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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/30693-8.txt b/30693-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ac3115f --- /dev/null +++ b/30693-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6238 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Renaissance Fancies and Studies, by +Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee) + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Renaissance Fancies and Studies + Being a Sequel to Euphorion + +Author: Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee) + +Release Date: December 17, 2009 [EBook #30693] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE FANCIES AND STUDIES *** + + + + +Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + + + + + + + + +RENAISSANCE FANCIES AND STUDIES: + +BEING A SEQUEL TO +EUPHORION + + +BY +VERNON LEE + + +LONDON +SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE +1895 + + +[_All rights reserved_] + +_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. +_At the Ballantyne Press_ + + + + +_TO_ + +_MY DEAR FRIENDS_ +_MARIA AND PIER DESIDERIO PASOLINI_ + + +_EASTER 1895_ + + + + +PREFACE + +These essays being mainly the outcome of direct personal impressions of +certain works of art and literature, and of the places in which they +were produced, I have but few acknowledgments to make to the authors of +books treating of the same subject. Among the exceptions to this rule, I +must mention foremost Professor Tocco's _Eresia nel Medio Evo_, Monsieur +Gebhart's _Italie Mystique_, and Monsieur Paul Sabatier's _St. François +d'Assise_. + +I am, on the other hand, very deeply indebted to the conversation and +advice of certain among my friends, for furnishing me second-hand a +little of that archæological and critical knowledge which is now-a-days +quite unattainable save by highly trained specialists. My best thanks, +therefore, to Miss Eugénie Sellers, editor of Furtwängler's "Masterpieces +of Greek Sculpture;" to Mr. Bernhard Berenson, author of "Venetian +Painters," and a monograph on Lorenzo Lotto; and particularly to my +friend Mrs. Mary Logan, whose learned catalogue of the Italian paintings +at Hampton Court is sufficient warrant for the correctness of my +art-historical statements, which she has had the kindness to revise. + +MAIANO, NEAR FLORENCE, + +_April_ 1895. + + + + + CONTENTS + PAGE + + PREFACE ix + + THE LOVE OF THE SAINTS 1 + + THE IMAGINATIVE ART OF THE RENAISSANCE 65 + + TUSCAN SCULPTURE 135 + + A SEEKER OF PAGAN PERFECTION, BEING THE LIFE + OF DOMENICO NERONI, PICTOR SACRILEGUS 163 + + VALEDICTORY 233 + + + + +THE LOVE OF THE SAINTS + + +I + +"Panis Angelicus fit panis hominum. O res mirabilis, manducat Dominum +Pauper, Servus et Humilis." These words of the Matins of the Most Holy +Sacrament I heard for the first time many years ago, to the beautiful +and inappropriate music of Cherubini. They struck me at that time as +foolish, barbarous, and almost gross; but since then I have learned to +think of them, and in a measure to feel of them, as of something greater +and more solemn than all the music that Cherubini ever wrote. + +All the hymns of the same date are, indeed, things to think upon. They +affect one--the "Stabat Mater," for instance, and the "Ave Verum"--very +much in the same way as the figures which stare down, dingy green and +blue, from the gold of the Cosmati's mosaics: childish, dreary, all +stiff and agape, but so solemn and pathetic, and full of the greatest +future. For out of those Cosmati mosaics, and those barbarous frescoes +of the old basilicas, will come Giotto and all the Renaissance; and out +of those Church songs will come Dante; they are all signs, poor primitive +rhymes and primitive figures, that the world is teeming again, and will +bear, for centuries to come, new spiritual wonders. Hence the importance, +the venerableness of all those mediæval hymns. But of none so much, to +my mind, as of those words I have quoted from the Matins of the Most +Holy Sacrament-- + + "O res mirabilis, manducat Dominum, + Pauper, Servus et Humilis." + +For their crude and pathetic literality, their image of the Godhead +actually giving Himself, as they emphatically say, to be _chewed_ by the +poor and humble man and the serf, show them to have been most especially +born, abortions though they be, in the mightiest throes of mystical +feeling, after the incubation of whole nations, born of the great mediæval +marriage, sublime, grotesque, morbid, yet health-bringing, between +abstract idealising religious thought and the earthly affections of +lovers and parents--a strange marriage, like that of St. Francis and +Poverty, of which the modern soul also had to be born anew. + +Indeed, if we realise in the least what this hymn must have meant, +shouted in the processions of Flagellants, chaunted in the Pacts of +Peace after internecine town wars; above all, perhaps, muttered in +the cell of the friar, in the den of the weaver; if we sum up, however +inadequately, the state of things whence it arose, and whence it helped +to deliver us, we may think that the greatest music is scarcely reverent +enough to accompany these poor blundering rhymes. + +The Feast of the Most Holy Sacrament, to whose liturgy this hymn, "O Res +Mirabilis," belongs, was instituted to commemorate the miracle of Bolsena, +which, coming late as it did, in the country of St. Francis, and within +two years of the birth of Dante, seems in its significant coincidences, +in its startling symbolism, the fit material summing up of what is +conveniently designated as the Franciscan revival: the introduction into +religious matters of passionate human emotion. For in the year 1263, at +Bolsena in Umbria, the consecrated wafer dropped blood upon the hands of +an unbelieving priest. + +This trickery of a single individual, or more probably hallucination--this +lie and self-delusion of interested or foolish bystanders--just happened +to symbolise a very great reality. For during the earlier Middle Ages, +before the coming of Francis of Assisi, the souls of men, or, more +properly, their hearts, had been sorely troubled and jeopardised. + +The mixture of races and civilisations, southern and northern and +eastern, antique and barbarian, which had been slowly taking place ever +since the fall of the Roman Empire, had seemed, in its consummation of +the twelfth century, less fertile on the whole than poisonous. The old +tribal system, the old civic system, triumphant centralising imperialism, +had all been broken up long since; and now feudalism was going to pieces +in its turn, leaving a chaos of filibustering princelets, among whom +loomed the equivocal figures of Provençal counts, of Angevin and Swabian +kings, brutal as men of the North, and lax as men of the South; moreover, +suspiciously oriental; brilliant and cynical persons, eventually to be +typified in Frederick II., who was judiciously suspected of being +Antichrist in person. In the midst of this anarchy, over-rapid industrial +development had moreover begotten the tendencies to promiscuity, to +mystical communism, always expressive of deep popular misery. The Holy +Land had become a freebooter's Eldorado; the defenders of Christ's +sepulchre were turned half-Saracen, infected with unclean mixtures of +creeds. Theology was divided between neo-Aristotelean logic, abstract +and arid, and Alexandrian esoteric mysticism, quietistic, nay, nihilistic; +and the Church had ceased to answer to any spiritual wants of the people. +Meanwhile, on all sides everywhere, heresies were teeming, austere and +equivocal, pure and unclean according to individuals, but all of them +anarchical, and therefore destructive at a moment when, above all, order +and discipline were wanted. The belief in the world's end, in the speedy +coming of Antichrist and the Messiah, was rife among all sects; and +learned men, the disciples of Joachim of Flora, were busy calculating +the very year and month. Lombardy, and most probably the south of France, +Flanders and the Rhine towns, were full of strange Manichean theosophies, +pessimistic dualism of God and devil, in which God always got the worst +of it, when God did not happen to be the devil himself. The ravening +lions, the clawing, tearing griffins, the nightmare brood carved on the +capitals, porches, and pulpits of pre-Franciscan churches, are surely +not, as orthodox antiquarians assure us, mere fanciful symbols of the +Church's vigilance and virtues: they express too well the far-spread +occult Manichean spirit, the belief in a triumphant power of evil. + +Michelet, I think, has remarked that there was a moment in the early +Middle Ages when, in the mixture of all contrary things, in the very +excess of spiritual movement, there seemed a possibility of dead level, +of stagnation, of the peoples of Europe becoming perhaps bastard +Saracens, as in Merovingian times they had become bastard Romans; a +chance of Byzantinism in the West. Be this as it may, it seems certain +that, towards the end of the twelfth century, men's souls were shaken, +crumbling, and what was worse, excessively arid. There was as little +certainty of salvation as in the heart of that Priest saying Mass at +Bolsena; but the miracle came to mankind at large some seventy years +before it came to him. It had begun, no doubt, unnoticed in scores +of obscure heresies, in hundreds of unnoticed individuals; it became +manifest to all the world in the persons of Dominick, of Elizabeth of +Hungary, of King Lewis--above all, of Francis of Assisi. As in the +hands of the doubting priest, so in the hands of all suffering mankind, +the mystic wafer broke, proving itself true food for the soul: the +life-blood of hope and love welled forth and fertilised the world. For +the second time, and in far more humble and efficacious way, Christ had +been given to man. + +To absorb the Eternal Love, to feed on the Life of the World, to make +oneself consubstantial therewith, these passionate joys of poor mediæval +humanity are such as we should contemplate with sympathy only and respect, +even when the miracle is conceived and felt in the grossest, least +spiritual manner. That act of material assimilation, that feeding off +the very Godhead in most literal manner, as described in the hymn to +the Most Holy Sacrament, was symbolic of the return from exile of the +long-persecuted instincts of mankind. It meant that, spiritually or +grossly, each according to his nature, men had cast fear behind them, +and--O res mirabilis!--grown proud once more to love. + +Of this new wonder--questionable enough at times, but, on the whole, +marvellously beneficent--the German knightly poets, so early in the +field, are naturally among the earliest (for the Provençals belonged to +a sceptical, sensual country) to give us a written record. Nearly all of +the Minnesingers composed what we must call religious erotics, in no +way different, save for names of Christ and the Virgin, from their most +impassioned secular ones. The Song of Solomon, therefore, is one of the +few pieces of written literature of which we find constant traces in the +works of these very literally illiterate poets. Yet the quality of their +love, if one may say so, is very different from anything Hebrew, or, +for the matter of that, Greek or Roman; their ardour is not a transient +phenomenon which disturbs them, like that of the Shulamite, or the lover +described by Sappho or Plato, but a chief business of their life, as in +the case of Dante, of Petrarch, of Francesca and Paolo, or Tristram and +Yseult. Indeed, it is difficult to guess whether this self-satisfied, +self-glorifying quality, which distinguishes mediæval passion from the +passion (always regarded as an interlude, harmless or hurtful, in civic +concerns) of unromantic Antiquity--whether, I say, this peculiarity of +mediæval love is due to its having served for religious as well as +for secular use, or whether the possibility of its being brought into +connection with the highest mysteries and aspirations was not itself a +result of the dignity in which mere earthly ardours had come to be held. +Be this as it may, these German devotional rhapsodies display their +essentially un-Hebrew, un-antique characters only the more by the traces +of the _canticus canticorum_ in them, as in all devout love lyrics. + +Any one curious in such matters may turn to a very striking poem by +Dante's contemporary, Frauenlob, in Von der Hagen's great collection. +Also to a very strange composition, from the heyday of minne-song, +by Heinrich von Meissen. This is not the furious love ode, but the +ceremonious epithalamium of devotional poetry. It is the bearing in +triumph, among flare of torches and incense smoke, over flower-strewn +streets and beneath triumphal arches, of the Bride of the Soul, her +enthroning on a stately couch, like some new-wed Moorish woman, for +men to come and covet and admire. Above all, and giving one a shock of +surprise by association with the man's other work, is a very long and +elaborate poem addressed to Christ or God by no less a minnesinger than +Master Gottfried of Strasburg. In it the Beloved is compared to all the +things desired by eye or ear or taste or smell: cool water and fruit +slaking feverish thirst, lilies with vertiginous scent, wine firing the +blood, music wakening tears, precious stones of Augsburger merchants, +essences and spices of an Eastern cargo:-- + + "Ach herzen Trut, genaden vol, + Ach wol u je mer mere wol, + Ein suez in Arzeniê + Ach herzen bruch, ach herzen not. + Ach Rose rot, + Ach rose wandels vrie! + Ach jugend in jugent, ach jugender Muot, + Ach bluejender herzen Minne!" + +And so on for pages; the sort of words which poor Brangwain may have +overheard on the calm sea, when the terrible knowledge rushed cold to +her heart that Tristram and Yseult had drained the fatal potion. + +All this is foolish and unwholesome enough, just twice as much so, for +its spiritual allegorising, as the worldly love poetry of these often +foolish and unwholesome German chivalrous poets. But, for our consolation, +in that same huge collection of Von der Hagen's Minnesingers, stand the +following six lines, addressed to the Saviour, if tradition is correct, +by a knightly monk, Bruder Wernher von der Tegernsee:-- + + "Dû bist mîn, ih bin dîn; + Des solt dû gewis sîn. + Dû bist beslozzen + In mînem herzen; + _Verlorn ist daz sluzzelîn: + Dû muost immer drinne sîn._" + +"Thou art locked up in my heart; the little key is lost; thou must +remain inside." + +This is a way of loving not logically suitable, perhaps, to a divine +essence, but it is the lovingness which fertilises the soul, and makes +flowers bud and birds sing in the heart of man. Out of it, through +simple creatures like Bruder Wernher, through the simplicity of scores +of obscurer singers and craftsmen than he, of hundreds of nameless good +men and women, comes one large half of the art of Dante and Giotto, nay, +of Raphael and Shakespeare: the tenderness of the modern world, unknown +to stoical Antiquity. + + +II + +The early Middle Ages--the times before Love came, and with it the +gradual dignifying of all realities which had been left so long to mere +gross or cunning or violent men--the early Middle Ages have left behind +them one of the most complete and wonderful of human documents, the +letters of Abélard and Héloïse. This is a book which each of us should +read, in order to learn, with terror and self-gratulation, how the +aridity of the world's soul may neutralise the greatest individual +powers for happiness and good. These letters are as chains which we +should keep in our dwelling-place, to remind us of past servitude, +perhaps to warn us against future. + +No other two individuals could have been found to illustrate, by the +force of contrast, the intellectual and moral aridity of that eleventh +century, which yet, in a degree, was itself a beginning of better things. +For Héloïse and Abélard were not merely among the finest intellects +of the Middle Ages; they were both, in different ways, to the highest +degree passionately innovating natures. No woman has ever been more rich +and bold and warm of mind and heart than Héloïse; nor has any woman ever +questioned the unquestioned ideas and institutions of her age, of any +age, with such vehemence and certainty of intuition. She judges questions +which are barely asked and judged of now-a-days, applying to consecrated +sentimentality the long-lost instinctive human rationalism of the ancient +philosophers. How could St. Luke recommend us to desist from getting +back our stolen property? She feels, however obscurely, that this is +foolish, antisocial, unnatural. Nay, why should God prefer the penitence +of one sinner to the constant goodness of ninety-nine righteous men? She +is, this learned theologian of the eleventh century, as passionately +human in thought as any Mme. Roland or Mary Wolstonecraft of a hundred +years ago. + +Abélard, on the other hand, we know to have been one of the most subtle +and solvent thinkers of the Middle Ages; pursued by the greatest +theologians, crushed by two Councils, and remaining, in the popular +fancy, as a sort of Friar Bacon, a forerunner of the wizard Faustus; a +man whom Bernard of Clairvaux called a thief of souls, a rapacious wolf, +a Herod; a man who reveals himself a Pagan in his attempts to turn Plato +into a Christian; a man who disputes about Faith in the teeth of Faith, +and criticises the Law in the name of the Law; a man, most enormous of +all, who sees nothing as symbol or emblem (_per speculum in ænigmate_), +but dares to look all things in the face (_facie ad faciem omnia +intuetur_). _Facie ad faciem omnia intuetur_, this, which is the +acknowledged method of all modern, as it had been of all antique, thought, +nay, of all modern, all antique, all healthy spiritual life--this was +the most damnable habit of Abélard; and, as the letters show, of Héloïse. +What shall we think, in consequence, of the intellectual and moral +sterility of the orthodox world of the eleventh century, when we find +this heretical man, this rebellious woman, arguing incessantly about +unrealities, crushing out all human feeling, judging all questions of +cause and effect, settling all relations of life, with reference to a +system of intricate symbolical riddles? These things are exceedingly +difficult for a modern to realise; we feel as though we had penetrated +into some Gulliver's world or kingdom of the Moon; for theology and +its methods have been relegated, these many hundred years, to a sort +of _Hortus inclusus_ where nothing human grows. These mediæval men +of science apply their scientific energies to mastering, collecting, +comparing and generalising, not of any single fact of nature, but of the +words of other theologians. The magnificent sense of intellectual duty, +so evident in Abélard, and in a dozen monastic authors quoted by him, +is applied solely to fantasticating over Scripture and its expositors, +and diverting their every expression from its literal, honest, sane +meaning. And indeed, are some of the high efforts of mediæval genius, the +calculations of Joachim and the Eternal Gospel, any better than the Book +of Dreams and the Key to the Lottery? Most odious, perhaps, in this +theology triumphant (sickening enough, in good sooth, even in the timid +official theology of later days), is the loss of all sense of what's +what, of fitness and decency, which interprets allegorically the grosser +portions of Scripture, and, by a reverse process, lends to the soul +the vilest functions of the body, and discusses virtue in the terms +of fleshliness. No knowledge can come out of this straw-splitting _in +vacuo_; and certainly no art out of this indecent pedant's symbolism: +all things are turned to dusty, dirty lumber. + +As with the intellectual, so also, in large degree, with the moral: +a splendid will to do right is applied, in its turn, to phantoms. +Here again the letters of Abélard and Héloïse are extraordinarily +instructive. The highest virtue, the all-including (how differently +Dante feels, whatever he may say!), is _obedience_. Thus Abélard, +having quoted from St. Augustine that all which is done for obedience' +sake is well done, proceeds very logically: "It is more advantageous for +us to act rightly than to do good.... We should think not so much of the +action itself, as of the manner in which it is performed." + +Do not imagine that this care for the motive and contempt of the action +arises from an estimate of the importance of a man's sum-total of +tendencies, contrasted with his single, perhaps unintentional, acts; +still less that the advantage thus referred to has anything to do with +other men's happiness. The advantage is merely to the individual soul, +or in a cruder, truer view, to the individual combustible body to which +that soul shall be eternally reunited hereafter. And the spirit which +makes virtue alone virtuous is the spirit of obedience: obedience +theoretically to a god, but practically to a father of the Church, a +Council, an abbot or abbess. In this manner right-doing is emptied of +all rational significance, becomes dependent upon what itself, having +no human, practical reason, is mere arbitrary command. Chastity, for +instance, which is, together with mansuetude, the especial Christian +virtue, becomes in this fashion that mere guarding of virginity which, +for some occult reason, is highly prized in Heaven; as to clean living +being indispensable for bearable human relations, which even the unascetic +ancients recognised so clearly, there is never an inkling of that. Whence, +indeed, such persons as do not _go in for_ professionally pleasing the +divinity, who are neither priests, monks, nor nuns, need not stickle +about it; and the secular literature of the Middle Ages, with its +Launcelots, Tristrams, Flamencas, and all its German and Provençal +lyrists, becomes the glorification of illicit love. Indeed, in the +letters before us, Abélard regrets his former misconduct only with +reference to religious standards: as a layman he was perfectly free to +seduce Héloïse; the scandal, the horrible sin, was not the seduction, +but the profanation by married love of the dress of a nun, the sanctuary +of the virgin. So it is with the renunciation of all the world's pleasures +and interests. The ascetic sacrifice of inclination, which the stoics +had conceived as resistance to the tyrant without and the tyrant within, +as a method for serene and independent life and death, this ascetic +renunciation becomes, in this arid theological world, the mere giving up +to please a jealous God of all that is not He. Abélard's regulations for +the nuns, which he gives as rules of perfection (save in the matter of +that necessary half sin, marriage) to devout lay folk, come after all to +this: give human nature enough to keep it going, so that it may be able +to sacrifice everything else to the jealousy of the Godhead. Eating, +clothing oneself, washing (though, by the way, there is no mention +of this save for the sick), nay, speaking and thinking, are merely +instrumental to the contemplation of God; any more than suffices for +this is sinful. On this point Abélard quotes, with stolidest approval, +one of the most heart-rending of anecdotes. A certain monk being asked +why he had fled humankind, answered, on account of his great love for +it, and the impossibility of loving God and it at the same time. + +Think upon that. Think on the wasted treasure of loving-kindness of +which that monk and the thousands he represents cheated his fellow-men. +O love of human creatures, of man for woman, parents and children, of +brethren, love of friends; fuel and food, which keeps the soul alive, +balm curing its wounds, or, if they be incurable, helps the poor dying +thing to die at last in peace--this was those early saints' notion of +thee! + +To refuse thus to love is to refuse not merely the highest usefulness, +but to refuse also the best kind of justice. Here again, nay, here more +than ever, we may learn from those wonderful letters. They constitute, +indeed, a document of the human soul to which, in my recollection, one +other only, Benjamin Constant's _Adolphe_, can be compared. But in these +letters,--hers of grief, humiliation, hopelessness, making her malign +her noble self; and his, bitter, self-righteous, crammed with theological +moralisings--we see not merely the dual drama of two ill-assorted +creatures, but the much more terrible tragedy, superadded by the +presence, looming, impassive, as of Cypris in Euripides' Hippolytus, of +a third all-powerful and superhuman entity: the spirit of monasticism. +The unequal misery, the martyrdom of Héloïse arises herefrom, that she +rebels against this _Deus ex machina_; that this nun of the eleventh +century is a strong warm-hearted modern woman, fit for Browning. While +Abélard is her whole life, the intimate companion of her highest thoughts, +she is only a toy to him, and a toy which his theologian's pride, his +monkish self-debasement, makes him afraid and ashamed of. Abélard has +been for her, and ever remains, something like Brahma to Goethe's +Bayadere; her love, her love above all for his intrepid intellect, has +raised him to a sacredness so great, that his whim, his fame, his peace, +his very petulance can be refused nothing; and that, on the other hand, +any concession taken from him seems positive sacrilege. Hence her refusal +of marriage, her answer, "that she would be prouder as his mistress--the +Latin word is harlot--than as the wife of Cæsar." Fifty years later, in +the kind, passionate, poetical days of St. Francis, Héloïse might have +given this loving fervour to Christ, and been a happy, if a deluded, +woman; but in those frigid monkish days, there was no one for her to +love, save this frigid monkish Abélard. As it is, therefore, she loves +Christ and God in obedience to Abélard; she passionately cons the fathers, +the Scriptures, merely because, so to speak, the hand of Abélard has +lain on the page, the eyes of Abélard have followed the characters; and +finally, after all her vain entreaties for (she scarce knows what!) love, +sympathy, one personal word, she feeds her starving heart on the only +answer to her supplications--the dialectic exercises, metaphysical +treatises, and theological sermons (containing even the forms applicable +only to a congregation) which he doles out to her. Thankful for anything +which comes _from_ him, however little it comes _to_ her. + +How different with Abélard! Despite occasional atrocious misery and +unparalleled temporal misfortunes (which on the whole act upon him as +tonics), this great metaphysician is well suited to his times, and +spiritually thrives in their exhausted, chill atmosphere. The public +rumour (which Héloïse hurls at him in a fit of broken-hearted rage), +that his passion for her had been but a passing folly of the flesh, +he never denies, but, on the contrary, reiterates perpetually for +her spiritual improvement; let her understand clearly from what +inexpressible degradation God in His mercy has saved them, at least +saved him; let her realise that he wanted only carnal indulgence, and +would have got it, if need be, through threats and blows. He recognises, +in his past, only a feeling which, now it is over, fills his ascetic +mind with nothing but disgust and burning shame, and hence he tries, by +degrading it still more, by cynically raking up all imaginable filth, +to separate that past from his present. So far, were only he himself +concerned, one would sympathise, though contemptuously, with this +agonised reaction of a proud, perhaps a vain, _man_ of mere intellect. +But the atrocious thing is, that he treats her as a loathsome relic of +this past dishonour; and answers her prayer (after twelve years' +silence!) for a word of loving-kindness by elaborate denunciations of +their former love, and reiterated jubilations that _he_, at least, has +long been purged thereof; not unmixed with sharp admonishment that she +had better not try to infect his soul afresh, but set about, if needful, +cleansing her own. Now it so happens that what he would cure her of is +incurable, being, in fact, eternal, divine--simple human love. So, to +his pious and cynical admonitions she answers with strange inconsistency. +Long brooding over his taunts will sometimes make her, to whom he is +always the divinity, actually believe, despite her reiteration, that +she had sinned out of obedience to him, that she really is a polluted +creature, guilty of the unutterable crime of contaminating a man of God, +nay, a god himself. And then, unable to silence affection, she cries +out in agony at the perversity of her nature, incapable even of hating +sincerely its sinfulness; for would she not do it again, is she not the +same Héloïse who would have left the very altar, the very communion with +Christ, at Abélard's word? At other times she is pious, resigned, almost +serene; for is that not Abélard's wish? a careful mother to her nuns. +But when, encouraged by her docility and blind to her undying love, +Abélard believes that he has succeeded in quieting her down, and rewards +her piety by some rhetorical phrase of Monkish eulogy, she suddenly +turns round, a terrible tragic figure. She repudiates the supposed +purity and piety, blazons out her wickedness and hypocrisy, and cries +out, partly with the horror of the sacrilegious nun, mainly with the +pride of the faithful wife, that it is not God she loves but Abélard. + +After the most violent of these outbreaks there is a dead silence. One +guesses that some terrible message has come, warning her that unless she +promised that she would never write to Abélard save as the Abbess of the +Paraclete to the monk of Cluny, not a word from him shall ever come; +and that, in order to keep this last miserable comfort, she has bitten +out that truth-speaking tongue of hers. For after this there are only +questions on theological points and on the regulation of nunneries; and +Abélard becomes as liberal of words as he used to be chary, as full of +encouragement as he once was of insult, now that he feels comfortably +certain that Héloïse has changed from a mistress to a penitent, and that +in her also there is an end at last of all that sinful folly of love. +And thus, upon Héloïse pacified, numbed, dead of soul, among her praying +and scrubbing and cooking and linen-mending nuns; and Abélard reassured, +serene, spiritually proud once more among the raging controversies, the +ecclesiastical persecutions in which his soul prospered, the volume +closes; the curtain falls upon one of the most terrible tragedies of the +heart, as poignant after seven hundred years as in those early Middle +Ages, before St. Francis claimed sun and swallows as brethren, and the +baby Christ was given to hold to St. Anthony of Padua. + + +III + +The humanising movement, due no doubt to greater liberty and prosperity, +to the growing importance of honest burgher life, which the Church +authorised in the person of Francis of Assisi, doubtless after persecuting +it in the persons of dozens of obscure heresiarchs--this great revival +of religious faith was essentially the triumph of profane feeling in the +garb of religious: the sanctification, however much disguised, of all +forms of human love. One is fully aware of the moral dangers attendant +upon every such equivocation; and the great saints (like their last modern +representatives, the fervent, shrewd, and kindly leaders of certain +Protestant revivals) were probably, for all their personal extravagances, +most fully prepared for every sort of unwholesome folly among their +disciples. The whole of a certain kind of devotional literature, manuals +of piety, Church hymns, lives and correspondence of saintly persons, is +unanimous in testifying to the hysterical self-consciousness, intellectual +enervation, emotional going-to-bits, and moral impotence produced by +such vicarious and barren expenditure of feeling. Yet it seems to me +certain that this enthroning of human love in matters spiritual was an +enormous, indispensable improvement, which, whatever detriment it may +have brought in individual and, so to say, professionally religious +cases, nay, perhaps to all religion as a whole, became perfectly +wholesome and incalculably beneficent in the enormous mass of +right-minded laity. + +For human emotion, although so often run to waste, had been at least +elicited, and, once elicited, could find, in nine cases out of ten, its +true and beneficent channel; whereas, in the earlier mediæval days, the +effort to crush out all human feeling (as with that holy man quoted by +Abélard), to break all human solidarity, had not merely left the world +in the hands of unscrupulous and brutal persons, but had imprisoned all +finer souls in solitary and selfish thoughts of their individual salvation. +Things were now different. The story of Lucchesio of Poggibonsi, recovered +from oblivion by M. Paul Sabatier, is the most lovely expression of +Franciscan tenderness and reverence towards the affections of the +laymen, and ought to be remembered in company with the legend of the +wood-pigeons, whom St. Francis established in his cabin and blessed in +their courtship and nesting. This Lucchesio had exercised a profession +which has ever savoured of damnation to the minds of the poor and their +lovers, that of corn merchant or speculator in grain; but touched by +Franciscan preaching, he had kept only one small garden, which, together +with his wife, he cultivated half for the benefit of the poor. One day +the wife, known in the legend only as Bona Donna, sickened and knew +she must die, and the sacrament was brought to her accordingly. But +Lucchesio never thought that it could be God's will that he should +remain on earth after his wife had been taken from him. So he got +himself shriven, received the last sacraments with her, held her hands +while she died; and when she was dead, stretched himself out, made +the sign of the cross, called on Jesus, Mary, and St. Francis, and +peacefully died in his turn: God could not have wished him to live on +without her. The passionate Franciscan sympathy with human love makes +light of all the accepted notions of bereavement being acceptable as a +divine dispensation. Lucchesio of Poggibonsi was, we are told, a member of +the Third Order of Franciscans, and his legend may help us to appreciate +the value of such institutions, which gave heaven to the laity, to +the married burgher, the artisan, the peasant; which fertilised the +religious ideal with the simplest and sweetest instincts of mankind. +But, Third Order apart, the mission of the regular Franciscans and +Dominicans is wholly different from that of the earlier orders of +monasticism proper. The earlier monks, however useful and venerable as +tillers of the soil and students of all sciences, were, nevertheless, +only agglomerated hermits, retired from the world for the safety each of +his own soul; whereas the preaching, wandering friars are men who mix +with the world for the sake of souls of others. Thus, throughout the +evolution of religious communities, down to the Jesuits and Oratorians, +to the great nursing brother-and sisterhoods of the seventeenth century, +we can watch the substitution of care for lay souls in the place of +more saintly ones--a gradual secularisation in unsuspected harmony with +the heretical and philosophical movements which tend more and more to +make religion an essential function of life, instead of an activity with +which life is for ever at variance. + +In accordance with this evolution is the great enthroning of love in the +thirteenth century: it means the replacing of the terror of a divinity, +who was little better than a metaphysical Moloch (sometimes, and oftener +than we think, a metaphysical Ormuzd and Ahriman of Manichean character), +by the idolatry of an all-gracious Virgin, of an all-compassionate and +all-sympathising Christ. + +It was an effort at self-righting of the unhappy world, this love-fever +which followed on the many centuries of monastic self-mutilation; for, +in sickness of the spirit, the hot stage, for all its delirium, means +a possibility of life. Moreover, it gave to mankind a plenitude of +happiness such as is necessary, whether reasonable or unreasonable, for +mankind to continue living at all; art, poetry, freedom, all the things +which form the _Viaticum_ on mankind's journey through the dreary ages, +requiring for their production, it would seem, an extra dose of faith, +of hope, and happiness. Indeed, the Franciscan movement is important not +so much for its humanitarian quality as for its optimism. + +Many other religious movements have asserted, with equal and greater +efficacy, the need for charity and loving-kindness; but none, as it +seems to me, has conceived like it that charity and loving-kindness are +not mitigations of misery, but aids to joy. The universal brotherhood, +preached by Francis of Assisi, is a brotherhood not of suffering, but of +happiness, nay, of life and of happiness. + +The sun, in the wonderful song which he made--characteristically--during +his sickness, is the brother of man because of his radiance and splendour; +water and fire are his brethren on account of their virtues of purity +and humbleness, of jocund and beautiful strength;[1] and if we find, +throughout his legends, the Saint perpetually accompanied by birds--the +swallows he begged to let him speak, the falcon who called him in the +morning, the turtle-doves whose pairing he blessed, and all the feathered +flock whom Benozzo represents him preaching to in the lovely fresco at +Montefalco--if, as I say, there is throughout his life and thoughts a +sort of perpetual whir and twitter of birds, it is, one feels sure, +because the creatures of the air, free to come and go, to sit on +beautiful trees, to drink of clear streams, to play in the sunshine and +storm, able above all to be like himself, poets singing to God, are the +symbols, in the eyes of Francis, of the greatest conceivable +felicity.[2] + + [Footnote 1: St. Francis's hymn (Sabatier, _St. François d'Assise_):-- + + Laudato sie, mi signore, cum tucte le tue creature, + Spetialimento messer lo frate sole, + Lo quale jorna, et illumini per lui; + _Et ello è bello e radiante cum grande splendore._ + * * * * * + Laudato si, mè signore per frate Vento + Et per aere et nubilo et sereno et omne tempo + * * * * * + Laudato, si, mi signore, per sor acqua + La quale è multo utile et humele et pretiosa et casta; + Laudato si, mi signore, per frate focu + Per lo quale ennallumini la nocte + _Et ello è bello et jocundo e robustioso e forte._ + + In its rudeness, how magnificent is this last line!] + + [Footnote 2: St. Francis's sermon to the birds in the valley of Bevagna + (_Fioretti_ xvi.): "Ancora gli (a Dio) siete tenuti per lo elemento + dell' aria che egli ha diputato a voi ... e Iddio vi pasce, e davvi li + fiumi e le fonti per vostro bere; davvi li monti e le valli per vostro + rifugio e gli alberi alti per fare li vostri nidi ... e però guardatevi, + sirocchie mie, del peccato della ingratitudine, e sempre vi studiate di + lodare Iddio ... e allora tutti qugli uccilli si levarons in aria con + maraviglios canti." + + _Fioretti_ xxviii. "... Questo dono, che era dato a frate Bernardo da + Quintevalle, cioè, che volando si pascesse come la rondine." _Fioretti_ + xxii., Considerazioni i.] + +Indeed, we can judge of what the Franciscan movement was to the world by +what its gospel, the divine _Fioretti_, are even to ourselves. This humble +collection of stories and sayings, sometimes foolish, always childlike, +becomes, to those who have read it with more than the eyes of the body, +a beloved and necessary companion, like the solemn serene books of antique +wisdom, the passionate bitter Book of Job, almost, in a way, like the +Gospels of Christ. But not for the same reason: the book of Francis +teaches neither heroism nor resignation, nor divine justice and mercy; +it teaches love and joyfulness. It keeps us for ever in the company of +creatures who are happy because they are loving: whether the creatures +be poor, crazy Brother Juniper (the comic person of the cycle) eating +his posset in brotherly happiness with the superior he had angered; or +Brother Masseo, unable from sheer joy in Christ to articulate anything +save "U-u-u," "like a pigeon;" or King Lewis of France falling into the +arms of Brother Egidio; or whether they be the Archangel Michael in +friendly converse with Brother Peter, or the Madonna handing the divine +child for Brother Conrad to kiss, or even the Wolf of Gubbio, converted, +and faithfully fulfilling his bargain. There are sentences in the +_Fioretti_ such as exist perhaps in no other book in the world, and +which teach something as important, after all, as wisdom even and perfect +charity--"And there answered Brother Egidio: Beloved brethren, know that +as soon as he and I embraced one another, the light of wisdom revealed +and manifested to me his heart, and to him mine; and thus by divine +operation, seeing one into the other's heart, that which I would have +said to him and he to me, each understood much better than had we spoken +with our tongue, and with greater joyfulness...." Again, Jesus appeared +to Brother Ruffino and said, "Well didst thou do, my son, inasmuch as +thou believedst the words of St. Francis; for he who saddened thee was +the demon, whereas I am Christ thy teacher; and for token thereof I will +give thee this sign: As long as thou live, thou shalt never feel +affliction of any sort nor sadness of heart." + +St. Francis, we are told, being infirm of body, was comforted through +God's goodness by a vision of the joy of the blessed. "Suddenly there +appeared to him an angel in a great radiance, which angel held a viol +in his left hand and a bow in his right. And while St. Francis remained +in stupefaction at the sight, this angel drew the bow once _upwards_ +across the viol, and instantly there issued such sweetness of melody as +melted the soul of St. Francis, and suspended it from all bodily sense. +And, as he afterwards told his companions, he was of opinion that if +that angel had drawn the bow _downwards_ (instead of upwards) across the +viol, his soul would have departed from his body for the very excess of +delight." + +It was not so much to save the souls of men from hell, about which, +indeed, there is comparatively little talk in the _Fioretti_, but to +draw them also into the mystic circle where such angelic music was +heard, that Francis of Assisi preached throughout Umbria, and even +as far as the Soldan's country; and, if we interpret it rightly, the +strings of that heavenly viol were the works of creation and the souls +of all creatures, and the bow, whose upward movement ravished, and whose +downward movement would have almost annihilated with its sweetness, that +bow drawn across the vibrating world was no other than love. + + +IV + +Justice preached by Hebrew prophets, charity and purity taught by Jesus +of Nazareth, fortitude recommended by Epictetus and Aurelius, none of +these great messages to men necessarily produce that special response +which we call Art. But the message of loving joyfulness, of happiness +in the world and the world's creatures, whether men or birds, or sun +or moon,--this message, which was that of St. Francis, sets the soul +singing; and just such singing of the soul makes art. Hence, even as +the Apennine blazed with supernatural light, and its forests and rocks +became visible to the most distant wayfarers, when the Eternal Love +smote with its beams the praying saint on La Vernia; so also the souls +of those men of the Middle Ages were made luminous and visible by the +miracle of poetry and painting, and we can see them still, distinct even +at this distance. + +One of the earliest of the souls so revealed is that of the Blessed +Jacopone of Todi. Jacopo dei Benedetti, a fellow-countryman of St. +Francis, must have been born in the middle of the thirteenth century, +and is said to have died in 1316, when Dante, presumably, was writing +his "Purgatory" and "Paradise;" to him is ascribed the authorship of +the hymn "Stabat Mater," remembered, and to be remembered (owing to the +embalming power of music) far beyond his vernacular poems. Tradition has +it that he turned to the religious life in consequence of the sudden +death of his beloved, and the discovery that she had worn a hair-shirt +next her delicate body. Be this as it may, many allusions in his poems +suggest that he had lived the wild life of the barbarous Umbrian cities, +being a highwayman perhaps, forfeiting his life, and also having to fly +the country before the fury of some family vendetta. On the other hand, +it is plain at every line that he was a frantic ascetic, taking a savage +pleasure in vilifying all mundane things, and passionately disdainful of +study, of philosophical and theological subtleties. No poet, therefore, +of the troubadour sort, or of the idealising learned refinement of +Guinicelli or Cavalcanti. Nor was his life one of apostolic sweetness. +Having taken part in the furious Franciscan schism, and pursued with +invectives Boniface VIII., he was cast by that Pope into a dungeon at +Palestrina. "My dwelling," he writes, "is subterranean, and a cesspool +opens on to it; hence a smell not of musk. No one can speak to me; the +man who waits on me may, but he is obliged to make confession of my +sayings. I wear jesses like a falcon, and ring whenever I move: he who +comes near my room may hear a queer kind of dance. When I have laid +myself down, I am tripped up by the irons, and wound round in a big +chain (_negli ferri inzampagliato, inguainato in catenone_). I have a +little basket hung up so that the mice may not injure it; it can hold +five loaves.... While I eat them little by little, I suffer great +cold." + +Moreover, Pope Boniface refuses him absolution, and Jacopone's +invectives are alternated with heart-rending petitions that this mercy +at least be shown him; as to his other woes, he will endure them till +his death. In this frightful place Jacopone had visions, which the +Church, giving him therefore the title of Blessed, ratifies as genuine. +One might expect nightmares, such as troubled the early saints in the +wilderness, or John Bunyan in gaol; but that was not the spirit of the +mediæval revival: terror had been cast out by love. More than a quarter +of Jacopone's huge volume consists in what is merely love poetry: he is +languishing, consumed by love; when the beloved departs, he sighs and +weeps, and shrieks, and _dies alive_. Will the beloved have no mercy? +"Jesu, donami la morte, o di te fammi assaggiare." Then the joys of +love, depicted with equal liveliness, amplifications as usual of the +erotic hyperboles of the Shulamite and her lover; the phenomenon, to +whose uncouth strangeness devotional poetry accustoms us even now-a-days, +which we remarked in Gottfried von Strasburg and Frauenlob, and on which +it is needless further to insist. + +But there is here in Jacopone something which we missed in Gottfried +and Frauenlob, of which there is no trace in the Song of Solomon, but +which, suggested in the lovely six lines of Bruder Wernher, makes the +emotionalism of the Italian Middle Ages wholesome and fruitful. A +child-like boy and girlish light-heartedness that makes love a matter +not merely of sighing and dying, but of singing and dancing; and, +proceeding thence, a fervour of loving delightedness which is no longer +of the man towards the woman, but of the man and the woman towards the +baby. The pious monk, in his ecstasies over Jesus, intones a song which +might be that of those passionate _farandoles_ of angels who dance and +carol in Botticelli's most rapturous pictures:-- + + "Amore, amor, dove m'hai tu menato? + Amore, amor, fuor di me m'hai trattato. + Ciascun amante, amator del Signore, + Venga alla danza cantando d'amore." + +Can we not see them, the souls of such fervent lovers, swaying and +eddying, with joined hands and flapping wings, flowers dropping from +their hair, above the thatched roof of the stable at Bethlehem? + +The stable at Bethlehem! It is perpetually returning to Jacopone's +thoughts. The cell, the dreadful underground prison at Palestrina, is +broken through, irradiated by visions which seem paintings by Lippo or +Ghirlandaio, nay, by Correggio and Titian themselves, "the tender baby +body (_il tenerin corpo_) of the blood of Mary has been given in charge +to a pure company; St. Joseph and the Virgin contemplate the little +creature (_il piccolino_) with stupefaction. _O gran piccolino Jesu +nostro diletto_, he who had seen Thee between the ox and the little +ass, breathing upon thy holy breast, would not have guessed thou were +begotten of the Trinity!" But besides the ox and the ass there are the +angels. "In the worthy stable of the sweet baby the angels are singing +round the little one; they sing and cry out, the beloved angels, quite +reverent, timid and shy (_tutti riverenti, timidi e subbietti_, this +beautiful expression is almost impossible save in Italian), round the +little baby Prince of the Elect who lies naked among the prickly hay. He +lies naked and without covering; the angels shout in the heights. And +they wonder greatly that to such lowliness the Divine Verb should have +stooped. The Divine Verb, which is highest knowledge, this day seems as +if He knew nothing of anything (_il verbo divino che è sommo sapiente, +in questo di par che non sappia niente!