[27] It was this false striving after "the ideal," as Mr. Symonds
points out, that caused Reynolds, with his obsolete doctrine about
the nature of "the grand style," to admire the Bolognese masters. For
Reynolds's statement of his doctrine see his _Discourses_, ii. and
iii., and his papers in the _Idler_ (Nos. 79 and 82); for Ruskin's
destructive criticism of it, see _Modern Painters_, vol. iii. pt. iv.
ch. i.-iii.
[28] The realism and the morbid taint in the religious pictures of
the Italian decadence were in some measure the direct outcome of
ecclesiastical teaching. "Depict well the flaying of St. Bartholomew,"
said a Jesuit father, "it may win hearts to piety." The comment of
Shelley on the Bolognese Schools was this: "Why write books against
religion when we may hang up such pictures?"