Andrea del Sarto and Benvenuto
Cellini were workers, and their work remains.
Again, good work is born of affection. Love teaches more art than all
the schools. What we love, we instinctively beautify. The artist
beautifies the material on which he works. He loves his task, and from
his love there begins a gradual shaping of the ideal. The product gains
a touch of beauty. The needlework of Egypt and Byzantium, the laces of
Venice and of Spain, are historic. It is said of Queen Isabella, that
she was one of the best needleworkers of her age; that "her _motifs_
were the great events of the time."
A peasant girl of Venice was once given a beautiful coral-branch and
some rare leaves and shells which her lover had gathered for her from
the sea-depths. She was untaught in art, and making fish-nets was her
wonted work. Day by day as she wrought her nets, she looked upon the
lovely sea-treasures, their beauty passed into her heart and mind, and
she began to copy, spray by spray, the coral-foliage, the leaves of the
sea-grasses, and the curves of the sea-shells, until after a time, in
the meshes of her fish-nets, she had imprisoned forms of exquisite
beauty, and one saw there reproduced, in dainty and artistic grouping,
what her very soul had loved and fed upon.
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