_). Look at him on the hay, crying +and kicking (_che gambetta piangente_), as if He were not at all a divine +man...." Meanwhile, other angels, as in Benozzo's frescoes, are busy +"picking rarest flowers in the garden." In the garden! Why He Himself +is a fragrant garden; Jesus is a garden of many sweet odours; and "what +they are those can tell who are the lovers of this sweet little brother +of ours." + +_Di Questo nostro dolce fratellino_: it is such expressions as these, +Bambolino, Piccolino, Garzolino, "el magno Jesulino," these caressing, +ever-varied diminutives, which make us understand the monk's passionate +pleasure in the child; and which, by the emotion they testify to and +re-awaken, draw more into relief, make visible and tangible the little +kicking limbs on the straw, the dimpled baby's body. + +And then there are the choruses of angels. "O new song," writes Jacopone, +"which has killed the weeping of sick mankind! Its melody, methinks, +begins upon the high _Fa_, descending gently on the _Fa_ below, which +the _Verb_ sounds. The singers, jubilating, forming the choir, are the +holy angels, singing songs in that hostelry, before the little babe, who +is the Incarnate Word. On lamb's parchment, behold! the divine note is +written, and God is the scribe, Who has opened His hand, and has taught +the song." + +Have we not here, in this odd earliest allegory of music and theology, +this earliest precursor of the organ-playing of Abt Vogler, one of those +choirs, clusters of singing childish heads--clusters, you might almost +say, of sweet treble notes, tied like nosegays by the score held +scrollwise across them, which are among the sweetest inventions of +Italian art, from Luca della Robbia to Raphael, "cantatori, guibilatori, +che tengon il coro?" + +And this is the place for a remark which, in the present uncertainty +of all æsthetic psychology, I put forward as a mere suggestion, but +a suggestion less wide of the truth than certain theories now almost +unquestioned: the theories which arbitrarily assume that art is the +immediate and exact expression of contemporary spiritual aspirations and +troubles. That such may be the case with literature, particularly the +more ephemeral kinds thereof, is very likely, since literature, save in +the great complex structures of epos, tragedy, choral lyric, is but the +development of daily speech, and possibly as upstart, as purely passing, +as daily speech itself; moreover, in its less artistic forms, requiring +little science or apprenticeship. + +But art is a thing of older ancestry; you cannot, however bursting +with emotion, embody your feelings in forms like those of Phidias, of +Michelangelo, of Bach, or Mozart, unless such forms have come ready to +hand through the long, steady working of generations of men: Phidias +and Bach in person, cut off from their precursors, would not, for all +their genius, get as far as a schoolboy's caricature, or a savage's +performance on a marrow-bone. And these slowly elaborated forms, +representing the steady impact of so many powerful minds, representing, +moreover, the organic necessity by which, a given movement once started, +that movement is bound to proceed in a given direction, these forms +cannot be altered, save infinitesimally, to represent the particular +state of the human soul at a given moment. You might as well suppose +that the human shape itself, evolved through these millions of years, +could suddenly be accommodated to perfect representation of the momentary +condition of certain human beings; even the Tricoteuses of the guillotine +had the heads and arms of ordinary women, not the beaks and claws of +harpies. Hence such expressiveness must be limited to microscopic +alterations; and, indeed, one marvels at the modest demands of the art +critics, who are satisfied with the pucker of a frontal muscle of a +Praxitelean head as testimony to the terrible deep disorder in the +post-Periclean Greek spirit, and who can still find in the later +paintings of Titian, when all that makes Titian visible and admirable +is deducted, a something, just a little _je ne sais quoi_, which proves +these later Titians to have originated in the Catholic reaction. If +the theory of art as the outcome of momentary conditions be limited +to such particularities, I am quite willing to accept it; only, such +particularities do not constitute the large, important and really +valuable characteristics of art, and it matters very little by what +they are produced. + +How then do matters stand between art and civilisation? Here follows +my hypothesis. There is in the history of every art (and for brevity's +sake, I include in this term every distinct category, say, renaissance +sculpture as distinguished from antique, of the same art) a moment when, +for one reason or other, that art begins to come to the fore, to bestir +itself. The circumstances of the nation and time make this art materially +advantageous or spiritually attractive; the opening up of quarries, the +discovery of metallic alloys, the necessity of roofing larger spaces, +the demand for a sedentary amusement, for music to dance to in new social +gatherings--any such humble reason, besides many others, can cause one +art to issue more particularly out of the limbo of the undeveloped, or +out of the lumber-room of the unused. + +It is during this historic moment--a moment which may last years or +scores of years--that, as it seems to me, an art can really be deeply +affected by its surrounding civilisation. For is it not called forth by +that civilisation's requirements, material or spiritual; and is it not, +by the very fact of being thus new, or at all events nascent, devoid +of all conditioning factors, save those which the civilisation and +its requirements impose from without? An art, like everything vital, +takes shape not merely by pressure from without, but much more by the +necessities inherent in its own constitution, the almost mechanical +necessities by which all variable things _can_ vary only in certain +fashions. All the natural selection, all the outer pressure in the +world, cannot make a stone become larger by cutting, cannot make colour +less complex by mixing, cannot make the ear perceive a dissonance more +easily than a consonance, cannot make the human mind turn back from +problems once opened up, or revert instantaneously to effects it is sick +of; and a number of such immutable necessities constitute what we call +the organism of an art, which can therefore respond only in one way and +not another to the influences of surrounding civilisation. Given the +sculpture of the Ægina period, it is impossible we should not arrive at +the sculpture of the time of Alexander: the very constitution of clay +and bronze, of marble, chisel and mallet, let alone that of the human +mind, makes it inevitable; and you would have it inevitably if you could +invert history, and put Chæronea in the place of Salamis. But there +is no reason why you should eventually get Lysippian and Praxitelean +sculpture instead of Egyptian or Assyrian, say, in the time of Homer, +whenever that may have been. For the causes which forced Greek sculpture +along the line leading to Praxiteles and Lysippus were not yet at work; +and had other forces, say, a preference for stone work instead of clay +and bronze work, a habit of Persian or Gaulish garments, of Lydian +effeminate life instead of Dorian athleticism, supervened, had satraps +ordered rock-reliefs of battles instead of burghers ordering brazen +images of boxers and runners, Praxiteles and Lysippus might have +remained _in mente Dei_, if, indeed, even there. Similarly, once +given your Pisan sculptors, Giotto, nay, your imaginary Cimabue, you +inevitably get your Donatello, Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, and eventually +your Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Titian; for the problems of form and of +sentiment, the questions of perspective, anatomy, dramatic expression, +lyric suggestion, architectural decoration, were established, in however +rudimentary a manner, as soon as painting was ordered to leave off doing +idle, emotionless Christs, rows of gala saints and symbols of metaphysic +theology, and told to set about showing the episodes of Scripture, the +things Christ and the Apostles did, and the places where they did them, +and the feelings they felt about it all; told to make visible to the +eye the gallant archangels, the lovable Madonnas, the dear little baby +Saviours, the angels with their flowers and songs, all the human hope +and pity and passion and tenderness which possessed the world in the +days of St. Francis. + +What pictures should we have seen if Christianity (which was impossible) +had continued in the habits of thought and feeling of the earlier Middle +Ages? Byzantine _icones_ become frightfuler and frightfuler, their +theological piety perhaps sometimes relieved by odd wicked Manichean +symbolism; all talent and sentiment abandoning painting, perhaps to +the advantage of music, whose solemn period of recondite contrapuntal +complexity--something corresponding to the ingenuities and mysticism of +theology--might have come two centuries earlier, and delighted the world +instead of being unnoticed by it. Be this as it may, there is no need +for wondering, as people occasionally wonder, how the solemn terror, the +sweetness, pathos, or serenity of men like Signorelli, Botticelli, or +Perugino, nay Michelangelo, Raphael, or Giorgione, could have originated +among Malatestas, Borgias, Poggios, or Aretines. It did not. And, +therefore, since literature always precedes its more heavily cumbered +fellow-servant art, we must look for the literary counterpart of the +painters of the Renaissance among the writers who preceded them by +many generations, men more obviously in touch with the great mediæval +revival: Dante, Boccaccio, the compilers of the "Fioretti di San +Francesco," and, as we have just seen, Fra Jacopone da Todi. + + +V + +What art would there have been without that Franciscan revival, or +rather what emotional synthesis of life would art have had to record? +This speculation has been dismissed as futile, because it is impossible +to conceive that mankind could have gone on without some such enthusiastic +return of faith in the goodness of things. But another question remains +to be answered, remains to be asked; and that is, what was the spiritual +meaning of the art which immediately preceded the Franciscan revival? +what was the emotional synthesis of life given by those who had come too +early to partake in the new religion of love? + +The question seems scarcely to have occurred to any one, perhaps because +the Church found it expedient to obliterate, to the best of her power, +all records of her terrible mediæval vicissitudes, and to misinterpret, +for the benefit of purblind antiquarians, the architectural symbolism of +the earlier Middle Ages. + +Since, in the deciphering of such expressions of mankind's moods and +intuitions, scientific investigation is scarcely more important than +the moods and intuitions of the looker-on, it seems quite fitting that +I should begin these suggestions about pre-Franciscan Italian art by +saying that some years ago there met by accident in my mind a certain +impression of Lombard twelfth-century art, and a certain anecdote of +Lombard twelfth-century history. + +It was at Lucca, a place most singularly rich in round-arched buildings, +that I was, so to speak, overwhelmed by the fact that the Italian churches +of immediately pre-Franciscan days possess by way of architectural +ornamentation nothing but images of deformity and emblems of wickedness. +This fact, apart from its historical bearing, may serve also to illustrate +a theory I have already put forth, to wit, that the only art which is +necessarily expressive of contemporary thought and feeling is such as +embodies very little skill, and as expresses but very few organic +necessities of form, both of which can result only from the activity +and the influence of generations of craftsmen; since in these Lucchese +churches the architectural forms proclaim one thing and the sculptural +details another. The first speak only of logic and serenity; the second +only of the most abominable nightmare. The truth is, that these churches +of Lucca, and their more complex and perfect prototypes, like Sant' +Ambrogio of Milan, and San Miniato of Florence, are not the real outcome +of the century which built them. It is quite natural that, with their +stately proportions, their harmonious restrained vaultings, their easy, +efficient colonnades, their ample and equable illumination, above all +their obvious pleasure in constructive logic, these churches should +affect us as being _classic_ as opposed to romantic, and even in a very +large measure actually antique; for they have come, through generations +as long-lived and as scanty as those of the patriarchs, straight from +the classic, the antique; grandchildren of the courts of law and temples +of Pagan Rome, children of the Byzantine basilicas of early Christian +days; strange survivals from distant antiquity, testifying to the lack +of artistic initiative in the barbarous centuries between Constantine to +Barbarossa. No period in the world's history could have produced anything +so organic without the work of previous periods; and when the Middle +Ages did in their turn produce an architecture original to themselves, +it was by altering these still classic forms into something absolutely +different: that thirteenth-century Gothic which answers to the material +and necessities of the democratic and romantic times heralded by St. +Francis. The twelfth century, therefore, could not express itself in +the architectural forms and harmonies of those Lucchese churches; but +it could express itself in their rude and thoroughly original sculpture. +Hence, while there is in them no indication of the symbolism of the coming +ogival Gothic, there is no trace either of the symbolism belonging to +Byzantine buildings. None of the Gothic imagery testifying faith and +joy in God and His creatures; no effigies of saints; at most only of +the particular building's patron; no Madonnas, infant Christs, burning +cherubim, singing and playing angels, armed romantic St. Michael or +St. George; none of those goodly rows of kings and queens guarding the +portals, or of those charming youthful heads marking the spring of the +pointed arch, the curve of the spandril. Nor, on the other hand, any +remnant of Byzantine devices of the date-loaded palms, the peacocks +and doves, the bunches of grapes, the serene, almost Pagan imagery which +graces the churches of the Cælian and Aventine, the basilicas of +Ravenna, and which would seem the necessary accompaniment of this +stately Neo-Byzantine architecture. The churches of Lucca, like their +contemporaries and immediate predecessors throughout Tuscany and North +Italy, are ornamented only with symbols of terror.[3] + + [Footnote 3: The Cathedral of Assisi, a very early mediæval building, + affords a singular instance of the meeting of the last remnant of that + serene symbolism of Roman and Byzantine-Roman churches with the usual + Lombard horrors. A fine passion-flower or vine encircles the porch, + peacocks strut and drink from an altar, while, on the other hand, lions + mangle a man and a sheep, and horrible composite monsters, resembling + the prehistoric plesiosaurus, bite each other's necks. A Madonna and + Christ are enthroned on Byzantine seats, the weight resting on human + beings, not so realistically crushed as those of Ferrara and Milan, but + suffering. There is a similar meeting of symbols in the neighbouring + Cathedral of Foligno; and, so far as I could see, the Umbrian valley + is rich in very early churches of this type, sometimes lovely in + ornamentation, like S. Pietro of Spoleto, sometimes very rude, like + the tiny twin churches of Bevagna.] + +The minds of the sculptors seem haunted by the terror of wicked wild +beasts, irresistible and mysterious, as in the night fears of children. +The chief ornament of St. Michael of Lucca is a curious band of black +and white inlaid work, of which Mr. Ruskin has said, with the optimism +of an orthodox symbolist, that it shows that the people of Lucca loved +hunting, even as the people of Florence loved the sciences and crafts +symbolised on their belfry. But the two or three solitary mannikins of +the frieze of St. Michael exemplify not the pleasures, but the terrors +of the chase; or rather they are not hunting, but being hunted by the +wild beasts all round; attacked rather than pursuing, flying on their +little horses from the unequal fight, or struggling under the hug of +bears, the grip of lions; never does one of them carry off a dead +creature or deal a mortal blow. The wild beasts are masters of the +situation, the men mere intruders, speedily worsted; and this is proved +by the fact that where the wolves, lions, and bears are not struggling +with human beings, they are devouring each another, the appearance of +the poor little scared men being only an interlude in the everlasting +massacre of one beast by another. The people who worked this frieze may +have pretended, perhaps, that they were expressing the pleasures of +hunting; but what they actually realised was evidently the horrors of a +world given over to ravening creatures. The porch sculptures of this +and all the other churches of Lucca remove all further doubt upon this +point. For here what human beings there lie under the belly and in the +claws (sometimes a mere horrid mangled human head) of the lions and +lionesses who project like beamheads out of the wall or carry the porch +columns on their back: scowling, murderous creatures, with which the +twelfth and early thirteenth century ornamented even houses and public +tanks like Fonte Branda, which less terrified generations adorned with +personified virtues. The nightmare of wild beasts is carried on in the +inside of the churches: there again, under the columns of the pulpits +are the lions and lionesses gnashing their teeth, tearing stags and +gazelles and playing with human heads. And, to increase the horror, +there also loom on the capitals of the nave strange unknown birds of +prey, fantastic terrible vultures and griffins. Everywhere massacre and +nightmare in those churches of Lucca. And the impression they made on +my mind was naturally strengthened by the recollection of the similar +and often more terrible carvings in other places, Milan, Pavia, Modena, +Volterra, the Pistoiese and Lucchese hill-towns, in all other places +rich in pre-Franciscan art. Above all, there came to my mind the image +of the human figures which in most of such pre-Franciscan places express +the other half of all this terror, the feelings of mankind in this kingdom +of wicked, mysterious wild beasts. I allude to the terrible figures, +crushed into dwarfs and hunchbacks by the weight of porch columns and +pulpits, amid which the tragic creature, with broken spine and starting +eyes, of Sant' Ambrogio of Milan is, through sheer horrified realisation, +a sort of masterpiece. But there are wild beasts, lions and lionesses, +among the works of thirteenth-century sculptors, and lions and lionesses +continue for a long time as ornaments of pure Gothic architecture. Of +course; but it was the very nearness of the resemblance of these later +creatures that brought home to me the utterly different, the uniform and +extraordinary character, of those of earlier date: the emblem was kept +by the force of tradition, but the meaning thereof was utterly changed. +The Pisani, for instance, carved lions and lionesses under all their +pulpits; some of them are merely looking dignified, others devouring +their prey, but they are conceived by a semi-heraldic decorator or an +intelligent naturalist; nay, the spirit of St. Francis has entered into +the sculptors, the feeling for animal piety and happiness, to the extent +of representing the lionesses as suckling and tenderly licking their +whelps. The men of that time cannot even conceive, in their newly acquired +faith and joy in God and His creatures, what feelings must have been +uppermost in the men who first set the fashion of adorning churches with +men-devouring monsters. + +Such were my impressions during those days spent among the serene +Lucchese churches and their terrible emblems. And under their influence, +thinking of the times which had built the churches and carved the +emblems, there came to my memory a very curious anecdote, unearthed +by the learned ecclesiastical historian Tocco, and consigned in his +extremely suggestive book on mediæval heresies. A certain priest of +Milan became so revered for his sanctity and learning, and for the +marvellous cures he worked, that the people insisted on burying him +before the high altar, and resorting to his tomb as to that of a saint. +The holy man became even more undoubtedly saintly after his death; and +in the face of the miracles which were wrought by his intercession, it +became necessary to proceed to his beatification. The Church was about +to establish his miraculous sainthood, when, in the official process +of collecting the necessary information, it was discovered that the +supposed saint was a Manichean heretic, a _Catharus_, a believer in the +wicked Demiurgus, the creating Satan, the defeat of the spiritual God, +and the uselessness of the coming of Christ. It was quite probable that +he had spat upon the crucifix as a symbol of the devil's triumph; it was +quite possible that he had said masses to Satan as the true creator of +all matter. Be this as it may, that priest's half-canonised bones were +publicly burnt and their ashes scattered to the wind. The anecdote shows +that the Manichean heresies, some ascetic and tender, others brutal and +foul, had made their way into the most holy places. And, indeed, when we +come to think of it, no longer startled by so extraordinary a revelation, +this was the second time that Christianity ran the risk of becoming a +dualistic religion--a religion, like some of its Asiatic rivals, of +pessimism, transcendentally spiritual or cynically base according to the +individual believer. Nor is it surprising that such views, identical +with those of the transcendental theologians of the fourth century, and +equivalent to the philosophical pessimism of our own day, as expounded +particularly by Schopenhauer, should have found favour among the best +and most thoughtful men of the early Middle Ages. In those stern and +ferocious, yet tender-hearted and most questioning times, there must +have been something logically satisfying, and satisfying also to the +harrowed sympathies, in the conviction, if not in the dogma, that the +soul of man had not been made by the maker of the foul and cruel world +of matter; and that the suffering of all good men's hearts corresponded +with the suffering, the humiliation of a mysteriously dethroned God of +the Spirit. And what a light it must have shed, completely solving all +terrible questions, upon the story of Christ's martyrdom, so constantly +uppermost in the thoughts and feelings of mediæval men! + +Now, the men who built Sant' Ambrogio[4] and San Miniato a Monte, +who carved the stone nightmares, the ravening lions, the squashed and +writhing human figures of the early Lombard and Tuscan churches, were +the contemporaries of that Manichean priest of Milan, who, although a +saint, had believed in the triumph of the Devil and the wickedness of +the Creator. And among his fellow-heretics--those heretics lurking +everywhere, and most among the most religious--should we not expect to +find the mysterious guilds of Lombard freemasons, and the craftsmen to +whom they gradually revealed their secrets, affirming in their stone +symbolism to the already initiated, and suggesting to the uninitiated, +their terrible creed of inevitable misery on earth? Nay, can we not +imagine some of them, even as the Templars were accused of doing (and +the Templars were patrons, remember, of important guilds of masons), +propitiating the Great Enemy by service and ritual, proclaiming his +Power, even as the ancients propitiated the divinities of darkness whom +they hated? For the God of Good, we can fancy them reasoning, the Pure +Spirit who will triumph when all this cruel universe goes to pieces, +can wish for no material altars, and can have no use for churches. +Or did not the idea of a dualism become confused into a vacillating, +contradictory notion of a Power at once good and evil, something +inscrutable, unthinkable, but inspiring less confidence than terror? + + [Footnote 4: Here are a few dates, as given by Murray's Handbooks. + + Fiesole Cathedral begun 1028; S. Miniato a Monte, 1013; Pisa Cathedral + consecrated 1118; baptistery (lower storey), 1153. Lucca façade + (interior later), 1204; S. Frediano of Lucca begun by Perharit 671, + altered in twelfth century; S. Michele façade, 1188. Pistoia: S. + Giovanni Evangelista by Gruamons, 1166; S. Andrea, also by Gruamons; S. + Bartolomeo by Rudolphinus, 1167. Pulpit of S. Ambrogio of Milan, 1201; + church traditionally begun about 868, probably much more modern.] + +Whatever the secret of those sculptured monsters, this much is +historically certain, that a dualistic, profoundly pessimist belief had +honeycombed Christianity throughout Provence and Northern and Central +Italy. But for this knowledge it would be impossible to explain the +triumphant reception given to St. Francis and his sublime, illogical +optimism, his train of converted wolves, sympathising birds, and saints +and angels mixing familiarly with mortal men. The Franciscan revival +has the strength and success of a reaction. And in sweeping away the +pessimistic terrors of mankind, it swept away, by what is at least +a strange coincidence, the nightmare sculpture of the old Lombard +stonemasons. + +What the things were which made room for the carved virgins and saints, +the lute-playing angels and nibbling squirrels and twittering birds of +Gothic sculpture, I wish to put before the reader in one significant +example. The Cathedral of Ferrara is a building which, although finished +in the thirteenth century, had been begun and consecrated so early as +1135, and the porch thereof, as is frequently the case, appears to have +been erected earlier than other portions. Of this porch two pillars +are supported by life-sized figures, one bearded, one beardless, both +dressed in the girdled smock of the early Middle Ages. The enormous +weight of the porch is resting, not conventionally (as in the antique +caryatid) on the head, but on the spine; and the head is protruded +forwards in a fearful effort to save itself, the face most frightfully +convulsed: another moment and the spine must be broken and the head +droop freely down. Before the portals, but not supporting anything, are +six animals of red marble--a griffin, two lions, two lionesses, or what +seem such, and a second griffin. The central lions are well preserved, +highly realistic, but also decorative; one of them is crushing a large +ram, another an ox, both creatures splendidly rendered. I imagine these +central lions to be more recent (having perhaps replaced others) than +their neighbours, which are obliterated to the extent of being lions or +lionesses only by guesswork. These nameless feline creatures hold what +appear to be portions of sheep, one of them having at its flank a curious +excrescence like the stinging scorpion of the Mithra groups. The griffins, +on the other hand, although every detail is rubbed out, are splendid in +power and expression--great lion-bodied creatures, with gigantic eagle's +beak, manifestly birds rather than beasts, with the muscular neck and +probably the movement of a hawk. Like hawks, they have not swooped on +to their prey, but let themselves drop on to it, arriving not on their +belly like lions, but on their wings like birds. The prey is about a +fourth of the griffin's size. One of the griffins has swooped down +upon a wain, whose two wheels just protrude on either side of him; the +heads of two oxen are under his paws, and the head, open mouthed, with +terrified streaming hair, of the driver; beasts and men have come down +flat on their knees. The other griffin has captured a horse and his +rider; the horse has shied and fallen sideways beneath the griffin's +loins, with head protruding on one side and hoofs on the other, the +empty stirrup is still swinging. The rider, in mail-shirt and Crusader's +helmet, has been thrown forward, and lies between the griffin's claws, +his useless triangular shield clasped tight against his breast. Perhaps +merely because the attitude of the two griffins had to be symmetrical, +and the horse and rider filled up the space under their belly less +closely than the cart, oxen, and driver, there arises the suggestive +fact that the poor man and his bullocks are crushed more mercilessly +than the rich man and his horse. But be this as it may, poor and rich, +serf and knight, the griffin of destiny encompasses and pounces upon +each; and the talons of evil pin down and the beak of misery rends with +impartial cruel certainty. + +Such is the account of the world and man, of justice and mercy, recorded +for us by the stonemasons of Ferrara. + + +VI + +As with the emotional, the lyric element in Renaissance art, so also +with the narrative or dramatic; it belongs not to the original, real, +or at all events primitive Christianity of the time when the Man Jesus +walked on earth in the body, but to that day when He arose once more, no +less a Christ, be sure, in the soul of those men of the Middle Ages. +The Evangelists had never felt--why should they, good, fervent Jewish +laymen?--the magic of the baby Christ as it was felt by those mediæval +ascetics, suddenly reawakened to human feeling. There is neither +tenderness nor reverence in the Gospels for the mother of the Lord; +some rather rough words on her motherhood; and that mention in St. John, +intended so evidently to bring the Evangelist, or supposed Evangelist, +into closer communion with Christ, not to draw attention to Christ's +mother. Yet out of those slight, and perhaps almost contemptuous +indications, the Middle Ages have made three or four perfect and wonderful +types of glorified womanhood: the Mother in adoration, the crowned, +enthroned Virgin, the Mater Gloriosa; the broken-hearted Mother, Mater +Dolorosa, as found at the foot of the cross or fainting at the deposition +therefrom; types more complete and more immortal than that of any Greek +divinity; above all, perhaps, the mere young mother holding the child +for kindly, reverent folk to look at, for the little St. John to play +with, or alone, looking at it, thinking of it in solitude and silence: +the whole lovingness of all creatures rising in a clear flame to heaven. +Nay, is not the suffering Christ a fresh creation of the Middle Ages, +made really to bear the sorrows of a world more sorrowful than that of +Judea? That strange Christ of the Resurrection, as painted occasionally +by Angelico, by Pier della Francesca, particularly in a wonderful small +panel by Botticelli; the Christ not yet triumphant at Easter, but risen +waist-high in the sepulchre, sometimes languidly seated on its rim, stark, +bloodless, with scarce seeing eyes, and the motionless agony of one +recovering from a swoon, enduring the worst of all his martyrdom, the +return to life in that chill, bleak landscape, where the sparse trees +bend in the dawn wind; returning from death to a new, an endless series +of sufferings, even as that legend made him answer the wayfaring Peter, +_returning to be crucified once more--iterum crucifigi_. + +All this is the lyric side, on which, in art as in poetry, there are as +many variations as there are individual temperaments, and the variety in +Renaissance art is therefore endless. Let us consider the narrative or +dramatic side, on which, as I have elsewhere tried to show, all that +could be done was done, only repetition ensuing, very early in the +history of Italian art, by the Pisans, Giotto and Giotto's followers. + +These have their counterpart, their precursors, in the writers and +reciters of devotional romances. + +Among the most remarkable of these is the "Life of the Magdalen," +printed in certain editions of Frate Domenico Cavalca's well known +charming translations of St. Jerome's "Lives of the Saints." Who the +author may be seems quite doubtful, though the familiar and popular +style might suggest some small burgher turned Franciscan late in life. +As the spiritual love lyrics of Jacopone stand to the _Canzonieri_ of +Dante and of Dante's circle of poets, so does this devout novel stand to +Boccaccio's more serious tales, and even to his "_Fiammetta_;" only, I +think that the relation of the two novelists is the reverse of that of +the poets; for, with an infinitely ruder style, the biographer of the +Magdalen, whoever he was, has also an infinitely finer psychological +sense than Boccaccio. Indeed, this little novel ought to be reprinted, +like "Aucasin et Nicolette," as one of the absolutely satisfactory +works, so few but so exquisite, of the Middle Ages. + +It is the story of the relations of Jesus with the family of Lazarus, +whose sister Mary is here identified with the Magdalen; and it is, save +for the account of the Passion, which forms the nucleus, a perfect tissue +of inventions. Indeed, the author explains very simply that he is +narrating not how he knows of a certainty that things did happen, but +how it pleases him to think that they might have happened. For the man +puts his whole heart in the story, and alters, amplifies, explains away +till his heart is satisfied. The Magdalen, for instance, was not all +the sort of woman that foolish people think. If she took to scandalous +courses, it was only from despair at being forsaken by her bridegroom, +who left her on the wedding-day to follow Christ to the desert, and who +was no other than the Evangelist John. Moreover, let no vile imputations +be put upon it; in those days, when everybody was so good and modest, it +took very little indeed (in fact, nothing which our wicked times would +notice at all) to get a woman into disrepute. + +Judged by our low fourteenth-century standard, this sinning Magdalen +would have been only a little over-cheerful, a little free, barely +what in the fourteenth century is called (the mere notion would +have horrified the house of Lazarus) _a trifle fast_; our unknown +Franciscan--for I take him to be a Franciscan--insists very much on her +having sung and whistled on the staircase, a thing no modest lady of +Bethany would then have done; but which, my dear brethren, is after +all.... + +This sinful Magdalen, repenting of her sins, such as they are, is living +with her sister Mary and her brother Lazarus; the whole little family +bound to Jesus by the miracle which had brought Lazarus back to life. +Jesus and his mother are their guests during Passion week; and the awful +tragedy of the world and of heaven passes, in the anonymous narrative, +across the narrow stage of that little burgher's house. As in the art of +the fifteenth century, the chief emotional interest of the Passion is +thrown not on the Apostles, scarcely on Jesus, but upon the two female +figures, facing each other as in some fresco of Perugino, the Magdalen +and the Mother of Christ. Facing one another, but how different! This +Magdalen has the terrific gesture of despair of one of those colossal +women of Signorelli's, flung down, as a town by earthquake, at the foot +of the cross. She was pardoned "because she had loved much"--_quia +multo amavit_. The unknown friar knew what _that_ meant as well as his +contemporary Dante, when Love showed him the vision of Beatrice's death. +Never was there such heart-breaking as that of his heroine: she becomes +almost the chief personage of the Passion; for she knows not merely all +the martyrdom of the Beloved, feels all the agonies of His flesh and +His spirit, but knows--how well!--that she has lost Him. Opposite this +terrible convulsive Magdalen, sobbing, tearing her hair and rolling on the +ground, is the other heart-broken woman, the mother; but how different! +She remains maternal through her grief, with motherly thoughtfulness +for others; for to the real mother (how different in this to the lover!) +there will always remain in the world some one to think of. She bridles +her sorrow; when John at last hesitatingly suggests that they must not +stay all night on Calvary, she turns quietly homeward; and, once at home, +tries to make the mourners eat, tries to eat with them, makes them take +rest that dreadful night. For such a mother there shall not be mere +bitterness in death; and here follows a most beautiful and touching +invention: the glorified Christ, returning from Limbo, takes the happy, +delivered souls to visit his mother. + +"And Messer Giesù having tarried awhile with them in that place, said: +'Now let us go and make my mother happy, who with most gentle tears is +calling upon me.' And they went forthwith, and came to the room where +our Lady was praying, and with gentle tears asking God to give her +back her son, saying it was to-day the third day. And as she stayed +thus, Messer Giesù drew near to her on one side, and said: 'Peace and +cheerfulness be with thee, Holy Mother.' And straightway she recognised +the voice of her blessed son, and opened her eyes and beheld him thus +glorious, and threw herself down wholly on the ground and worshipped +him. And the Lord Jesus knelt himself down like her; and then they rose +to their feet and embraced one another most sweetly, and gave each other +peace, and then went and sat together," while all the holy people from +Limbo looked on in admiration, and knelt down one by one, first the +Baptist, and Adam and Eve, and all the others, saluting the mother of +Christ, while the angels sang the end of all sorrows. + + +VII + +There would be much to say on this subject. One might point out, for +instance, not only that Dante has made the lady he loved in his youth +into the heroine--a heroine smiling in fashion more womanlike than +theological--of his vision of hell and heaven; but what would have been +even less possible at any previous moment of the world's history, he +has interwoven his theogony so closely with strands of most human +emotion and passion (think of that most poignant of love dramas in the +very thick of hell!), that, instead of a representation, a chart, so to +speak, of long-forgotten philosophical systems, his poem has become a +picture, pattern within pattern, of the life of all things: flowers +blowing, trees waving, men and women moving and speaking in densest +crowds among the flaming rocks of hell, the steps of purgatory, the +planispheres of heaven's stars making the groundwork of that wondrous +tapestry. But it is better to read Dante than to read about Dante, so I +let him be. + +On the other hand, and lest some one take Puritanic umbrage at my +remarks on early Italian art, and deprecate the notion that religious +painters could be so very human, I shall say a few parting words about +the religious painter, the saint _par excellence_, I mean the Blessed +Angelico. Heaven forbid I should attempt to turn him into a brother +Lippo, of the Landor or Browning pattern! He was very far indeed, let +alone from profanity, even from such flesh and blood feeling as that of +Jacopone and scores of other blessed ones. He was, emotionally, rather +bloodless; and whatsoever energy he had probably went in tussels with +the technical problems of the day, of which he knew much more, for +all his cloistered look, than I suspected when I wrote of him before. +Angelico, to return to the question, was not a St. Francis, a Fra +Jacopone. But even Angelico had his passionately human side, though it +was only the humanness of a nice child. In a life of hard study, and +perhaps hard penance, that childish blessed one nourished childish +desires--desires for green grass and flowers, for gay clothes,[5] for +prettily-dressed pink and lilac playfellows, for the kissing and hugging +in which he had no share, for the games of the children outside the +convent gate. How human, how ineffably full of a good child's longing, +is not his vision of Paradise! The gaily-dressed angels are leading the +little cowled monks--little baby black and white things, with pink faces +like sugar lambs and Easter rabbits--into deep, deep grass quite full +of flowers, the sort of grass every child on this wicked earth has been +cruelly forbidden to wade in! They fall into those angels' arms, hugging +them with the fervour of children in the act of _loving_ a cat or a dog. +They join hands with those angels, outside the radiant pink and blue +toy-box towers of the celestial Jerusalem, and go singing "Round the +Mulberry Bush" much more like the babies in Kate Greenaway's books than +like the Fathers of the Church in Dante. The joys of Paradise, for this +dear man of God, are not confined to sitting _ad dexteram domini_.... + + [Footnote 5: Mme. Darmesteter's charming essays "The End of the Middle + Ages," contain some amusing instances of such repressed love of finery + on the part of saints. Compare Fioretti xx., "And these garments of + such fair cloth, which we wear (in Heaven) are given us by God in + exchange for our rough frocks."] + +_Di questo nostro dolce Fratellino_; that line of Jacopone da Todi, +hymning to the child Christ, sums up, in the main, the vivifying spirit +of early Italian art; nay, is it not this mingled emotion of tenderness, +of reverence, and deepest brotherhood which made St. Francis claim sun +and birds, even the naughty wolf, for brethren? This feeling becomes +embodied, above all, in the very various army of charming angels; +and more particularly, perhaps, because Venice had no other means of +expression than painting, in the singing and playing angels of the +old Venetians. These angels, whether they be the girlish, long-haired +creatures, robed in orange and green, of Carpaccio; or the naked babies, +with dimpled little legs and arms, and filetted silky curls of Gian +Bellini, seem to concentrate into music all the many things which that +strong pious Venice, tongue-tied by dialect, had no other way of saying; +and we feel to this day that it sounds in our hearts and attunes them to +worship or love or gentle contemplation. The sound of those lutes and +pipes, of those childish voices, heard and felt by the other holy persons +in those pictures--Roman knight Sebastian, Cardinal Jerome, wandering +palmer Roch, and all the various lovely princesses with towers and palm +boughs in their hands--moreover brings them together, unites them in one +solemn blissfulness round the enthroned Madonna. These are not people +come together by accident to part again accidentally; they are eternal, +part of a vision disclosed to the pious spectator, a crowning of the +Mass with its wax-lights and songs. + +But the Venetian playing and singing angels are there for something more +important still. Those excellent old painters understood quite well that +in the midst of all this official, doge-like ceremony, it was hard, very +hard lines for the poor little Christ Child, having to stand or lie for +ever, for ever among those grown-up saints, on the knees of that majestic +throning Madonna; since the oligarchy, until very late, allowed no little +playfellow to approach the Christ Child, bringing lambs and birds and +such-like, and leading Him off to pick flowers as in the pictures of those +democratic Tuscans and Umbrians. None of that silly familiarity, said +stately Venetian piety. But the painters were kinder. They incarnated +their sympathy in the baby music-making angels, and bade them be friendly +to the Christ Child. They are so; and nowhere does it strike one so much +as in that fine picture, formerly called Bellini, but more probably Alvise +Vivarini, at the Redentore, where the Virgin, in her lacquer-scarlet +mantle, has ceased to be human altogether, and become a lovely female +Buddha in contemplation, absolutely indifferent to the poor little +sleeping Christ. The little angels have been sorry. Coming to make their +official music, they have brought each his share of heaven's dessert: a +little offering of two peaches, three figs, and three cherries on one +stalk (so precious therefore!), placed neatly, spread out to look much, +not without consciousness of the greatness of the sacrifice. They have +not, those two little angels, forgotten, I am sure, the gift they have +brought, during that rather weary music-making before the inattentive +Madonna. They keep on thinking how Christ will awake to find all those +precious things, and they steel their little hearts to the sacrifice. +The little bird who has come (invited for like reason) and perched on +the curtain bar, understands it all, respects their feelings, and refrains +from pecking. + +Such is the heart of the saints, and out of it comes the painted triumph +of _El Magno Jesulino_. + + + + +THE IMAGINATIVE ART OF THE RENAISSANCE + + +I + +In a Florentine street through which I pass most days, is a house +standing a little back (the place is called the Square of Purgatory), +the sight of which lends to that sordid street of stained palace backs, +stables, and dingy little shops, a certain charm and significance, in +virtue solely of three roses carved on a shield over a door. The house +is a humble one of the sixteenth century, and its three roses have just +sufficient resemblance to roses, with their pincushion heads and straight +little leaves, for us to know them as such. Yet that rude piece of +heraldic carving, that mere indication that some one connected with the +house once thought of roses, is sufficient, as I say, to give a certain +pleasurableness to the otherwise quite unpleasurable street. + +This is by no means an isolated instance. In various places, as emblems +of various guilds or confraternities, one meets similarly carved, on +lintel or escutcheon, sheaves of lilies, or what is pleasanter still, +that favourite device of the Renaissance (become well known as the +monogram of the painter Benvenuto Garofalo), a jar with five clove-pinks. +And on each occasion of meeting them, that carved lily and those graven +clove-pinks, like the three roses in the Square of Purgatory, have shed +a charm over the street, given me a pleasure more subtle than that derived +from any bed of real lilies, or pot of real clove-pinks, or bush of real +roses; colouring and scenting the street with this imaginary colour and +perfume. What train of thought has been set up? It would be hard to say. +Something too vague to be perceived except as a whole impression of +pleasure; a half-seen vision, doubtless, of the real flowers, of the +places where they grow; perhaps even a faint reminiscence, a dust of +broken and pounded fragments, of stories and songs into which roses +enter, or lilies, or clove-pinks. + +Hereby hangs a whole question of æsthetics. Those three stone roses +are the type of one sort of imaginative art; of one sort of art which, +beyond or independent of the charm of visible beauty, possesses a charm +that acts directly upon the imagination. Such charm, or at least such +interest, may be defined as the literary element in art; and I should +give it that name, did it not suggest a dependence upon the written word +which I by no means intend to imply. It is the element which, unlike +actual representation, is possessed by literature as well as by art; +indeed, it is the essence of the former, as actual representation is of +the latter. But it belongs to art, in the cases when it belongs to it at +all, not because the artist is in any way influenced by the writer, but +merely because the forms represented by the artist are most often the +forms of really existing things, and fraught, therefore, with associations +to all such as know them; and because, also, the artist who presents +these forms is a human being, and as such not only sees and draws, +but feels and thinks; because, in short, literature being merely the +expression of habits of thought and emotion, all such art as deals with +the images of real objects tends more or less, in so far as it is a +human being, to conform to its type. + +This is one kind of artistic imagination, this which I have rudely +symbolised in the symbol of the three carved roses--the imagination +which delights the mind by holding before it some charming or uncommon +object, and conjuring up therewith a whole train of feeling and fancy; +the school, we might call it, of intellectual decoration, of arabesques +formed not of lines and colours, but of associations and suggestions. +And to this school of the three carved roses in the Square of Purgatory +belong, among others, Angelico, Benozzo, Botticelli, and all those +Venetians who painted piping shepherds, and ruralising magnificent +ladies absorbed in day-dreams. + +But besides this kind of imagination in art, there is another and +totally different. It is the imagination of how an event would have +looked; the power of understanding and showing how an action would have +taken place, and how that action would have affected the bystanders; a +sort of second-sight, occasionally rising to the point of revealing, not +merely the material aspect of things and people, but the emotional value +of the event in the eyes of the painter. Thus, for instance, Tintoret +concentrated a beam of sunlight into the figure of Christ before Pilate, +not because he supposed Christ to have stood in that sunlight, but +because the white figure, shining yet ghost-like, seemed to him, perhaps +unconsciously, to indicate the position of the betrayed Saviour among +the indifference and wickedness of the world. Hence I would divide all +imaginative art, particularly that of the old Italian masters, into art +which stirs our own associations, and suggests to us trains of thought +and feeling perhaps unknown to the artist, and art which exhibits a +scene or event foreign to ourselves, and placed before us with a +deliberate intention. Both are categories of imaginative activity +due to inborn peculiarities of character; but one of them, namely, the +suggestive, is probably spontaneous, and quite unintentional, hence +never asked for by the public, nor sought after by the artist; while the +other, self-conscious and intentional, is therefore constantly sought +after by the artist, and bargained for by the public. I shall begin +with the latter, because it is the recognised commodity: artistic +imagination, as bought and sold in the market, whether of good quality +or bad. + + +II + +The painters of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, +developing the meagre suggestions of Byzantine decoration, incorporating +the richer inventions of the bas-reliefs of the Pisan sculptors and +of the medallions surrounding the earliest painted effigies of holy +personages, produced a complete set of pictorial themes illustrative +of Gospel history and of the lives of the principal saints. These +illustrative themes--definite conceptions of situations and definite +arrangements of figures--became forthwith the whole art's stock, universal +and traditional; few variations were made from year to year and from +master to master, and those variations resolved themselves continually +back into the original type. And thus on, through the changes in artistic +means and artistic ends, until the Italian schools disappeared finally +before the schools of France and Flanders. Let us take a striking example. +The presentation of the Virgin remains unaltered in main sentiment and +significance of composition, despite the two centuries and more which +separate the Gaddi from Titian and Tintoret, despite the complete change +in artistic aims and methods separating still more completely the men of +the fourteenth century from the men of the sixteenth. The long flight of +steps stretching across the fresco in Santa Croce stretches also across +the canvas of the great Venetians; and the little girl climbs up them +alike, presenting her profile to the spectator; although at the top +of the steps there is in one case a Gothic portal, and in the other a +Palladian portico, and at the bottom of the steps in the fresco stand +Florentines who might personally have known Dante, and at the bottom +of the steps in the pictures the Venetian patrons of Aretino. Yet the +presentation of the little maiden to the High Priest is quite equally +conceivable in many other ways and from many other points of view. As +regards both dramatic conception and pictorial composition, the moment +might have been differently chosen; the child might still be with its +parents or already with the priest; and the flight of steps might have +been replaced by the court of the temple. Any man might have invented +his own representation of the occurrence. But the men of the sixteenth +century adhered scrupulously or indifferently to the inventions of the +men of the fourteenth. + +This is merely one instance in a