IT IS a double-distilled work of art. The figures seem to have
become art before they were painted. They remind me immedi-
ately of polychrome sculpture, and I remember that Rogier him-
self, at the height of his fame, was not above colouring sculpture, just
as Zeuxis had coloured the sculpture of Praxiteles. Not only are the
figures arranged as if in high relief before a plain gold background;
they have the formal perfection of a classical frieze and hold their
positions in the design with no feeling of weight or possible fatigue.
And yet the noble artifice of the whole is combined with an almost
shocking realism in the parts. My eye is immediately drawn to these
details and for some minutes I can think of nothing but the stereo-
scopic intensity with which they are seen and the microscopic pre-
cision with which they are rendered.

The combination is, and always has been, irresistible: 'I say that
learned and unlearned alike will praise those heads which appear to
stand out from the picture as if they were sculptured'. Those words,
from Alberti's treatise on the art of painting, were probably written
in the very year that Rogier painted his Descent from the Cross. They
were true in 1435 and remained true till the time of Roger Fry: for
what other meaning can one give to the words 'plastic values' which
echo through his writings. Alberti does not say 'as if they were real'
but 'as if they were sculpture', implying thereby a purposeful simplifi-
cation of each form intended to make it more vividly experienced by
the spectator; and this Rogier has achieved in the highest degree.
The Virgin's head is surely one of the greatest examples of 'tactile

-43-