so it seems to him, why he should not make use of the eternal model, the human figure. And his choice of men and women as subjects is not made in the hope that charm of anecdote or psychological depth may hide artistic poverty. He seeks to convey emotion not by the subjects represented, but by his means of representing them. He is, in short, a painter, and nothing more than a painter: not a historian, not a scientist, not a raconteur, not a metaphysician. Nor can it be maintained that as a subject for pure painting a woman or a child is inferior to a plate of apples or a fantastic hieroglyph. Recourse to such indifferent or unreal subjects for the sake of concentrating attention on the pictorial method is in a sense a catering to the laziness of the spectator. The spectator is all too ready, it is true, to look at the subject and not at the execution; but if he has the least suspicion of the meaning of painting he ought to be able to distinguish purely pictorial value from its decorative or narrative or religious pretext.
In any case, whatever the fashions and theories of the moment, Spadini does not claim to be an innovator, a seeker, a theorist, an exception, a pioneer. He is content to be a true painter, and at the most, an Italian painter. He has no fear of tradition, which for the strong is a springboard, not a prison. He has visited the galleries,