hundred. If we summon up in our mind +as many as we can of the various frescoes and pictures representing the +chief incidents of Scripture history, we shall find that, while there +are endless differences between them with respect to drawing, anatomy, +perspective, light and shade, colour and handling, there are but few and +slight variations as regards the conception of the situation and the +arrangement for the figures. In the Marriage of the Virgin the suitors +are dressed, sometimes in the loose robe and cap with lappets of the +days of Giotto, and sometimes in the tight hose and laced doublet of +the days of Raphael and of Luini; but they break their wands across +their knees with the same gesture and expression; and although the temple +is sometimes close at hand, and sometimes a little way off, the wedding +ceremony invariably takes place outside it, and not inside. The shepherds +in the Nativity are sometimes young and sometimes old, but they always +come in broad daylight, and the manger by which the Virgin is kneeling +is always outside the stable, and always in one corner of the picture. +Again, whatever slight difference there may be in the expression and +gesture of the apostles at the Last Supper, they are always seated on +one side only of a table facing the spectator, with Judas alone on a +stool on the opposite side. And although there are two themes of the +Entombment of Christ, one where the body is stretched on the ground, the +other where it is being carried to the sepulchre, the action is always +out of doors, and never, as might sometimes be expected, gives us the +actual burial in the vault. These examples are more than sufficient. Yet +I feel that any description in words is inadequate to convey the extreme +monotony of all these representations, because the monotony is not merely +one of sentiment by selection of the dramatic moment, but of the visible +composition of the paintings, of the outlines of the groups and the +balancing of them. A monotony so complete that any one of us almost +knows what to expect, in all save technical matters and the choice of +models, on being told that in such a place there is an old Italian +fresco, or panel, or canvas, representing some principal episode of +Gospel history. + +The explanation of this fidelity to one theme of representation in an +art which was the very furthest removed from any hieratic prescriptions, +in an art which was perpetually growing--and growing more human and +secular--must be sought for, I think, in no peculiarities of spiritual +condition or national imagination, but in two facts concerning the merely +technical development of painting, and the results thereof. These two +facts are briefly: that at a given moment--namely, the end of the +thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth--there existed +just enough power of imitating nature to admit of the simple indication +of a dramatic situation, without further realisation of detail; and +that at this moment, consequently, there originated such pictorial +indications of the chief dramatic situations as concerned the Christian +world. And secondly, that from then and until well into the sixteenth +century, the whole attention of artists was engrossed in changing the +powers of indication into powers of absolute representation, developing +completely the drawing, anatomy, perspective, colour, light and shade, +and handling, which Giotto and his contemporaries had possessed only in +a most rudimentary condition, and which had sufficed for the creation of +just such pictorial themes as they had invented, and no more. + +Let me explain myself further. The artists of the fourteenth century, +with the exception of Giotto himself--to whose premature excellence none +of his contemporaries and disciples ever attained--give us, by means of +pictorial representation, just about the same as could be given to us +by the conventional symbolism of writing. In describing a Giottesque +fresco, or panel, we are not stopped by the difficulty of rendering +visible effects in words, because the visible effects that meet us are +in reality so many words; so that, to describe the picture, it almost +suffices to narrate the story, no arrangements of different planes and +of light and shade, no peculiarities of form, foreshortening, colour, +or texture requiring to be seen in order to be fully understood. The +artists of the fifteenth century--for the Giottesques do little more +than carry, without developing them, the themes of Giotto into various +parts of Italy--work at adding to the art exactly those qualities which +belong exclusively to it, and which baffle the mere written word: they +acquire the means, slowly and laboriously, of showing these events no +longer merely to the mind, but also to the eye; they place these people +in real space, in real relations of distance and light, they give them +a real body which can stand and move, made of real flesh and blood and +bones, and covered with real clothes; they turn these abstractions once +more into realities like the realities of nature whence they had been +abstracted. But the work of the fifteenth century does not go beyond +filling up the programme indicated by the Giottesques; and it is only +after the men of the sixteenth century have been enabled to completely +realise all that the men of the fourteenth century had indicated, that +art, with Michelangelo, Tintoret, and still more with the great painters +of Spain and Flanders, proceeds to encounter problems of foreshortening, +of light and shade, of atmospheric effect, that could never have been +imagined by the contemporaries of Giotto, nor even by the contemporaries +of Ghirlandaio and the Bellini. Hence, throughout the fifteenth century, +while there is a steady development of the artistic means required to +realise those narrative themes which the Giottesques had invented, there +is no introduction of any new artistic means unnecessary for this result, +but which, like the foreshortenings of Michelangelo, and the light +and shade of Tintoret, like the still further additions to painting +represented by men like Velasquez and Rembrandt, could suggest new +treatment of the old histories and enable the well-known events to be +shown from totally new intellectual standpoints, and in totally new +artistic arrangements. If we look into the matter, we shall recognise +that the monotony of representation throughout the Renaissance can +be amply accounted for without referring to the fact, which, however, +doubtless went for something, that the men of the fifteenth century were +too much absorbed in the working out of details to feel any desire for +new pictorial versions of the stories of the Gospel, and the lives of +the Saints. + +Moreover, the Giottesques--among whom I include the immediate precursors, +sculptors as well as painters, of Giotto--put into their Scripture +stories an amount of logic, of sentiment, of dramatic and psychological +observation and imagination more than sufficient to furnish out the works +of three generations of later comers. Setting aside Giotto himself, who +concentrates and diffuses the vast bulk of dramatic invention as well +as of artistic observation and skill, there is in even the small and +smallest among his followers, an extraordinary happiness of individual +invention of detail. I may quote a few instances at random. It would be +difficult to find a humbler piece of work than the so-called Tree of +the Cross, in the Florentine Academy: a thing like a huge fern, with +medallion histories in each frond, it can scarcely be considered a work +of art, and stands halfway between a picture and a genealogical tree. +Yet in some of its medallions there is a great vivacity of imaginative +rendering; for instance, the Massacre of the Innocents represented by +a single soldier, mailed and hooded, standing before Herod on a floor +strewn with children's bodies, and holding up an infant by the arm, like +a dead hare, preparing slowly to spit it on his sword; and the kiss of +Judas, the soldiers crowding behind, while the traitor kisses Christ, +seems to bind him hand and foot with his embraces, to give him up, with +that stealthy look backwards to the impatient rabble--a representation +of the scene, infinitely superior in its miserable execution to Angelico's +Ave Rabbi! with its elaborate landscape of towers and fruit trees. +Again, in a series of predella histories of the Virgin, in the same +place, also a very mediocre and anonymous work, there is extraordinary +charm in the conception of the respective positions of Mary and Joseph +at their wedding: he is quite old and grey; she young, unformed, almost +a child, and she has to stand on two steps to be on his level, raising +her head with a beautiful, childlike earnestness, quite unlike the +conventional bridal timidity of other painters. Leaving these unknown +mediocrities, I would refer to the dramatic value (besides the great +pictorial beauty) of an Entombment by Giottino, in the corridor of the +Uffizi: the Virgin does not faint, or has recovered (thus no longer +diverting the attention from the dead Saviour to herself, as elsewhere), +and surrounds the head of her son with her arms; the rest of the figures +restrain themselves before her, and wink with strange blinking efforts +to keep back their tears. Still more would I speak of two small frescoes +in the Baroncelli Chapel at Santa Croce, which are as admirable in +poetical conception as they are unfortunately poor in artistic execution. +One of them represents the Annunciation to the Shepherds: they are lying +in a grey, hilly country, wrapped in grey mists, their flock below asleep, +but the dog vigilant, sniffing the supernatural. One is hard asleep; the +other awakes suddenly, and has turned over and looks up screwing his +eyes at the angel, who comes in a pale yellow winter sunrise cloud, in +the cold, grey mist veined with yellow. The chilliness of the mist at +dawn, the wonder of the vision, are felt with infinite charm. In the +other fresco the three kings are in a rocky place, and to them appears, +not the angel, but the little child Christ, half-swaddled, swimming +in orange clouds on a deep blue sky. The eldest king is standing, and +points to the vision with surprise and awe; the middle-aged one shields +his eyes coolly to see; while the youngest, a delicate lad, has already +fallen on his knees, and is praying with both hands crossed on his breast. +For dramatic, poetic invention, these frescoes can be surpassed, poor as +is their execution, only by Giotto's St. John ascending slowly from the +open grave, floating upwards, with outstretched arms and illumined face, +to where a cloud of prophets, with Christ at their head, enwraps him in +the deep blue sky. + +These pictorial themes elaborated by the painters of the school of +Giotto were not merely as good, in a way, as any pictorial themes could +be: simple, straightforward, often very grand, so that the immediately +following generations could only spoil, but not improve upon them; they +were also, if we consider the matter, the only pictorial representations +of Scripture histories possible until art had acquired those new powers +of foreshortening, and light and shade and perspective, which were +sought for only after the complete attainment of the more elementary +powers which the Giottesques never fully possessed. Let us ask ourselves +how, in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, any notable change in +general arrangement of any well-known Scripture subject could well have +been introduced; and, in order to do so, let us realise one or two cases +where the same subjects have been treated by later masters. Tintoretto's +Last Judgment, where the Heavenly Hosts brood, poised on their wings, +above the river of hell which hurries the damned down its cataracts, is +impossible so long as perspective and foreshortening will barely admit +(as is the case up to the end of the fifteenth century), of figures +standing firmly on the ground and being separated into groups at various +distances. In Rembrandt's and Terburg's Adoration of the Shepherds, the +light emanates from the infant Christ; in Ribera's magnificent Deposition +from the Cross, the dead Saviour and His companions are represented, +not, as in the Entombments of Perugino and Raphael, in the open air, +but in the ghastly light of the mouth of the sepulchre. These are new +variations upon the hackneyed themes, but how were they possible so long +as the problems of light and shade were limited (as was the case even +with Leonardo), to giving the modelling, rather in form than in colour, +of a face or a limb? One of the earliest and greatest innovations is +Signorelli's treatment of the Resurrection in the chapel of San Brizio, +at Orvieto; he broke entirely with the tradition (exemplified particularly +by Angelico) of making the dead come fully fleshed and dressed as in +their lifetime from under the slabs of a burial place, goaded by grotesque +devils with the snouts and horns of weasels and rams, with the cardboard +masks of those carnival mummers who gave the great pageant of Hell +mentioned by old chroniclers. But Signorelli's innovation, his naked +figures partially fleshed and struggling through the earth's crust, his +naked demons shooting through the air and tying up the damned, could +not possibly have been executed or even conceived until his marvellous +mastery of the nude and of the anatomy of movement had been obtained. +Indeed, wherever, in the art of the fifteenth century, we find a beginning +of innovation in the conception and arrangement of a Scripture history, +we shall find also the beginning of the new technical method which has +suggested such a partial innovation. Thus, in the case of one of the +greatest, but least appreciated, masters of the early Renaissance, Paolo +Uccello. His Deluge, in the frescoes of the green cloister of S. Maria +Novella, is wonderfully original as a whole conception; and the figure +clinging to the side of the ark, with soaked and wind-blown drapery; +the man in a tub trying to sustain himself with his hands, the effort +and strain of the people in the water, are admirable as absolute +realisation of the scene. Again, in the Sacrifice of Noah, there is in +the foreshortened figure of God, floating, brooding, like a cloud, with +face downward and outstretched hands over the altar, something which is +a prophecy, and more than a prophecy, of what art will come to in the +Sixtine and the Loggie. But these inventions are due to Uccello's +special and extraordinary studies of the problems of modelling and +foreshortening; and when his contemporaries try to assimilate his +achievements, and unite them with the achievements of other men in other +special technical directions, there is an end of all individual poetical +conception, and a relapse into the traditional arrangements; as may be +seen by comparing the Bible stories of Paolo Uccello with those of +Benozzo Gozzoli at Pisa. + +It is not wonderful that the painters of the fifteenth century should +have been satisfied with repeating the themes left by the Giottesques. +For the Giottesques had left them, besides this positive heritage, a +negative heritage, a programme to fill up, of which it is difficult to +realise the magnitude. The work of the Giottesques is so merely poetic, +or at most so merely decorative in the sense of a mosaic or a tapestry, +and it is in the case of Giotto and one or two of his greatest +contemporaries, particularly the Sienese, so well-balanced and +satisfying as a result of its elementary nature that we are apt to +overlook the fact that everything in the way of realisation as opposed +to indication, everything distinguishing the painting of a story from +the mere telling thereof, remained to be done. And such realisation +could be attained only through a series of laborious failures. It is by +comparing some of the later Giottesques themselves, notably the Gaddi +with Giotto, that we bring home to ourselves, for instance, that Giotto +did not, at least in his finest work at Florence, attempt to model his +frescoes in colour. Now the excessive ugliness of the Gaddi frescoes at +St. Croce is largely due to the effort to make form and boss depend, as +in nature, upon colour. Giotto, in the neighbouring Peruzzi and Bardi +chapels, is quite satisfied with outlining the face and draperies in +dark paint, and laying on the colour, in itself beautiful, as a child +will lay it on to a print or outline drawing, filling up the lines, but +not creating them. I give this as a solitary instance of one of the +first and most important steps towards pictorial realisation which the +great imaginative theme-inventors left to their successors. As a fact, +the items at which the fifteenth century had to work are too many to +enumerate; in many cases each man or group of men took up one particular +item, as perspective, modelling, anatomy, colour, movement, and their +several subdivisions, usually with the result of painful and grotesque +insistency and onesidedness, from the dreadful bag of bones anatomies +of Castagno and Pollaiolo, down to the humbler, but equally necessary, +architectural studies of Francesco di Giorgio. Add to this the necessity +of uniting the various attainments of such specialists, of taming down +these often grotesque monomaniacs, of making all these studies of drawing, +anatomy, colour, modelling, perspective, &c., into a picture. If that +picture was lacking in individual poetic conception; if those studies +were often intolerably silly and wrong-headed from the intellectual +point of view; if the old themes were not only worn threadbare, but +actually maltreated, what wonder? The themes were there, thank Heaven! +no one need bother about them; and no one did. Moreover, as I have +already pointed out, no one could have added anything, save in the +personal sentiment of the heads, the hands, the tilt of the figure, +or the quality of the form. Everything which depends upon dramatic +conception, which is not a question of form or sentiment, tended merely +to suffer a steady deterioration. Thus, nearly two hundred years after +Giotto, Ghirlandaio could find nothing better for his frescoes in +St. Trinità than the arrangement of Giotto's St. Francis, with the +difference that he omitted all the more delicate dramatic distinctions. +I have already alluded to the poetic conception of an early Marriage of +the Virgin in the Florence Academy; that essential point of the extreme +youth of Mary was never again attended to, although the rest of the +arrangement was repeated for two centuries. Similarly, no one noticed +or reproduced the delicate distinctions of action which Gaddi had put +into his two Annunciations of the Cappella Baroncelli; the shepherds +henceforth sprawled no matter how; and the scale of expression in the +vision of the Three Kings was not transferred to the more popular theme +of their visit to the stable at Bethlehem. In Giotto's Presentation at +the Temple in the Arena chapel at Padua, the little Mary is pushed up +the steps by her mother; in the Baroncelli frescoes the little girl, +ascending gravely, turns round for a minute to bless the children at +the foot of the steps. Here are two distinct dramatic conceptions, the +one more human, the other more majestic; both admirable. The fifteenth +century, nay, the fourteenth, took no account of either; the Virgin +merely went up the steps, connected by no emotion with the other +characters, a mere little doll, as she is still in the big pictures +of Titian and Tintoret, and quite subordinate to any group of richly +dressed men or barebacked women. It is difficult to imagine any miracle +quite so dull as the Raising of the King's Son in the Brancacci Chapel; +its dramatic or undramatic foolishness is surpassed only by certain +little panels of Angelico, with fiery rain and other plagues coming down +upon the silly blue and pink world of dolls. + +A satisfactory study of the lack of all dramatic invention of the +painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is afforded by the +various representations of the Annunciation of the Virgin, one of the +favourite themes of the early Renaissance. It never seems to have +occurred to any one that the Virgin and the Archangel might be displayed +otherwise than each in one corner of the picture. Such a composition as +that of Rossetti's Ancilla Domini, where the Virgin cowers on her bed +as the angel floats in with flames round his feet; such a suggestion as +that of the unfinished lily on the embroidery frame, was reserved for +our sceptical and irreverent, but imaginative times. + +The variety in these Annunciations depends, as I have remarked, not upon +a new dramatic conception, producing, as in the case of Rossetti's, a new +visible arrangement; but upon the particular kind of form preferred by +the artist, and the particular kind of expression common in his pictures; +the variety, I may add, is, with one or two exceptions, a variety in +inertness. Let us look at a few, taking merely those in one gallery, the +Uffizi. The Virgin, in that superb piece of gilding by Simone Martini +(did those old painters ever think of the glorified evening sky when +they devised such backgrounds?), is turning away from the angel in sheer +loathing and anger, a great lady feeling sick at the sudden intrusion of +a cad. In a picture by Angelo Gaddi, she is standing with her hand on her +chest, just risen from her chair, like a prima donna going to answer an +_encore_--a gracious, but not too eager recognition of an expected +ovation. In one by Cosimo Rossetti she lifts both hands with shocked +astonishment as the angel scuddles in; in the lovely one, with blue +Alpine peaks and combed-out hair, now given to Verocchio, she raises one +hand with a vacant smile, as if she were exclaiming, "Dear me! there's +that angel again." The one slight deviation from the fixed type of +Annunciation, Angelico's, in a cell at St. Mark's, where he has made +the Virgin kneel and the angel stand, merely because he had painted +another Annunciation with a kneeling angel a few doors off, is due to +no dramatic inspiration. The angel standing upright with folded arms +(how different from Rossetti's standing angel!) while the Virgin kneels, +instead of kneeling to her as, according to etiquette, results merely +in an impression that this silly, stolid, timid little _Ancilla Domini_ +(here again one thinks of Rossetti's cowering and dazed Virgin), has +been waiting for some time in that kneeling attitude, and that the +Archangel has come by appointment. + +Among this crowd of unimpressive, nay brainless, representations of one +of the grandest and sweetest of all stories, there stand out two--an +Annunciation by Signorelli, a small oil painting in the Uffizi, and +one by Botticelli,[6] a large tempera picture in the same room. But +they stand out merely because the one is the work of the greatest +early master of form and movement, or rather the master whose form and +movement had a peculiar quality of the colossal; and the other is the +work of the man, of all Renaissance painters, whose soul seems to have +known most of human, or rather feminine wistfulness, and sorrow, and +passion. + + [Footnote 6: Probably executed from Botticelli's design, by Raffaellino + del Garbo.] + +The little panel by Signorelli (the lowest compartment, divided into +three, of an altar-piece) is perhaps, besides the Orvieto _Resurrection_, +his most superb and poetical work. The figures, only three inches high, +have his highest quality of powerful grandeur, solemnly rustic in the +kneeling shepherds--solemn in the very swagger, hand on hip, of the +parti-coloured bravoes of the Magi; the landscape, only a few centimetres +across, is one of the amplest and most austere that ever has been painted: +a valley, bounded by blue hills and dark green ilex groves, wide, silent, +inhabited by a race larger and stronger than the human, with more than +human passions, but without human speech. In it the Virgin is seated +beneath a portico, breathing, as such creatures must breathe, the vast +greenness, the deep evening breeze. And to her comes bounding, with +waving draperies and loosened hair, the Archangel, like a rushing wind, +the wind which the strong woman is quietly inhaling. There is no religious +sentiment here, still less any human: the Madonna bows gravely as one +who is never astonished; and, indeed, this race of giants, living in +this green valley, look as if nothing could ever astonish them--walking +miracles themselves, and in constant relation with the superhuman. + +We must forget all such things in turning to that Annunciation of +Botticelli. The angel has knelt down vehemently, but drawn himself back, +frightened at his own message; moved overmuch and awed by what he has to +say, and her to whom he must say it; lifting a hand which seems to beg +patience, till the speech which is throbbing in his heart can pass his +lips; eagerness defeating itself, passionate excitement turned into awe +in this young, delicate, passionate, and imaginative creature. He has +not said the word; but she has understood. She has seen him before; she +knows what he means, this vehement, tongue-tied messenger; and at his +sight she reels, her two hands up, the beating of her own blood too loud +in her ears, a sudden mist of tears clouding her eyes. This is no simple +damsel receiving the message, like Rossetti's terrified and awe-stricken +girl, that she is the handmaid of the Lord. This is the nun who has been +waiting for years to become Christ's own bride, and receives at length +the summons to him, in a tragic overpowering ecstasy, like Catherine in +Sodoma's fresco, sinking down at the touch of the rays from Christ's +wounds. Nay, this is, in fact, the mere long-loving woman, suddenly +overcome by the approach of bliss ever hungered for, but never expected, +hearing that it is she who is the beloved; and the angel is the knight's +squire, excited at the message he has to carry, but terrified at the +sight of the woman to whom he must carry it, panting with the weight of +another man's love, and learning, as he draws his breath to say those +words, what love is himself. + +The absence of individual invention, implying the absence of individual +dramatic realisation, strikes one more than anywhere in the works of +Angelico; and most of all in his frescoes of the cells of St. Mark's. +For, while these are evidently less cared for as art, indeed scarcely +intended, in their hasty execution, to be considered as paintings at +all, they are more strictly religious in intention than any other of +Angelico's works; indeed, perhaps, of all paintings in the world, the +most exclusively devoted to a religious object. They are, in fact, so +many pages of Scripture stuck up, like texts in a waiting-room, in the +cells of the convent: an adjunct to the actual written or printed Bible +of each monk. For this reason we expect them to possess what belongs so +completely to the German engravers of Dürer's school, the very essential +of illustrative art--imaginative realisation of the scenes, an attempt +to seize the attention and fill it with the subject. This is by no means +the case: for Angelico, although a saint, was a man of the fifteenth +century, and, despite all his obvious efforts, he was not a real follower +of Giotto. What impressiveness of actual artistic arrangement these +frescoes really possess, is due, I think, to no imaginative effort +of the artist, but to the exigencies of the place; as any similar +impressiveness is due in Signorelli's Annunciation to the quality of his +form, and in Botticelli's Annunciation to the pervading character of his +heads and gestures. These pale angels and St. Dominicks and Magdalens, +these diaphanous, dazzling Christs and Virgins of Angelico's, shining +out of the dark corner of the cell made darker, deeper, by the dark +green or inky purple ground on which they are painted, are less the +spiritual conception of the painter than the accidental result of the +darkness of the place, where lines must be simple and colours light, if +anything is to be visible. For in the more important frescoes in the +corridors and chapter-room, where the light is better, there is a return +to Angelico's hackneyed vapid pinks and blues and lilacs, and a return +also to his niminy-piminy lines, to all the wax-doll world of the missal +painter. The fine fresco of St. Dominick at the foot of the cross, which +seems to constitute an exception to this rule, really goes to prove it, +since it is intended to be seen very much like the cell frescoes: white +and black on a blue ground at the end of the first corridor, a thing +to be looked at from a great distance, to impress the lay world that +sees it at the cloister and from outside the convent railing. The cell +frescoes are, I have said, the most exclusively religious paintings in +the world, since they are to the highest degree, what all absolutely +pious art must be, _aids to devotion_. Their use is to assist the monk +in that conjuring up of the actual momentary feelings, nay, sensations, +of the life of Christ which is part of his daily duty. They are such +stimuli as the Church has given sometimes in an artistic, sometimes in a +literary form, to an imagination jaded by the monotonous contemplation +of one subject, or overexcited to the extent of rambling easily to +another: they are what we fondly imagine will be the portraits of the +dear dead which we place before us, forgetting that after a while we +look without seeing, or see without feeling. That this is so, that these +painted Gospel leaves stuck on the cell walls are merely such mechanical +aids to devotion, explains the curious and startling treatment of +some of the subjects, which are yet, despite the seeming novelty and +impressiveness, very cold, undramatic, and unimaginative. Thus, there +is the fresco of Christ enthroned, blindfold, with alongside of Him a +bodiless scoffing head, with hat raised, and in the act of spitting; +buffeting hands, equally detached from any body, floating also on the +blue background. There is a Christ standing at the foot of the cross, +but with his feet in a sarcophagus, the column of the flagellation +monumentally or heraldically on one side, the lance of Longinus on the +other; and above, to the right, the floating face of Christ being kissed +by that of Judas; to the left the blindfold floating head of Christ again, +with the floating head of a soldier spitting at Him; and all round +buffeting and jibing hands, hands holding the sceptre of reed, and +hands counting out money; all arranged very much like the nails, hammer, +tweezers and cock on roadside crosses; each a thing whereon to fix +the mind, so as to realise that kiss of Judas, that spitting of the +soldiers, those slaps; and to hear, if possible, the chink of the pieces +of silver that sold our Lord. How different, these two pictorial dodges +of the purely mechanical Catholicism of the fifteenth century from +the tender or harrowing gospel illustrations, where every detail is +conceived as happening in the artist's own town and to his own kinsfolk, +of the Lutheran engravers of the school of Dürer! + +Thus things go on throughout the fifteenth century, and, indeed, +deep into the sixteenth, where traditional arrangement and individual +conception overlap, according as a new artistic power does or does not +call forth a new dramatic idea. I have already alluded to the fact that +the Presentation of the Virgin remains the same, so far as arrangement +is concerned, in the pictures of Titian and Tintoret as in the frescoes +of Giotto and Gaddi. Michelangelo's Creation of Adam seems still inherited +from an obscure painter in the "Green Cloister," who inherited it from +the Pisan sculptors. On the other hand, the Resurrection and Last Judgment +of Signorelli at Orvieto, painted some years earlier, constitutes in many +of its dramatic details a perfectly original work. Be this as it may, and +however frequent the recurrence of old themes, with the sixteenth century +commences the era of new individual dramatic invention. Michelangelo's +Dividing of the Light from the Darkness, where the Creator broods still +in chaos, and commands the world to exist; and Raphael's Liberation of +St. Peter, with its triple illumination from the moon, the soldier's +torches and the glory of the liberating angel, are witnesses that +henceforward each man may invent for himself, because each man is in +possession of those artistic means which the Giottesques had indicated +and the artists of the fifteenth century had laboriously acquired. And +now, the Giottesque programme being fulfilled, art may go abroad and +seek for new methods and effects, for new dramatic conceptions. + + +III + +The other day, walking along the river near Careggi (with its memories +of Lorenzo dei Medici and his Platonists), close to the little cupola +and loggia built by Ghirlandaio, I came upon a strip of new grass, +thickly whitened with daisies, beneath the poplars beginning to yellow +with pale sprouting leaves. And immediately there arose in my mind, by +the side of this real grass and real budding of trees, the remembrance +of certain early Renaissance pictures: the rusty, green, stencilled +grass and flowers of Botticelli, the faded tapestry work of Angelico; +making, as it were, the greenness greener, the freshness fresher, of +that real grass and those real trees. And not by the force of contrast, +but rather by the sense that as all this appears to me green and fresh +in the present, so likewise did it appear to those men of four centuries +ago: the fact of their having seen and felt, making me, all the more, +see and feel. + +This is one of the peculiarities of rudimentary art--of the art of +the early Renaissance as well as of that of Persia and India, of +Constantinople, of every peasant potter all through the world: that, +not knowing very well its own aims, it fills its imperfect work with +suggestion of all manner of things which it loves, and tries to gain in +general pleasurableness what it loses in actual achievement; and lays +hold of us, like fragments of verse, by suggestiveness, quite as much +as by pictorial realisation. And upon this depends the other half of +the imaginative art of the Renaissance, the school of intellectual +decoration, of arabesques formed, not of lines and of colours, but of +associations and suggestions. + +The desire which lies at the bottom of it--a desire masked as religious +symbolism in the old mosaicists and carvers and embroiderers--is the +desire to paint nice things, in default of painting a fine picture. The +beginning of such attempts is naturally connected with the use of gilding; +whether those gold grounds of the panel pictures of the fourteenth century +represented to the painters only a certain expenditure of gold foil, or +whether (as I have suggested, but I fear fantastically) their streakings +and veinings of coppery or silvery splendour, their stencillings of rays +and dots and fretwork, their magnificent inequality and variety of brown +or yellow or greenish effulgence, were vaguely connected in the minds of +those men with the splendour of the heaven in which the Virgin and the +Saints really dwell. It is the cunning use of this gilding, of tools +for ribbing and stencilling and damascening, which give half of their +marvellous exotic loveliness to Simone Martini's frescoes at Assisi and +his Annunciation of the Florentine Gallery; this, and the feeling for +wonderful gold woven and embroidered stuffs, like that white cloth of +gold of the kneeling angel, fit, in its purity and splendour, for the +robe of Grail king. The want of mechanical dexterity, however, prevented +the Giottesques from doing very much in the decorative line except +in conjunction with the art--perhaps quite separate from that of the +painter, and exercised by a different individual--of the embosser and +gilder. + +It is with the fifteenth century that begins, in Italy as in Flanders (we +must think of the carved stonework, the Persian carpets, the damascened +armour, the brocade dresses of Van Eyck's and Memling's Holy Families), +the deliberate habit of putting into pictures as much as possible of the +beautiful and luxurious things of this world. The house of the Virgin, +originally a very humble affair, or rather, in the authority of the +early Giottesques, a _no place, nowhere_, develops gradually into a +very delightful residence in the choicest part of the town, or into a +pleasantly situated villa, like the one described in the Decameron, +commanding a fine view. The Virgin's bedchamber, where we are shown it, +as, for instance, in Crivelli's picture in the National Gallery, is +quite as well appointed in the way of beautiful bedding, carving, and +so forth, as the chamber of the lady of John Arnolfini of Lucca in Van +Eyck's portrait. Outside it, as we learn from Angelico, Cosimo Rosselli, +Lippi, Ghirlandaio, indeed, from almost every Florentine painter, +stretches a pleasant portico, decorated in the Ionic or Corinthian +style, as if by Brunellesco or Sangallo, with tesselated floor, or +oriental carpet, and usually a carved or gilded desk and praying +stool; while the privacy of the whole place is guarded by a high wall, +surmounted by vases, overtopped by cypresses, and in whose shelter +grows a row of well-kept roses and lilies. Sometimes this house, as I +have said, becomes a villa, as is the case, not unfrequently, with the +Lombards, who love to make the angel appear on the flowery grass against +a background of Alpine peaks, such as you see them, rising blue and +fairylike from the green ricefields about Pavia. Crivelli, however, +though a Lombard, prefers a genteel residence in town, the magnificent +Milan of Galeazzo and Filippo Visconti. He gives us a whole street, +where richly dressed and well peruked gentlemen look down from +the terraces, duly set with flower-pots, of houses ornamented with +terra-cotta figures and medallions like those of the hospital at Milan. +In this street the angel of the Annunciation is kneeling, gorgeously +got up in silks and brocades, and accompanied by a nice little bishop +carrying a miniature town on a tray. The Virgin seems to be receiving +the message through the window or the open door. She has a beautiful bed +with a red silk coverlet, some books, and a shelf covered with plates +and preserve jars. This evident appreciation of jam, as one of the +pleasant things of this world, corresponds with the pot of flowers on +the window, the bird-cage hanging up: the mother of Christ must have the +little tastes and luxuries of a well-to-do burgess's daughter. Again, +the cell of St. Jerome, painted some thirty years later by Carpaccio, in +the Church of the Slavonians, contains not only various convenient and +ornamental articles of furniture, but a collection of nick-nacks, among +which some antique bronzes are conspicuous. + +The charm in all this is not so much that of the actual objects +themselves; it is that of their having delighted those people's minds. +We are pleased by their pleasure, and our imagination is touched by +their fancy. The effect is akin to that of certain kinds of poetry, +not the dramatic certainly, where we are pleased by the mere suggestion +of beautiful things, and quite as much by finding in the poet a mind +appreciative and desirous of them, constantly collecting them and +enhancing them by subtle arrangements; it is the case with much lyric +verse, with the Italian folk-rhymes, woven out of names of flowers +and herbs, with some of Shakespeare's and Fletcher's songs, with the +"Allegro" and "Penseroso," Keats, some of Heine, and, despite a mixture +of unholy intention, Baudelaire. The great master thereof in the early +Renaissance, the lyrist, if I may use the word, of the fifteenth century, +is of course Botticelli. He is one of those who most persistently +introduce delightful items into their works: elaborately embroidered +veils, scarves, and gold fringes. But being a man of fine imagination +and most delicate sense of form, he does not, like Angelico or Benozzo +or Carpaccio, merely stick pretty things about; he works them all into +his strange arabesque, half intellectual, half physical. Thus the screen +of roses[7] behind certain of his Madonnas, forming an exquisite Morris +pattern with the greenish-blue sky interlaced; and those beautiful, +carefully-drawn branches of spruce-fir and cypress, lace-like in his +Primavera; above all, that fan-like growth of myrtles, delicately cut +out against the evening sky, which not merely print themselves as shapes +upon the mind, but seem to fill it with a scent of poetry. + + [Footnote 7: I learn from the learned that the Florence and Louvre + Madonnas, with the roses, are not Botticelli's; but Botticelli, I + am sure, would not have been offended by those lovely bushes being + attributed to him.] + +This pleasure in the painter's pleasure in beautiful things is connected +with another quality, higher and rarer, in this sort of imaginative art. +It is our appreciation of the artist's desire for beauty and refinement, +of his search for the exquisite. Herein, to my mind, lies some of +the secret of Botticelli's fantastic grace; the explanation of that +alternate or rather interdependent ugliness and beauty. Botticelli, +as I have said elsewhere, must have been an admirer of the grace and +sentiment of Perugino, of the delicacy of form of certain Florentine +sculptors--Ghiberti, and those who proceed from him, Desiderio, Mino, +and particularly the mysterious Florentine sculptor of Rimini; and what +these men have done or do, Botticelli attempts, despite or (what is +worse) by means of the realistic drawing and ugly models of Florence, +the mechanism and arrangement of coarse men like the Pollaiolos. +The difficulty of attaining delicate form and sentiment with such +materials--it cannot be said to have been attained in that sense by any +other early Tuscan painter, not even Angelico or Filippo Lippi--makes the +desire but the keener, and turns it into a most persevering and almost +morbid research. Thence the extraordinary ingenuity displayed, frequently +to the detriment of the work, in the arrangement of hands (witness the +tying, clutching hands, with fingers bent curiously in intricate knots, +of the Calumny of Apelles), and of drapery; in the poising of bodies and +selection of general outline. This search for elegance and grace, for +the refined and unhackneyed, is frequently baffled by the ugliness of +Botticelli's models, and still more by Botticelli's deficient knowledge +of anatomy and habit of good form. But, when not baffled, this desire is +extraordinarily assisted by those very defects. This great decorator, +who uses the human form as so much pattern element, mere lines and +curves like those of a Raffaelesque arabesque, obtains with his +imperfect, anatomically defective, and at all events ill-fashioned +figures, a far-fetched and poignant grace impossible to a man dealing +with more perfect elements. For grace and distinction, which are +qualities of movement rather than of form, do not strike us very much in +a figure which is originally well made. The momentary charm of movement +is lost in the permanent charm of form; the creature could not be +otherwise than delightful, made as it is; and we thus miss the sense of +selection and deliberate arrangement, the sense of beauty as movement, +that is, as grace. Whereas, in the case of defective form, any grace +that may be obtained affects us _per se_. It need not have been there; +indeed, it was unlikely to be there; and hence it obtains the value and +charm of the unexpected, the rare, the far-fetched. This, I think, is +the explanation of the something of exotic beauty that attaches to +Botticelli: we perceive the structural form only negatively, sufficiently +to value all the more the ingenuity of arrangement by which it is made +to furnish a beautiful outline and beautiful movement; and we perceive +the great desire thereof. If we allow our eye to follow the actual +structure of the bodies, even in the Primavera, we shall recognise that +not one of these figures but is downright deformed and out of drawing. +Even the Graces have arms and shoulders and calves and stomachs all at +random; and the most beautiful of them has a slice missing out of her +head. But if, instead of looking at heads, arms, legs, bodies, separately, +and separate from the drapery, we follow the outline of the groups against +the background, drapery clinging or wreathing, arms intertwining, hands +combed out into wonderful fingers; if we regard these groups of figures +as a pattern stencilled on the background, we recognise that no pattern +could be more exquisite in its variety of broken up and harmonised lines. +The exquisite qualities of all graceful things, flowers, branches, +swaying reeds, and certain animals like the stag and peacock, seem to +have been abstracted and given to these half-human and wholly wonderful +creatures--these thin, ill put together, unsteady youths and ladies. The +ingenious grace of Botticelli passes sometimes from the realm of art +to that of poetry, as in the case of those flowers, with stiff, tall +stems, which he places by the uplifted foot of the middle Grace, thus +showing that she has trodden over it, like Virgil's Camilla, without +crushing it. But the element of sentiment and poetry depends in reality +upon the fascination of movement and arrangement; fascination seemingly +from within, a result of exquisite breeding in those imperfectly made +creatures. It is the grace of a woman not beautiful, but well dressed +and moving well; the exquisiteness of a song sung delicately by an +insufficient or defective voice: a fascination almost spiritual, since +it seems to promise a sensitiveness to beauty, a careful avoidance of +ugliness, a desire for something more delicate, a reverse of all things +gross and accidental, a possibility of perfection. + +This imagination of pleasant detail and accessory, which delights us +by the intimacy into which we are brought with the artist's innermost +conception, develops into what, among the masters of the fifteenth +century, I should call the imagination of the fairy tale. A small number +of scriptural and legendary stories lend themselves quite particularly +to the development of such beautiful accessory, which soon becomes the +paramount interest, and vests the whole with a totally new character: a +romantic, childish charm, the charm of the improbable taken for granted, +of the freedom to invent whatever one would like to see but cannot, the +charm of the fairy story. From this unconscious altering of the value of +certain Scripture tales, arises a romantic treatment which is naturally +applied to all other stories, legends of saints, biographical accounts, +Decameronian tales (Mr. Leyland once possessed some Botticellian +illustrations of the tale of Nastagio degli Onesti, the hero of Dryden's +"Theodore and Honoria," a sort of pendant to the Griseldis attributed to +Pinturicchio), and mythological episodes: a new kind of invention, based +upon a desire to please, and as different from the invention of the +Giottesques as the Arabian Nights are different from Homer. + +I have said that it begins with the unconscious altering of the values +of certain scriptural stories, owing to the preponderance of detail over +accessory. The chief example of this is the Adoration of the Magi. In +the paintings of the Giottesques, and in the paintings of the serious, +or duller, masters of the fifteenth century--Ghirlandaio, Rosselli, +Filippino, those for whom the fairy tale could exist no more than for +Michelangelo or Andrea del Sarto--the chief interest in this episode is +the Holy Family, the miraculous Babe whom these great folk came so far to +see. The fourteenth century made very short work of the kings, allowing +them a minimum of splendour; and those of the fifteenth century, who +cared only for artistic improvement, copied slavishly, giving the kings +their retinue only as they might have introduced any number of studio +models or burgesses aspiring at portraits, after the fashion of the +Brancacci and S. Maria Novella frescoes, where spectators of miracles +make a point never to look at the miraculous proceedings. But there +were men who felt differently: the men who loved splendour and detail. +To Gentile da Fabriano, that wonderful man in whom begins the colour and +romance of Venetian painting,[8] the adoration of the kings could not +possibly be what it had been for the Giottesques, or what it still was +for Angelico. The Madonna, St. Joseph, the child Christ did not cease to +be interesting: he painted them with evident regard, gave the Madonna a +beautiful gold hem to her dress, made St. Joseph quite unusually amiable, +and shed a splendid gilt glory about the child Christ. But to him the +wonderful part of the business was not the family in the shed at Bethlehem +which the kings came to see; but those kings themselves, who came from +such a long way off. He put himself at the point of view of a holy +family less persuaded of its holiness, who should suddenly see a bevy +of grand folks come up to their door: the miraculous was here. The +spiritual glory was of course on the side of the family of Joseph; but +the temporal glory, the glory that delighted Gentile, that went to +his brain and made him childishly happy, was with the kings and their +retinue. That retinue--the trumpeters prancing on white horses, with +gold lace covers, the pages, the armour-bearers, the treasurers, the +huntsmen with the hounds, the falconers with the hawks, winding for +miles down the hills, and expanding into the circle of strange and +delightful creatures that kings must have about their persons: jesters +with heads thrown back and eyes squeezed close, while thinking of some +funny jest; dwarfs and negroes, almost as amusing as their camels +and giraffes; tame lynxes chained behind the saddle, monkeys perched, +jabbering, on the horses' manes--all this was much more wonderful in +Gentile da Fabriano's opinion than all the wonders of the Church, which +grew somehow less wonderful the more implicitly you believed in them. +Then, in the midst of all these delightful splendours, the kings +themselves! The old grey-beard in the brown pomegranate embossed brocade +going on all fours, and kissing the little child's feet; the dark young +man, with peaked beard and wistful face, removing his coroneted turban; +and last, but far from least, the youngest king, the beardless boy, with +the complexion of a well-bred young lady, the almond eyes and golden +hair, standing up in his tunic of white cloth of silver, while one squire +unbuckled his spurs and another removed his cloak. The darling little +Prince Charming, between whom and the romantic bearded young king there +must for some time have been considerable rivalry, and alternating views +in the minds of men and the hearts of women (particularly when the +second king, the bearded one, became the John Palæologus of Benozzo), +until it was victoriously borne in upon the public that this delicate, +beardless creature, so much younger and always the last, must evidently +be _the_ prince, the youngest of the king's sons in the fairy tales, the +one who always succeeds where the two elder have failed, who gets the +Water that Dances and the Apple Branch that Sings, who carries off the +enchanted oranges, slays the ogre, releases the princess, flies through +the air, the hero, the prince of Fairyland.... + + [Footnote 8: This quality, particularly in the Adoration of the Magi, + is already very marked in the very charming and little known frescoes + of Ottaviano Nelli, in the former Trinci Palace at Foligno. Nelli was + the master of Gentile, and through him greatly influenced Venice.] + +The fairy business of the story of the Three Kings takes even greater +proportions in the delightful frescoes of Benozzo Gozzoli in the Riccardi +Chapel. Here the Holy Family are suppressed, so to speak, altogether, +tucked into the altar in a picture, and the act of adoration at Bethlehem +becomes the mere excuse for the romantic adventures of three people of +the highest quality. The journey itself, where Gentile da Fabriano sums +up in that procession twisting about the background of his picture, here +occupies a whole series of frescoes. And on this journey is concentrated +all that the Renaissance knew of splendour, delightfulness, and romance. +The green valleys, watered by twisting streams, with matted grasses, +which Botticelli puts behind his enthroned Madonna and victorious +Judith; Angelico's favourite hillsides with blossoming fruit trees and +pointing cypresses; the mysterious firwoods--more mysterious for their +remoteness on the high Apennines--which fascinate the fancy of Filippo +Lippi; all this is here, and through it all winds the procession of +the Three Kings. There are the splendid stuffs and Oriental jewels and +trappings, the hounds and monkeys, and jesters and negroes, the falcon +on the wrist, the lynxes chained to the saddle, all the magnificence +dreamed by Gentile da Fabriano; and among it all ride, met by bevies +of peacock-winged angels, kneeling and singing before the flowering +rose-hedges, the Three Kings. The old man, who looks like some Platonist +philosopher, the beardless prince, surrounded by his noisy huntsmen and +pages; and that dark-bearded youth in the Byzantine dress and shovel +hat, the genuine king from the East, riding with ardent, wistful eyes, a +beautiful kingly young Quixote: Sir Percival seeking the Holy Grail, or +King Cophetua seeking for his beggar girl. It is a page of fairy tale, +retold by Boiardo or Spenser. + +After such things as these it is difficult to speak of those more +prosaic tales, really intended as such, on which the painters of the +Renaissance spent their fancy. Still they have all their charm, these +fairy tales, not of the great poets indeed, but of the nursery. + +There is, for instance, the story of a good young man (with a name for +a fairy tale too, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini!) showing his adventures by +land and sea and at many courts, the honours conferred on him by kings +and emperors, and how at last he was made Pope, having begun as a mere +poor scholar on a grey nag; all painted by Pinturicchio in the Cathedral +library of Siena. There is the lamentable story of a bride and bridegroom, +by Vittore Carpaccio: the stately, tall bride, St. Ursula, and the dear +little foolish bridegroom, looking like her little brother; a story +containing a great many incidents: the sending of an embassy to the King; +the King being sorely puzzled in his mind, leaning his arm upon his bed +and asking the Queen's advice; the presence upon the palace steps of an +ill-favoured old lady, with a crutch and basket, suspiciously like the +bad fairy who had been forgotten at the christening; the apparition of +an angel to the Princess, sleeping, with her crown neatly put away at +the foot of the bed; the arrival of the big ship in foreign parts, with +the Bishop and Clergy putting their heads out of the port-holes and +asking very earnestly, "Where are we?" and finally, a most fearful +slaughter of the Princess and her eleven thousand ladies-in-waiting. The +same Carpaccio--a regular old gossip from whom one would expect all the +formulas, "and then he says to the king, Sacred Crown," "and then the +Prince walks, walks, walks, walks." "A company of knights in armour nice +and shining," "three comely ladies in a green meadow," and so forth of +the professional Italian story-teller--the same Carpaccio, who was also, +and much more than the more solemn Giovanni Bellini, the first Venetian +to handle oil paints like Titian and Giorgione, painted the fairy tale +of St. George, with quite the most dreadful dragon's walk, a piece of +sea sand embedded with bones and half-gnawed limbs, and crawled over +by horrid insects, that any one could wish to see; and quite the most +comical dragon, particularly when led out for execution among the +minarets and cupolas and camels and turbans and symbols of a kind of +small Constantinople. + +One of the funniest of all such series of stories, and which shows that +when the Renaissance men were driven to it they could still invent, +though (apparently) when they had to invent in this fashion, they ceased +to be able to paint, is the tale of Griseldis, attributed in our National +Gallery to Pinturicchio, but certainly by a very inferior painter of his +school. The Marquis, after hunting deer on a steep little hill, shaded +by elm trees, sees Griseldis going to a well, a pitcher on her head. He +reins in his white horse, and cranes over in his red cloak, the young +parti-coloured lords-in-waiting pressing forwards to see her, but only +as much as politeness warrants. Scene II.