Lord Salisbury yesterday week replied to a question of Lord
Stanley of Alderley's as to the conduct of the Chantrey Trustees in purchasing for the nation Mr. Calderon's picture of St. Elizabeth of Hungary naked before the altar, to the great annoyance of all good Roman Catholics, by a jocose speech which will hardly be regarded as doing justice to the grave dis- pleasure with which the Roman Catholic Church regards the purchase in question. He declined to express any opinion until some canon was laid down as to the course artists should favour in dealing with the question of clothes or no clothes. Some pictures regarded with admiration by artists would attract the attention of the police if translated into ordinary life. In the desire of artists to show their command of the tints of human flesh, they frequently omitted to clothe saintly persons with a sufficiency of clothing, and he referred to certain pic- tures of this kind by Catholic artists,—the reading Magdalen was understood to be one of them,—which had never incurred the censure of the Church. The answer would probably be, that from pictures representing the earliest age of the Church, in which it was quite natural to portray the first converts (not, of course, in the act of worship), as they might have been before the Church had exerted her full influence over them, no in- ference could be drawn unfavourable to the high esteem in which modesty is held by the Church; and, besides that, it is one thing to paint the natural life even of a saint, and another thing to paint imaginary acts of worship which would have been regarded by the Church as simply sacrilegious. Lord Salisbury, however, added that Mr. Calderon's picture is now in a place of great "seclusion," where it is not at all likely to do any harm by attracting the notice of unprepared gazers. Lord Salisbury's tone was decidedly light-minded.
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