Subjects. 313 passions are brought into play, and the sight of which will awake noble emotions in the spectator. Greek and Roman Mythology have afforded countless subjects for the painter. The chief masters of the Dutch school, such as Gerard Dou, Cuyp, Metsu, Hobbema, etc., may be taken as repre- sentative men who adopted the realistic style ; and the three great Italian masters of the golden age of painting — Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci — and Murillo, in Spain, were the chief apostles of the ideal style. The name of Eclectics has been given to those artists who strove to combine the excellences of both idealism and realism : of these the Carracci family were the most eminent. We must say one word, before turning to the history of painting, on the symbolic art, to which Ruskin has given the name of Grotesque (see ' Modern Painters,' vol. III. chap, viii.), and which, rightly used, exercises a wide influence for good. True grotesque art is the represent- ation, by symbols easily intelligible to all, of truths which could not readily be otherwise expressed. All allegoric pictures are in this sense grotesque. Holbein's Dance of Death, and Albrecht Diirer's Melencolia and his Knight, Death and the Devil, are fine instances of the power with which symbolic representations may bring great truths and their inevitable consequences vividly before the minds of the multitude. Coarse caricature of every variety may be characterised as false grotesque, totally unworthy of cultivation by any true artist.