--A stubbly landscape. The +Marquis, in red and gold cloak and well-combed yellow head of hair, +approaches on foot to the little pink farm-house. Surprise of old +Giannucole, who is coming down the exterior steps. "Bless my soul! the +Lord Marquis!" "Where is your daughter?" asks the Marquis, with pointing +finger. But the daughter, hearing voices, has come on to the balcony and +throws up her arms astonished. "Dear me! the cavalier who accosted me in +the wood!" The Marquis and Grizel walk off, he deferentially dapper, she +hanging back a little in her black smock. Scene III.--The Marquis, still +in purple and gold, and red stockings and Hessian boots, says with some +timidity and much grace, pointing to the magnificent clothes brought by +his courtiers, "Would you mind, dear Grizel, putting on these clothes +to please me?" But Griseldis is extremely modest. She tightens her white +shift about her, and doesn't dare look at the cloth of gold dress which +is so pretty. Scene IV.--A triumphal arch, with four gilt figures. The +Marquis daintily, with much wrist-twisting, offers to put the ring on +Griseldis' hand, who obediently accepts, while pages and trumpeters hold +the Marquis's three horses. + +Act II. Scene I.--A portico. Griseldis reluctantly, but obediently, +gives up her baby. Scene II.--A conspirator in black cloak and red +stockings walks off with it on the tips of his toes, and then returns +and tells the Marquis that his Magnificence's orders have been executed. +Scene III.--Giannucole, father of Griseldis, having been sent for, arrives +in his best Sunday cloak. The Marquis in red, with a crown on, says, +standing hand on hip, "You see, after that I really cannot keep her on +any longer." Several small dogs sniff at each other in the background. +Scene V.--Triumphal arch, with bear chained to it, peacock, tame deer, +crowd of courtiers. A lawyer reads the act of divorce. The Marquis steps +forward to Grizel with hands raised, "After this kind of behaviour, it +is quite impossible for me to live with you any longer." Griseldis is +ladylike and resigned. The Marquis says with acrimonious politeness, +"I am sorry, madam, I must trouble you to restore to me those garments +before departing from my house." Griseldis slowly let her golden frock +fall to her feet, then walks off (Scene VI.) towards the little pink +farm, where her father is driving the sheep. The courtiers look on and +say, "Dear, dear, what very strange things do happen!" + +Act III. Scene I.--Outside Giannucole's farm. The Marquis below. Griseldis +at the balcony. He says, "I want to hire you as a maid." "Yes, my Lord." +Scene II.--A portico, with a large company at dinner. The Marquis +introduces his supposed bride and brother-in-law, in reality his own +children. He turns round to Griseldis, who is waiting at table, and bids +her be a little more careful what she is about with those dishes. Scene +III.--Dumb show. Griseldis, in her black smock, is sweeping out the future +Marchioness's chamber. Scene IV.--At table. The Marquis suddenly bids +Griseldis, who is waiting, come and sit by him; he kisses her, and points +at the supposed bride and brother-in-law. "Those are our children, dear." +A young footman is quite amazed. Scene V.--A procession of caparisoned +horse, and giraffes carrying monkeys. A grand supper. "And they live +happy ever after." + +But the fairy tale, beyond all others, with these painters of the +fifteenth century, is the antique myth. No Bibbienas and Bembos +and Calvos have as yet indoctrinated them (as Raphael, alas! was +indoctrinated) with the _real spirit of classical times_, teaching them +that the essence of antiquity was to have no essence at all; no Ariostos +and Tassos have taught the world at large the real Ovidian conception, +the monumental allegoric nature and tendency to vacant faces and +sprawling, big-toed nudity of the heroes and goddesses as Giulio Romano +and the Caracci so well understood to paint them. For all the humanists +that hung about courts, the humanities had not penetrated much into +the Italian people. The imaginative form and colour was still purely +mediæval; and the artists of the early Renaissance had to work out their +Ovidian stories for themselves, and work them out of their own material. +Hence the mythological creatures of these early painters are all, more +or less, gods in exile, with that charm of a long residence in the +Middle Ages which makes, for instance, the sweetheart of Ritter Tannhäuser +so infinitely more seductive than the paramour of Adonis; that charm +which, when we meet it occasionally in literature, in parts of Spenser, +for instance, or in a play like Peel's "Arraignment of Paris," is so +peculiarly delightful. + +These early painters have made up their Paganism for themselves, out of +all pleasant things they knew; their fancy has brooded upon it; and the +very details that make us laugh, the details coming direct from the +Middle Ages, the spirit in glaring opposition occasionally to that of +Antiquity, bring home to us how completely this Pagan fairyland is a +genuine reality to these men. We feel this in nearly all the work of +that sort--least, in the archæological Mantegna's. We see it beginning +in the mere single figures--the various drawings of Orpheus, "Orpheus le +doux menestrier jouant de flutes et de musettes," as Villon called him, +much about that time--piping or fiddling among little toy animals out of +a Nuremberg box; the drawing of fauns carrying sheep, some with a queer +look of the Good Shepherd about them, of Pinturicchio; and rising to +such wonderful exhibitions (to me, with their obscure reminiscence of +pageants, they always seem like ballets) as Perugino's Ceiling of the +Cambio, where, among arabesqued constellations, the gods of antiquity +move gravely along: the bearded knight Mars, armed _cap-à-pie_ like a +mediæval warrior; the delicate Mercurius, a beautiful page-boy stripped +of his emblazoned clothes; Luna dragged along by two nymphs; and Venus +daintily poised on one foot on her dove-drawn chariot, the exquisite +Venus in her clinging veils, conquering the world with the demure +gravity and adorable primness of a high-born young abbess. + +The actual fairy story becomes, little by little, more complete--the +painters of the fifteenth century work, little guessing it, are the +precursors of Walter Crane. The full-page illustration of a tale of +semi-mediæval romance--of a romance like Spenser's "Fairy Queen" or +Mr. Morris's "Earthly Paradise," exists distinctly in that picture +and drawing, by the young Raphael or whomsoever else, of Apollo and +Marsyas.[9] This piping Marsyas seated by the tree stump, this naked +Apollo, thin and hectic like an undressed archangel, standing against +the Umbrian valley with its distant blue hills, its castellated village, +its delicate, thinly-leaved trees--things we know so well in connection +with the Madonna and Saints, that this seems absent for only a few +minutes--all this is as little like Ovid as the triumphant antique +Galatea of Raphael is like Spenser. Again, there is Piero di Cosimo's +Death of Procris: the poor young woman lying dead by the lake, with +the little fishing town in the distance, the swans sailing and cranes +strutting, and the dear young faun--no Praxitelian god with invisible +ears, still less the obscene beast whom the late Renaissance copied from +Antiquity--a most gentle, furry, rustic creature, stooping over her in +puzzled, pathetic concern, at a loss, with his want of the practice of +cities and the knowledge of womankind, what to do for this poor lady +lying among the reeds and the flowering scarlet sage; a creature the +last of whose kind (friendly, shy, woodland things, half bears or half +dogs, frequent in mediæval legend), is the satyr of Fletcher's "Faithful +Shepherdess," the only poetic conception in that gross and insipid piece +of magnificent rhetoric. The perfection of the style must naturally be +sought from Botticelli, and in his Birth of Venus (but who may speak of +that after the writer of most subtle fancy, of most exquisite language, +among living Englishman?)[10] This goddess, not triumphant but sad in +her pale beauty, a king's daughter bound by some charm to flit on her +shell over the rippling sea, until the winds blow it in the kingdom of +the good fairy Spring, who shelters her in her laurel grove and covers +her nakedness with the wonderful mantle of fresh-blown flowers.... + + [Footnote 9: I believe now unanimously given to Pinturicchio.] + + [Footnote 10: Alas! no longer among the living, though among those + whose spiritual part will never die. Walter Pater died July 1894: a + man whose sense of loveliness and dignity made him, in mature life, + as learned in moral beauty as he had been in visible.] + +But the imagination born of the love of beautiful and suggestive detail +soars higher; become what I would call the lyric art of the Renaissance, +the art which not merely gives us beauty, but stirs up in ourselves as +much beauty again of stored-up impression, reaches its greatest height +in certain Venetian pictures of the early sixteenth century. Pictures of +vague or enigmatic subject, or no subject at all, like Giorgione's Fête +Champêtre and Soldier and Gipsy, Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, The +Three Ages of Man, and various smaller pictures by Bonifazio, Palma, +Basaiti; pictures of young men in velvets and brocades, solemn women +with only the glory of their golden hair and flesh, seated in the grass, +old men looking on pensive, children rolling about; with the solemnity +of great, spreading trees, of greenish evening skies: the pathos of +the song about to begin or just finished, lute or viol or pipe still +lying hard by. Of such pictures it is best, perhaps, not to speak. The +suggestive imagination is wandering vaguely, dreaming; fumbling at +random sweet, strange chords out of its viol, like those young men and +maidens. The charm of such works is that they are never explicit; they +tell us, like music, deep secrets, which we feel, but cannot translate +into words. + + +IV + +The first new factor in art which meets us at the beginning of the +sixteenth century is not among the Italians, and is not a merely +artistic power. I speak of the passionate individual fervour for +the newly recovered Scriptures, manifest among the German engravers, +Protestants all or nearly all, and among whose works is for ever turning +up the sturdy, passionate face of Luther, the enthusiastic face of +Melanchthon. The very nature of these men's art is conceivable only +where the Bible has suddenly become the reading, and the chief reading, +of the laity. These prints, large and small, struck off in large numbers, +are not church ornaments like frescoes or pictures, nor aids to monastic +devotion like Angelico's Gospel histories at St. Mark's--they are +illustrations to the book which every one is reading, things to be +framed in the chamber of every burgher or mechanic, to be slipped into +the prayer-book of every housewife, to be conned over during the long +afternoons, by the children near the big stove or among the gooseberry +bushes of the garden. And they are, therefore, much more than the +Giottesque inventions, the expression of the individual artist's +ideas about the incidents of Scripture; and an expression not for the +multitude at large, fresco or mosaic that could be elaborated by a +sceptical or godless artist, but a re-explanation as from man to man +and friend: this is how the dear Lord looked, or acted--see, the words +in the Bible are so or so forth. Therefore, there enters into these +designs, which contain after all only the same sort of skill which was +rife in Italy, so much homeliness at once, and poignancy and sublimity +of imagination. The Virgin, they have discovered, is not that grandly +dressed lady, always in the very finest brocade, with the very finest +manners, and holding a divine infant that has no earthly wants, whom Van +Eyck and Memling and Meister Stephan painted. She is a good young woman, +a fairer version of their dear wife, or the woman who might have been +that; no carefully selected creature as with the Italians, no well-made +studio model, with figure unspoilt by child-bearing, but a real wife and +mother, with real milk in her breasts (the Italian virgin, save with one +or two Lombards, is never permitted to suckle)[11], which she very readily +and thoroughly gives to the child, guiding the little mouth with her +fingers. And she sits in the lonely fields by the hedges and windmills +in the fair weather; or in the neat little chamber with the walled town +visible between the pillar of the window, as in Bartholomew Beham's +exquisite design, reading, or suckling, or sewing, or soothing the +fretful baby; no angels around her, or rarely: the Scripture says +nothing about such a court of seraphs as the Italians and Flemings, the +superstitious Romanists, always placed round the mother of Christ. It +is all as it might have happened to them; they translate the Scripture +into their everyday life, they do not pick out of it the mere stately +and poetic incidents like the Giottesques. This everyday life of theirs +is crude enough, and in many cases nasty enough; they have in those +German free towns a perfect museum of loathsome ugliness, born of ill +ventilation, gluttony, starvation, or brutality: quite fearful wrinkled +harridans and unabashed fat, guzzling harlots, and men of every variety +of scrofula, and wart and belly, towards none of which (the best far +transcending the worst Italian Judas) they seem to feel any repugnance. +They have also a beastly love of horrors; their decollations and +flagellations are quite sickening in detail, as distinguished from the +tidy, decorous executions of the early Italians; and one feels that they +do enjoy seeing, as in one of their prints, the bowels of St. Erasmus +being taken out with a windlass, or Jael, as Altdorfer has shown her +in his romantic print, neatly hammering the nail into the head of the +sprawling, snoring Sisera. There is a good deal of grossness, too (of +which, among the Italians, even Robetta and similar, there is so little), +in the details of village fairs and adventures of wenches with their +Schatz; and a strange permeating nightmare, gruesomeness of lewd, warty +devils, made up of snouts, hoofs, bills, claws, and incoherent parts +of incoherent creatures; of perpetual skeletons climbing in trees, or +appearing behind flower-beds. But there is also--and Holbein's Dance of +Death, terrible, jocular, tender, vulgar and poetic, contains it all, this +German world--a great tenderness. Tenderness not merely in the heads of +women and children, in the fervent embrace of husband and wife and mother +and daughter; but in the feeling for dumb creatures and inanimate things, +the gentle dogs of St. Hubert, the deer that crouch among the rocks with +Genevieve, the very tangled grasses and larches and gentians that hang +to the crags, drawn as no Italian ever drew them; the quiet, sentimental +little landscapes of castles on fir-clad hills, of manor-houses, gabled +and chimneyed, among the reeds and willows of shallow ponds. These +feelings, Teutonic doubtless, but less mediæval than we might think, for +the Middle Ages of the Minnesingers were terribly conventional, seem to +well up at the voice of Luther; and it is this which make the German +engravers, men not always of the highest talents, invent new and beautiful +Gospel pictures. Of these I would take two as typical--typical of +individual fancy most strangely contrasting with the conventionalism of +the Italians. Let the reader think of any of the scores of Flights into +Egypt, and of Resurrections by fifteenth-century Italians, or even +Giottesques; and then turn to two prints, one of each of these subjects +respectively, by Martin Schongauer and Altdorfer. Schongauer gives a +delightful oasis: palms and prickly pears, the latter conceived as +growing at the top of a tree; below, lizards at play and deer grazing; +in this place the Virgin has drawn up her ass, who browses the thistles +at his feet, while St. Joseph, his pilgrim bottle bobbing on his back, +hangs himself with all his weight to the branches of a date palm, trying +to get the fruit within reach. Meanwhile a bevy of sweet little angels +have come to the rescue; they sit among the branches, dragging them down +towards him, and even bending the whole stem at the top so that he may +get at the dates. Such a thing as this is quite lovely, particularly +after the routine of St. Joseph trudging along after the donkey, the +eternal theme of the Italians. In Altdorfer's print Christ is ascending +in a glory of sunrise clouds, banner in hand, angels and cherubs peering +with shy curiosity round the cloud edge. The sepulchre is open, guards +asleep or stretching themselves, and yawning all round; and childish +young angels look reverently into the empty grave, rearranging the +cerecloths, and trying to roll back the stone lid. One of them leans +forward, and utterly dazzles a negro watchman, stepping forward, lantern +in hand; in the distance shepherds are seen prowling about. "This," says +Altdorfer to himself, "is how it must have happened." + + [Footnote 11: And the circular so-called Botticelli (now given, I + believe, to San Gallo) in the National Gallery.] + +Hence, among these Germans, the dreadful seriousness and pathos of the +Passion, the violence of the mob, the brutality of the executioners, +above all, the awful sadness of Christ. There is here somewhat of the +realisation of what He must have felt in finding the world He had come +to redeem so vile and cruel. In what way, under what circumstances, +such thoughts would come to these men, is revealed to us by that +magnificent head of the suffering Saviour--a design apparently for a +carved crucifix--under which Albrecht Dürer wrote the pathetic words: +"I drew this in my sickness." + +Thus much of the power of that new factor, the individual interest in +the Scriptures. All other innovations on the treatment of religious +themes were due, in the sixteenth century, but still more in the +seventeenth, to the development of some new artistic possibility, or +to the gathering together in the hands of one man of artistic powers +hitherto existing only in a dispersed condition. This is the secret +of the greatness of Raphael as a pictorial poet, that he could do all +manner of new things merely by holding all the old means in his grasp. +This is the secret of those wonderful inventions of his, which do not +take our breath away like Michelangelo's or Rembrandt's, but seem at the +moment the one and only right rendering of the subject: the Liberation +of St. Peter, Heliodorus, Ezechiel, and the whole series of magnificent +Old Testament stories on the ceiling of the Loggie. In Raphael we see +the perfect fulfilment of the Giottesque programme: he can do all that +the first theme inventors required for the carrying out of their ideas; +and therefore he can have new, entirely new, themes. Raphael furnishes, +for the first time since Giotto, an almost complete set of pictorial +interpretations of Scripture. + +We are now, as we proceed in the sixteenth century, in the region where +new artistic powers admit of new imaginative conceptions on the part +of the individual. We gain immensely by the liberation from the old +tradition, but we lose immensely also. We get the benefit of the fancy +and feelings of this individual, but we are at the mercy, also, of his +stupidity and vulgarity. Of this the great examples are Tintoretto, and +after him Velasquez and Rembrandt. Of Tintoret I would speak later, +for he is eminently the artist in whom the gain and the loss are most +typified, and perhaps most equally distributed, and because, therefore, +he contrasts best with the masters anterior to Raphael. + +The new powers in Velasquez and Rembrandt were connected with the +problem of light, or rather, one might say, in the second case, of +darkness. This new faculty of seizing the beauties, momentary and not +inherent in the object, due to the various effects of atmosphere and +lighting up, added probably a good third to the pleasure-bestowing +faculty of art; it was the beginning of a kind of democratic movement +against the stern domination of such things as were privileged in shape +and colour. A thousand things, ugly or unimaginative in themselves, a +plain face, a sallow complexion, an awkward gesture, a dull arrangement +of lines, could be made delightful and suggestive. A wet yard, a pail +and mop, and a servant washing fish under a pump could become, in the +hands of Peter de Hoogh, and thanks to the magic of light and shade, as +beautiful and interesting in their way as a swirl of angels and lilies +by Botticelli. But this redemption of the vulgar was at the expense, +as I have elsewhere pointed out, of a certain growing callousness to +vulgarity. What holds good as to the actual artistic, visible quality, +holds good also as to the imaginative value. Velasquez's Flagellation, +if indeed it be his, in our National Gallery, has a pathos, a something +that catches you by the throat, in that melancholy weary body, broken +with ignominy and pain, sinking down by the side of the column, which +is inseparable from the dreary grey light, the livid colour of the +flesh--there is no joy in the world where such things can be. But the +angel who has just entered has not come from heaven--such a creature is +fit only to roughly shake up the pillows of paupers, dying in the damp +dawn in the hospital wards. + +It is, in a measure, different with Rembrandt, exactly because he is the +master, not of light, but of darkness, or of light that utterly dazzles. +His ugly women and dirty Jews of Rotterdam are either hidden in the gloom +or reduced to mere vague outlines, specks like gnats in the sunshine, in +the effulgence of light. Hence we can enjoy, almost without any disturbing +impressions, the marvellous imagination shown in his etchings of Bible +stories. Rembrandt is to Dürer as an archangel to a saint: where the +German draws, the Dutchman seems to bite his etching plate with elemental +darkness and glory. Of these etchings I would mention a few; the reader +may put these indications alongside of his remembrances of the Arena +Chapel, or of Angelico's cupboard panels in the Academy at Florence: +they show how intimately dramatic imagination depends in art upon mere +technical means, how hopelessly limited to mere indication were the +early artists, how forced along the path of dramatic realisation are the +men of modern times. + +_The Annunciation to the Shepherds_: The heavens open in a circular +whirl among the storm darkness, cherubs whirling distantly like +innumerable motes in a sunbeam; the angel steps forward on a ray of +light, projecting into the ink-black night. The herds have perceived +the vision, and rush headlong in all directions, while the trees groan +beneath the blast of that opening of heaven. A horse, seen in profile, +with the light striking on his eyeball, seems paralysed by terror. The +shepherds have only just awakened. _The Nativity_: Darkness. A vague +crowd of country folk jostling each other noiselessly. A lantern, a +white speck in the centre, sheds a smoky, uncertain light on the corner +where the Child sleeps upon the pillows, the Virgin, wearied, resting +by its side, her face on her hand. Joseph is seated by, only his head +visible above his book. The cows are just visible in the gloom. The +lantern is held by a man coming carefully forward, uncovering his head, +the crowd behind him. _A Halt on the Journey to Egypt_: Night. The +lantern hung on a branch. Joseph seated sleepily, with his fur cap +drawn down; the Virgin and Child resting against the packsaddle on the +ground. _An Interior_: The Virgin hugging and rocking the Child. Joseph, +outside, looks in through the window. _The Raising of Lazarus_: A vault +hung with scimitars, turbans, and quivers. Against the brilliant daylight +just let in, the figure of Christ, seen from behind, stands out in His +long robes, raising His hand to bid the dead arise. Lazarus, pale, +ghost-like in this effulgence, slowly, wearily raises his head in the +sepulchre. The crowd falls back. Astonishment, awe. This coarse Dutchman +has suppressed the incident of the bystanders holding their nose, to +which the Giottesques clung desperately. This is not a moment to think of +stenches or infection. _Entombment_: Night. The platform below the cross. +A bier, empty, spread with a winding-sheet, an old man arranging it at +the head. The dead Saviour being slipped down from the cross on a sheet, +two men on a ladder letting the body down, others below receiving it, +trying to prevent the arm from trailing. Immense solemnity, carefulness, +hushedness. A distant illuminated palace blazes out in the night. One +feels that they are stealing Him away. + +I have reversed the chronological order and chosen to speak of Tintoret +after Rembrandt, because, being an Italian and still in contact with +some of the old tradition, the great Venetian can show more completely, +both what was gained and what was lost in imaginative rendering by the +liberation of the individual artist and the development of artistic +means. First, of the gain. This depends mainly upon Tintoret's handling +of light and shade, and his foreshortenings: it enables him to compose +entirely in huge masses, to divide or concentrate the interest, to throw +into vague insignificance the less important parts of a situation in +order to insist upon the more important; it gives him the power also of +impressing us by the colossal and the ominous. The masterpiece of this +style, and probably Tintoret's masterpiece therefore, is the great +Crucifixion at S. Rocco. To feel its full tragic splendour one must +think of the finest things which the early Renaissance achieved, such as +Luini's beautiful fresco at Lugano; by the side of the painting at S. +Rocco everything is tame, except, perhaps, Rembrandt's etching called +the Three Crosses. After this, and especially to be compared with the +frescoes of Masaccio and Ghirlandaio of the same subject, comes the +Baptism of Christ. The old details of figures dressing and undressing, +which gave so much pleasure to earlier painters, for instance, Piero +della Francesca, in the National Gallery, are entirely omitted, as the +nose-holding in the Raising of Lazarus, is omitted by Rembrandt. Christ +kneels in the Jordan, with John bending over him, and vague multitudes +crowding the banks, distant, dreamlike beneath the yellow storm-light. +Of Tintoret's Christ before Pilate, of that figure of the Saviour, long, +straight, wrapped in white and luminous like his own wraith, I have +spoken already. But I must speak of the S. Rocco Christ in the Garden, +as imaginative as anything by Rembrandt, and infinitely more beautiful. +The moonlight tips the draperies of the three sleeping apostles, gigantic, +solemn. Above, among the bushes, leaning His head on His hand, is seated +Christ, weary to death, numbed by grief and isolation, recruiting for +final resistance. The sense of being abandoned of all men and of God has +never been brought home in this way by any other painter; the little +tear-stained Saviours, praying in broad daylight, of Perugino and his +fellows, are mere distressed mortals. This betrayed and resigned Saviour +has upon Him the _weltschmerz_ of Prometheus. But even here we begin to +feel the loss, as well as the gain, of the painter being forced from the +dramatic routine of earlier days: instead of the sweet, tearful little +angel of the early Renaissance, there comes to this tragic Christ, in +a blood-red nimbus, a brutal winged creature thrusting the cup in His +face. The uncertainty of Tintoret's inspirations, the uncertainty of +result of these astonishing pictorial methods of attaining the dramatic, +the occasional vapidness and vulgarity of the man, unrestrained by any +stately tradition like the vapidness and vulgarity of so many earlier +masters,[12] comes out already at S. Rocco. And principally in the +scene of the Temptation, a theme rarely, if ever, treated before the +sixteenth century, and which Tintoret has made unspeakably mean in its +unclean and dramatically impotent suggestiveness: the Saviour parleying +from a kind of rustic edifice with a good-humoured, fat, half feminine +Satan, fluttering with pink wings like some smug seraph of Bernini's +pupils. After this it is scarce necessary to speak of whatever is +dramatically abortive (because successfully expressing just the wrong +sort of sentiment, the wrong situation) in Tintoret's work: his Woman +taken in Adultery, with the dapper young Rabbi, offended neither by +adultery in general nor by this adulteress in particular; the Washing of +the Feet, in London, where the conversation appears to turn upon the +excessive hotness or coldness of the water in the tub; the Last Supper +at S. Giorgio Maggiore, where, among the mysterious wreaths of smoke +peopled with angels, Christ rises from His seat and holds the cup to His +neighbour's lips with the gesture, as He says, "This is My blood," of +a conjuror to an incredulous and indifferent audience. To Tintoret +the contents of the chalice is the all-important matter: where is the +majesty of the old Giottesque gesture, preserved by Leonardo, of pushing +forward the bread with one hand, the wine with the other, and thus +uncovering the head and breast of the Saviour, the gesture which does +indeed mean--"I am the bread you shall eat, and the wine you shall +drink"? There remains, however, to mention another work of Tintoret's +which, coming in contact with one's recollections of earlier art, may +suggest strange doubts and well nigh shake one's faith in the imaginative +efficacy of all that went before: his enormous canvas of the Last Day, +at S. Maria dell' Orto. The first and overwhelming impression, even +before one has had time to look into this apocalyptic work, is that +no one could have conceived such a thing in earlier days, not even +Michelangelo when he painted his Last Judgment, nor Raphael when he +designed the Vision of Ezechiel. This is, indeed, one thinks, a revelation +of the end of all things. Great storm clouds, whereon throne the Almighty +and His Elect, brood over the world, across which, among the crevassed, +upheaving earth, pours the wide glacier torrent of Styx, with the boat +of Charon struggling across its precipitous waters. The angels, confused +with the storm clouds of which they are the spirit, lash the damned down +to the Hell stream, band upon band, even from the far distance. And in +the foreground the rocks are splitting, the soil is upheaving with the +dead beneath; here protrudes a huge arm, there a skull; in one place the +clay, rising, has assumed the vague outline of the face below. In the +rocks and water, among the clutching, gigantic men, the huge, full-bosomed +woman, tosses a frightful half-fleshed carcass, grass still growing from +his finger tips, his grinning skull, covered half with hair and half +with weeds, greenish and mouldering: a sinner still green in earth and +already arising. + + [Footnote 12: How peccable is the individual imagination, unchastened + by tradition! I find among the illustrations of Mr. Berenson's very + valuable monograph on Lotto, a most curious instance in point. This + psychological, earnest painter has been betrayed, by his morbid + nervousness of temper, into making the starting of a cat into the + second most important incident in his Annunciation.] + +A wonderful picture: a marvellous imaginative mind, with marvellous +imaginative means at his command. Yet, let us ask ourselves, what is the +value of the result? A magnificent display of attitudes and forms, a +sort of bravura ghastliness and impressiveness, which are in a sense +_barrocco_, reminding us of the wax plague models of Florence and of +certain poems of Baudelaire's. But of the feeling, the poetry of this +greatest of all scenes, what is there? And, standing before it, I think +instinctively of that chapel far off on the windswept Umbrian rock, with +Signorelli's Resurrection: a flat wall accepted as a flat wall, no +place, nowhere. A half-dozen groups, not closely combined. Colour +reduced to monochrome; light and shade nowhere, as nowhere also all +these devices of perspective. But in that simply treated fresco, with +its arrangement as simple as that of a vast antique bas-relief, there +is an imaginative suggestion far surpassing this of Tintoret's. The +breathless effort of the youths breaking through the earth's crust, +shaking their long hair and gasping; the stagger of those rising to +their feet; the stolidity, hand on hip, of those who have recovered +their body but not their mind, blinded by the light, deafened by the +trumpets of Judgment; the absolute self-abandonment of those who can +raise themselves no higher; the dull, awe-stricken look of those who +have found their companions, clasping each other in vague, weak wonder; +and further, under the two archangels who stoop downwards with the +pennons of their trumpets streaming in the blast, those figures who +beckon to the re-found beloved ones, or who shade their eyes and point +to a glory on the horizon, or who, having striven forward, sink on +their knees, overcome by a vision which they alone can behold. And +recollecting that fresco of Signorelli's, you feel as if this vast, tall +canvas at S. Maria dell' Orto, where topple and welter the dead and the +quick, were merely so much rhetorical rhodomontade by the side of the +old hymn of the Last Day-- + + "Mors stupebit et natura + Quum resurget creatura + Judicanti responsura." + + +V + +Again, in the chaos of newly-developing artistic means, and of struggling +individual imaginations, we get once more, at the end of the eighteenth +century, to what we found at the beginning of the fourteenth: the art +that does not show, but merely speaks. We find it in what, of all things, +are the apparently most different to the quiet and placid outline +illustration of the Giottesque: in the terrible portfolio of Goya's +etchings, called the Disasters of War. Like Dürer and Rembrandt, the +great Spaniard is at once extremely realistic and extremely imaginative. +But his realism means fidelity, not to the real aspect of things, of +the _thing in itself_, so to speak, but to the way in which things will +appear to the spectator at a given moment. He isolates what you might +call a case, separating it from the multitude of similar cases, giving +you one execution where several must be going on, one firing off of +cannon, one or two figures in a burning or a massacre; and his technique +conduces thereunto, blurring a lot, rendering only the outline and +gesture, and that outline and gesture frequently so momentary as to be +confused. But he is real beyond words in his reproduction of the way in +which such dreadful things must stamp themselves upon the mind. They are +isolated, concentrated, distorted: the multiplicity of horrors making +the perceiving mind more sensitive, morbid as from opium eating, and +thus making the single impression, which excludes all the rest, more vivid +and tremendous than, without that unconsciously perceived rest, it could +possibly be. Nay, more, these scenes are not merely rather such as they +were recollected than as they really were seen; they are such as they +were recollected in the minds and feelings of peasants and soldiers, of +people who could not free their attention to arrange all these matters +logically, to give them their relative logical value. The slaughtering +soldiers--Spaniards, English, or French--of the Napoleonic period become +in his plates Turks, Saracens, huge vague things in half Oriental +costumes, whiskered, almost turbaned in their fur caps, they become +almost ogres, even as they must have done in the popular mind. The +shooting of deserters and prisoners is reduced to the figures at the +stake, the six carbine muzzles facing them: no shooting soldiers, no +stocks to the carbines, any more than in the feeling of the man who +was being shot. The artistic training, the habit of deliberately or +unconsciously looking for visible effects which all educated moderns +possess, prevents even our writers from thus reproducing what has been +the actual mental reality. But Goya does not for a moment let us suspect +the presence of the artist, the quasi-writer. The impression reproduced +is the impression, not of the artistic bystander, but of the sufferer or +the sufferer's comrades. This makes him extraordinarily faithful to the +epigraphs of his plates. We feel that the woman, all alone, without +bystanders, earthworks, fascines, smoke, &c., firing off the cannon, +is the woman as she is remembered by the creature who exclaims, "Que +valor!" We feel that the half-dead soldier being stripped, the condemned +turning his head aside as far as the rope will permit, the man fallen +crushed beneath his horse or vomiting out his blood, is the wretch who +exclaims, "Por eso soy nacido!" They are, these etchings of Goya's, the +representation of the sufferings, real and imaginative, of the real +sufferers. In the most absolute sense they are the art which does not +merely show, but tells; the suggestive and dramatic art of the individual, +unaided and unhampered by tradition, indifferent to form and technicality, +the art which even like the art of the immediate predecessors of Giotto, +those Giuntas and Berlinghieris, who left us the hideous and terrible +Crucifixions, says to the world, "You shall understand and feel." + + + + +TUSCAN SCULPTURE + + +I + +We are all of us familiar with the two adjacent rooms at South Kensington +which contain, respectively, the casts from antique sculpture and those +from the sculpture of the Renaissance; and we are familiar also with the +sense of irritation or of relief which accompanies our passing from +one of them to the other. This feeling is typical of our frame of mind +towards various branches of the same art, and, indeed, towards all +things which might be alike, but happen to be unlike. Times, countries, +nations, temperaments, ideas, and tendencies, all benefit and suffer +alternately by our habit of considering that if two things of one sort +are not identical, one must be in the right and the other in the wrong. +The act of comparison evokes at once our innate tendency to find fault; +and having found fault, we rarely perceive that, on better comparing, +there may be no fault at all to find. + +As the result of such comparison, we shall find that Renaissance +sculpture is unrestful, huddled, lacking selection of form and harmony +of proportions; it reproduces ugliness and perpetuates effort; it is +sometimes grotesque, and frequently vulgar. Or again, that antique +sculpture is conventional, insipid, monotonous, without perception for +the charm of detail or the interest of individuality; afraid of movement +and expression, and at the same time indifferent to outline and grouping; +giving us florid nudities which never were alive, and which are doing +and thinking nothing whatever. Thus, according to which room or which +mood we enter first, we are sure to experience either irritation at +wrong-headedness or relief at right-doing; whether we pass from the +sculpture of ancient Greece to the sculpture of mediæval Italy, or _vice +versâ_. + +But a more patient comparison of these two branches of sculpture, and of +the circumstances which made each what it was, will enable us to enjoy +the very different merits of both, and will teach us also something of +the vital processes of the particular spiritual organism which we call +an art. + +In the early phase of the philosophy of art--a phase lingering on to our +own day in the works of certain critics--the peculiarities of a work of +art were explained by the peculiarities of character of the artist: the +paintings of Raphael and the music of Mozart partook of the gentleness +of their life; while the figures of Michelangelo and the compositions of +Beethoven were the outcome of their misanthropic ruggedness of temper. +The insufficiency, often the falseness, of such explanations became +evident when critics began to perceive that the works of one time and +country usually possessed certain common peculiarities which did not +correspond to any resemblance between the characters of their respective +artists; peculiarities so much more dominant than any others, that a +statue or a picture which was unsigned and of obscure history was +constantly attributed to half-a-dozen contemporary sculptors or painters +by half-a-dozen equally learned critics. The recognition of this fact +led to the substitution of the _environment_ (the _milieu_ of Monsieur +Taine) as an explanation of the characteristics, no longer of a single +work of art, but of a school or group of kindred works. Greek art +henceforth was the serene outcome of a serene civilisation of athletes, +poets, and philosophers, living with untroubled consciences in a good +climate, with slaves and helots to char for them while they ran races, +discussed elevated topics, and took part in Panathenaic processions, +riding half naked on prancing horses, or carrying olive branches and +sacrificial vases in honour of a divine patron, in whom they believed +only as much as they liked. And the art of the Middle Ages was the +fantastic, far-fetched, and often morbid production of nations of +crusaders and theologians, burning heretics, worshipping ladies, seeing +visions, and periodically joining hands in a vertiginous death-reel, +whose figures were danced from country to country. This new explanation, +while undoubtedly less misleading than the other one, had the disadvantage +of straining the characteristics of a civilisation or of an art in order +to tally with its product or producer; it forgot that Antiquity was not +wholly represented by the frieze of the Parthenon, and that the Gothic +cathedrals and the frescoes of Giotto had characteristics more +conspicuous than morbidness and insanity. + +Moreover, in the same way that the old personal criticism was unable to +account for the resemblance between the works of different individuals +of the same school, so the theory of the environment fails to explain +certain qualities possessed in common by various schools of art and various +arts which have arisen under the pressure of different civilisations; +and it is obliged to slur over the fact that the sculpture of the time +of Pericles and Alexander, the painting of the early sixteenth century, +and the music of the age of Handel, Haydn, and Mozart are all very much +more like one another in their serene beauty than they are any of them +like the other productions, artistic or human, of their environment. +Behind this explanation there must therefore be another, not controverting +the portion of truth it contains, but completing it by the recognition +of a relation more intimate than that of the work of art with its +environment: the relation of form and material. The perceptions of the +artist, what he sees and how he sees it, can be transmitted to others +only through processes as various as themselves: hair seen as colour +is best imitated with paint, hair seen as form with twisted metal wire. +It is as impossible to embody certain perceptions in some stages of +handicraft as it would be to construct a complex machine in a rudimentary +condition of mechanics. Certain modes of vision require certain methods +of painting, and these require certain kinds of surface and pigment. Until +these exist, a man may see correctly, but he cannot reproduce what he is +seeing. In short, the work of art represents the meeting of a mode of +seeing and feeling (determined partly by individual characteristics, +partly by those of the age and country) and of a mode of treating +materials, a craft which may itself be, like the mind of the artist, +in a higher or lower stage of development. + +The early Greeks had little occasion to become skilful carvers of +stone. Their buildings, which reproduced a very simple wooden structure, +were ornamented with little more than the imitation of the original +carpentering; for the Ionic order, poor as it is of ornament, came only +later; and the Corinthian, which alone offered scope for variety and +skill of carving, arose only when figure sculpture was mature. But the +Greeks, being only just in the iron period (and iron, by the way, is the +tool for stone), were great moulders of clay and casters of metal. The +things which later ages made of iron, stone, or wood, they made of clay +or bronze. The thousands of exquisite utensils, weapons, and toys in our +museums make this apparent; from the bronze greaves delicately modelled +like the legs they were to cover, to the earthenware dolls, little +Venuses, exquisitely dainty, with articulated legs and go-carts. + +Hence the human figure came to be imitated by a process which was not +sculpture in the literal sense of carving. It is significant that the +Latin word whence we get _effigy_ has also given us _fictile_, the making +of statues being thus connected with the making of pots; and that the +whole vocabulary of ancient authors shows that they thought of statuary +not as akin to cutting and chiselling, but to moulding ([Greek: plassô] += _fingo_), shaping out of clay on the wheel or with the modelling +tool.[13] It seems probable that marble-work was but rarely used for +the round until the sixth century; and the treatment of the hair, +the propping of projecting limbs and drapery, makes it obvious that a +large proportion of the antiques in our possession are marble copies of +long-destroyed bronzes.