truth of the Book of Job was no more affected by the nature of his habitation or his habit than by his writing materials. All mental fashions come round again and again, though they are only concerned with what we might call superficial things. They affect the educated and the learned more than the simple, who know nothing about any superficialities but those they see around them, and who rather dislike the unfamiliar and flatten out the per- spective of the past and turn their backs upon it muttering their favourite catchword, "old-fashioned." Education gives a sense of time. It is doubtful what effect it has upon a sense of eternity. An imaginary modern portrayal of St. Paul's face would give to a pious Scotswoman whose mind has been nourished upon his Epistles far more pleasure than anything Professor Lanciani could show her. But educated men and women, however they may theorize and discount disappointment, must await with breathless eagerness his further revelations.
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