Journals

I used to say: “What is naked is chaste, what is naked is beautiful,” and I didn’t know what it was. Now, I know it and I like it; alas! why must it not be chaste? and why must attractive delights of necessity be indecent?

On Fra Angelico, Chastity and Desire Maurice Denis, 1886

What a pitfall the practice of Antiquity can be—It is an art that is too rich, too perfect, too general, of bygone idealism, and for which the conventions have become nearly incomprehensible