[14] So that the Greek statue, even if eventually +destined for marble, was conceived by a man having the habit of +modelling in clay. + + [Footnote 13: I am confirmed in these particulars by my friend + Miss Eugenie Sellers, whose studies of the ancient authorities on + art--Lucian, Pausanias, Pliny, and others, will be the more fruitful + that they are associated with knowledge--uncommon in archæologists--of + more modern artistic processes.] + + [Footnote 14: This becomes overwhelmingly obvious on reading Professor + Furtwängler's great "Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture." Praxiteles + appears to have been exceptional in his preference for marble.] + +Let us turn from early Greece to mediæval Italy. Hammered iron had +superseded bronze for weapons and armour, and silver and gold, worked +with the chisel, for ornaments. On the other hand, the introduction from +the East of glazed pottery had banished to the art of the glass-blower +all fancy in shaping utensils. There was no demand in common life for +cast metal-work, and there being no demand for casting, there was no +practice either in its cognate preliminary art of moulding clay. Hence, +such bronze work as originated was very unsatisfactory; the lack of +skill in casting, and the consequent elaboration of bronze-work with the +file, lasting late into the Renaissance. But the men of the Middle Ages +were marvellously skilful carvers of stone. Architecture, ever since the +Roman time, had given more and more importance to sculptured ornament: +already exquisite in the early Byzantine screens and capitals, it +developed through the elaborate mouldings, traceries, and columns of +the Lombard style into the art of elaborate reliefs and groups of the +full-blown Gothic; indeed the Gothic church is, in Italy, the work no +longer of the mason, but of the sculptor. It is no empty coincidence +that the hillside villages which still supply Florence with stone and +with stonemasons should have given their names to three of its greatest +sculptors, Mino da Fiesole, Desiderio da Settignano, and Benedetto da +Maiano; that Michelangelo should have told Vasari that the chisel and +mallet had come to him with the milk of his nurse, a stonecutter's wife +from those same slopes, down which jingle to-day the mules carting +ready-shaped stone from the quarries. The mediæval Tuscans, the Pisans +of the thirteenth, and the Florentines of the fifteenth century, evidently +made small wax or clay sketches of their statues; but their works are +conceived and executed in the marble, and their art has come out of the +stone without interposition of other material, even as the figures which +Michelangelo chopped, living and colossal, direct out of the block.[15] + + [Footnote 15: Interesting details in Vasari's treatise, and in his + Lives of J. della Quercia, Ferrucci, and other sculptors.] + +The Greek, therefore, was a moulder of clay, a caster of bronze, in the +early time when the art acquires its character and takes its direction; +in that period, on the contrary, the Tuscan was a chaser of silver, a +hammerer of iron, above all a cutter of stone. Now clay (and we must +remember that bronze is originally clay) means the modelled plane and +succession of planes smoothed and rounded by the finger, the imitation +of all nature's gently graduated swellings and depressions, the absolute +form as it exists to the touch; but clay does not give interesting light +and shade, and bronze is positively blurred by high lights; and neither +clay nor bronze has any resemblance to the texture of human limbs or +drapery: it gives the form, but not the stuff. It is the exact reverse +with marble. Granulated like a living fibre, yet susceptible of a delicate +polish, it can imitate the actual substance of human flesh, with its +alternations of opacity and luminousness; it can reproduce, beneath +the varied strokes of the chisel, the grain, running now one way, now +another, which is given to the porous skin by the close-packed bone +and muscle below. Moreover, it is so docile, so soft, yet so resistant, +that the iron can cut it like butter or engrave it lightly like agate; +so that the shadows may pour deep into chasms and pools, or run over the +surface in a network of shallow threads; light and shade becoming the +artist's material as much as the stone itself. + +The Greek, as a result, perceived form not as an appearance, but as a +reality; saw with the eye the complexities of projection and depression +perceivable by the hand. His craft was that of measurements, of minute +proportion, of delicate concave and convex--in one word, of _planes_. +His dull, malleable clay, and ductile, shining bronze had taught him +nothing of the way in which light and shadow corrode, blur, and pattern +a surface. His fancy, his skill, embraced the human form like the gypsum +of the moulder, received the stamp of its absolute being. The beauty he +sought was concrete, actual, the same in all lights and from all points +of view: the comely man himself, not the beautiful marble picture. + +The marble picture, on the other hand--a picture in however high and +complete relief--a picture for a definite point of view, arranged by +receiving light projected at a given angle on a surface cut deep or +shallow especially to receive it--was produced by the sculpture that +spontaneously grew out of the architectural stone-cutting of the Byzantine +and Lombard schools. The mouldings on a church, still more the stone +ornaments of its capitals, pulpit, and choir rails, seen, as they are, +each at various and peculiar heights above the eye, under light which, +however varying, can never get behind or above them if outdoor, below +or in flank if indoor--these mouldings, part of a great architectural +pattern of black and white, inevitably taught the masons all the subtle +play of light and surface, all the deceits of position and perspective. +And the mere manipulation of the marble taught them, as we have seen, +the exquisite finenesses of surface, texture, crease, accent, and line. +What the figure actually was--the real proportions and planes, the +actual form of the model--did not matter; no hand was to touch it, no +eye to measure; it was to be delightful only in the position which the +artist chose, and in no other had it a right to be seen. + + +II + +These were the two arts, originating from a material and a habit of work +which were entirely different, and which produced artistic necessities +diametrically opposed. It might be curious to speculate upon what would +have resulted had their position in history been reversed; what statues +we should possess had the marble-carving art born of architectural +decoration originated in Greece, and the art of clay and bronze flourished +in Christian and mediæval Italy. Be this as it may, the accident of the +surroundings--of the habits of life and thought which pressed on the +artist, and combined with the necessities of his material method--appears +to have intensified the peculiarities organic in each of the two +sculptures. I say _appears_, because we must bear in mind that the +combination was merely fortuitous, and guard against the habit of +thinking that because a type is familiar it is therefore alone +conceivable. + +We all know all about the antique and the mediæval _milieu_. It is +useless to recapitulate the influence, on the one hand, of antique +civilisation, with its southern outdoor existence, its high training +of the body, its draped citizens, naked athletes, and half-clothed +work-folk, its sensuous religion of earthly gods and muscular demigods; +or the influence, on the other hand, of the more complex life of the +Middle Ages, essentially northern in type, sedentary and manufacturing, +huddled in unventilated towns, with its constant pre-occupation, even +among the most sordid grossness, of the splendour of the soul, the +beauty of suffering, the ignominy of the body, and the dangers of bodily +prosperity. Of all this we have heard even too much, thanks to the +picturesqueness which has recommended the _milieu_ of Monsieur Taine +to writers more mindful of literary effect than of the philosophy of +art. But there is another historical circumstance whose influence, in +differentiating Greek sculpture from the sculpture of mediæval Italy, +can scarcely be overrated. It is that, whereas in ancient Greece +sculpture was the important, fully developed art, and painting merely +its shadow; in mediæval Italy painting was the art which best answered +the requirements of the civilisation, the art struggling with the most +important problems; and that painting therefore reacted strongly upon +sculpture. Greek painting was the shadow of Greek sculpture in an almost +literal sense: the figures on wall and base, carefully modelled, without +texture, symmetrically arranged alongside of each other regardless of +pictorial pattern, seem indeed to be projected on to the flat surface by +the statues; they are, most certainly, the shadow of modelled figures +cast on the painter's mind. + +The sculptor could learn nothing new from paintings where all that is +proper to painting is ignored:--plane always preferred to line, the +constructive details, perceptible only as projection, not as colour or +value (like the insertion of the leg and the thigh), marked by deep +lines that look like tattoo marks; and perspective almost entirely +ignored, at least till a late period. It is necessary thus to examine +Greek painting[16] in order to appreciate, by comparison with this +negative art, the very positive influence of mediæval painting or +mediæval sculpture. The painting on a flat surface--fresco or panel--which +became more and more the chief artistic expression of those times, taught +men to consider perspective; and, with perspective and its possibility +of figures on many planes, grouping: the pattern that must arise from +juxtaposed limbs and heads. It taught them to perceive form no longer as +projection or plane; but as line and light and shade, as something whose +charm lay mainly in the boundary curves, the silhouette, so much more +important in one single, unchangeable position than where, the eye +wandering round a statue, the only moderate interest of one point of +view is compensated by the additional interest of another. Moreover, +painting, itself the product of a much greater interest in colour than +Antiquity had known, forced upon men's attention the important influence +of colour upon form. For, although the human being, if we abstract the +element of colour, if we do it over with white paint, has indeed the +broad, somewhat vague form, the indecision of lines which characterises +antique sculpture; yet the human being as he really exists, with his +coloured hair, eyes, and lips, his cheeks, forehead, and chin patterned +with tint, has a much greater sharpness, precision, contrast of form, +due to the additional emphasis of the colour. Hence, as pictorial +perspective and composition undoubtedly inclined sculptors to seek +greater complexities of relief and greater unity of point of view, so +the new importance of drawing and colouring suggested to them a new view +of form. A human being was no longer a mere arrangement of planes and +of masses, homogeneous in texture and colour. He was made of different +substances, of hair, skin over fat, muscle, or bone, skin smooth, +wrinkled, or stubbly, and, besides this, he was painted different +colours. He had, moreover, what the Greeks had calmly whitewashed away, +or replaced by an immovable jewel or enamel: that extraordinary and +extraordinarily various thing called an Eye. + + [Footnote 16: At all events, Greek painting preceding or contemporaneous + with the great period of sculpture. Later painting was, of course, much + more pictorial.] + +All these differences between the monochrome creature--colour +abstracted--of the Greeks and the mottled real human being, the +sculptors of the Renaissance were led to perceive by their brothers the +painters; and having perceived, they were dissatisfied at having to omit +in their representation. But how show that they too had seen them? + +Here return to our notice two other peculiarities which distinguish +mediæval sculpture from antique: first, that mediæval sculpture, rarely +called upon for free open-air figures, was for ever producing architectural +ornament, seen at a given height and against a dark background; and +indoor decoration seen under an unvarying and often defective light; +and secondly, that mediæval sculpture was the handicraft of the subtle +carver in delicate stone. + +The sculpture which was an essential part of Lombard and Gothic +architecture required a treatment that should adapt it to its particular +place and subordinate it to a given effect. According to the height +above the eye and the direction of the light, certain details had to be +exaggerated, certain others suppressed; a sculptured window, like those +of Orsanmichele, would not give the delightful pattern of black and +white unless some surfaces were more raised than others, some portions +of figure or leafage allowed to sink into quiescence, others to start +forward by means of the black rim of undercutting; and a sepulchral +monument, raised thirty feet above the spectator's eye, like those +inside Sta. Maria Novella, would present a mere intricate confusion +unless the recumbent figure, the canopy, and various accessories, were +such as to seem unnatural at the level of the eye. Thus, the heraldic +lions of one of these Gothic tombs have the black cavity of the jaw cut +by marble bars which are absolutely out of proportion to the rest of the +creature's body, and to the detail of the other features, but render the +showing of the teeth even at the other side of the transept. Again, in +the more developed art of the fifteenth century, Rossellino's Cardinal +of Portugal has the offside of his face shelved upwards so as to catch +the light, because he is seen from below, and the near side would +otherwise be too prominent; while the beautiful dead warrior, by an +unknown sculptor, at Ravenna has had a portion of his jaw and chin +deliberately cut away, because the spectator is intended to look down +upon his recumbent figure. If we take a cast of the Cardinal's head and +look down upon it, or hang a cast of the dead warrior on the wall, the +whole appearance alters; the expression is almost reversed and the +features are distorted. On the other hand, a cast from a real head, +placed on high like the Cardinal's, would become insignificant, and laid +at the height of a table, like the dead warrior's, would look lumbering +and tumid. Thus, again, the head of Donatello's Poggio, which is visible +and intelligible placed high up in the darkness of the Cathedral of +Florence, looks as if it had been gashed and hacked with a blunt knife +when seen in the cast at the usual height in an ordinary light. + +Now this subtle circumventing of distance, height, and darkness; this +victory of pattern over place; this reducing of light and shadow into +tools for the sculptor, mean, as we see from the above examples, +sacrificing the reality to the appearance, altering the proportions +and planes so rigorously reproduced by the Greeks, mean sacrificing the +sacred absolute form. And such a habit of taking liberties with what +can be measured by the hand, in order to please the eye, allowed the +sculptors of the Renaissance to think of their model no longer as +the homogeneous _white man_ of the Greeks, but as a creature in whom +structure was accentuated, intensified, or contradicted by colour and +texture. + +Furthermore, these men of the fifteenth century possessed the cunning +carving which could make stone vary in texture, in fibre, and almost in +colour. + +A great many biographical details substantiate the evidence of statues +and busts that the sculptors of the Renaissance carried on their business +in a different manner from the ancient Greeks. The great development in +Antiquity of the art of casting bronze, carried on everywhere for the +production of weapons and household furniture, must have accustomed +Greek sculptors (if we may call them by that name) to limit their personal +work to the figure modelled in clay. And the great number of their +works, many tediously constructed of ivory and gold, shows clearly that +they did not abandon this habit in case of marble statuary, but merely +gave the finishing strokes to a copy of their clay model, produced by +workmen whose skill must have been fostered by the apparently thriving +trade in marble copies of bronzes. + +It was different in the Renaissance. Vasari recommends, as obviating +certain miscalculations which frequently happened, that sculptors should +prepare large models by which to measure the capacities of their block +of marble. But these models, described as made of a mixture of plaster, +size, and cloth shavings over tow and hay, could serve only for the +rough proportions and attitude; nor is there ever any allusion to any +process of minute measurement, such as pointing, by which detail could +be transferred from the model to the stone. Most often we hear of small +wax models which the sculptors enlarged directly in the stone. Vasari, +while exaggerating the skill of Michelangelo in making his David out of +a block mangled by another sculptor, expresses no surprise at his having +chopped the marble himself; indeed, the anecdote itself affords evidence +of the commonness of such a practice, since Agostino di Duccio would not +have spoilt the block if he had not cut into it rashly without previous +comparison with a model.[17] We hear, besides, that Jacopo della +Quercia spent twelve years over one of the gates of S. Petronio, and +that other sculptors carried out similar great works with the assistance +of one man, or with no assistance at all,--a proceeding which would have +seemed the most frightful waste except in a time and country where +half of the sculptors were originally stone-masons and the other half +goldsmiths, that is to say, men accustomed to every stage, coarse or +subtle, of their work. The absence of replicas of Renaissance sculpture, +so striking a contrast to the scores of repetitions of Greek works, +proves, moreover, that the actual execution in marble was considered +an intrinsic part of the sculpture of the fifteenth century, in the +same way as the painting of a Venetian master. Phidias might leave the +carving of his statues to skilful workmen, once he had modelled the +clay, even as the painters of the merely designing and linear schools, +Perugino, Ghirlandaio, or Botticelli, might employ pupils to carry out +their designs on panel or wall. But in the same way as a Titian is not a +Titian without a certain handling of the brush, so a Donatello is not a +Donatello, or a Mino not a Mino, without a certain individual excellence +in the cutting of the marble. + + [Footnote 17: Several Greek vases and coins show the sculptor modelling + his figure; while in Renaissance designs, from that of Nanni di Banco + to a mediocre allegorical engraving in an early edition of Vasari, the + sculptor, or the personified art of Sculpture, is actually working with + chisel and mallet.] + +These men brought, therefore, to the cutting of marble a degree of +skill and knowledge of which the ancients had no notion, as they had no +necessity. In their hands the chisel was not merely a second modelling +tool, moulding delicate planes, uniting insensibly broad masses of +projection and depression. It was a pencil, which, according as it was +held, could emphasise the forms in sharp hatchings or let them die away +unnoticed in subdued, imperceptible washes. It was a brush which could +give the texture and the values of the colour--a brush dipped in various +tints of light and darkness, according as it poured into the marble the +light and the shade, and as it translated into polishings and rough +hewings and granulations and every variety of cutting, the texture of +flesh, of hair, and of drapery; of the blonde hair and flesh of children, +the coarse flesh and bristly hair of old men, the draperies of wool, of +linen, and of brocade. The sculptors of Antiquity took a beautiful human +being--a youth in his perfect flower, with limbs trained by harmonious +exercise and ripened by exposure to the air and sun--and, correcting +whatever was imperfect in his individual forms by their hourly experience +of similar beauty, they copied in clay as much as clay could give of his +perfections: the subtle proportions, the majestic ampleness of masses, +the delicate finish of limbs, the harmonious play of muscles, the serene +simplicity of look and gesture, placing him in an attitude intelligible +and graceful from the greatest possible distance and from the largest +variety of points of view. And they preserved this perfect piece of +loveliness by handing it over to the faithful copyist in marble, to the +bronze, which, more faithful still, fills every minutest cavity left by +the clay. Being beautiful in himself, in all his proportions and details, +this man of bronze or marble was beautiful wherever he was placed and +from wheresoever he was seen; whether he appeared foreshortened on a +temple front, or face to face among the laurel trees, whether shaded by +a portico, or shining in the blaze of the open street. His beauty must +be judged and loved as we should judge and love the beauty of a real +human being, for he is the closest reproduction that art has given of +beautiful reality placed in reality's real surroundings. He is the +embodiment of the strength and purity of youth, untroubled by the +moment, independent of place and of circumstance. + +Of such perfection, born of the rarest meeting of happy circumstances, +Renaissance sculpture knows nothing. A lesser art, for painting was then +what sculpture had been in Antiquity; bound more or less closely to +the service of architecture; surrounded by ill-grown, untrained bodies; +distracted by ascetic feelings and scientific curiosities, the sculpture +of Donatello and Mino, of Jacopo della Quercia and Desiderio da +Settignano, of Michelangelo himself, was one of those second artistic +growths which use up the elements that have been neglected or rejected +by the more fortunate and vigorous efflorescence which has preceded. +It failed in everything in which antique sculpture had succeeded; it +accomplished what Antiquity had left undone. Its sense of bodily beauty +was rudimentary; its knowledge of the nude alternately insufficient and +pedantic; the forms of Donatello's David and of Benedetto's St. John are +clumsy, stunted, and inharmonious; even Michelangelo's Bacchus is but +a comely lout. This sculpture has, moreover, a marvellous preference +for ugly old men--gross, or ascetically imbecile; and for ill-grown +striplings: except the St. George of Donatello, whose body, however, is +entirely encased in inflexible leather and steel, it never gives us the +perfection and pride of youth. These things are obvious, and set us +against the art as a whole. But see it when it does what Antiquity never +attempted; Antiquity which placed statues side by side in a gable, +balancing one another, but not welded into one pattern; which made +relief the mere repetition of one point of view of the round figure, the +shadow of the gable group; which, until its decline, knew nothing of the +pathos of old age, of the grotesque exquisiteness of infancy, of the +endearing awkwardness of adolescence; which knew nothing of the texture +of the skin, the silkiness of the hair, the colour of the eye. + + +III + +Let us see Renaissance sculpture in its real achievement. + +Here are a number of children by various sculptors of the fifteenth +century. This is the tiny baby whose little feet still project from a +sort of gaiter of flesh, whose little boneless legs cannot carry the fat +little paunch, the heavy big head. Note that its little skull is still +soft, like an apple, under the thin floss hair. Its elder brother or +sister is still vaguely contemplative of the world, with eyes that +easily grow sleepy in their blueness. Those a little older have learned +already that the world is full of solemn people on whom to practise +tricks; their features have scarcely accentuated, their hair has merely +curled into loose rings, but their eyes have come forward from below the +forehead, eyes and forehead working together already; and there are +great holes, into which you may dig your thumb, in the cheeks. Those of +fourteen or fifteen have deplorably thin arms, and still such terrible +calves; and a stomach telling of childish gigantic meals; but they have +the pert, humorous frankness of Verrocchio's David, who certainly flung +a jest at Goliath's unwieldy person together with his stone; or the +delicate, sentimental pretty woman's grace of Donatello's St. John of +the Louvre, and Benedetto da Maiano's: they will soon be poring over +the _Vita Nuova_ and Petrarch. Two other St. Johns--I am speaking of +Donatello's--have turned out differently. One, the first beard still +doubtful round his mouth, has already rushed madly away from earthly +loves; his limbs are utterly wasted by fasting; except his legs, which +have become incredibly muscular from continual walking; he has begun +to be troubled by voices in the wilderness--whether of angels or of +demons--and he flies along, his eyes fixed on his scroll, and with them +fixing his mind on unearthly things; he will very likely go mad, this +tempted saint of twenty-one. Here he is again, beard and hair matted, +almost a wild man of the woods, but with the gravity and self-possession +of a preacher; he has come out of the wilderness, overcome all temptations, +his fanaticism is now militant and conquering. This is certainly not +the same man, but perhaps one of his listeners, this old King David of +Donatello--a man at no time intelligent, whose dome-shaped head has +taken back, with the thin white floss hair that recalls infancy, an +infantine lack of solidity; whose mouth is drooping already, perhaps +after a first experience of paralysis, and his eyes getting vague in +look; but who, in this intellectual and physical decay, seems to have +become only the more full of gentleness and sweetness; misnamed David, a +Job become reconciled to his fate by becoming indifferent to himself, an +Ancient Mariner who has seen the water-snakes and blessed them and been +filled with blessing. + +These are all statues or busts intended for a given niche or bracket, a +given portico or window, but in a measure free sculpture. Let us now +look at what is already decoration. Donatello's Annunciation, the big +coarse relief in friable grey stone (incapable of a sharp line), picked +out with delicate gilding; no fluttering or fainting, the angel and the +Virgin grave, decorous, like the neighbouring pilasters. Again, his +organ-loft of flat relief, with granulated groundwork: the flattened +groups of dancing children making, with deep, wide shadows beneath their +upraised, linked arms, a sort of human trellis-work of black and white. +Mino's Madonna at Fiesole: the relief turned and cut so as to look out +of the chapel into the church, so that the Virgin's head, receiving the +light like a glory on the pure, polished forehead, casts a nimbus of +shadow round itself, while the saints are sucked into the background, +their accessories only, staff and gridiron, allowed to assert themselves +by a sharp shadow; a marvellous vision of white heavenly roses, their +pointed buds and sharp spines flourishing on martyrs' blood and incense, +grown into the close lips and long eyes, the virginal body and thin +hands of Mary. From these reliefs we come to the compositions, group +inside group, all shelving into portico and forest vista, of the pulpit +of Sta. Croce, the perspective bevelling it into concavities, like those +of panelling; the heads and projecting shoulders lightly marked as some +carved knob or ornament; to the magnificent compositions in light and +shade, all balancing and harmonising each other, and framed round by +garlands of immortal blossom and fruit, of Ghiberti's gates. + +Nor is this all. The sculpture of the Renaissance, not satisfied with +having portrayed the real human being made of flesh and blood, of bone +and skin, dark-eyed or flaxen-haired, embodied in the marble the +impalpable forms of dreams. Its latest, greatest, works are those +sepulchres of Michelangelo, whose pinnacle enthrones strange ghosts of +warriors, and whose steep sides are the unquiet couch of divinities +hewn, you would say, out of darkness and the light that is as darkness. + + + + +A SEEKER OF PAGAN PERFECTION + +BEING THE LIFE OF DOMENICO NERONI, PICTOR SACRILEGUS + + +Every time, of late years, of my being once more in Rome, I have been +subject to a peculiar mental obsession: retracing my steps, if not +materially, in fancy at least, to such parts of the city as bear witness +to the strange meeting of centuries, where the Middle Ages have altered +to their purposes, or filled with their significance, the ruined remains +of Antiquity. + +Such places are scarcer than one might have expected, and for that +reason perhaps more impressive, more fragmentary and enigmatic. There +are the colossal columns--great trickles and flakes of black etching as +with acid their marble--of the temple of Mars Ultor, with that Tuscan +palace of Torre della Milizia rising from among them. There is, inside +Ara Coeli--itself commemorating the legend of Augustus and the Sibyl--the +tomb of Dominus Pandulphus Sabelli, its borrowed vine-garlands and satyrs +and Cupids surmounted by mosaic crosses and Gothic inscriptions; and +outside the same church, on a ground of green and gold, a Mother of God +looking down from among gurgoyles and escutcheons on to the marble +river-god of the yard of the Capitol below. Then also, where pines and +laurels still root in the unrifled tombs, the skeleton feudal fortress, +gutted as by an earthquake, alongside of the tower of Cæcilia Metella. +These were the places to which my thoughts were for ever recurring; to +them, and to nameless other spots, the street-corner, for instance, +where an Ionic pillar, with beaded and full-horned capital, is walled +into the side of an insignificant modern house. I know not whether, in +consequence of this straining to see the meeting-point of Antiquity and +the Middle Ages (like the fancy, sometimes experienced, to reach the +confluence of rivers), or rather as a cause thereof, but a certain story +has long lurked in the corners of my mind. Twenty years have passed since +first I was aware of its presence, and it has undergone many changes. It +is presumably a piece of my inventing, for I have neither read it nor +heard it related. But by this time it has acquired a certain traditional +veracity in my eyes, and I give to the reader rather as historical fact +than as fiction the study which I have always called to myself: _Pictor +Sacrilegus_. + + +I + +Domenico, the son of Luca Neroni, painter, sculptor, goldsmith, and +engraver, about whom, owing either to the scarcity of his works or +the scandal of his end, Vasari has but a few words in another man's +biography, must have been born shortly before or shortly after the year +1450, a contemporary of Perugino, of Ghirlandaio, of Filippino Lippi, +and of Signorelli, by all of whom he was influenced at various moments, +and whom he influenced by turns. + +He was born and bred in the Etruscan town of Volterra, of a family which +for generations had exercised the art of the goldsmith, stimulated, +perhaps, by the sight of ornaments discovered in Etruscan tombs, and +carrying on, peradventure, some of the Etruscan traditions of two +thousand years before. The mountain city, situate on the verge of the +malarious seaboard of Southern Tuscany, is reached from one side through +windings of barren valleys, where the dried-up brooks are fringed, +instead of reed, with the grey, sand-loving tamarisk; and from the other +side, across a high-lying moorland of stunted heather and sere grass, +whence the larks rise up scared by only a flock of sheep or a mare and +her foal, and you journey for miles without meeting a house or a clump +of cypresses. In front, with the white road zigzagging along their +crests, is a wilderness of barren, livid hillocks, separated by huge +fissures and crevassed by huge cracks, with here and there separate +rocks, projecting like Druidic stones from the valley of gaping ravines; +and beyond them all a higher mountain, among whose rocks and ilexes you +doubtfully distinguish the walls and towers of the Etruscan city. A mass +of Cyclopean wall and great black houses, grim with stone brackets and +iron hooks and stanchions, all for defence and barricade, Volterra looks +down into the deep valleys, like the vague heraldic animal, black and +bristly, which peers from the high tower of the municipal palace. One +wonders how this could ever have been a city of the fat, voluptuous +Etruscans, whose images lie propped up and wide-eyed on their stone +coffin-lids. The long wars of old Italic times, in which Etruria fell +before Rome, must have burned and destroyed, as one would think, the +land as well as the inhabitants, leaving but grey cinders and blackened +stone behind. Siena and Florence ruined Volterra once more in the Middle +Ages, isolating it near the pestilential Maremma and checking its growth +outward and inward. The cathedral, the pride of a mediæval commonwealth, +is still a mean and unfinished building of the twelfth century. There +is no native art, of any importance, of a later period; what the town +possesses has come from other parts, the altar-pieces by Matteo di +Giovanni and Signorelli, for instance, and the marble candelabra, +carried by angels, of the school of Mino da Fiesole. + +In this remote and stagnant town, the artistic training of Domenico +Neroni was necessarily imperfect and limited throughout his boyhood +to the paternal goldsmith's craft. Indeed, it seems likely that some +peculiarities of his subsequent life as an artist, his laboriousness +disproportionate to all results, his persistent harping on unimportant +detail, and his exclusive interest in line and curve, were due not +merely to an unhappy and laborious temperament, but also to the long +habit of an art full of manual skill and cunning tradition, which +presented the eye with ingenious patterns, but rarely attempted, save in +a few church ornaments, more of the domain of sculpture, to tell a story +or express a feeling. + +Besides this influence of his original trade, we find in Domenico +Neroni's work the influence of his early surroundings. His native +country is such as must delight, or help to form, a painter of pale +anatomies. The painters of Southern Tuscany loved as a background the +arid and mountainous country of their birth. Taddeo di Bartolo placed +the Death of the Virgin among the curious undulations of pale clay and +sandy marl that stretch to the southernmost gates of Siena; Signorelli +was amused and fascinated by the odd cliffs and overhanging crags, +unnatural and grotesque like some Druidic monument, of the valleys of +the Paglia and the Chiana; and Pier della Francesca has left, in the +allegorical triumphs of Frederick of Urbino and his duchess, studies +most exquisite and correct, of what meets the traveller's eyes on the +watersheds of the central Apennine, sharp-toothed lines of mountain +peaks pale against the sky, dim distant whiteness of sea, and valleys +and roads and torrents twisting intricately as on a map. The country +about Volterra, revealing itself with rosy lividness at dawn, with +delicate periwinkle blue at sunset, through an open city gate or a gap +between the tall black houses, helped to make Neroni a lover of muscle +and sinew, of the strength and suppleness of movement, of the osseous +structure divined within the limbs; and made him shrink all his life +long, not merely from drapery or costume that blunted the lines of the +body, but from any warmth and depth of colour; till the figures stood +out like ghosts, or people in faded tapestries, from the pale lilacs and +greys and washed out cinnamons of his backgrounds. For the bold peaks +and swelling mountains of the valleys of the Arno and the Tiber, and the +depths of colour among vegetation and rivers, seemed crude and emphatic +to a man who carried in his memory those bosses of hill, pearly where +the waters have washed the sides, pale golden buff where a little sere +grass covers the rounded top; those great cracks and chasms, with the +white road snaking along the narrow table-land and the wide valleys; and +the ripple of far-off mountain chains, strong and restrained in curves, +exquisite in tints, like the dry white and purpled hemlock, and the +dusty lilac scabius, which seem to flower alone in that arid and +melancholy and beautiful country. + +"Colour," wrote Domenico Neroni, among a mass of notes on his art, +measurements, and calculations, "is the enemy of noble art. It is the +enemy of all precise and perfect form, since where colour exists form +can be seen only as juxtaposition of colour. For this reason it has +pleased the Creator to lend colour only to the inanimate world, as +to senseless vegetables and plants, and to the lower kinds of living +creatures, as birds, fishes, and reptiles; whereas nobler creatures, as +lions, tigers, horses, cattle, stags, and unicorns, are robed in white +or dull skins, the noblest breeds, indeed, both of horses, as those of +the Soldans of Egypt and Numidia, and of oxen, as those of the valleys +of the Clitumnus and Chiana, being white; whence, indeed, the poet Virgil +has said that such latter are fittest for sacrifice to the immortal +gods; 'hinc albi, Clitumne, greges,' and what follows. And man, the +masterpiece of creation, is white; and only in the less noble portions +of his body, which have no sensitiveness and no shape (being, indeed, +vegetative and deciduous), as hair and beard, partaking of colour. +Wherefore the ancient Romans and Greeks, portraying their gods, chose +white marble for material, and not gaudy porphyry or jasper, and +portrayed them naked. Whence certain moderns, calling themselves +painters, who muffle our Lord and the Holy Apostles in many-coloured +garments, thinking thereby to do a seemly and honourable thing, but +really proceeding basely like tailors, might take a lesson if they +could." + +The quotation from Virgil, and the allusion to the statues of the +immortal gods, shows that Neroni must have written these lines in +the later part of his career, when already under the influence of +that humanist Filarete, who played so important a part in his life, +and when possessed already by those notions which brought him to so +strange and fearful an end. But from his earliest years he sought +for form, despising other things. He passed with contempt through a six +months' apprenticeship at Perugia, railing at the great factory of +devotional art established there by Perugino, of whom, with his rows of +splay-footed saints and spindle-shanked heroes, he spoke with the same +sweeping contempt as later Michelangelo. At Siena, which he described +(much as its earlier artists painted it) as a town of pink toy-houses +and scarlet toy-towers, he found nothing to admire save the marble +fountain of Jacopo della Quercia, for the antique group of the Three +Graces, later to be drawn by the young Raphael, had not yet been given +to the cathedral by the nephew of Pius II. The sight of these noble +reliefs, particularly of the one representing Adam and Eve driven out of +Paradise, with their strong and well-understood nudities, determined him +to exchange painting for sculpture, and made him hasten to Florence to +see the works of Donatello and of Ghiberti. + +Domenico Neroni must have spent several years of his life--between +1470 and 1480--in Florence, but little of his work has remained in that +city,--little, at least, that we can identify with certainty. For taking +service, as he did, with the Pollaiolos, Verrocchio, Nanni di Banco, and +even with Filippino and Botticelli, wherever his inquisitive mind could +learn, or his restless, fastidious, laborious talent gain him bread, it +is presumable that much of his work might be discovered alongside that +of his masters, in the collective productions of the various workshops. +It is possible thus that he had a hand in much metal and relief work +of the Pollaiolos, and perhaps even in the embroidering and tapestries +of which they were undertakers; also in certain ornaments, friezes of +Cupids and dolphins, and exquisite shell and acanthus carving of the +monuments of Santa Croce; and it may be surmised that he occasionally +assisted Botticelli in his perspective and anatomy, since that master +took him to Rome when commissioned to paint in the chapel of Pope +Sixtus. Indeed, in certain little-known studies for Botticelli's Birth +of Venus and Calumny of Apelles one may discover, in the strong sweep of +the outline, in the solid fashion in which the figures are planted on +their feet--all peculiarities which disappear in the painted pictures, +where grace of motion and exquisitive research take the place of solid +draughtsman-ship--the hand of the artist whom the restless desire to +confront ever new problems alone prevented from attaining a place among +the great men of his time. + +For there was in Domenico Neroni, from the very outset of his career, a +curiosity after the hidden, a passion for the unattainable, which kept +him, with greater power than many of his contemporaries, and vastly +greater science, a mere student throughout his lifetime. He resembled +in some respects his great contemporary Leonardo, but while the eager +inquisitiveness of the latter was tempered by a singular power of +universal enjoyment, a love of luxury and joyousness in every form, the +intellectual activity of Neroni was exasperated into a kind of unhappy +mania by the fact that its satisfaction was the only happiness that he +could conceive. He would never have understood, or understanding would +have detested, the luxurious _dilettante_ spirit which made Leonardo +prefer painting to sculpture, because whereas the sculptor is covered +with a mud of marble dust, and works in a place disorderly with chips +and rubbish, the painter "sits at his easel, well dressed and at ease, +in a clean house adorned with pictures, his work accompanied by music +or the reading of delightful books, which, untroubled by the sound of +hammering and other noises, may be listened to with very great pleasure." +The workshop of Neroni, when he had one of his own, was full of cobwebs +and dust, littered with the remains of frugal and unsavoury meals, +and resolutely closed to the rich and noble persons in whose company +Leonardo delighted. And if Neroni, in his many-sided activity, eventually +put aside sculpture for painting, it was merely because, as he was wont +to say, a figure must needs look real when it is solid and you can +walk round it; but to make men and women rise out of a flat canvas or +plastered wall, and stand and move as if alive, is truly the work of a +god. + +Men and women, said Neroni; and he should have added men and women nude. +For the studies which he made of the anatomy of horses and dogs were +destined merely to shed light on the construction of human creatures; +and his elaborate and exquisite drawings of undulating hills and sinuous +rivers, nay, of growths of myrtle and clumps of daffodils, were intended +as practice towards drawing the more subtle lines and curves of man's +body. And as to clothes, he could not understand that great anatomists +like Signorelli should huddle their figures quite willingly in immense +cloaks and gowns; still less how exquisite draughtsmen like his friend +Botticelli (who had the sense of line like no other man since Frate +Lippo, although his people were oddly out of joint) could take pleasure +in putting half-a-dozen veils atop of each other, and then tying them +all into bunches and bunches with innumerable bits of tape! As to himself, +he invariably worked out every detail of the nude, in the vain hope that +the priests and monks for whom he worked would allow at least half of +those beautiful anatomies to remain visible; and when, with infinite +difficulties and bad language, he gradually gave in to the necessity of +some sort of raiment, it was of such a nature--the hose and jerkins of +the men-at-arms like a second skin, the draperies of the womankind as +clinging as if they had been picked out of the river, that a great many +pious people absolutely declined to pay the agreed on sum for paintings +more suited to Pagan than to Christian countries; and indeed Fra Girolamo +Savonarola included much work of Domenico's in his very finest burnings. + +Such familiarity with nude form was not easily attained in the fifteenth +century. Mediæval civilisation gave no opportunities for seeing naked +or half-naked people moving freely as in the antique palæstra; and +there had yet been discovered too few antique marbles for the empiric +knowledge of ancient sculptors to be empirically inherited by modern +ones. Observation of the hired model, utterly insufficient in itself, +required to be supplemented by a thorough science of the body's +mechanism. But physiology and surgery were still in their infancy; +and artists could not, as they could after the teachings of Vesalius, +Fallopius, and Cesalpinus, avail themselves of the science accumulated +for medical purposes. Verrocchio and the Pollaiolos most certainly, and +Donatello almost without a doubt, practised dissection as a part of +their business, as Michelangelo, with the advantage of twenty years of +their researches behind him, practised it passionately in his turn. Of +all the men of his day, Domenico Neroni, however, was the most fervent +anatomist. He ran every risk of contagion and of punishment in order +to procure corpses from the hospital and the gibbet. He undermined his +constitution by breathing and handling corruption, and when his friends +implored him to spare his health, he would answer, although unable to +touch food for sickness, by paraphrasing the famous words of Paolo +Uccello, and exclaiming from among his grisly and abominable properties, +"Ah! how sweet a thing is not anatomy!" + +There was nothing, he said--for he spoke willingly to any one who +questioned him on these subjects--more beautiful than the manner in +which human beings are built, or indeed living creatures of any kind; +for, in the scarcity of corpses and skeletons, he would pick up on his +walks the bones of sheep that had died on the hill-sides, or those of +horses and mules furbished up by the scavenger dogs of the river-edge. +It was marvellous to listen to him when he was in the vein. He sat +handling horrible remains and talking about them like a lover about his +mistress or a preacher about God; indeed, bones, muscles, and tendons +were mistress and god all in one to this fanatical lover of human form. +He would insist on the loveliness of line of the scapula, finding in the +sweep of the _acromion_ ridge a fanciful resemblance to the pinion, and +in the angular shape of the _coracoid_ process to the neck and head of a +raven in full flight. Following with his finger the triangular outline +of the bone, he went on to explain how its freedom of movement is due to +its singular independence; laid loosely on the flat muscles behind the +upper ribs, it moves with absolute freedom, backwards and forwards, up +and down, unconnected with any other bone, till, turning the corner of +the shoulder, it is hinged rather than tied to the collar-bone; the +collar-bone itself free to move upwards from its articulation in the +sternum. And then talk of the great works of man! Talk of Brunellesco +and his cupola, of the engineers of the Duke of Calabria! Look at the +human arm: what engineer would have dared to fasten anything to such a +movable base as that? Yet an arm can swing round like a windmill, and +lift weights like the stoutest crane without being wrenched out of +its sockets, because the muscles act as pulleys in four different +directions. And see, under the big _deltoid_, which fits round the +shoulder like an epaulette and pulls the arm up, is the scapular +group, things like tidily sorted skeins, thick on the shoulder-blades, +diminished to a tendon string at their insertion in the arm; their +business is to pull the arm back, in opposition to the big pectoral +muscle which pulls it forwards. Here you have your arm working up, +backwards or forwards; but how about pulling it down? An exquisite +little arrangement settles that. Instead of being inserted with the rest +on the outside of the arm-bone, the lowest muscle takes another road, +and is inserted in the under part of the bone, in company with the great +_latissimus dorsi_, and these tightening while the _deltoid_ slackens, +pull the arm down. No other arrangement could have done it with so little +bulk; and an additional muscle on the under-arm or the ribs would have +spoilt the figure of Apollo himself. + +Among the paintings of contemporary artists, the one which at that time +afforded Domenico the most unmingled satisfaction was Pollaiolo's tiny +panel of Hercules and the Hydra. There! You might cover it with the palm +of your hand; but in that hand you would be holding the concentrated +strength and valour of the world, the true son of Jove, the most beautiful +muscles that ever were seen! At least the most beautiful save in the +statues of Donatello; for, of course, Donato was the greatest craftsman +that had ever lived; and Domenico spoke of him as, in Vasari's day, men +were to speak of Michelangelo. + +For I ask you, who save an angel in human shape could have modelled that +David, so young and triumphant and modest, treading on Goliath's head, +with toes just slightly turned downwards, and those sandals, of truly +divine workmanship? And that St. John in the Wilderness--how beautiful +are not his ribs, showing under the wasted pectoral muscles; and how one +sees that the _radius_ rolls across the _ulna_ in the forearm; surely +one's heart, rather than the statue, must be made of stone if one can +contemplate without rapture the exquisite rendering of the texture where +the shin-bone stands out from the muscles of the leg. Such must have +been the works of those famous Romans and Greeks, Phidias and Praxiteles. + +Such were the notions of Domenico of Volterra in the earlier part of his +career. For a change came gradually upon him after his first visit to +Rome, whither, about 1480, he accompanied Botticelli, Rosselli, and +Ghirlandaio, whom His Beatitude Pope Sixtus had sent for to decorate the +new chapel of the palace. + + +II + +We must not be deluded, like Domenico Neroni during his Florentine days, +into the easy mistake of considering mere realism as the veritable aim +of the art of his days. Deep in the life of that art, and struggling +for ever through whatever passion for scientific accuracy, technical +skill, or pathetic expression, is the sense of line and proportion, the +desire for pattern, growing steadily till its triumph under Michelangelo +and Raphael. + +This reveals itself earliest in architecture. The men of the fifteenth +century had lost all sense of the logic of construction. Columns, +architraves, friezes, and the various categories of actual stone +and brick work, occurred to them merely as so much line