In psychological history, portraits are as necessary
as dates; and one of the most valuable gifts to an age is a great
portrait-painter,--a Titian, a Gainsborough, a Reynolds, or a
Page,--which last has more of the Titianesque character than any one who
has painted since the great Venetians lived, and few, indeed, are the
generations so endowed.
Beside this full insight and representation of character, which makes
the ideal portraiture, we have the less complete, but only in degree
less valuable, apprehension which results from a point of sympathy,
a likeness of liking in one or more fields of thought, a common
sensitiveness, a common interest; and the rarer sympathy between artist
and subject, of that intimacy and complete understanding of personal
character, which, even where no great talent exists in the artist, gives
a unique value to his work, but which, where the intimacy is that of
great minds, gives us works on which no dilettanteism, even, makes a
criticism,--as in that portrait of Dante by Giotto, to our mind the
portrait _par excellence_ of past time.
In the three admirable portraits whose titles stand at the head of our
notice, we have in one way and another all of the conditions we have
spoken of fulfilled.
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