universe which we need not anthropomorphise to realise--and that is man
himself. His movements, his actions, are the only things we realise
without any myth-making effort--directly. Hence, there is no visible
object of such artistic possibilities as the human body; nothing with
which we are so familiar; nothing, therefore, in which we so rapidly
perceive changes; nothing, then, which if represented so as to be
realised more quickly and vividly than in life, will produce its effect
with such velocity and power, and so strongly confirm our sense of
capacity for living.

[Page heading: VALUE OF THE NUDE IN ART]

Values of touch and movement, we remember, are the specifically artistic
qualities in figure painting (at least, as practised by the
Florentines), for it is through them chiefly that painting directly
heightens life. Now while it remains true that tactile values can, as
Giotto and Masaccio have forever established, be admirably rendered on
the draped figure, yet drapery is a hindrance, and, at the best, only a
way out of a difficulty, for we _feel_ it masking the really
significant, which is _the form underneath_. A mere painter, one who is
satisfied to reproduce what everybody sees, and to paint for the fun of
painting, will scarcely comprehend this feeling. His only significant is
the obvious--in a figure, the face and the clothing, as in most of the
portraits manufactured nowadays. The artist, even when compelled to
paint draped figures, will force the drapery to render the nude, in
other words the material significance of the human body. But how much
more clearly will this significance shine out, how much more
convincingly will the character manifest itself, when between its
perfect rendering and the artist nothing intervenes! And this perfect
rendering is to be accomplished with the nude only.