VERROCCH1O'S HORSE.
To Ina EnrIen OF TI71 " SPECTATCR."1 SIR,—Your reviewer of my book Animal Sculpture (Spectator, December 5th) is quite right in saying that the horse in Verrocchio 's statue does not look as if he could canter over the edge of his pedestal.` He does not look as if he could stand on his legs, let alone canter ; also his poor rider is iu agony from his legs being stretched so far apart, and if the horse began to move he would split in half. I am very glad my book is accomplishing its object. I wrote it primarily to show what ridiculous blunders men who have never been on a horse's back make when they try to write about equestrian statues. On every other subject men who write criticisms are sup- posed to know something of the subject they are criticizing, but in art a man who has never bad a lump of clay in his hands considers himself competent to teach sculptors their business. Will your critic kindly tell me what the Verrocchio horse is supposed to be doing—is he standing, walking. trot- ting, pacing, cantering, galloping, rearing, kicking, shying, buck-jumping, or what ?—I am. Sir, &c., Surrenden Park, Pluckley, Kent. WALTER WINANS.
[We will save our critic the trouble of answering Mr. Winans's specific question. Verrocchio's horse is doing none of the things suggeated. by Mr. Winans, but something which very possibly Mr. Winans is constitutionally unable to appreciate—appealing to the sense of beauty and satisfying that sense, the essential function of the figurative arts. We may add, for Mr. Winans's information, that our critic happens to nave been a rider from childhood, and, though a painter, not a sculptor, has often had a lump of clay in his hands. This
information is supplied solely for Mr. Winans's amusement On the main issue it is irrelevant. We cannot admit for a moment that a critic need necessarily be an executant- Winckelmann was not, unless we are strangely mistaken, a worker in marble, and yet who has surpassed hire in his particular form of criticism of sculpture?—ED- Spectator.]
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