It is difficult to know why one should be moved by the expression of form; but it appears to have some physical influence over us.  In looking at a fine drawing, say of a strong man, we seem to identify ourselves with it and feel a thrill of its strength in our own bodies, prompting us to set our teeth, stiffen our frame, and exclaim “That’s fine.”  Or, when looking at the drawing of a beautiful woman, we are softened by its charm and feel in ourselves something of its sweetness as we exclaim, “How beautiful.”  The measure of the feeling in either case will be the extent to which the artist has identified himself with the subject when making the drawing, and has been impelled to select the expressive elements in the forms.

Art thus enables us to experience life at second hand.  The small man may enjoy somewhat of the wider experience of the bigger man, and be educated to appreciate in time a wider experience for himself.  This is the true justification for public picture galleries.  Not so much for the moral influence they exert, of which we have heard so much, but that people may be led through the vision of the artist to enlarge their experience of life.  This enlarging of the experience is true education, and a very different thing from the memorising of facts that so often passes as such.  In a way this may be said to be a moral influence, as a larger mind is less likely to harbour small meannesses.  But this is not the kind of moral influence usually looked for by the many, who rather demand a moral story told by the picture; a thing not always suitable to artistic expression.

One is always profoundly impressed by the expression of a sense of bulk, vastness, or mass in form.  There is a feeling of being lifted out of one’s puny self to something bigger and more stable.  It is this splendid feeling of bigness in Michael Angelo’s figures that is so satisfying.  One cannot come away from the contemplation of that wonderful ceiling of his in the Vatican without the sense of having experienced something of a larger life than one had known before.  Never has the dignity of man reached so high an expression in paint, a height that has been the despair of all who have since tried to follow that lonely master.  In landscape also this expression of largeness is fine:  one likes to feel the weight and mass of the ground, the vastness of the sky and sea, the bulk of a mountain.

On the other hand one is charmed also by the expression of lightness.  This may be noted in much of the work of Botticelli and the Italians of the fifteenth century.  Botticelli’s figures seldom have any weight; they drift about as if walking on air, giving a delightful feeling of otherworldliness.  The hands of the Madonna that hold the Child might be holding flowers for any sense of support they express.  It is, I think, on this sense of lightness that a great deal of the exquisite charm of Botticelli’s drawing depends.

The feathery lightness of clouds and of draperies blown by the wind is always pleasing, and Botticelli nearly always has a light wind passing through his draperies to give them this sense.