and curve, +applicable to the surface of their buildings, with not more reference +to their architecture than a fresco or an arras. The Pazzi Chapel, for +instance, is one agglomeration of architectural members which perform +no architectural function; but, taken as a piece of surface decoration, +say as a stencilling, what could be more harmonious? Or take Alberti's +famous church at Rimini; it is but a great piece of architectural +veneering, nothing that meets the eye doing any real constructive duty, +its exquisite decoration no more closely connected with the building +than the strips of damask and yards of gold braid used in other places +on holidays. As the fifteenth century treats the architectural detail +of Græco-Roman art, so likewise does it proceed with its sculptured +ornament; all meaning vanishes before the absorbing interest in pattern. +For there is in antique architectural ornament a much larger proportion +of significance than can strike us at first. Thus the garlands of ivy +and fruit had actually hung round the tomb before being carved on its +sides; before ornamenting its corners the rams' heads and skulls of oxen +had lain for centuries on the altar. The medallions of nymphs, centaurs, +tritons, which to us are so meaningless and irrelevant, had a reference +either to the divinity or to the worshippers; and there is probably +almost as much spontaneous symbolism in the little cinerary box in the +Capitol (of a person called Felix), with its variously employed genii, +making music, carrying lanterns and torches, burning or extinguished +under a trellis hung with tragic masks, as in any Gothic tomb with +angels drawing the curtains of the deathbed. There has been, with the +change of religion, an interruption in the symbolic tradition; yet, +though we no longer interpret with readiness this dead language of +paganism, we feel, if we are the least attentive, that it contains +a real meaning. We feel that the sculptors cared not merely for the +representation, but also for the object represented. These things were +dear to them, a part of their life, their worship, their love; and they +put as much observation into their work as any Gothic sculptor, and +often as much fancy and humour (though both more beautiful), as one may +judge, with plenty of comparison at hand, by a certain antique altar in +Siena Cathedral, none of whose Gothic animals come up to the wonderful +half-human rams' heads and bored, cross griffins of this forlorn fragment +of paganism. The significance of classic ornament the men of the +fifteenth century straightway overlooked. They laid hold of it as +merely so much form, joining sirens, griffins, garlands, rams' heads, +victories, without a suspicion that they might mean or suggest anything. +They do, in fact, mean nothing, in most Florentine work, besides +exquisite pattern; in the less subtle atmosphere of Venice they reach +that frank senselessness which has moved the wrath of Ruskin. But what a +charm have not even those foolish monuments of doges and admirals, tier +upon tier of triumphal arch, of delicately flowered column and scalloped +niche, and then rows of dainty warriors and virtues; how full of meaning +to the eye and spirit is not this art so meaningless to the literary +mind! + +Of course the painting of that age never became an art of mere pattern +like the architecture. The whole life and thought of the time was poured +into it; and the art itself developed in its upward movement a number +of scientific interests--perspective, anatomy, expression--which +counteracted that tendency to seek for mere beauty of arrangement and +detail. Yet the perfection of Renaissance art never lies in any realism +in our modern sense, still less in such suggestiveness as belongs to our +literary age; and its triumph is when Raphael can vary and co-ordinate +the greatest number of heads, of hands, feet, and groups, as in the +School of Athens, the Parnassus, the marvellous little Bible histories +of the Loggie; above all, in that "Vision of Ezekiel," which is the very +triumph of compact and harmonious composition; when Michelangelo can +tie human beings into the finest knots, twist them into the most shapely +brackets, frameworks, and key-stones. Even throughout the period of +utmost realism, while art was struggling with absorbing problems, men +never dreamed of such realism as ours. They never painted a corner of +nature at random, merely for the sake of veracity; they never modelled +a modern man or woman in their real everyday dress and at their real +everyday business. In the midst of everything composition ruled supreme, +and each object must needs find its echo, be worked into a scheme of +lines, or, with the Venetians, of symmetrically arranged colours. There +is an anatomical engraving by Antonio Pollaiolo, one of the strongest +realists of his time, which sums up the tendencies of fifteenth-century +art. It is a combat of twelve naked men, extraordinarily hideous and +in hideous attitudes, but they are so arranged that their ungainly and +flayed-looking limbs form with the background of gigantic ivy tendrils +an intricate and beautiful pattern, such as we find in Morris's paper +and stuffs. + +This hankering after pattern, this desire for beauty as such, became +manifest in Domenico Neroni after his first sojourn in Rome. + +The Roman basilicas, with their stately rows of columns, Corinthian and +Ionic, taken from some former temple, and their sunken floor, solemn +with Byzantine patterns of porphyry and serpentine, had impressed with +their simplicity and harmony the mind of this Florentine, surrounded +hitherto by the intricacies of Gothic buildings. They had formed the +link to those fragments of ancient architecture, more intact but also +more hidden than in our days, whose dignity of proportion and grace of +detail--vast rosetted arches and slender rows of fluted pillars--our +modern and Hellenicised taste has treated with too ready contempt. For +this Vitruvian art, unoriginal and bungling in the eyes of our purists, +was yet full of the serenity, the ampleness which the Middle Ages lacked, +and affected the men of the fifteenth century much like a passage of +Virgil after a canto of Dante. It formed the fit setting for those +remains of antique sculpture which were then gradually beginning to be +drawn from the earth. Of such statues and reliefs--which the men of +the Renaissance regarded as the work rather of ancient Rome than of +Greece--a certain amount was beginning to be carried all over Italy, and +notably to the houses of the rich Florentine merchants, who incrusted +their staircase walls with inscriptions and carvings, and set statues +and sarcophagi under the columns of their courtyards. But such sculpture +was chosen rather for its portable character than its excellence; and +although single busts and slabs were diligently studied by Florentine +artists, there could not have existed in Florence a number of antiques +sufficient to impress the ideal of ancient art upon men surrounded on +all sides by the works of medieval painters and sculptors. + +To the various sights of Rome must be due that sudden enlarging of +style, that kind of new classicism, which distinguishes the work of +fifteenth-century masters after their visit to the Eternal City, enabling +Ghirlandaio, Signorelli, Perugino, and Botticelli to make the Sixtine +Chapel, and even the finical Pinturicchio, the Vatican library, into +centres of fresh influence for harmony and beauty. + +The result upon Domenico Neroni was a momentary confusion in all his +artistic conceptions. Too much of a seeker for new things, for secret +and complicated knowledge, to undergo a mere widening of style like his +more gifted or more placid contemporaries, he fell foul of his previous +work and his previous masters, without finding a new line or new ideals. +The frescoes of Castagno, the little panels of the Pollaiolos, nay, even +the works of Donatello, were no longer what they had seemed before his +Roman journey, and even what he had remembered them in Rome; for it is +with more noble things, even as with the rooms which we inhabit, which +strike us as small and dingy only on returning from larger and better +lighted ones. + +It is to this period of incipient but ill-understood classicism that +belongs the only work of Domenico Neroni--at least the only work still +extant nowadays--which possesses, over and above its artistic or +scientific merit, that indefinable quality which we must simply call +_charm_; to this time, with the one exception of the famous woodcuts +done for Filarete. Domenico began about this time, and probably under +the stress of necessity, to make frontispieces for the books with which +Florentine printers were rapidly superseding the manuscripts of twenty +years before: collections of sermons, of sonnets, lives of saints, +editions of Virgil and Terence, quaint versified encyclopædias, and even +books on medicine and astrology. From these little woodcuts, groups of +saints round the Cross, with Giotto's tower and Brunellesco's dome in +the distance, pictures of Fathers of the Church or ancient poets seated +at desks in neatly panelled closets--always with their globes, books, +and pot of lilies, and a vista of cloisters; or battles between chaste +viragos, in flying Botticellian draperies, and slim, naked Cupids; from +such frontispieces Domenico passed on to larger woodcuts, destined to +illustrate books never printed, or perhaps, like the so-called _playing +cards of Mantegna_ and certain prints of Robetta, to be bought as cheap +ornaments for walls. Some of those that remain to us have a classical +stiffness, reminding one of the Paduan school; others, and these his +best, remind one of the work of Botticelli. There is, for instance, the +figure of a Muse, elaborately modelled under her ample drapery, seated +cross-legged by a playing fountain, on a carpet of exquisitely designed +ground-ivy, a little bare trellis behind her, a tortoise lyre in her +hand; which has in it somewhat of that odd, vague, questioning character, +half of eagerness, half of extreme lassitude, which we find in +Botticelli. Only that in Neroni's work it seems not the outcome of a +certain dreamy spiritual dissatisfaction--the dissatisfaction which +makes us feel that Botticelli's flower-wreathed nymphs may end in the +pool under the willows like Ophelia--but rather of a torturing of line +and attitude in search of grace. Grace! Unclutchable phantom, which +had appeared tantalisingly in Neroni's recollections of the antique, a +something ineffable, which he could not even see clearly when it was +there before him, accustomed as he had been to all the hideousness of +anatomised reality. In these woodcuts he seems hunting it for ever; and +there is one of them which is peculiarly significant, of a nymph in +elaborately wound robes and veils, striding, with an odd, mad, uncertain +swing, through fields of stiff grass and stunted rushes, a baby faun in +her bosom, another tiny goat-legged creature led by the hand, while +she carries uncomfortably, in addition to this load, a silly trophy of +wild-flowers tied to a stick; the personification almost, this lady with +the wide eyes and crazy smile, of the artist's foolishly and charmingly +burdened journey in quest of the unattainable. The imaginative quality, +never intended or felt by the painter himself, here depends on his +embodying longings after the calm and stalwart goddesses on sarcophagus +and vase, in the very thing he most seeks to avoid, a creature borrowed +from a Botticelli allegory, or one of the sibyls of the unspeakable +Perugino himself! The circumstances of this quest, and the accidental +meeting in it of the antique and the mediæval, the straining, the +Quixote-riding or Three-King pilgrimaging after a phantom, gives to +such work of Domenico's that indefinable quality of _charm_; the man +does not indeed become a poet, but in a measure a subject for poetry. + + +III + +In order to understand what must have passed in the mind of one of those +Florentines of the fifteenth century, we must realise the fact that, +unlike ourselves, they had not been brought up under the influence of +the antique, and, unlike the ancients, they had not lived in intimacy +with Nature. The followers of Giotto had studied little beyond the head +and hands, and as much of the body as could be guessed at under drapery +or understood from movement; and this achievement, with no artistic +traditions save those of the basest Byzantine decay, was far greater +than we easily appreciate. It remained for the men of the fifteenth +century, Donatello, Ghiberti, Masaccio, and their illustrious followers, +to become familiar with the human body. To do so is easy for every one +in our day, when we are born, so to speak, with an unconscious habit +of antique form, diffused not merely by ancient works of art in marble +or plaster, but by more recent schools of art, painting as well as +sculpture, themselves the outcome of classical imitation. The early +Italian Renaissance had little or none of these facilitations. Fragments +of Greek and Roman sculpture were still comparatively uncommon before +the great excavations of the sixteenth century; nor was it possible for +men so unfamiliar, not merely with the antique, but with Nature itself, +to profit very rapidly by the knowledge and taste stored up even in +those fragments. It was necessary to learn from reality to appreciate +the antique, however much the knowledge of the antique might later +supplement, and almost supplant, the study of reality. So these men of +the fifteenth century had to teach themselves, in the first instance, +the very elements of this knowledge. And here their position, while +yet so unlike ours, was even more utterly unlike that of the ancients +themselves. The great art of Greece undoubtedly had its days of +ignorance; but for those ancient painters and sculptors, who for +generations had watched naked lads exercising in the school or +racecourse, and draped, half-naked men and women walking in the +streets and working in the fields, their ignorance was of the means +of representation, not of the object represented. It is the hand, the +tool which is at fault in those constrained, simpering warriors of the +schools of Ægina, in those slim-waisted dæmonic dancers of the Apulian +vases; the eye is as familiar with the human body, the mind as accustomed +to select its beauty from its ugliness, as the eye and mind of such of us +as cannot paint are familiar nowadays with the shapes and colours, with +the charm of the trees and meadows that we love. The contemporaries, on +the contrary, of Donatello had received from the sculptors of the very +farthest Middle Ages, those who carved the magnificent patterns of +Byzantine coffins and the exquisite leafage of Longobard churches, a +remarkable mastery over the technical part of their craft. The hand +was cunning, but the eye unfamiliar. Hence it comes that the sculpture +of the earlier Renaissance displays perfection of workmanship, which +occasionally blinds us to its poverty of form, and even to its +deficiency of science. And hence also the rapidity with which every +additional item of knowledge is put into practice that seems to argue +perfect familiarity. But these men were not really familiar with their +work. The dullest modern student, brought up among casts and manuals, +would not be guilty of the actual anatomical mistakes committed every +now and then by these great anatomists, so passionately curious of +internal structure, so exquisitely faithful to minute peculiarity, let +alone the bunglings of men so certain of their pencil, so exquisitely +keen to form, as Botticelli. As a matter of fact, every statue or drawn +figure of this period represents a hard fight with ignorance and with +unfamiliarity worse than ignorance. The grosser the failure hard-by, the +more splendid the real achievement. For every limb modelled truthfully +from the life, every gesture rendered correctly, every bone or muscle +making itself felt under the skin, every crease or lump in the surface, +is so much conquered from the unknown. + +So long as this study, or rather this ignorance, continued, the antique +could be appreciated only very partially, and almost exclusively in the +points in which it differed least from the works of these modern men. +It must have struck them by its unerring science, its great truthfulness +to nature, but its superior beauty could not have appealed to artists +too unfamiliar with form to think of selecting it. + +The study of antique proportion, the reproduction of antique types, so +visible in the sculptures of Michelangelo, of Cellini, and of Sansovino, +and no less in the painting of Raphael, of Andrea, and even of the later +Venetians, was very unimportant in the school of Donatello; and it is +probable that he and his pupils did not even perceive the difference +between their own works and the old marbles, which they studied merely +as so many realistic documents. + +During his Florentine days Domenico Neroni, like his masters, was +unconscious of the real superiority of the antique, and blind to its +difference from what his contemporaries and himself were striving to +produce. He did not perceive that the David of Donatello and that of +Verrocchio were unlike the marble gods and heroes with whom he would +complacently compare them, nor that the bas-reliefs of the divine +Ghiberti were far more closely connected with the Gothic work of +Orcagna, even of the Pisans, than with those sculptured sarcophagi +collected by Cosimo and Piero dei Medici. It was only when his insatiate +curiosity had exhausted those problems of anatomy which had still +troubled his teachers that he was able to see what the antique really +was, or rather to see that the modern was not the same thing. Ghirlandaio, +Filippino, Signorelli, and Botticelli undoubtedly were affected by +a similar intuition of the Antique; but they were diverted from its +thorough investigation by the manifold other problems of painting as +distinguished from sculpture, and by the vagueness, the unconsciousness +of great creative activity: the antique became one of the influences +in their development, helping very quietly to enlarge and refine their +work. + +It was different with Domenico, in whom the man of science was much more +powerful than the artist. His nature required definite decisions and +distinct formulas. It took him some time to understand that the school +of Donatello differed absolutely from the antique, but the difference +once felt, it appeared to him with extraordinary clearness. + +He never put his thoughts into words, and probably never admitted even +to himself that the works he had most admired were lacking in beauty; +he merely asserted that the statues of the old Romans and Greeks were +astonishingly beautiful. In reality, however, he was perpetually +comparing the two, and always to the disadvantage of the moderns. It is +possible in our day to judge justly the comparative merits of antique +sculpture and of that of the early Renaissance; or rather to appreciate +them as two separate sorts of art, delightful in quite different ways, +letting ourselves be charmed not more by the actual beauty of form, +and nobility of movement of the one than by the simplicity, the very +homeliness, the essentially human quality of the other. To us there +is something delightful in the very fact that the Davids of Donatello +and Verrocchio are mere ordinary striplings from the street and the +workshop, that the singers of Luca della Robbia are simple unfledged +choir-boys, and the Virgins of Mino Florentine fine ladies; we have +enough of antique perfection, we have had too much of pseudo-antique +faultlessness, and we feel refreshed by this unconsciousness of beauty +and ugliness. A contemporary could not enter into such feelings, he +could not enjoy his own and his fellows' _naïveté_; besides, the antique +was only just becoming manifest, and therefore triumphant. To Domenico, +Donatello's David became more and more unsatisfactory, faulty above the +waist, positively ungainly below, weak and lubberly; how could so divine +an artist have been satisfied with that flat back, those narrow shoulders +and thick thighs? He felt freer to dislike the work of Verrocchio, his +own teacher, and a man without Donatello's overwhelming genius; that +David of his, with his immense head and wizen face, his pitiful child's +arms and projecting clavicles, straddling with hand on hip; was it +possible that a great hero, the slayer of a giant (Domenico's notions +of giants were taken rather from the romances of chivalry recited in +the market than from study of Scripture) should have been made like +that? And so, like his great contemporary Mantegna in far-off Lombardy, +Domenico turned that eager curiosity with which he had previously sought +for the secret of flayed limbs and fleshless skeletons, to studying the +mystery of proportion and beauty which was hidden, more subtly and +hopelessly, in the broken marbles of the Pagans. + +It happened one day, somewhere about the year 1485, that he was called +to examine a group of Bacchus and a Faun, recently brought from Naples +by the banker Neri Altoviti, of the family which once owned a charming +house, recently destroyed, whose triple row of pillared balconies used +to put an odd Florentine note into the Papal Rome, turning the swirl of +the Tiber opposite Saint Angelo's into a reach of the Arno. The houses +of the Altovitis in Florence were in that portion of the town most +favoured by the fifteenth century, already a little way from the market: +the lion on the tower of the Podestà, and the Badia steeple printing the +sky close by; while not far off was the shop where the good bookseller +Vespasiano received orders for manuscripts, and conversed with the +humanists whose lives he was to write. The Albizis and Pandolfinis, +illustrious and numerous families, struck in so many of their members by +the vindictiveness of the Medicis, had their houses in the same quarter, +and at the corner of the narrow street hung the carved escutcheon--two +fishes rampant--of the Pazzis: their house shut up and avoided by the +citizens, who had so recently seen the conspirators dangling in hood and +cape from the windows of the public palace. The house of the Altovitis +was occupied on the ground floor by great warehouses, whose narrow, +grated windows were attainable only by a steep flight of steps. The +court was surrounded on three sides by a cloister or portico, which +repeated itself on the first and second floors, with the difference that +the lowest arches were supported by rude square pillars, ornamented +with only a carved marigold, while the uppermost weighed on stout oaken +shafts, between which ropes were stretched for the drying of linen; and +the middle colonnade consisted of charming Tuscan columns, where Sirens +and Cupids and heraldic devices replaced the acanthus or rams' horns of +the capitals. It was to this middle portion of the house that Domenico +ascended up a noble steep-stepped staircase, protected from the rain +by a vaulted and rosetted roof, for it was external and occupied the +side of the yard left free from cloisters. The great banker had bidden +Domenico to his midday meal, which was served with a frugality now fast +disappearing, but once habitual even among the richest Florentines. But +though the food was simple and almost scanty, nearly forty persons sat +down to meat together, for Neri Altoviti held to the old plan, commended +by Alberti in his dialogue on the governing of a household, that the +clerks and principal servants of a merchant were best chosen among his +own kinsfolk, living under his roof, and learning obedience from the +example of his children. Despite this frugality, the dining-room was, +though bare, magnificent. There were none of those carpets and Eastern +stuffs which surprised strangers from the North in the voluptuous little +palaces of contemporary Venetians, and the benches were hard and narrow. +But the ceiling overhead was magnificently arranged in carved compartments, +great gold sunflowers and cherubs projecting from a dark blue ground +among the brown raftering; in the middle of the stencilled wall was one +of those high sideboards so frequently shown in old paintings, covered +with gold and silver dishes and platters embossed by the most skilful +craftsmen; and at one end a great washing trough and fountain, such as +still exist in sacristies, ornamented with groups of dancing children +by Benedetto da Maiano; while behind the high seat of the father of +the family a great group of saints, emerging from blooming lilies and +surrounded by a glory of angels, was hanging in a frame divided into +carved compartments: the work, panel and frame, of the late Brother +Filippo Lippi. At one end of the board sat all the men, arranged +hierarchically, from the father in his black loose robe to lads in short +plaited tunic and striped hose; the womankind were seated together, and +the daughters, even the mother of the house, modest and almost nunlike +in apparel and head-dress, would rise and help to wait on the men, with +that silent and grave courtesy which, according to Vespasiano, had +disappeared from Florence with Alessandra dei Bardi. There was little +speech, and only in undertones; a Franciscan said a long grace, and +afterwards, and in the middle of the meal, a young student, educated by +the frequent munificence of the Altovitis, read out loud a chapter of +Cicero's "De Senectute;" for Neri, although a busy banker, with but +little time for study, was not behind his generation in the love of +letters and philosophy. + +After meat Messer Neri dismissed the rest of the company to their various +avocations; the ladies silently retired to superintend the ironing and +mending of the house linen, and Domenico was escorted by his host to see +the newly arrived piece of statuary. It had been placed already in the +banker's closet, where he could feast his eyes on its perfection while +attending to his business or improving his mind by study. This closet, +compared to the rest of the house, was small and low-roofed. At its +end, as we see in the pictures of Van Eyck and Memling, opened out the +conjugal chamber, reflecting its vast, red-covered bed, raised several +steps, its crucifix and praying-stool, and its latticed window in a +circular mirror framed in cut facets, which hung opposite on the wall of +the closet. The latter was dark, a single trefoiled window admitting on +either side of its column and through its greenish bottle-glass but +little light from the narrow street. The chief furniture consisted of +shelves carrying books, small antique bronzes, some globes, a sand-glass, +and panel cupboards, ornamented with pictures of similar objects, and +with ingenious perspectives of inlaid wood. An elaborate iron safe, +painted blue and studded with beautiful metal roses, stood in a corner. +There were two or three arm chairs of carved oak for visitors. The +master sat upon a bench behind an oaken counter or desk, very much like +St. Jerome in his study. On the wall behind, and above his head, hung a +precious Flemish painting (Flemish paintings were esteemed for their +superior devoutness) representing the Virgin at the foot of the Cross, +with a Nativity and a Circumcision on either of the opened shutters. It +made a glowing patch of vivid geranium and wine colour, of warm yellow +glazing on the oak of the wall. On the counter or writing-table stood a +majolica pot with three lilies in it, a pile of manuscript and ledgers, +and a human skull alongside of a crucifix, beautifully wrought of bronze +by Desiderio da Settignano. A Latin translation of Plato's "Phædo" was +spread open on the desk, together with one of the earliest printed +copies of the "Divine Comedy." + +Messer Neri did not take his seat at the counter, but, after a pause, +and with some solemnity, drew a curtain of dark brocade which had been +spread across one end of the closet, and displayed his new purchase. + +"I have it from the king, for the settling of a debt of a thousand +crowns contracted with my father, when he was Duke of Calabria," said +the banker, with due appreciation of the sum. "'Tis said they found it +among the ruins of that famous palace of the Emperor Tiberius of which +Tacitus has told us." + +The two marble figures, to which time and a long sojourn underground +had given a brownish yellow colour, reddish in places with rust stains, +stood out against a background of Flemish tapestry, whose emaciated +heads of kings and thin bodies of warrior saints made a confused pattern +on the general dusky blue and green. The group was in wonderful +preservation: the figure of Bacchus intact, that of the young faun +lacking only the arm, which had evidently been freely extended. + +It exists in many repetitions and variations in most of our museums; a +work originally of the school of Praxiteles, but in none of the copies +handed to us of excellence sufficient to display the hand of the +original sculptor. Besides, we have been spoilt by familiarity with an +older and more powerful school, by knowledge of a few great masterpieces, +for complete appreciation of such a work. But it was different four +hundred years ago; and Domenico Neroni stood long and entranced before +the group. The principal figure embodied all those beauties which he had +been striving so hard to understand: it was, in the most triumphant +manner, the absolute reverse of the figures of Donatello. + +The young god was represented walking with leisurely but vigorous step, +supporting himself upon the shoulder of the little satyr as the vine +supports itself, with tendrils trailed about branches and trunk, on the +propping tree from which the child Ampelos took his name. Like the head +with its elaborately dressed curls, the beautiful body had an ampleness +and tenderness that gave an impression almost womanly till you noticed +the cuirass-like sit of the chest on the loins, and the compressed +strength of the long light thighs. The creature, as you looked at him, +seemed to reveal more and more, beneath the roundness and fairness of +surface, the elasticity and strength of an athlete in training. But when +the eye was not exploring the delicate, hard, and yet supple depressions +and swellings of the muscles, the slender shapeliness of the long legs +and springy feet, the back bulging with strong muscles above, and going +in, tight, with a magnificent dip at the waist; all impressions were +merged in a sense of ease, of suavity, of full-blown harmony. Here was +no pomp of anatomical lore, of cunning handicraft, but the life seemed +to circulate strong and gentle in this exquisite effortless body. And +the creature was not merely alive with a life more harmonious than +that of living men or carved marbles, but beautiful, equally in simple +outline if you chose that, and in subtle detail when that came under +your notice, with a beauty that seemed to multiply itself, existing in +all manners, as it can only in things that have life, in perfect flowers +and fruits, or high-bred Oriental horses. Of such things did the +under-strata of consciousness consist in Neroni--vague impressions +of certain bunches of grapes with their great rounded leaves hanging +against the blue sky, of the flame-like tapered petals of wild tulips in +the fields, of the golden brown flanks of certain horses, and the broad +white foreheads of the Umbrian bullocks; forming as it were a background +for the perception of this god, for no man or woman had ever been like +unto him. + +Domenico remained silent, his arms folded on his breast; it was not a +case for talking. + +But the young man who had read Cicero aloud at table had come up behind +him, and thought it more seemly to praise his patron's new toy, while +at the same time displaying his learning; so he cleared his throat, and +said in a pompous manner:-- + +"It is stated in the fifth chapter of the Geography of Strabo that the +painter Parrhasius, having been summoned by the inhabitants of Lindos to +make them an image of their tutelary hero Hercules, obtained from the +son of Jupiter that he should appear to him in a dream, and thus enable +him worthily to portray the perfections of a demigod. Might we not be +tempted to believe that the divine son of Semele had vouchsafed a +similar boon to the happy sculptor of this marble?" + +But Domenico only bit his thumb and sighed very heavily. + + +IV + +To the men of those days, which have taken their name from the revival +of classical studies, Antiquity, although studied and aped till its +phrases, feelings, and thoughts had entered familiarly into all life, +remained, nevertheless, a period of permanent miracle. It was natural, +therefore, to the contemporaries of Poggius and Æneas Sylvius, of +Ficinus and Politian, that the art of the Romans and Greeks should, like +their poetry, philosophy, and even their virtues, be of transcendent and +unqualified splendour. Why it should be thus they asked as little as why +the sun shines, mediæval men as they really were, and accepting quite +simply certain phenomena as the result of inscrutable virtues. Even later, +when Machiavelli began to examine why the ancients had been more valorous +and patriotic than his contemporaries, nay, when Montaigne expounded +with sceptical cynicism the superior sanity and wisdom of Pagan days, +people were satisfied to think--when they thought at all--that antique +art was excellent because it belonged to antiquity. And it was not till +the middle of the eighteenth century that the genius of Winkelmann brought +into fruitful contact the study of ancient works of art, and that of the +manners and notions of antiquity, showing the influence of a civilisation +which cultivated bodily beauty as an almost divine quality, and making +us see behind that beautiful nation of marble the generations of living +athletes, among whom the sculptor had found his critics and his models. + +To a man like Domenico Neroni, devoid of classical learning and +accustomed to struggling with anatomy and perspective, the problem of +ancient art was not settled by the fact of its antiquity. He had gone +once more to Rome on purpose to see as many old marbles as possible, +and he brought to their study the feverish curiosity with which in +former years he had flayed and cut up corpses and spent his nights in +calculations of perspective. To such a mind, where modern scientific +methods were arising among mediæval habits of allegory and mysticism, +the statues and reliefs which he was perpetually analysing became a sort +of subsidiary nature, whose riddles might be read by other means than +mere investigation; for do not the forces of Nature, its elemental +spirits, give obedience to wonderful words and potent combinations of +numbers? + +Certain significant facts had flashed across his mind in his studies +of that almost abstract, nay, almost cabalistic thing, the science of +bodily proportions. It was plain that the mystery of antique beauty--the +ancient symmetry, _symmetria prisca_ as a humanist designs it in his +epitaph for Leonardo da Vinci--was but a matter of numbers. For a man's +length, if he stand with outstretched arms, is the same from finger tip +to finger tip as his length when erect from head to feet, namely, eight +times the length of his head. Now eight heads, if divided into halves, +give four as the measure of throat and thorax; and four heads to the +length of the leg from the acetabulum to the heel, divided themselves +into two heads going to the thigh and two heads to the shank; while in +the cross measurement two heads equal the breadth of the chest, and +three measure the length from the shoulder to the middle finger. These +measures--a mere rough rule of thumb in our eyes--contained to this +mediæval mind the promise of some great mystery. To him, accustomed to +hear all the occurrences of Nature, and all human concerns referred to +astrological calculations, and conceiving the universe as governed by +spirits--in shape, perhaps, like the Primum Mobile, the Mercurius and +Jupiter of Mantegna's playing cards, crowned with stars and poised upon +globes--it was as if the divining rod were turning pertinaciously to one +spot in the earth, where, had he but the necessary tools, he must strike +upon veins of the purest gold, or cause water to spirt high in the air. +This number _eight_, and the pertinacity of its recurrence, puzzled him +intensely. It seemed to point so clearly, much as in music the sensitive +seventh points to the tonic, to a sort of resolution on the number nine. +And if only nine could be established, it would seem to explain so +much.... For five being man's numeral in creation (and is not the +measurement of his face also _five eyes_?), it makes, when added to +four, the number of the material elements over which he dominates, +_nine_, which would thus represent the supremacy or perfection of man. +Man's power of reproduction being represented by three, its multiple +nine would be still more obviously important. How to turn this eight +into nine became Domenico's study, and he took measurement after +measurement for this purpose. At length he remembered that man's body +is a unity, therefore represented by the number one, and that will, +judgment, and supremacy are also comprised in the unit. Now one and +eight make nine beyond all possibility of doubt, and the formula--"man's +body is a unity--or one"--composed of harmonies of eight, would give +the formula _nine_ meaning _man's supremacy is expressed in his body_. +The importance of working round to this famous nine will be clear when +we reflect that, according to the Kabbala and the lost sacred book of +Hermes Trismegistus--the Pimandra, doubtless, which he is represented, +on the floor of Siena Cathedral, as offering to a Jew and a Gentile--nine +represents the sun and all beautiful bright things that draw their +influence from it, as the gleam of beaten gold, the rustle of silken +stuffs, the smell of the flower heliotrope, and all such men as +delineate human beings with colours, or make their effigy in stone or +metal; moreover, Phoebus Apollo, whom the poets describe as the most +beautiful of the gods, as indeed he is represented in all statues and +reliefs. + +Domenico would often discuss these matters with a learned man who +greatly frequented his company. This was the humanist Niccolò Feo, known +as Filarete. Filarete was a native of Southern Apulia, a bastard of the +house of the Counts of Sulmona, who, in order to prevent any plots +against the legitimate branch, had handsomely provided for him in an +abbey of which they enjoyed the patronage. But his restless spirit +drove him from the cloister, and impelled him to long and adventurous +journeys. He had travelled in India and the East, and in Greece, +returning to Italy only when Constantinople fell before the Turks. +During these years he had acquired immense learning, considerable +wealth, and a vaguely sinister reputation. He had been persecuted by +Paul II. for taking part in the famous banquets, savouring oddly of +Paganism, of Pomponius Lætus; but the late Pontiff Sixtus IV. had taken +him into his favour together with Platina, one of his fellow-sufferers +in the castle of Saint Angelo. He was now old, and, after a life of +study, adventure, and possibly of sin, was living in affluence in a +house given him by the illustrious Cardinal at St. Peter ad Vincula, who +had also obtained him a canonry of St. John Lateran. He was busying his +last year in a great work of fancy and erudition, for which he required +the assistance of a skilful draughtsman and connoisseur of antiquities, +than whom none could suit him so well as Domenico Neroni. + +The book of Filarete, of which the rare copies are among the most +precious relics of the Renaissance, was a strange mixture of romance, +allegory, and encyclopædic knowledge, such as had been common in the +Middle Ages, and was still fashionable during the revival of letters, +which merely added the element of classical learning. Like the +_Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ of Francesco Colonna, of which it was +doubtless the prototype, the _Alcandros_ of Filarete, though never +carried beyond the first volume, is an amazing and wearisome display of +the author's archæological learning. It contains exact descriptions of +all the rarities of ancient art, and of things Oriental which he had +seen, and pages of transcripts from obscure Latin and Greek authors, +descriptive of religious ceremonies; varied with Platonic philosophy, +Decameronian obscenities, in laboured pseudo-Florentine style, and +Dantesque visions, all held together by the confused narrative of an +allegorical journey performed by the author. It is profusely ornamented +with woodcuts, representing architectural designs of a fantastic, rather +Oriental description, restorations of ancient buildings, reproductions +of antique inscriptions and designs, and last, but far from least, a +certain number of small compositions, of Mantegnesque quality, but +Botticellian charm, showing the various adventures of the hero in +terrible woods, delicious gardens, and in the company of nymphs, demigods, +and allegorical personages. These latter are undoubtedly from the hand +of Domenico Neroni; and it was while discussing these delightful damsels +seated with lutes and psalteries under vine-trellises, these scholars +in cap and gown, weeping in quaint chambers with canopied beds and +carnations growing on the window, these processions--suggesting +Mantegna's Triumph of Julius Cæsar--of priests and priestesses with +victories and trophies, that the painter from Volterra and the Apulian +humanist would discuss the secret of antique beauty--discuss it for +hours, surrounded by the precious manuscripts and inscriptions, the +fragments of sculpture, the Eastern rarities, of Filarete's little house +on the Quirinal hill, or among the box-hedges, clipped cypresses, and +fountains of his garden; while the riots and massacres, the fanatical +processions and feudal wars, of mediæval Rome raged unnoticed below. For +Pope Sixtus and his Riarios, and Pope Innocent and his Cybos, thirsting +for power and gold, drunken with lust and bloodshed, were benign and +courteous patrons of all art and all learning. + + +V + +But that number nine, attained with so much difficulty, although it put +the human proportion into visible connection with the sun, with beaten +gold, the smell of the heliotrope, and the god Apollo, and opened a vista +of complicated astral influences, did not in reality bring Domenico one +step nearer the object of his desires. It had enabled those ancient men +to make statues that were perfectly beautiful, that was obvious; but it +did not make his own figures one tittle less hideous, for he felt them +now to be absolutely hideous. One wintry day, as he was roaming amongst +the fallen pillars and arches, thickly covered with myrtle and ilex, of +the desolate region beyond what had once been the Forum and was now the +cattle-market, there came across Domenico's mind, while he watched a +snake twisting in the grass, the remembrance of a certain anecdote about +a Greek painter, to whom Hercules had shown himself in a vision. He had +heard it, without taking any notice, two years before, from the young +scholar who read Cicero at table for Messer Neri Altoviti; and although +he had thought of it several times, it had never struck him except as +one of the usual impudent displays of learning of the parasitic tribe +of humanists. + +But at this moment the remembrance of this fact came as a great light +into Domenico's soul. For what were these statues save the idols of the +heathens; and what wonder they should be divinely beautiful, when those +who made them might see the gods in visions? + +This explanation, which to us must sound far-fetched and fantastic, +knowing, as we do, the real reason that made a people of athletes into a +people of sculptors, savoured of no strangeness to a man of the Middle +Ages. Visions of superhuman creatures were among the most undisputed +articles of his belief, and among the commonest subjects of his art. Had +not the Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Bernard, the Saviour among His +cherubim to St. Francis--the very stones shown at La Vernia where it +had happened--the Divine Bridegroom to Catherine of Siena? Had not St. +Anthony of Padua held the Divine Child in his arms? And all not so long +ago? Besides, every year there was some nun or monk claiming to have +conversed with Christ and His court; and the heavens were opening quite +frequently in the walls of cells and the clefts of hermitages. And did +not Dante relate a journey into Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise? It was +perfectly natural that what was constantly happening to holy men and +women nowadays should have happened in Pagan times also; and what men +could so well have deserved a visit from gods as those who spent their +lives faithfully portraying them? The story of Parrhasius and his vision +was familiar ground to a man accustomed to see, in all corners of Italy, +portraits of the Saviour painted by St. Luke, or finished, like the +famous Holy Face of Lucca, by angels. For an absolute contempt for the +artistic value of such miraculous images did not, in the mind of Neroni, +throw any doubt on their authenticity; in the same way that the passion +for antiquity, the hankering after Pagan beliefs, did not probably +interfere with the orthodoxy of so many of the humanists. Domenico, +besides, remembered that Virgil and Ovid, whom he had not read, but +whose fables he had sometimes been asked to illustrate, were constantly +talking of visions of gods and goddesses, nay, of their descending upon +earth to unite themselves with mortals in love or friendship, for he had +had to furnish designs for woodcuts representing Diana and Endymion, +Jupiter and Ganymede, the gods coming to Philemon and Baucis, and Apollo +tending the herds of Admetus. Neither did it occur to Domenico's mind +that the existence of the old gods might be a mere invention, or a mere +delusion of the heathen. For all their classic culture, the men of +the fifteenth century, as the men of the thirteenth for all their +scholasticism, were in an intellectual condition such as we rarely +meet with nowadays among educated persons; and Domenico, a mere +handicraftsman, had not learned from the study of Cicero and Plato to +examine and understand the difference between reality and fiction. +To him a scene which was frequently painted, an adventure which was +written down and could be read, was necessarily a reality. Dante had +spoken of the gods, and what Dante said was evidently true, the +allegorical meaning, the metaphor, entirely escaping this simple mind; +and Virgil, Homer, Ovid told the most minute details about gods and +goddesses, and they themselves were grave and learned men. Domenico did +not even think that the ancient gods were dead. Of course heaven was now +occupied by Christ and His saints, those heavenly hosts of whom he would +think, when he thought of them at all, as seated stepwise on a great +stand, blue and pink and green in dress, golden discs about their heads, +and an atmosphere of fretted gold, of swirling stencilled golden angels' +wings all round them, and God the Father, a great triangle blazing with +Alpha and Omega, above Jesus enthroned, and His mother; and it was they +who ruled things here, and to them he said his prayers night and +morning, and knelt in church. But _here_, somehow did not cover the +whole universe, nor did that pink and blue and gold miniature painter's +heaven extend everywhere, although, of course, somehow or other it did. +Anyhow, it was certain that not so very far off there were Saracens +and Turks--why he had seen some of the Duke of Calabria's Turkish +garrison--who believed in Macomet, Trevigant, and Apollinis; these to be +sure were false gods (the word _false_ carried no clear meaning to his +mind, or if any, one rather equivalent to _wrong, objectionable_ rather +than to non-existent), but they certainly worked wonderful miracles for +their people. And indeed--here Domenico's placid contemplation of the +kingdom of Macomet, Trevigant, and Apollinis was exchanged for a vague +horror, shot with gleams of curiosity--the devil also had his place in +the world, a place much nearer and universal, and did marvellous things, +pointing out treasures, teaching the future, lending invulnerable +strength to the men and women who worshipped him, of whom some might +be pointed out to you in every town--yes, grave and respectable men, +priests and monks among them, and even Cardinals of Holy Church, as +every one knew quite well.... So that, in a confused manner, rather +negative than positive, Domenico considered that the Pagan gods must +be somewhere or other, the past and present not very clearly separated +in his mind, or rather the past existing in a peculiar simultaneous +manner with the present, as a sort of St. Brandan's isle, in distant, +unattainable seas; or as Dante's mountain of Purgatory, a very solid +mountain indeed, yet which, for some mysterious and unquestioned reason, +people never stumbled upon except after death. All this was scarcely an +actual series of arguments; it was rather the arguments which, with much +effort, Domenico might have fished out of his obscure consciousness +had you summoned him to explain how the ancient gods could possibly +be immortal. As to him, he had always heard of them as immortal, and +although he had not been taught any respect or love for them as for +Christ, the Madonna, and the saints, they must be existing somewhere +since _immortal_ means that which cannot die. + +But now he began to feel a certain shyness about immortal gods, for they +had begun to occupy his thoughts, and it was with much cunning that he +put questions to his friend Filarete, desirous to gain information on +certain points without actually seeming to ask it. The humanist, summoned +to explain what the Fathers of the Church--those worthies crowned with +mitres and offering rolls of manuscript, whom Domenico had occasionally +to portray for his customers--said about the ancient gods, answered with +much glibness but considerable contempt, for the Greek and Latin of +these saintly philosophers inspired the learned man with a feeling of +nausea. He got out of a chest several volumes covered with dust, and +began to quote the "Apology" of Justin Martyr, the "Legation" of +Athenagoras, the "Apology" of Tertullian and Lactantius, whose very name +caused him to writhe with philological loathing. And he told Domenico +that it was the opinion of these holy but ill-educated persons that +dæmons assumed the name and attributes of Jupiter, of Venus, of Apollo +and Bacchus, lurking in temples, instituting festivals and sacrifices, +and were often allowed by Heaven to distract the faithful by a display +of miracles. + +"Then they are devils?" asked Domenico, trying to follow. + +A smile passed over the beautifully cut mouth, the noble, wrinkled +face--like that of the marble Seneca--of the old humanist. + +"Talk of devils to the barefoot friar who preaches in the midst of the +market-place," he said, "not to Filarete. The