MEN I HAVE PAINTED
Thouron was an enigma. "We know," say they, "the altar and the hearth, the forum and the market-place. What lies beyond?" That which lies beyond they do not know, and it was in "the beyond" that Henry Thouron lived, thought, and worked.
Ruskin has said, in one of his lectures, that classicalism began wherever civilization began, with Pagan faith; mediævalism began and continued wherever civilization began, and continued, to confess Christ; and, lastly, modernism began and continues wherever civilization began, and continues, to deny Christ. Since Ruskin delivered this lecture, in Edinburgh in the year 1853, the denials of Christ are growing louder and louder, and the cocks are crowing lustily.
Ruskin has given away Thouron's secret—he was a mediævalist; he was born four centuries too late. He should have been a contemporary of Raphael. The dress of Giotto would have suited him. It was often my privilege to be admitted to his studio when he was working on the large decoration for the cathedral. Standing high on the scaffolding, with a gray linen blouse pulled over his modern clothes, he was transformed into a fresco painter of the fifteenth century. In physique, in bearing, in colour, and in physiognomy he was mediæval—his spirit haunted the aisles of the Gothic cathedrals. His sole ambition seemed to inspire him to make his own church, to confess Christ on every wall and in every aisle.
To this end he became a patron of Art as well as an artist, showing even here the religious spirit of the princes of the Church and the State, who, in those times, made it possible for the genius of a Michael Angelo or a Giotto to develop and flourish. Henry Thouron knew, as Ruskin
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