Volume 53, Number 6 · April 6, 2006
The God of Realism
By Robert Hughes
There are some great artists whose achievements we admire, so to speak, from the outside. They do not excite the sense of empathy: not, at least, in any personal way. You may admire Piero della Francesca, or Raphael, or Poussin. You may find yourself transported by the calm columnar beauty of Piero's Madonna del Parto, or by the heroic and somewhat abstract gran-deur of the figures who populate Poussin's Institution of the Seven Sacraments, or by the overwhelming kingliness of Titian's portrait of Charles V, there on the wall of the Prado. But what you are not likely to feel is a sense of community with these magnificent products of human thought and imagination. Were there really people who looked like this, who could be seen walking the streets of Rome, Arezzo, or Paris? Who could be spoken to, and answer your voice? It seems implausible. We look at them for quite different reasons. We admire their difference, and their distance, from us.
Feature, 3910 words
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