whole world, air, fire, +earth, water, the entire universe is governed by dæmons, and they +inspire our noblest thoughts. Hast never heard of the familiar dæmon +of Socrates, whispering to him superhuman wisdom? Yes, indeed, Venus, +Apollo, Æsculapius, Jove, the stars and planets, the winds and tides are +dæmons. But thou canst not understand such matters, my poor Domenico. +So get thee to Brother Baldassare of Palermo, and ask him questions." + +But Filarete's expression was very different when, one day, Domenico +shyly inquired concerning the truth of that story of Parrhasius and +the Hercules of Lindos. Strange rumours were current in Rome of unholy +festivities in which Filarete and other learned men--some of those +whom Paul II. had thrown into prison--had once taken part. They had +not merely laid their tables and spread their couches according to +descriptions contained in ancient authors; but, crowned with roses, +laurel, myrtle, or parsley, had sung hymns to the heathen gods, and, it +was whispered, poured out libations and burned incense in their honour. +Their friends, indeed, had answered scornfully that these were but +amusements of learned men; not to be taken more seriously than the +invocations to the gods and muses in their poems, than the mythological +subjects which the Popes themselves selected to adorn their dwellings. +And doubtless this explanation was correct. Yet the pleasure of these +little pedantic and artistic mummeries, which took place in suburban +gardens, while the townsfolk streamed in the hot June nights, decked +with bunches of cloves and of lavender, to make bonfires in the empty +places near the Lateran, little guessing that their ancestors had +once done the same in honour of the neighbouring Venus--the innocent +childishness of these learned men was perhaps spiced, for some +individuals at least, by a momentary belief in the gods of the old +poets, by a sudden forbidden fervour for the exiled divinities of Virgil +and Ovid, under whose reign the world had been young, men had been free +to love and think, and Rome, now the object of the world's horror and +contempt, had been the world's triumphant mistress. But these had been +mere mummeries, mere child's play, and the soul of Filarete had thirsted +for a reality. He could not have answered had you asked whether he +believed in the absolute existence and power of the old gods, any more +than whether he disbelieved in the power of Christ and His avenging +angels; his cultivated and sceptical mind was, after all, in a state of +disorder similar to that of Domenico's ignorance. All that he knew with +certainty was that Christ and His worship represented to him all that +was unnatural, cruel, foolish, and hypocritical; while the gods were +associated with every thought of liberty, of beauty, and of glory. And +so, one evening, after working up still further the enthusiasm, the +passionate desire of his friend, he told Domenico that, if he chose, he +too perhaps might see a god. + +In his antiquarian rambles Filarete had discovered, a mile or two +outside the southern gates of Rome, a subterranean chamber, richly +adorned with stuccoes--known nowadays as the tomb of certain members of +the Flavian family, but which, thanks to the defective knowledge of his +day and the habit of seeing people buried in churches, the humanist had +mistaken for a temple--intact, and scarcely desecrated, of the Eleusinian +Bacchus. Above its vaults, barely indicated by a higher mound in the +waving ground of the pasture land, had once stood a Christian church, as +ancient almost as the supposed temple below, whose Byzantine columns lay +half hidden by the high grass, and the walls of whose apse had become +overgrown by ivy and weeds, the nest of lazy snakes. The Gothic soldiers, +Arians or heathens, who had burned down, in some drunken bout, the +little church above-ground, had penetrated at the same time into the +tomb beneath in search of treasure, and finding none, dispersed the +bones in the sarcophagi they had opened. They had left open the aperture +leading downward, which had been matted over by a thick growth of ivy +and wild clematis. One day, while surveying the remains of the Christian +church, always in hopes of discovering in it a former temple of the +Pagans, Filarete had walked into that tuft of solid green, and found +himself, buried and half stunned, in the mouth of the tomb below. It +was through this that he bade Domenico follow him, bearing a certain +mysterious package in his cloak, one January day of the year fourteen +hundred and eighty-eight. + +Above-ground it had frozen in the night; here below, when they had +descended the rugged sepulchral stairs, the air had a damp warmth, an +odd feel of inhabitation. Above-ground, also, everything lay in ruins, +while here all was intact. As the light of the torches moved slowly +along the vaulted and stuccoed ceilings, it showed the delicate lines +of a profusion of little reliefs and ornaments, fresh as if cast and +coloured yesterday. Slender garlands of leaves, and long knotted ribbons +and veils in lowest relief partitioned the space; and framed by them, now +round, now oval, now oblong, were medallions of naked gods banqueting +and playing games, of satyrs and nymphs dancing, nereids swinging on +the backs of hippocamps, tritons curling their tails and blowing their +horns, Cupids fluttering among griffins and chimæras; a life of laughter +and love, which mocked the eye, starting into vividness in one place, +dying away in a mere film where the torchlight pressed on too closely +in others. All along the walls, below the line of the stuccoes, were +excavated shelves, on which stood numbers of small cinerary boxes, each +bearing a name. In the middle of the vaulted chamber was a huge stone +coffin, carved with revelling Bacchantes, and grim tragic masks at its +corners; and all round the coffin, broken in one of its flanks by the +tools of the treasure-seeker, lay bones and skulls, dispersed on the +damp ground even as the Goths had left them. + +It was this sarcophagus which, with its Dionysiac revels, and the name +of one Dionysius carved on it, a freedman of the Flavians, had led +Filarete to consider the tomb as a kind of temple consecrated to +Bacchus. + +Filarete bade Domenico stick the pointed end of his torch into the mouth +of an amphora standing erect in a corner, and began to unpack the load +they had brought on a mule. It looked like the preparation for a feast: +there were loaves of bread, fruit, a flask of choice wine; and Domenico, +for a moment, thought the old man mad. But his feelings changed when +Filarete produced a set of silver lamps, and bade him trim and light +them, placing them on the ledges alongside of the cinerary urns; and +when he lit some strange incense and filled the place with its smoke. +Despite the many descriptions of ancient sacrifices with which the +humanist had entertained him, Domenico had brought a vague notion of a +raising of devils, and felt relieved at the absence of brimstone fumes, +and of the magic books that accompanied them. + +Although more passionately longing--he knew not, he dared not tell +himself for what--Domenico did not come with the curious exaltation of +spirits of his companion, all whose antiquarian lore had gone to his +head, and who really imagined himself to be a genuine Pagan engaged in +Pagan rites. For Filarete the ceremony was everything; for Domenico it +was merely a means, a sort of sacrilegious juggling, into which he had +not inquired more particularly, which was to give him the object of his +wishes at the price of great peril to his soul. But when the subterranean +chamber was filled with a cloud of incense, through which, in the dim +yellow light of the lamp, the naked gods and goddesses on the vault, the +satyrs and nymphs, the Tritons and Bacchantes seemed to float in and out +of sight, a feeling of awe, of an unknown kind of reverence and rapture, +began to fill his soul, and his eyes became fixed on the lid of the +carved sarcophagus--vague images of Christian resurrections mingling +with his hopes--Would the god appear? + +Filarete, meanwhile, had enveloped his head in a long linen veil, +and, after washing his hands thrice in a golden basin brought for the +purpose, he placed some faggots on the sarcophagus, lit them, and +throwing grains of incense and of salt alternately into the flames, +began to chant in an unknown tongue, which Domenico guessed to be Greek. +Then beckoning to the painter, who was kneeling, as at church, in a +corner, he bade him unpack a basket matted over with leaves, whose +movements and sounds had puzzled Domenico as he carried it down. In +great surprise, and with a vague sense of he knew not what, he handed +its contents to Filarete. It was a miserable little lamb, newly born, +its long, soft legs tied together, its almost sightless, pale eyes +half-started from its sockets. As the humanist took it, it bleated with +sudden shrill strength, and Domenico could not help thinking of certain +images he had seen on monastery walls of the Good Shepherd carrying the +lame lamb on his shoulders. This was very different. For, with an odd +ferocity, Filarete placed the miserable young creature on the stone +before the fire, and slit its throat and chest with a long knife. + +The god did not appear. They extinguished the lamps, left the carcase +of the lamb half charred in a pool of blood on the stone, and slowly +reascended into the daylight, leaving behind them, in the vaulted +chamber, a stifling fume of incense, of burnt flesh, and mingled damp. + +Up above, among the ruins of the Christian church, where they had left +their mules, it was cold and sunny, and the light seemed curiously blue, +almost grey and dusty, after the yellow illumination below. Before them, +interrupted here and there by a mass of ruined masonry, or a few arches +of aqueduct, waved the grey-green, billowy plain, where the wind, which +rolled the great winter cloud-balls overhead, danced and sang with the +tall, dry hemlocks and sere white thistles, shining and rattling like +skeletons. And on to it seemed to descend cloud-mountains, vague +blueness and darkness--cloud or hill, you could not tell which--out of +whose flank, ever and anon, a sunbeam conjured up a visionary white +resplendent city. + +The short winter day was beginning to draw in when they approached +silently the city walls, solemn with their towers and gates, endless +as it seemed, and enclosing, one felt vaguely, an endless, distant, +invisible city. + +The sound of its bells came as from afar to meet the sacrilegious men. + + +VI + +The culminating sacrilege was yet to come. The place that witnessed it +remains unchanged--a half-deserted church among the silent grass-grown +lanes, the crumbling convent walls, and ill-tended vineyards of the +Aventine; a hill that has retained in Christian times a look of its +sinister fame in Pagan ones. Among the cypresses, which seem to wander +up the hillside, rises the square belfry, among whose brickwork, flushed +in the sunset, are inlaid discs of porphyry torn from some temple +pavement, and plates of green majolica brought from the East, it is +said, by pilgrims or Crusaders. The arum-fringed lane widens before the +outer wall of the church, overtopped by its triangular gable. Behind +this wall is a yard or atrium, the pavement grass-grown, the walls +stained with great patches of mildew, and showing here and there in +their dilapidation the shaft and capital of a bricked-up Ionic pillar. +The place tells of centuries of neglect, of the gradual invasion of +resistless fever; and it was fitly chosen, some fifty years ago, for the +abode of a community of Trappists. In the reign of Innocent VIII. it +was still nominally in the hands of certain Cistercians; but the fever +had long driven these monks to the more wholesome end of the hill, where +they had erected a smaller church; and the convent had served for years +as a fortress of the turbulent family of the Capranicas, one of whose +members was always the nominal abbot, with the Cardinal's hat, and title +Jervase and Protasius. And now, at the end of the fifteenth century, a +Cardinal Ascanio Capranica, famous for his struggle in magnificence and +sinfulness with the magnificent and sinful young nephews of Pope Sixtus, +had determined to restore the fortified monastery, to combat the fever +by abundant plantations, and to make the church a monument of his +splendour. And, in order to secure some benefit by his own munificence, +he had begun by commissioning Domenico Neroni to design and execute +a sepulchre three storeys high, full of carvings, and covered with +statues, so that his soul, if sent untimely to heaven, might not be +dishonoured by the unworthy resting-place of its trusty companion, the +Cardinal's handsome and well-tended body. + +This church of SS. Jervase and Protasius, which imitated, like most +churches of the early Christian period, the form of a basilica or court +of law, was constructed out of fragments of Pagan edifices, and occupied +the site of a Pagan edifice, whose columns had been employed to carry +the roof of the church, or, when of porphyry or serpentine, had been +sawed into discs for the pavement. On the slant of the hill, supporting +the apse, encircled by pillarets, is a round mass of masonry, overgrown +with ivy and ilex scrub, the remains of some antique bath or grotto; +and under the battlemented walls, the cloistered courts of the convent, +there stretches, it is said, a network of subterranean passages running +down to the Tiber. Four hundred years ago they were not to be discovered +if looked for, being completely hidden by the fallen masonry and the +cypress roots and growths of poisonous plants--nightshade, and hemlock, +and green-flowered hellebore; but wicked monks had sometimes been sucked +into them while digging the ground, or decoyed into their labyrinths by +devils. Was it possible that there had lingered on through the ages a +vague and horrified remembrance of those rites, the discovery of whose +mysterious and wide-spread abominations had frozen Rome with horror in +her most high and palmy days; and was there a connection between those +neophytes, wandering with blood-stained limbs and dishevelled locks +among the groves of the Aventine, then rushing to quench their burning +torches in the Tiber, two centuries before Christ, and the devils who +troubled the Benedictines of SS. Jervase and Protasius? These evil +spirits would appear, it had been said, in the cloisters of the convent, +processions carrying lights and garlands; and on certain nights, when +the monks were in prayer in their cells, strange sounds would issue +from the church itself, of flutes and timbrels, and demon laughter, and +demon voices chanting some unknown litany, and clearly aping the mass; +and Cardinal Capranica was blamed by many pious persons for his rash +intention of filling once more the deserted convent, and exposing holy +men to the wrath of such very pertinacious devils. Meanwhile mass upon +mass was said to clear the place of this demoniac infection. It was in +this church that the sacrilege of Domenico and Filarete rose to its +highest, and that an event took place which the men of the fifteenth +century could scarce find words to designate. + +Domenico had grown tired of his friend's archæological impieties. +It gave him no satisfaction to pour out wine, burn incense, arrange +garlands, and even cut the throats of animals according to a correct +Pagan ritual. It was nothing to him that Horace and Ovid and Tibullus +should have done alike. He was a good Christian, never doubting for +a moment the power of the Blessed Virgin, the saints, and even the +smallest and meanest priest, nor the heat of hell-fire. But he wanted to +have the secret of antique proportions, and he was convinced that this +secret could be communicated only by a Pagan divinity, just as certain +theological mysteries, such as the use of the rosary, had been revealed +to the saints by Christ or the Virgin. The Pagan gods were devils, and +to hold communication with devils was mortal sin and sure damnation. But +lots of people communicated with devils for much more paltry motives, for +greed of gold or love of woman, and were yet saved by the intercession +of some heavenly patron, or found it worth while not to be saved at all. +Domenico, like them, put the question of salvation behind him. He might +think of that afterwards, when he had possessed himself of the proportion +of the ancients. At all events, at present he was willing to risk +everything in order to attain that. He was determined to see that god of +the heathens, not as he had seen him once in the house of Messer Neri +Altoviti, cut out of marble, but alive, moving, speaking; for _that_ was +the god. + +The god was a devil. Now it is well known that there is a way of +compelling every devil to show himself, providing you use sufficiently +strong spells. They had sacrificed goats and lambs enough, also doves, +and had burned perfumes, and spilt wine sufficient for one of Cardinal +Riario's suppers. It was evidently not that sort of sacrifice which +would rejoice the god or compel him to show himself. For weeks and weeks +Domenico ruminated over the subject. And little by little the logical, +inevitable answer dawned upon his horrified but determined mind. For +what was the sacrifice which witches and warlocks notoriously offered +their Master? + +The place could not be better chosen. This church was full, every one +knew, of demons, who were certainly none other than the gods of the +heathen, as Tertullian, Lactantius, Athenagoras, Justin Martyr, and all +those other holy doctors had written. It was deserted, its keys in the +hands of Cardinal Capranica's confidential architect and decorator; and +there were masses being said every holiday to scare the evil spirits. +The sacrament was frequently left on the altar. + +All this Domenico expounded frequently to Filarete. But Filarete's +classic taste did not approve of Domenico's methods, which savoured of +vulgar witchcraft; perhaps also the learned man, who did not want the +secret of antique proportion, recoiled from a degree of profanity and of +danger, both to body and soul, which his companion willingly incurred in +such a quest as his. So Filarete demurred for a time, until at length +his feebler nature took fire at Domenico's determination, and the guilty +pair fixed upon the day and place for this unspeakable sacrilege. + +The Church of SS. Jervase and Protasius has undergone no change since +the feast of Corpus Christi of the year 1488. The damp that lies in the +atrium outside, making the grass and poppies sprout round the Byzantine +pillar which carries a cross over a pine-cone, has invaded the flat-roofed +nave and the wide aisles, separated from it by a single colonnade. A +greenish mildew marks the fissures in the walls, rent here and there +by landslips and earthquakes. The cipolline columns carrying the round +arches on their square capitals are lustreless, and their green-veined +marble looks like long-buried wood. The mosaic pavement stretches its +discs and volutes of porphyry and serpentine or yellowed Parian marble, +a tarnished and uneven carpet, to the greenish-white marble steps of +the chancel. The mosaics have long fallen out of the circle of the apse; +and the frescoes, painted by some obscure follower of Giotto, have left +only a green vague stain over the arches of the aisle. Pictures or +statues there are none, and no conspicuous sepulchre. Only, over the low +entrance, a colossal wooden crucifix of the thirteenth century hangs at +an angle from the wall, a painted Christ, stretching his writhing livid +limbs in agony opposite the high altar. It was in this stately and +desolate church, under the misty light that pours in through the wide +windows of grey coarse glass, and on the marble altar, facing that +effigy of the dying Saviour, that, in derision as it were of the miracle +which the church commemorates on that feast-day, Domenico and Filarete +were about to offer up to the demons Apollo, Bacchus, and Jove the +freshly consecrated wafer, the very body and blood of Christ. + +But an accomplice of theirs, a certain monk well versed in magic, whom +they employed in sundry details of devil-raising, on the score that they +were seeking treasure hidden in the church, had suddenly been seized +with qualms of conscience. Instead of appearing at the appointed time +alone, and bearing certain necessaries of his art, he kept them waiting +a full hour, until they began their proceedings without his assistance. +And even as Domenico was reaching his companion the ostensorium, which +had remained on the altar after the morning's mass, the church was +surrounded by the officers of the Podestà, on horseback, and by a crowd +of monks and priests, and rabble who had followed them. Of these persons, +not a few affirmed in after years, that, as they arrived at the church +door, they had heard sounds of flutes and timbrels, and mocking songs +filling the place; and that the devil, dressed in skins and garlands +like a wild man of the woods, had cleft the roof with his head, and +disappeared with many blasphemous yells as they entered. + + +VII + +In those last years of the fifteenth century, Rome was a city of the +Middle Ages. The cupola of the Pantheon, the circular hulk of the +Colosseum, and the twin columns of Trajan and Antoninus projected, like +the fantastic antiquities of some fresco of Benozzo Gozzoli, above +domeless church roofs, battlemented palace walls, and innumerable +Gothic belfries and feudal towers. In the theatre of Marcellus rose the +fortress of the Orsinis; against the tower whence Nero, as the legend +ran, had watched the city burning, were clustered the fortifications of +the Colonnas; and in every quarter the stern palaces of their respective +partisans frowned with their rough-hewn fronts, their holes for barricade +beams, and hooks for chains. The bridge of St. Angelo was covered with +the shops of armourers, as the old bridge of more peaceful Florence with +those of silversmiths. Walls and towers encircled the Leonine City where +the Pope sat unquietly in the big battlemented donjon by the Sixtine +Chapel; and in its midst was still old St. Peter's, half Lombard, half +Byzantine. In Rome there was no industry, no order, no safety. Through +its gates rushed raids of Colonnas and Orsinis, sold to or betrayed by +the Popes, from their castles of Umbria or the Campagna to their castles +in town; and their feuds meant battles also between the citizens who +obeyed or thwarted them. Houses were sacked and burnt, and occasionally +razed to the ground, for the ploughshare and the salt-sower to go over +their site. A few years later, when Pope Borgia dredged the Tiber for +the body of his son, the boatmen of Ripetta reported that so many +bodies were thrown over every night that they no longer heeded such +occurrences. And when, two centuries later, the Corsinis dug the +foundations of their house on the Longara, there were discovered +quantities of human bones in what had been the palace of Pope della +Rovere's nephew. Meanwhile Ghirlandaio and Perugino were painting the +walls of the Sixtine; Pinturicchio was designing the blue and gold +allegorical ceilings of the library; Bramante building the Chancellor's +palace, and the Pollaiolas and Mino da Fiesole carving the tombs in St. +Peter's, while learned men translated Plato and imitated Horace. + +Of this Rome there remains nowadays nothing, or next to nothing. +Sometimes, indeed, looking up the green lichened sides of some mediæval +tower, with its hooks for chains, and its holes for beams, a vague vision +thereof rises in our mind. And in the presence of certain groups by +Signorelli, representing murderous scuffles or supernatural destruction, +we feel as if we had come in contact with the other reality of those +times, the thing which serene art and literature and the love of antiquity +have driven into the background. But the complete vision of the time and +place, the certain knowledge of that Rome of Sixtus IV. and Innocent +VIII., we can now no longer grasp, a dreadful phantom passing too +rapidly across the centuries. + +It is with this feeling of impotence in my attempt to follow the +thoughts of an illiterate artist of the Renaissance, that I prefer +to conclude this strange story of the quest after antique beauty and +antique gods by quoting a page from one of the barbarous chroniclers +of mediæval Rome. The entry in the continuation of Infessura's diary +is headed "Pictor Sacrilegus":-- + +"On the 20th July of the year of salvation fourteen hundred and +eighty-eight, there were placed for three days in a cage on high in +the Campo dei Fiori, Messer Niccolò Filarete, Canon of Sancto Joanne; +also Domenico, the Volterran, painter and architect to the magnificent +Cardinal Ascanio, and Frate Garofalo of Valmontone, they having been +discovered in the act of desecrating the Church of SS. Jervase and +Protasius, and stealing for magic purposes the ostensorium and many gold +chalices and reliquaries with precious stones; and it was Frate Garofalo +who, being versed in witchcraft and treasure finding, was the accomplice +of the above, and denounced them on the feast of Corpus Domini. And the +twenty-third of the said month of July they were justiced, and in this +manner. _Videlicet_, Filarete and Domenico, having been removed from the +cage, were dragged on hurdles as far as the square of San Joanni, and +Frate Garofalo went on an ass, all of them crowned with paper mitres. +Frate Garofalo was hanged to the elm-tree of the square. Of Filarete and +Domenico, the right hand was chopped off, after which they were burned +in the said square. And their chopped off right hands were taken to the +Capitol and nailed up above the gate, alongside of the She-wolf of +metal. Laus Deo." + + + + +VALEDICTORY + + +I + +While gathering together the foregoing pages, written at different +periods and in different phases of thought, the knowledge has grown on +me that I was saying farewell to some of the ambitions and to most of +the plans of my youth. + +All writers start with the hope of solving a problem or establishing a +formula, however fragmentary or humble; and many, the most fortunate, +and probably the most useful, continue to work out their program, or at +least to think that they do so. Life to them is but the framework for +work; and that is why they manage to leave a fair amount of work behind +them,--work for other workers to employ or to undo. But with some +persons, life somehow gets the better of work, becomes, whether in the +form of circumstance or of new problems, infinitely the stronger; and +scatters work, tossing about such fragments as itself, in its irregular, +irresistible fashion, has torn into insignificance, or (once in a blue +moon!) shaped into more complete meaning. + +As regards my own case, I began by believing I should be an historian +and a philosopher, as most young people have done before me; then, +coming in contact with the concrete miseries of others, called social +and similar problems, I sought to apply some of my historical or +philosophic lore (such as it was) to their removal; and finally, life +having manifested itself as offering problems (unexpected occurrence!) +not merely concerning the Past, nor even the abstract Present, but +respecting my own comfort and discomfort, I have found myself at last +wondering in what manner thoughts and impressions could make the world, +the Past and Present, the near and the remote, more satisfying and +useful to myself. Circumstances of various kinds, and particularly +ill-health, have thus put me, although a writer, into the position of a +reader; and have made me ask myself, as I collected these fragments of +my former studies, what can the study of history, particularly of the +history of art and of other manifestations of past conditions of soul, +do for us in the present? + +All knowledge is bound to be useful. Apart from this truism, I believe +that all study of past conditions and activities will eventually result, +if not in the better management of present conditions and activities (as +all partisan historians have hoped, from Machiavelli to Macaulay), at +all events in a greater familiarity with the various kinds of character +expressed in historical events and in the way of looking at them; for +even if we cannot learn to guide and employ such multifold forces as +make, for instance, a French revolution, we may learn to use for the +best the individual minds and temperaments of those who describe them: +a Carlyle, a Michelet, a Taine, are natural forces also, which may serve +or may damage us. + +Moreover, I hold by the belief, expressed years ago, in my previous +volume of Renaissance studies, to wit, that historical reading (and in +historical I include the history of thoughts and feelings as much as of +events and persons) is a useful exercise for our sympathies, bringing us +wider and more wholesome notions of justice and charity. And I feel sure +that other uses for historical studies could be pointed out by other +persons, apart from the satisfaction they afford to those who pursue +them, which, considered merely as so much spiritual gymnastics, or +cricket, or football, or alpineering, is surely not to be despised. + +But now, having dropped long since out of the ranks of those who study +in order to benefit others, or even to benefit only themselves, I would +say a few words about the advantage which mere readers, as distinguished +from writers, may get from familiarity with the Past. + +This advantage is that they may find in the Past not merely a fine field +for solitary and useless delusions (though that also seems necessary), +but an additional world for real companionship and congenial activity. +Our individual activities and needs of this kind are innumerable, and of +infinite delicate variety; and there is reason to suppose that the place +in which our lot is cast does not necessarily fit them to perfection. For +things in this world are very roughly averaged; and although averaging +is a useful, rapid way of despatching business, it does undoubtedly +waste a great deal which is too good for wasting. Hence, it seems to me, +the need which many of us feel, which most of us would feel, if secured +of food and shelter, of spending a portion of their life of the spirit +in places and climates beyond that River Oceanus which bounds the land +of the living. + +As I write these words, I am conscious that this will strike many +readers as the expression of a superfine and selfish dilettantism, +arising no doubt from morbid lack of sympathy with the world into which +Heaven has put us. What! become absentees from the poor, much troubled +Present; turn your backs to Realities, become idle strollers in the +Past? And why not, dear friends? why not recognise the need for a holiday? +why not admit, just because work has to be done and loads to be borne, +that we cannot grind and pant on without interruption? Nay, that the +bearing of the load, the grinding of the work, is useless save to diminish +the total grinding and panting on this earth. Moreover, I maintain +that we have but a narrow conception of life if we confine it to the +functions which are obviously practical, and a narrow conception of +reality if we exclude from it the Past. And not because the Past has +been, has actually existed outside some one, but because it may, and +often does, actually exist within ourselves. The things in our mind, +due to the mind's constitution and its relation with the universe, are, +after all, realities; and realities to count with, as much as the tables +and chairs, and hats and coats, and other things subject to gravitation +outside it. It would seem, indeed, as if the chief outcome of the +spiritualising philosophy which maintains the immaterial and independent +quality of mind had been to make mind, the contents of our consciousness, +ideas, images, and feelings, into something quite separate from this +real material universe, and hence unworthy of practical consideration. +But granted that mind is not a sort of independent and foreign entity, +we must admit that what exists in it has a place in reality, and +requires, like the rest of reality, to be dealt with. But to return to +my thesis: that we require occasionally to live in the Past (and I shall +go on to state that it may be a Past of our own making); Do we not +require to travel in foreign parts which know us not, to sojourn for +our welfare in cities where we can neither elect members nor exercise +professions, but whence we bring back, not merely wider views, but +sounder nerves, tempers more serene and elastic? Nor is this all. We +think poorly of a man or woman who, besides practical cases for self +or others, does not require to come in contact also with the tangible, +breathable, visible, audible universe for its own sake; require to +wander in fields and on moors, to steep in sunshine or be battered by +winds, for the sake of a certain specific emotion of participation +in, of closer union with, the universal. Now the Past--the joys and +sufferings of the men long dead, their efforts, ideals, emotions, +nay, their very sensations and temperaments as registered in words +or expressed in art, are but another side of the universe, of that +universal life, to participate ever deeper in which is the condition of +our strength and serenity, the imperious necessity of our ever giving, +ever taking soul. + +And so, for our greater nobility and happiness, we require, all of us, +to live to some extent in the Past, as to live to some extent in what +we significantly call _nature_. We require, as we require mountain air +or sea scents, hayfields or wintry fallows, sun, storm, or rain, each +individual according to individual subtle affinities, certain emotions, +ideals, persons, or works of art from out of the Past. For one it will +be Socrates; for another St. Francis; for every one something somewhat +different, or at all events something differently conceived and +differently felt: some portion of the universe in time, as of the +universe in space, which answers in closest and most intimate way to +the complexion and habits of that individual soul. + + +II + +The satisfaction which it can bring to every individual soul: this is, +therefore, one of the uses of the Past to the Present, and surely not +one of the smallest. It is, I venture to insist, the special, the +essential use of all art and all poetry; any additional knowledge +of Nature's proceedings, any additional discipline of thought and +observation which may accrue in the study of art as an historic or +psychological phenomenon being, after all, valuable eventually for +the amount of such mere satisfaction of the spirit as that additional +knowledge or additional discipline can conduce towards. Scientific +results are important for the maintenance of life, doubtless; but the +sense of satisfaction, whether simple or complex, high or low, is +the sign that the processes we call life are being fulfilled and not +thwarted; so, since satisfaction is no such contemptible thing, why not +allow art to furnish it unmixed? + +I am sure to be misunderstood. I do not in the least mean to imply that +art can best be appreciated with the least trouble. The mere fact that +the pleasure of a faculty is proportioned to its activity negatives that; +and the fact that the richness, fulness, and hence also the durability, +of all artistic pleasure answers to the amount of our attention: the +mine, the ore, will yield, other things equal, according as we dig, and +wash, and smelt, and separate to the last possibility of separation what +we want from what we do not want. + +The historic or psychological study of art does thus undoubtedly increase +our familiarity, and hence our enjoyment. The mere scientific inquiry +into the difference between originals and copies, into the connection +between master and pupil, makes us alive to the special qualities which +can delight us. As long as we looked in a manner so slovenly that a +spurious Botticelli could pass for a genuine one, we could evidently +never benefit by the special quality, the additional excellence of +Botticelli's own work. And similarly in the case of archæology. Indeed, +in the few cases where I have myself hazarded an hypothesis on some +point of artistic history, as, for instance, regarding the respective +origin of antique and mediæval sculpture, I am inclined to think that +the chief use (if any at all) of my work, will be to make my readers +more sensitive to the specific pleasure they may get from Praxiteles or +from Mino da Fiesole, than they could have been when the works of both +were so little understood as to be judged by one another's standards. + +But to return. It seems as if at present the development, the contagion, +so to speak, of scientific methods applied to art were making people +forget a little that art, besides being, like everything else, the +passive object of scientific treatment, is (what most other things +are not) an active, positive, special factor of pleasure; and that, +therefore, save to special students, the greater, more efficacious form +of art should occupy an immensely larger share of attention than the +lesser and more inefficient. We are made, nowadays, to look at too much +mediocre art on the score of its historical value; we are kept too long +in contemplation of pictures and statues which cannot give much pleasure, +on the score that they led to or proceeded from other pictures or statues +which can. + +As regards Greek sculpture, the insistance on archaic forms is becoming, +if I may express my own feelings, a perfect bore. Why should we be kept +in the kitchen tasting half-cooked stuff out of ladles, when most of +us have barely time to eat our fully cooked dinner, which we like +and thrive on, in peace? Similarly with such painters as are mainly +precursors. They are taking up too much of our attention; and one might +sometimes be tempted to think that the only use of great artists, like +the only functions of those patriarchs who kept begetting one another, +was to produce other great artists: Giotto to produce eventually Masaccio, +Masaccio through various generations Michelangelo and Raphael, and +Michelangelo and Raphael, through even more, Manet and Degas, who in +their turn doubtless dutifully.... Meanwhile why should art have gone +on evolving, artists gone on making _filiations of schools_, if art, if +artists, if schools of artists had not answered an imperious, undying +wish for the special pleasures which painting can give? + +Therefore it seems to me that, desirable for all reasons as may be the +study of art, the knowledge of _filiations and influences_, it is still +more desirable that each of us should find out some painter whom he +can care for individually; and that all of us should find out certain +painters who can, almost infallibly, give immense pleasure to all of +us; painters who, had they been produced out of nothingness and been +followed by nobody, would yet stand in the most important relation in +which an artist can be: the relation of being beloved by the whole +world, or even by a few solitary individuals. + +For this reason let not the mere reader, who comes to art not for work, +but for refreshment, let not the mere reader (I call him reader, to +note his passive, leisurely character) be vexed with too much study of +Florentine and Paduan _precursors_, but go straight to the masters, whom +those useful and dreary persons rendered possible by their grinding. +Our ancestors, or rather those cardinals and superb lords with whom we +have neither spiritual nor temporal relationship, who made the great +collections of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, placing statues +under delicate colonnades and green ilex hedges, and hanging pictures in +oak-panelled corridors and tapestried guard-rooms, were occasionally +mistaken in thinking that a Roman emperor much restored, or a chalky, +sprawling Guido Reni, could afford lasting æsthetic pleasure; but, +bating such errors, were they not nearer good sense than we moderns, who +arrange pictures and statues as we might minerals or herbs in a museum, +and who, for instance, insist that poor tired people, longing for a +little beauty, should carefully examine the works of Castagno, of +Rosselli, and of that artist, so interesting as a specimen of the +minimum of talent, Neri di Bicci? They were unscientific, those lords +and cardinals, and desperately pleasure-seeking; but surely, surely +they were more sensible than we. + +Connected with this fact, and to be borne in mind by those not called +upon to elucidate art scientifically, is the further fact, which I have +analogically pointed out, when I said that every individual has in the +Past affinities, possibilities of spiritual satisfaction differing +somewhat from those of every other. It is well that we should try to +enlarge those possibilities; and we must never make up our mind that a +picture, statue, piece of music or poetry, says little to us until we +have listened to its say. But although we strive to make new friends, +let us waste no further time on such persons as we have vainly tried to +make friends of; and let each of us, in heaven's name, cherish to the +utmost his natural affinities. There are persons to whom, for instance, +Botticelli can never be what he truly is to some of their neighbours: +the very quality which gives such marvellous poignancy of pleasure to +certain temperaments causing almost discomfort to others; and similarly +about many other artists, representing very special conditions of being, +and appealing to special conditions in consequence. High Alpine air, +sea-water, Roman melting westerly winds, so vitalising, so soothing to +some folk, are mere worry, or fever, or lassitude to others, without its +being correct to say that one set of persons is healthy and the other +morbid: each being, in truth, healthy or morbid just in proportion as it +realises its necessities of existence, fitting equally into the universe +providing it be fitted each into the proper piece thereof. + +On the other hand (and this, rather than _filiations of schools_ and +_influences_ of artistic _milieus_, it were well we should know), it +becomes daily more empirically certain, and will some day doubtless +become scientifically obvious, that there are works of art which +awaken such emotion that they can be delectable only to creatures with +instincts out of gear and perception upside down; while there are others, +infinitely more plentiful, which, in greater or lesser degree, must +delight all persons who are sane, as all such are delighted by fine +weather, normal exercise, and kindly sympathy; and, _vice versâ_, that +as these wholesome works of art merely bore or actually distress the +poor morbid exceptions, so the unwholesome ones sicken or harrow the +sound generality; the world of art, moreover, like every other world, +being best employed in keeping alive its sound, not its unsound, +clients. + +Such works of art, such artists of widest wholesome appealingness, there +are in all periods of artistic development; more in certain fortunate +moments, say the Periklean age and the early sixteenth century, than +in others; and most perhaps in certain specially favoured regions--in +Attica during Antiquity, and during painting times, in the happy Venetian +country. These we all know of; but by the grace of Nature, which creates +men occasionally so fortunately balanced that their work, learned or +unlearned, must needs be fortunately balanced also, they arise sometimes +in the midst of mere artistic worry and vexation of spirit, or of artist +bleakness, perfect like the almond and peach trees, which blossom, white +and pink, on the frost-bitten green among the sapless vines of wintry +Tuscan hills; and to some natures, doubtless, these are more pleasant +and health-giving than more mature or mellow summer or autumnal +loveliness. But, as I have said, each must find his own closest +affinities in art and history as in friendship. + + +III + +There are some more things, and more important, still to be said, from +the reader's standpoint rather than the writer's, about the influence on +our lives of the Past and of its art, and more particularly of the vague +period called the Renaissance. + +When the Renaissance began to attract attention, some twenty or +twenty-five years ago, there happened among English historians and +writers on art, and among their readers, something very similar to what +had happened, apparently, when the Englishmen of the sixteenth century +first came in contact with the Italian Renaissance itself, or whatever +remained of it. Their conscience was sickened, their imagination +hag-ridden, by the discovery of so much beauty united to so much +corruption; and, among our latter-day students of the Renaissance, there +became manifest the same morbid pre-occupation, the same exaggerated +repulsion, which is but inverted attraction, which were rife among +the playwrights who wrote of _Avengers_ and _Atheists_, Giovannis and +Annabellas, Brachianos and Corombonas, and other _White Devils_, as old +Webster picturesquely put it, _of Italy_. Indeed, the second discovery +of the Renaissance by Englishmen had spiritual consequences so similar +to those of the first, that in an essay written fifteen years ago I +analysed the feelings of the Elizabethan playwrights towards Italian +things in order to vent the intense discomfort of spirit which I shared +assuredly with students older and more competent than myself. + +This kind of feeling has passed away among writers, together with much +of the fascination of the Renaissance itself. But it has left, I see, +vague traces in the mind of readers, rendering the Renaissance a little +distasteful (and no wonder) to the majority; or worse, a little too +congenial to an unsound minority; worst of all, tarnishing a little the +fair fame of Art; and as a writer now turned reader, I am anxious to +deliver, to the best of my powers, other readers from this perhaps +inevitable but false and unprofitable view of such matters. + +The conscience of writers on history and art has long become quite +comfortable about the Renaissance; and the Websterian or (in some cases +John Fordian) phenomenon of twenty years ago been forgotten as a piece +of childish morbidness. Does this mean that the conscience has become +hardened, that evil has ceased to repel us, or that beauty has been +accepted calmly as a pleasant and necessary, but somewhat immoral thing? +Very far from it. Our conscience has become quieter, not because it has +grown more callous, but because it has become more healthily sensitive, +more perceptive of many sides, instead of only one side of life. For +with experience and maturity there surely comes, to every one of us +in his own walk of life, a growing, at length an intuitive sense that +evil is a thing incidentally to fight, but not to think very much +about, because if it is evil, it is in so far sporadic, deciduous, and +eminently barren; while good, that is to say, soundness, harmony of +feeling, thought, and action with themselves, with others' feeling, +thought, and action, and with the great eternities, is organic, fruitful +and useful, as well as delightful to contemplate. Hence that the evil +of past ages should not concern us, save in so far as the understanding +thereof may teach us to diminish the evil of the Present. In any case, +that evil must be handled not with terror, which enervates and subjects +to contagion, but with the busy serenity of the physician, who studies +disease for the sake of health, and eats his wholesome food after +washing his hands, confident in the ultimate wholesomeness of nature. + +And in such frame of mind the corruption of the Renaissance leaves us +calm, and we know we had better turn our backs on it, and get from the +Renaissance only what was good. Only, if we are physicians, or more +correctly (since in a private capacity we all are) only _when_ we are +physicians, must we handle the unwholesome. Meanwhile, if we wish to be +sound, let us fill our soul with images and emotions of good; we shall +tackle evil, when need be, only the better. And here, by the way, let +me open a parenthesis to say that, of the good we moderns may get from +occasional journeys into the Past, there is a fine example in our +imaginary and emotional commerce with St. Francis and his joyous +theology. For while other times, our own among them, have given us +loftier morality and severer good sense, no period save that of St. +Francis could have given us a blitheness of soul so vivifying and so +cleansing. For the essence of his teaching, or rather the essence of +his personality, was the trust that serenity and joyfulness must be +incompatible with evil; that simple, spontaneous happiness is, even like +the air and the sunshine in which his beloved brethren the birds flew +about and sang, the most infallible antidote to evil, and the most +sovereign disinfectant. And because we require such doctrine, such +personal conviction, for the better living of our lives, we must, even +as to better climates, journey forth occasionally into that distant Past +of mediæval Italy; and as to the Ezzelinos, Borgias, and Riarios, and +the foul-mouthed humanists, good heavens! why should we sicken ourselves +with the thought of this long dead and done for abomination? + +So much for the history of the Renaissance and the good it can be to +us. Now as to the art. That more organic mode of feeling and thinking +which results in active maturity, from the ever-increasing connections +between our individual soul and the surrounding world; that same +intuition which told us that historic evil was no subject for +contemplation, does also admonish us never to be suspicious of true +beauty, of thoroughly delightful art. Nay, beauty and art in any case; +for though beauty may be adulterated, and art enslaved to something not +itself, be sure that the element of beauty, the activity of art, so far +as they are themselves specific, are far above suspicion even in the +most suspicious company. For even if beauty is united to perverse +fashions, and art (as with Baudelaire and the decadents) employed to +adorn the sentiments of maniacs and gaol-birds, the beauty and the art +remain sound; and if we must needs put them behind us, on account of too +inextricable a fusion, we should remember it is as we sometimes throw +away noble ore, for lack of skill to separate it from a base alloy. As +regards the nightmare anomaly of perfect art arisen in times of moral +corruption, those unconscious analogies I have spoken of, and which +perhaps are our most cogent reasons, have taught us that such anomalies +are but nightmares and horrid delusions. For, taking the phenomenon +historically, we shall see that although art has arisen in periods of +stress and change, and therefore of moral anarchy, it has never arisen +among the immoral classes nor to serve any immoral use: the apparent +anomaly in the Renaissance, for instance, was not an anomaly, but a +coincidence of contrary movements: a materially prosperous, intellectually +innovating epoch, producing on the one hand moral anarchy, on