“The Heart of the Andes”/Part 13
I have thus treated rapidly, and perhaps baldly, the signal facts of this picture. Its execution everywhere equals its conception. It is indeed many perfect pictures in one, — as a noble symphony bears in its choral swell a thousand hymns and harmonies. The lover of quiet beauty may here find solace, and he who adores supernal beauty has objects for loftiest worship. Yet so admirable is the dramatic construction of the work, that no scene is an episode, but each guides the mind on to the triumphal crowning spectacle, — every thought in the picture is an aspiration toward the grand dominant thought, the Dome of snow.
“The Heart of the Andes” is in itself an education in Art. No truer, worthier effort has ever been made to guide the world to feel, to comprehend, and to love the fairest and the sublimest scenes of Nature. It opens to us, in these ardent ages, a new earth more glorious than any we have known. What Beauty can do to exalt mankind is as yet only the dream of a few, but must some time become the reality of all. Toward this result Mr. Church offers here a masterpiece, the largess of his bountiful genius. Men are better and nobler when they are uplifted by such sublime visions, and the human sympathies stirred by such revelations of the divine cannot die; — they are immortal echoes, and they
“roll from soul to soul
And grow forever and forever.”