the +other artistic perfection, connected not as cause and effect, but as +coincidence, the one being the drawback, the other the advantage, of +that particular phase of being. The Malatestas and Borgias, of whom we +have heard too much, did not employ Alberti and Pier della Francesca, +Pinturicchio and Bramante, to satisfy their convict wickedness, but to +satisfy their artistic taste, which, in so far, was perfectly sound, as +various others among their faculties, their eye and ear, and sense of +cause and effect, were apparently sound also. And the architecture of +Alberti, the decorations of Pinturicchio, remain as spotless of all +contact with their evil instincts as the hills they may have looked at, +the sea they may have listened to, the eternal verity that two and two +make four, which had doubtless passed through their otherwise badly +inhabited minds. And, moreover, the sea is still sonorous, the mountains +are still hyacinth blue, and the buildings and frescoes still noble, +while the rest of those disagreeable mortals' cravings and strivings are +gone, and on the whole were best forgotten. + +But there is another side of this same question, and of it we are +admonished, as it seems to me, still louder by our growing intellectual +instincts--those instincts, let us remember, which do but represent +whatever has been congruous and uniform in repeated experience. Art is +a much greater and more cosmic thing than the mere expression of man's +thoughts or opinions on any one subject, of man's attitude towards his +neighbour or towards his country, much as all this concerns us. Art is +the expression of man's life, of his mode of being, of his relations +with the universe, since it is, in fact, man's inarticulate answer to +the universe's unspoken message. Hence it represents not the details of +his existence, which, more's the pity, are rarely what they should be, +whether in thought or action, but the bulk of his existence, _when that +bulk is unusually sound_. This clause contains the whole philosophy of +art. For art is the outcome of a surplus of human energy, the expression +of a state of vital harmony, striving for and partly realising a yet +greater energy, a more complete harmony in one sphere or another of man's +relations with the universe. Now if evil is a non-vital, deciduous, and +sterile phenomenon _par excellence_, art must be necessarily opposed to +it, and opposed in proportion to art's vigour. While, on the other hand, +the seeking, the realisation of greater harmony, whether harmony visible, +audible, thinkable, and livable, is as necessarily opposed to anomaly +and perversity as the great healthinesses of air and sunshine are +opposed to bodily disease. Hence, in whatever company we find art, +even as in whatever company we find bodily health and vigour, let us +understand that _in so far as truly art_, it is good and a source of +good. Let us never waver in our faith in art, for in so doing we should +be losing (what, alas! Puritan contemners of art, and decadent defilers +thereof, are equally doing) much of our faith in nature and much of our +faith in man. For art is the expression of the harmonies of nature, +conceived and incubated by the harmonious instincts of man. + +I have given the influence of St. Francis as an example of what added +strength our modern soul may get by a sojourn in the Past. What our soul +may get of similar but more sober joy may be shown by another example +from that wonderful Umbrian district, one of the earth's oases of +spiritual rest and refreshment. Among all the sane and satisfying art +of the Renaissance, Umbria, on the whole, has surely grown for us the +highest and the holiest. I am not speaking of the fact that Perugino +painted saints in devout contemplation, nor of their type of face and +expression. Whatever his people might be doing, or if they were not +people at all, but variations only of his little slender trees or distant +domes and steeples, his art would have been equally high and holy. And +this because of its effect, direct, unreasoning, on our spirit, making +us, while we look, live with a deeper, more devoutly joyful life. What +the man Perugino was, in his finite dealings with his clients and +neighbours, has mattered nothing in the painting of these pictures and +frescoes; still less what samples of conduct he was shown by the +ephemeral magnificos who bought his works. + +The tenderness and strength of the mediæval Italian temper (as shown in +Dante when he is human, but above all in Francis of Assisi) has been +working through generations toward these paintings, interpreting in its +spirit, selecting and emphasising for its meaning the country in all the +world most naturally fit to express it; and thus in these paintings we +have the incomparable visible manifestation of a perfect mood: that wide +pale shimmering valley, circular like a temple, and domed by the circular +vault of sky, really turned, for our feelings, into a spiritual church, +wherein not merely saints meditate and Madonnas kneel, but ourselves in +deepest devout happiness. + + +IV + +Thoughts such as these bring with them the memory of the master we have +recently lost, of the master who, in the midst of æsthetical anarchy, +taught us once more, and with subtle and solemn efficacy, the old +Platonic and Goethian doctrine of the affinity between artistic beauty +and human worthiness. + +The spiritual evolution of the late Walter Pater--with whose name I +am proud to conclude my second, as with it I began my first book on +Renaissance matters--had been significantly similar to that of his own +Marius. He began as an æsthete, and ended as a moralist. By faithful and +self-restraining cultivation of the sense of harmony, he appears to have +risen from the perception of visible beauty to the knowledge of beauty +of the spiritual kind, both being expressions of the same perfect +fittingness to an ever more intense and various and congruous life. + +Such an evolution, which is, in the highest meaning, an æsthetic +phenomenon in itself, required a wonderful spiritual endowment and an +unflinchingly discriminating habit. For Walter Pater started by being +above all a writer, and an æsthete in the very narrow sense of twenty +years ago: an æsthete of the school of Mr. Swinburne's _Essays_, and of +the type still common on the Continent. The cultivation of sensations, +vivid sensations, no matter whether healthful or unhealthful, which that +school commended, was, after all, but a theoretic and probably unconscious +disguise for the cultivation of something to be said in a new way, which +is the danger of all persons who regard literature as an end, and not +as a means, feeling in order that they may write, instead of writing +because they feel. And of this Mr. Pater's first and famous book was a +very clear proof. Exquisite in technical quality, in rare perception and +subtle suggestion, it left, like all similar books, a sense of caducity +and barrenness, due to the intuition of all sane persons that only an +active synthesis of preferences and repulsions, what we imply in the +terms _character_ and _moral_, can have real importance in life, affinity +with life--be, in short, vital; and that the yielding to, nay, the +seeking for, variety and poignancy of experience, must result in a +crumbling away of all such possible unity and efficiency of living. +But even as we find in the earliest works of a painter, despite the +predominance of his master's style, indications already of what will +expand into a totally different personality, so even in this earliest +book, examined retrospectively, it is easy to find the characteristic +germs of what will develop, extrude all foreign admixture, knit together +congruous qualities, and give us presently the highly personal synthesis +of _Marius_ and the _Studies on Plato_. + +These characteristic germs may be defined, I think, as the recurrence of +impressions and images connected with physical sanity and daintiness; +of aspiration after orderliness, congruity, and one might almost say +_hierarchy_; moreover, a certain exclusiveness, which is not the contempt +of the craftsman for the _bourgeois_, but the aversion of the priest for +the profane uninitiated. Some day, perhaps, a more scientific study of +æsthetic phenomena will explain the connection which we all feel between +physical sanity and purity and the moral qualities called by the same +names; but even nowadays it might have been prophesied that the man who +harped upon the clearness and livingness of water, upon the delicate +bracingness of air, who experienced so passionate a preference for the +whole gamut, the whole palette, of spring, of temperate climates and of +youth and childhood; a person who felt existence in the terms of its +delicate vigour and its restorative austerity, was bound to become, +like Plato, a teacher of self-discipline and self-harmony. Indeed, who +can tell whether the teachings of Mr. Pater's maturity--the insistance +on scrupulously disciplined activity, on cleanness and clearness of +thought and feeling, on the harmony attainable only through moderation, +the intensity attainable only through effort--who can tell whether this +abstract part of his doctrine would affect, as it does, all kindred +spirits if the mood had not been prepared by some of those descriptions +of visible scenes--the spring morning above the Catacombs, the Valley of +Sparta, the paternal house of Marius, and that temple of Æsculapius with +its shining rhythmical waters--which attune our whole being, like the +music of the Lady in _Comus_, to modes of _sober certainty of waking +bliss_? + +This inborn affinity for refined wholesomeness made Mr. Pater the natural +exponent of the highest æsthetic doctrine--the search for harmony +throughout all orders of existence. It gave the nucleus of what was +his soul's synthesis, his system (as Emerson puts it) of rejection and +acceptance. Supreme craftsman as he was, it protected him from the +craftsman's delusion--rife under the inappropriate name of "art for +art's sake" in these uninstinctive, over-dextrous days--that subtle +treatment can dignify all subjects equally, and that expression, +irrespective of the foregoing _impression_ in the artist and the +subsequent _impression_ in the audience, is the aim of art. Standing as +he did, as all the greatest artists and thinkers (and he was both) do, +in a definite, inevitable relation to the universe--the equation between +himself and it--he was utterly unable to turn his powers of perception +and expression to idle and irresponsible exercises; and his conception +of art, being the outcome of his whole personal mode of existence, was +inevitably one of art, not for art's sake, but of art for the sake of +life--art as one of the harmonious functions of existence. + +Harmonious, and in a sense harmonising. For, as I have said, he rose +from the conception of physical health and congruity to the conception +of health and congruity in matters of the spirit; the very thirst for +healthiness, which means congruity, and congruity which implies health, +forming the vital and ever-expanding connection between the two orders +of phenomena. Two orders, did I say? Surely to the intuition of this +artist and thinker, the fundamental unity--the unity between man's +relations with external nature, with his own thoughts and with others' +feelings--stood revealed as the secret of the highest æsthetics. + +This which we guess at as the completion of Walter Pater's message, +alas! must remain for ever a matter of surmise. The completion, +the rounding of his doctrine, can take place only in the grateful +appreciation of his readers. We have been left with unfinished systems, +fragmentary, sometimes enigmatic, utterances. Let us meditate their +wisdom and vibrate with their beauty; and, in the words of the prayer of +Socrates to the Nymphs and to Pan, ask for beauty in the inward soul, +and congruity between the inner and the outer man; and reflect in such +manner the gifts of great art and of great thought in our soul's depths. +For art and thought arise from life; and to life, as principle of +harmony, they must return. + + +Many years ago, in the fulness of youth and ambition, I was allowed, by +him whom I already reverenced as a master, to write the name of Walter +Pater on the flyleaf of a book which embodied my beliefs and hopes as a +writer. And now, seeing books from the point of view of the reader, I +can find no fitter ending to this present volume than to express what +all we readers have gained, and lost, alas! in this great master. + +THE END + +_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. +_Edinburgh and London_ + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE + +The following changes have been made to the text: + + and will bare (...) new and will _bear_ (...) new + spiritual wonders spiritual wonders + + per speculum et ænigmata per speculum _in ænigmate_ + + In was in this church that _It_ was in this church that + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Renaissance Fancies and Studies, by +Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee) + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE FANCIES AND STUDIES *** + +***** This file should be named 30693-8.txt or 30693-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/6/9/30693/ + +Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Renaissance Fancies and Studies + Being a Sequel to Euphorion + +Author: Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee) + +Release Date: December 17, 2009 [EBook #30693] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE FANCIES AND STUDIES *** + + + + +Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<h1>RENAISSANCE<br /><br /> + FANCIES AND STUDIES:</h1> +<p> </p> +<h5>BEING A SEQUEL TO</h5> +<h3>EUPHORION</h3> +<p> </p> + +<h6>BY</h6> +<h3>VERNON LEE</h3> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h4>LONDON<br /><br /> +SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE<br /><br /> +1895</h4> + +<h6>[<i>All rights reserved</i>]</h6> +<p> </p> +<div class="center"> + <p class="noindent"><small><i>Printed by</i></small> <span class="smallcaps"><small>Ballantyne, Hanson</small></span> & <span class="smallcaps"><small>Co.</small></span><br /> +<i><small>At the Ballantyne Press</small></i> + </p> +</div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="minimal" /> + +<div class="center"> + <p class="noindent"><i><small>TO</small><br /><br /> +<small>MY DEAR FRIENDS</small><br /><br /> +<span class="smallcaps">MARIA and PIER DESIDERIO PASOLINI</span></i> +</p> +</div> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="right"><i><span class="smallcaps"><small>Easter</small></span> <small>1895</small></i><span class="ind4"> </span></p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="minimal" /> +<p> </p> +<h3>PREFACE</h3> + +<p>These essays being mainly the outcome of direct personal +impressions of certain works of art and literature, +and of the places in which they were produced, I have +but few acknowledgments to make to the authors of +books treating of the same subject. Among the exceptions +to this rule, I must mention foremost Professor +Tocco's <i>Eresia nel Medio Evo</i>, Monsieur Gebhart's <i>Italie +Mystique</i>, and Monsieur Paul Sabatier's <i>St. François +d'Assise</i>.</p> + +<p>I am, on the other hand, very deeply indebted to +the conversation and advice of certain among my +friends, for furnishing me second-hand a little of that +archæological and critical knowledge which is now-a-days +quite unattainable save by highly trained specialists. +My best thanks, therefore, to Miss Eugénie +Sellers, editor of Furtwängler's "Masterpieces of Greek +Sculpture;" to Mr. Bernhard Berenson, author of +"Venetian Painters," and a monograph on Lorenzo +Lotto; and particularly to my friend Mrs. Mary +Logan, whose learned catalogue of the Italian paintings +at Hampton Court is sufficient warrant for the correctness +of my art-historical statements, which she has +had the kindness to revise.</p> + +<p class="revind"><span class="smallcaps">Maiano, near Florence</span>,<br /> +<i>April</i> 1895.</p> +<p> </p> + +<hr class="minimal" /> +<p> </p> +<h3>CONTENTS</h3> +<div class="center"> +<table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td align="center" valign="top"><a href="#THE_LOVE_OF_THE_SAINTS">THE LOVE OF THE SAINTS</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" valign="top"><a href="#THE_IMAGINATIVE_ART_OF_THE_RENAISSANCE">THE IMAGINATIVE ART OF THE RENAISSANCE</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" valign="top"><a href="#TUSCAN_SCULPTURE">TUSCAN SCULPTURE</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" valign="top"><a href="#A_SEEKER_OF_PAGAN_PERFECTION">A SEEKER OF PAGAN PERFECTION</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" valign="top"><a href="#VALEDICTORY">VALEDICTORY</a></td></tr> +</table> +</div> +<p> </p> +<hr class="minimal" /> +<p> </p> +<h3><a name="THE_LOVE_OF_THE_SAINTS" id="THE_LOVE_OF_THE_SAINTS"></a>THE LOVE OF THE SAINTS</h3> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>"Panis Angelicus fit panis hominum. O res mirabilis, +manducat Dominum Pauper, Servus et Humilis." These +words of the Matins of the Most Holy Sacrament I +heard for the first time many years ago, to the beautiful +and inappropriate music of Cherubini. They struck +me at that time as foolish, barbarous, and almost gross; +but since then I have learned to think of them, and in +a measure to feel of them, as of something greater and +more solemn than all the music that Cherubini ever +wrote.</p> + +<p>All the hymns of the same date are, indeed, things +to think upon. They affect one—the "Stabat Mater," +for instance, and the "Ave Verum"—very much in +the same way as the figures which stare down, dingy +green and blue, from the gold of the Cosmati's mosaics: +childish, dreary, all stiff and agape, but so solemn and +pathetic, and full of the greatest future. For out of those +Cosmati mosaics, and those barbarous frescoes of the +old basilicas, will come Giotto and all the Renaissance; +and out of those Church songs will come Dante; they +are all signs, poor primitive rhymes and primitive +figures, that the world is teeming again, and will <ins title="original has bare">bear</ins>, +for centuries to come, new spiritual wonders. Hence +the importance, the venerableness of all those mediæval +hymns. But of none so much, to my mind, as of those +words I have quoted from the Matins of the Most Holy +Sacrament—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="quote"> +<tr><td align="left">"O res mirabilis, manducat Dominum,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">Pauper, Servus et Humilis."</td></tr> +</table> +</div> + +<p>For their crude and pathetic literality, their image +of the Godhead actually giving Himself, as they emphatically +say, to be <i>chewed</i> by the poor and humble +man and the serf, show them to have been most +especially born, abortions though they be, in the +mightiest throes of mystical feeling, after the incubation +of whole nations, born of the great mediæval +marriage, sublime, grotesque, morbid, yet health-bringing, +between abstract idealising religious thought and +the earthly affections of lovers and parents—a strange +marriage, like that of St. Francis and Poverty, of which +the modern soul also had to be born anew.</p> + +<p>Indeed, if we realise in the least what this hymn +must have meant, shouted in the processions of +Flagellants, chaunted in the Pacts of Peace after +internecine town wars; above all, perhaps, muttered +in the cell of the friar, in the den of the weaver; +if we sum up, however inadequately, the state of +things whence it arose, and whence it helped to +deliver us, we may think that the greatest music is +scarcely reverent enough to accompany these poor +blundering rhymes.</p> + +<p>The Feast of the Most Holy Sacrament, to whose +liturgy this hymn, "O Res Mirabilis," belongs, was +instituted to commemorate the miracle of Bolsena, +which, coming late as it did, in the country of St. +Francis, and within two years of the birth of Dante, +seems in its significant coincidences, in its startling +symbolism, the fit material summing up of what is +conveniently designated as the Franciscan revival: the +introduction into religious matters of passionate human +emotion. For in the year 1263, at Bolsena in Umbria, +the consecrated wafer dropped blood upon the hands of +an unbelieving priest.</p> + +<p>This trickery of a single individual, or more probably +hallucination—this lie and self-delusion of interested +or foolish bystanders—just happened to symbolise a +very great reality. For during the earlier Middle Ages, +before the coming of Francis of Assisi, the souls of men, +or, more properly, their hearts, had been sorely troubled +and jeopardised.</p> + +<p>The mixture of races and civilisations, southern and +northern and eastern, antique and barbarian, which had +been slowly taking place ever since the fall of the +Roman Empire, had seemed, in its consummation of +the twelfth century, less fertile on the whole than +poisonous. The old tribal system, the old civic system, +triumphant centralising imperialism, had all been broken +up long since; and now feudalism was going to pieces +in its turn, leaving a chaos of filibustering princelets, +among whom loomed the equivocal figures of Provençal +counts, of Angevin and Swabian kings, brutal as men +of the North, and lax as men of the South; moreover, +suspiciously oriental; brilliant and cynical persons, +eventually to be typified in Frederick II., who was +judiciously suspected of being Antichrist in person. +In the midst of this anarchy, over-rapid industrial +development had moreover begotten the tendencies to +promiscuity, to mystical communism, always expressive +of deep popular misery. The Holy Land had become +a freebooter's Eldorado; the defenders of Christ's sepulchre +were turned half-Saracen, infected with unclean +mixtures of creeds. Theology was divided between +neo-Aristotelean logic, abstract and arid, and Alexandrian +esoteric mysticism, quietistic, nay, nihilistic; and +the Church had ceased to answer to any spiritual wants of +the people. Meanwhile, on all sides everywhere, heresies +were teeming, austere and equivocal, pure and unclean +according to individuals, but all of them anarchical, +and therefore destructive at a moment when, above all, +order and discipline were wanted. The belief in the +world's end, in the speedy coming of Antichrist and the +Messiah, was rife among all sects; and learned men, the +disciples of Joachim of Flora, were busy calculating the +very year and month. Lombardy, and most probably +the south of France, Flanders and the Rhine towns, were +full of strange Manichean theosophies, pessimistic dualism +of God and devil, in which God always got the +worst of it, when God did not happen to be the devil +himself. The ravening lions, the clawing, tearing +griffins, the nightmare brood carved on the capitals, +porches, and pulpits of pre-Franciscan churches, are +surely not, as orthodox antiquarians assure us, mere +fanciful symbols of the Church's vigilance and +virtues: they express too well the far-spread occult +Manichean spirit, the belief in a triumphant power +of evil.</p> + +<p>Michelet, I think, has remarked that there was a +moment in the early Middle Ages when, in the mixture +of all contrary things, in the very excess of spiritual +movement, there seemed a possibility of dead level, of +stagnation, of the peoples of Europe becoming perhaps +bastard Saracens, as in Merovingian times they had +become bastard Romans; a chance of Byzantinism in the +West. Be this as it may, it seems certain that, towards +the end of the twelfth century, men's souls were shaken, +crumbling, and what was worse, excessively arid. There +was as little certainty of salvation as in the heart of that +Priest saying Mass at Bolsena; but the miracle came to +mankind at large some seventy years before it came to +him. It had begun, no doubt, unnoticed in scores of +obscure heresies, in hundreds of unnoticed individuals; +it became manifest to all the world in the persons of +Dominick, of Elizabeth of Hungary, of King Lewis—above +all, of Francis of Assisi. As in the hands of the +doubting priest, so in the hands of all suffering mankind, +the mystic wafer broke, proving itself true food for the +soul: the life-blood of hope and love welled forth and +fertilised the world. For the second time, and in far +more humble and efficacious way, Christ had been given +to man.</p> + +<p>To absorb the Eternal Love, to feed on the Life of the +World, to make oneself consubstantial therewith, these +passionate joys of poor mediæval humanity are such as +we should contemplate with sympathy only and respect, +even when the miracle is conceived and felt in the +grossest, least spiritual manner. That act of material +assimilation, that feeding off the very Godhead in most +literal manner, as described in the hymn to the Most +Holy Sacrament, was symbolic of the return from exile +of the long-persecuted instincts of mankind. It meant +that, spiritually or grossly, each according to his nature, +men had cast fear behind them, and—O res mirabilis!—grown +proud once more to love.</p> + +<p>Of this new wonder—questionable enough at times, +but, on the whole, marvellously beneficent—the German +knightly poets, so early in the field, are naturally among +the earliest (for the Provençals belonged to a sceptical, +sensual country) to give us a written record. Nearly +all of the Minnesingers composed what we must call +religious erotics, in no way different, save for names of +Christ and the Virgin, from their most impassioned +secular ones. The Song of Solomon, therefore, is one of +the few pieces of written literature of which we find constant +traces in the works of these very literally illiterate +poets. Yet the quality of their love, if one may say so, +is very different from anything Hebrew, or, for the +matter of that, Greek or Roman; their ardour is not +a transient phenomenon which disturbs them, like that +of the Shulamite, or the lover described by Sappho or +Plato, but a chief business of their life, as in the case of +Dante, of Petrarch, of Francesca and Paolo, or Tristram +and Yseult. Indeed, it is difficult to guess whether this +self-satisfied, self-glorifying quality, which distinguishes +mediæval passion from the passion (always regarded as +an interlude, harmless or hurtful, in civic concerns) of +unromantic Antiquity—whether, I say, this peculiarity +of mediæval love is due to its having served for religious +as well as for secular use, or whether the possibility +of its being brought into connection with the +highest mysteries and aspirations was not itself a result +of the dignity in which mere earthly ardours had come +to be held. Be this as it may, these German devotional +rhapsodies display their essentially un-Hebrew, un-antique +characters only the more by the traces of the +<i>canticus canticorum</i> in them, as in all devout love +lyrics.</p> + +<p>Any one curious in such matters may turn to a very +striking poem by Dante's contemporary, Frauenlob, in +Von der Hagen's great collection. Also to a very +strange composition, from the heyday of minne-song, +by Heinrich von Meissen. This is not the furious love +ode, but the ceremonious epithalamium of devotional +poetry. It is the bearing in triumph, among flare of +torches and incense smoke, over flower-strewn streets +and beneath triumphal arches, of the Bride of the Soul, +her enthroning on a stately couch, like some new-wed +Moorish woman, for men to come and covet and admire. +Above all, and giving one a shock of surprise by association +with the man's other work, is a very long and +elaborate poem addressed to Christ or God by no less a +minnesinger than Master Gottfried of Strasburg. In it +the Beloved is compared to all the things desired by eye +or ear or taste or smell: cool water and fruit slaking +feverish thirst, lilies with vertiginous scent, wine firing +the blood, music wakening tears, precious stones of +Augsburger merchants, essences and spices of an Eastern +cargo:—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td align="left">"Ach herzen Trut, genaden vol,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Ach wol u je mer mere wol,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Ein suez in Arzeniê</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Ach herzen bruch, ach herzen not.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Ach Rose rot,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Ach rose wandels vrie!</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Ach jugend in jugent, ach jugender Muot,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Ach bluejender herzen Minne!"</td></tr> +</table> +</div> + +<p>And so on for pages; the sort of words which poor +Brangwain may have overheard on the calm sea, +when the terrible knowledge rushed cold to her +heart that Tristram and Yseult had drained the fatal +potion.</p> + +<p>All this is foolish and unwholesome enough, just +twice as much so, for its spiritual allegorising, as the +worldly love poetry of these often foolish and unwholesome +German chivalrous poets. But, for our consolation, +in that same huge collection of Von der Hagen's +Minnesingers, stand the following six lines, addressed +to the Saviour, if tradition is correct, by a knightly +monk, Bruder Wernher von der Tegernsee:—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td align="left">"Dû bist mîn, ih bin dîn;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Des solt dû gewis sîn.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Dû bist beslozzen</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> In mînem herzen;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> <i>Verlorn ist daz sluzzelîn:</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> <i>Dû muost immer drinne sîn.</i>"</td></tr> +</table> +</div> + +<p>"Thou art locked up in my heart; the little key is +lost; thou must remain inside."</p> + +<p>This is a way of loving not logically suitable, perhaps, +to a divine essence, but it is the lovingness +which fertilises the soul, and makes flowers bud and +birds sing in the heart of man. Out of it, through +simple creatures like Bruder Wernher, through the +simplicity of scores of obscurer singers and craftsmen +than he, of hundreds of nameless good men and women, +comes one large half of the art of Dante and Giotto, +nay, of Raphael and Shakespeare: the tenderness of the +modern world, unknown to stoical Antiquity.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>The early Middle Ages—the times before Love came, +and with it the gradual dignifying of all realities which +had been left so long to mere gross or cunning or violent +men—the early Middle Ages have left behind them one +of the most complete and wonderful of human documents, +the letters of Abélard and Héloïse. This is a book which +each of us should read, in order to learn, with terror +and self-gratulation, how the aridity of the world's soul +may neutralise the greatest individual powers for happiness +and good. These letters are as chains which we +should keep in our dwelling-place, to remind us of past +servitude, perhaps to warn us against future.</p> + +<p>No other two individuals could have been found to +illustrate, by the force of contrast, the intellectual and +moral aridity of that eleventh century, which yet, in a +degree, was itself a beginning of better things. For +Héloïse and Abélard were not merely among the finest +intellects of the Middle Ages; they were both, in different +ways, to the highest degree passionately innovating +natures. No woman has ever been more rich and bold +and warm of mind and heart than Héloïse; nor has +any woman ever questioned the unquestioned ideas and +institutions of her age, of any age, with such vehemence +and certainty of intuition. She judges questions which +are barely asked and judged of now-a-days, applying +to consecrated sentimentality the long-lost instinctive +human rationalism of the ancient philosophers. +How could St. Luke recommend us to desist from getting +back our stolen property? She feels, however obscurely, +that this is foolish, antisocial, unnatural. Nay, why +should God prefer the penitence of one sinner to the +constant goodness of ninety-nine righteous men? She +is, this learned theologian of the eleventh century, as +passionately human in thought as any Mme. Roland +or Mary Wolstonecraft of a hundred years ago.</p> + +<p>Abélard, on the other hand, we know to have been +one of the most subtle and solvent thinkers of the Middle +Ages; pursued by the greatest theologians, crushed by +two Councils, and remaining, in the popular fancy, +as a sort of Friar Bacon, a forerunner of the wizard +Faustus; a man whom Bernard of Clairvaux called a +thief of souls, a rapacious wolf, a Herod; a man who reveals +himself a Pagan in his attempts to turn Plato into +a Christian; a man who disputes about Faith in the teeth +of Faith, and criticises the Law in the name of the Law; +a man, most enormous of all, who sees nothing as symbol +or emblem (<i>per speculum in ænigmate</i>), but dares to +look all things in the face (<i>facie ad faciem omnia intuetur</i>). +<i>Facie ad faciem omnia intuetur</i>, this, which +is the acknowledged method of all modern, as it had +been of all antique, thought, nay, of all modern, all +antique, all healthy spiritual life—this was the most +damnable habit of Abélard; and, as the letters show, of +Héloïse. What shall we think, in consequence, of the +intellectual and moral sterility of the orthodox world of +the eleventh century, when we find this heretical man, +this rebellious woman, arguing incessantly about unrealities, +crushing out all human feeling, judging all +questions of cause and effect, settling all relations of +life, with reference to a system of intricate symbolical +riddles? These things are exceedingly difficult for a +modern to realise; we feel as though we had penetrated +into some Gulliver's world or kingdom of the Moon; for +theology and its methods have been relegated, these +many hundred years, to a sort of <i>Hortus inclusus</i> where +nothing human grows. These mediæval men of science +apply their scientific energies to mastering, collecting, +comparing and generalising, not of any single fact of +nature, but of the words of other theologians. The +magnificent sense of intellectual duty, so evident in +Abélard, and in a dozen monastic authors quoted by him, +is applied solely to fantasticating over Scripture and its +expositors, and diverting their every expression from +its literal, honest, sane meaning. And indeed, are some +of the high efforts of mediæval genius, the calculations +of Joachim and the Eternal Gospel, any better than the +Book of Dreams and the Key to the Lottery? Most +odious, perhaps, in this theology triumphant (sickening +enough, in good sooth, even in the timid official theology +of later days), is the loss of all sense of what's what, of +fitness and decency, which interprets allegorically the +grosser portions of Scripture, and, by a reverse process, +lends to the soul the vilest functions of the body, +and discusses virtue in the terms of fleshliness. No +knowledge can come out of this straw-splitting <i>in vacuo</i>; +and certainly no art out of this indecent pedant's +symbolism: all things are turned to dusty, dirty +lumber.</p> + +<p>As with the intellectual, so also, in large degree, with +the moral: a splendid will to do right is applied, in +its turn, to phantoms. Here again the letters of Abélard +and Héloïse are extraordinarily instructive. The +highest virtue, the all-including (how differently Dante +feels, whatever he may say!), is <i>obedience</i>. Thus Abélard, +having quoted from St. Augustine that all which +is done for obedience' sake is well done, proceeds very +logically: "It is more advantageous for us to act rightly +than to do good…. We should think not so much +of the action itself, as of the manner in which it is +performed."</p> + +<p>Do not imagine that this care for the motive and +contempt of the action arises from an estimate of the +importance of a man's sum-total of tendencies, contrasted +with his single, perhaps unintentional, acts; +still less that the advantage thus referred to has anything +to do with other men's happiness. The advantage +is merely to the individual soul, or in a cruder, +truer view, to the individual combustible body to which +that soul shall be eternally reunited hereafter. And +the spirit which makes virtue alone virtuous is the +spirit of obedience: obedience theoretically to a god, +but practically to a father of the Church, a Council, an +abbot or abbess. In this manner right-doing is emptied +of all rational significance, becomes dependent upon +what itself, having no human, practical reason, is mere +arbitrary command. Chastity, for instance, which is, +together with mansuetude, the especial Christian +virtue, becomes in this fashion that mere guarding of +virginity which, for some occult reason, is highly prized +in Heaven; as to clean living being indispensable for +bearable human relations, which even the unascetic +ancients recognised so clearly, there is never an inkling +of that. Whence, indeed, such persons as do not <i>go in +for</i> professionally pleasing the divinity, who are neither +priests, monks, nor nuns, need not stickle about it; and +the secular literature of the Middle Ages, with its +Launcelots, Tristrams, Flamencas, and all its German +and Provençal lyrists, becomes the glorification of illicit +love. Indeed, in the letters before us, Abélard regrets +his former misconduct only with reference to religious +standards: as a layman he was perfectly free to seduce +Héloïse; the scandal, the horrible sin, was not the +seduction, but the profanation by married love of the +dress of a nun, the sanctuary of the virgin. So it is +with the renunciation of all the world's pleasures and +interests. The ascetic sacrifice of inclination, which +the stoics had conceived as resistance to the tyrant +without and the tyrant within, as a method for serene +and independent life and death, this ascetic renunciation +becomes, in this arid theological world, the mere +giving up to please a jealous God of all that is not He. +Abélard's regulations for the nuns, which he gives as +rules of perfection (save in the matter of that necessary +half sin, marriage) to devout lay folk, come after all to +this: give human nature enough to keep it going, so +that it may be able to sacrifice everything else to the +jealousy of the Godhead. Eating, clothing oneself, +washing (though, by the way, there is no mention of +this save for the sick), nay, speaking and thinking, are +merely instrumental to the contemplation of God; any +more than suffices for this is sinful. On this point +Abélard quotes, with stolidest approval, one of the +most heart-rending of anecdotes. A certain monk +being asked why he had fled humankind, answered, on +account of his great love for it, and the impossibility +of loving God and it at the same time.</p> + +<p>Think upon that. Think on the wasted treasure of +loving-kindness of which that monk and the thousands +he represents cheated his fellow-men. O love of human +creatures, of man for woman, parents and children, +of brethren, love of friends; fuel and food, which +keeps the soul alive, balm curing its wounds, or, if +they be incurable, helps the poor dying thing to die at +last in peace—this was those early saints' notion of +thee!</p> + +<p>To refuse thus to love is to refuse not merely the +highest usefulness, but to refuse also the best kind of +justice. Here again, nay, here more than ever, we may +learn from those wonderful letters. They constitute, +indeed, a document of the human soul to which, in my +recollection, one other only, Benjamin Constant's <i>Adolphe</i>, +can be compared. But in these letters,—hers of grief, +humiliation, hopelessness, making her malign her noble +self; and his, bitter, self-righteous, crammed with +theological moralisings—we see not merely the dual +drama of two ill-assorted creatures, but the much +more terrible tragedy, superadded by the presence, +looming, impassive, as of Cypris in Euripides' Hippolytus, +of a third all-powerful and superhuman entity: +the spirit of monasticism. The unequal misery, the +martyrdom of Héloïse arises herefrom, that she rebels +against this <i>Deus ex machina</i>; that this nun of the +eleventh century is a strong warm-hearted modern +woman, fit for Browning. While Abélard is her +whole life, the intimate companion of her highest +thoughts, she is only a toy to him, and a toy which +his theologian's pride, his monkish self-debasement, +makes him afraid and ashamed of. Abélard has +been for her, and ever remains, something like +Brahma to Goethe's Bayadere; her love, her love +above all for his intrepid intellect, has raised him +to a sacredness so great, that his whim, his fame, his +peace, his very petulance can be refused nothing; and +that, on the other hand, any concession taken from +him seems positive sacrilege. Hence her refusal of marriage, +her answer, "that she would be prouder as his +mistress—the Latin word is harlot—than as the wife +of Cæsar." Fifty years later, in the kind, passionate, +poetical days of St. Francis, Héloïse might have given +this loving fervour to Christ, and been a happy, if a +deluded, woman; but in those frigid monkish days, there +was no one for her to love, save this frigid monkish +Abélard. As it is, therefore, she loves Christ and God +in obedience to Abélard; she passionately cons the +fathers, the Scriptures, merely because, so to speak, the +hand of Abélard has lain on the page, the eyes of Abélard +have followed the characters; and finally, after all her +vain entreaties for (she scarce knows what!) love, sympathy, +one personal word, she feeds her starving heart +on the only answer to her supplications—the dialectic +exercises, metaphysical treatises, and theological sermons +(containing even the forms applicable only to a +congregation) which he doles out to her. Thankful for +anything which comes <i>from</i> him, however little it comes +<i>to</i> her.</p> + +<p>How different with Abélard! Despite occasional +atrocious misery and unparalleled temporal misfortunes +(which on the whole act upon him as tonics), this great +metaphysician is well suited to his times, and spiritually +thrives in their exhausted, chill atmosphere. The public +rumour (which Héloïse hurls at him in a fit of broken-hearted +rage), that his passion for her had been but a +passing folly of the flesh, he never denies, but, on the +contrary, reiterates perpetually for her spiritual improvement; +let her understand clearly from what inexpressible +degradation God in His mercy has saved them, +at least saved him; let her realise that he wanted only +carnal indulgence, and would have got it, if need be, +through threats and blows. He recognises, in his past, +only a feeling which, now it is over, fills his ascetic mind +with nothing but disgust and burning shame, and hence +he tries, by degrading it still more, by cynically raking +up all imaginable filth, to separate that past from his +present. So far, were only he himself concerned, one +would sympathise, though contemptuously, with this +agonised reaction of a proud, perhaps a vain, <i>man</i> of +mere intellect. But the atrocious thing is, that he treats +her as a loathsome relic of this past dishonour; and +answers her prayer (after twelve years' silence!) for a +word of loving-kindness by elaborate denunciations of +their former love, and reiterated jubilations that <i>he</i>, at +least, has long been purged thereof; not unmixed with +sharp admonishment that she had better not try to +infect his soul afresh, but set about, if needful, cleansing +her own. Now it so happens that what he would cure +her of is incurable, being, in fact, eternal, divine—simple +human love. So, to his pious and cynical admonitions +she answers with strange inconsistency. Long brooding +over his taunts will sometimes make her, to whom +he is always the divinity, actually believe, despite her +reiteration, that she had sinned out of obedience to him, +that she really is a polluted creature, guilty of the +unutterable crime of contaminating a man of God, nay, +a god himself. And then, unable to silence affection, +she cries out in agony at the perversity of her nature, +incapable even of hating sincerely its sinfulness; for +would she not do it again, is she not the same Héloïse who +would have left the very altar, the very communion with +Christ, at Abélard's word? At other times she is pious, +resigned, almost serene; for is that not Abélard's wish? +a careful mother to her nuns. But when, encouraged +by her docility and blind to her undying love, Abélard +believes that he has succeeded in quieting her down, +and rewards her piety by some rhetorical phrase of +Monkish eulogy, she suddenly turns round, a terrible +tragic figure. She repudiates the supposed purity and +piety, blazons out her wickedness and hypocrisy, and +cries out, partly with the horror of the sacrilegious nun, +mainly with the pride of the faithful wife, that it is +not God she loves but Abélard.</p> + +<p>After the most violent of these outbreaks there +is a dead silence. One guesses that some terrible +message has come, warning her that unless she promised +that she would never write to Abélard save +as the Abbess of the Paraclete to the monk of Cluny, +not a word from him shall ever come; and that, in +order to keep this last miserable comfort, she has +bitten out that truth-speaking tongue of hers. For +after this there are only questions on theological +points and on the regulation of nunneries; and Abélard +becomes as liberal of words as he used to be +chary, as full of encouragement as he once was of +insult, now that he feels comfortably certain that +Héloïse has changed from a mistress to a penitent, +and that in her also there is an end at last of all +that sinful folly of love. And thus, upon Héloïse +pacified, numbed, dead of soul, among her praying +and scrubbing and cooking and linen-mending nuns; +and Abélard reassured, serene, spiritually proud once +more among the raging controversies, the ecclesiastical +persecutions in which his soul prospered, the volume +closes; the curtain falls upon one of the most terrible +tragedies of the heart, as poignant after seven hundred +years as in those early Middle Ages, before St. Francis +claimed sun and swallows as brethren, and the baby +Christ was given to hold to St. Anthony of Padua.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>The humanising movement, due no doubt to greater +liberty and prosperity, to the growing importance +of honest burgher life, which the Church authorised +in the person of Francis of Assisi, doubtless after +persecuting it in the persons of dozens of obscure +heresiarchs—this great revival of religious faith +was essentially the triumph of profane feeling in the +garb of religious: the sanctification, however much +disguised, of all forms of human love. One is fully +aware of the moral dangers attendant upon every +such equivocation; and the great saints (like their last +modern representatives, the fervent, shrewd, and kindly +leaders of certain Protestant revivals) were probably, +for all their personal extravagances, most fully prepared +for every sort of unwholesome folly among their +disciples. The whole of a certain kind of devotional +literature, manuals of piety, Church hymns, lives and +correspondence of saintly persons, is unanimous in +testifying to the hysterical self-consciousness, intellectual +enervation, emotional going-to-bits, and moral +impotence produced by such vicarious and barren expenditure +of feeling. Yet it seems to me certain that +this enthroning of human love in matters spiritual was +an enormous, indispensable improvement, which, whatever +detriment it may have brought in individual and, +so to say, professionally religious cases, nay, perhaps to +all religion as a whole, became perfectly wholesome and +incalculably beneficent in the enormous mass of right-minded +laity.</p> + +<p>For human emotion, although so often run to waste, +had been at least elicited, and, once elicited, could find, +in nine cases out of ten, its true and beneficent channel; +whereas, in the earlier mediæval days, the effort to +crush out all human feeling (as with that holy man +quoted by Abélard), to break all human solidarity, had +not merely left the world in the hands of unscrupulous +and brutal persons, but had imprisoned all finer +souls in solitary and selfish thoughts of their individual +salvation. Things were now different. The story +of Lucchesio of Poggibonsi, recovered from oblivion +by M. Paul Sabatier, is the most lovely expression +of Franciscan tenderness and reverence towards the +affections of the laymen, and ought to be remembered +in company with the legend of the wood-pigeons, +whom St. Francis established in his cabin and blessed +in their courtship and nesting. This Lucchesio had +exercised a profession which has ever savoured of +damnation to the minds of the poor and their lovers, +that of corn merchant or speculator in grain; but +touched by Franciscan preaching, he had kept only one +small garden, which, together with his wife, he cultivated +half for the benefit of the poor. One day the +wife, known in the legend only as Bona Donna, sickened +and knew she must die, and the sacrament was brought +to her accordingly. But Lucchesio never thought that +it could be God's will that he should remain on earth +after his wife had been taken from him. So he got +himself shriven, received the last sacraments with her, +held her hands while she died; and when she was dead, +stretched himself out, made the sign of the cross, called +on Jesus, Mary, and St. Francis, and peacefully died in +his turn: God could not have wished him to live on +without her. The passionate Franciscan sympathy +with human love makes light of all the accepted notions +of bereavement being acceptable as a divine dispensation. +Lucchesio of Poggibonsi was, we are told, a +member of the Third Order of Franciscans, and his +legend may help us to appreciate the value of such +institutions, which gave heaven to the laity, to the +married burgher, the artisan, the peasant; which fertilised +the religious ideal with the simplest and sweetest +instincts of mankind. But, Third Order apart, the +mission of the regular Franciscans and Dominicans +is wholly different from that of the earlier orders of +monasticism proper. The earlier monks, however useful +and venerable as tillers of the soil and students of +all sciences, were, nevertheless, only agglomerated hermits, +retired from the world for the safety each of his +own soul; whereas the preaching, wandering friars are +men who mix with the world for the sake of souls of +others. Thus, throughout the evolution of religious +communities, down to the Jesuits and Oratorians, +to the great nursing brother-and sisterhoods of the +seventeenth century, we can watch the substitution +of care for lay souls in the place of more saintly +ones—a gradual secularisation in unsuspected harmony +with the heretical and philosophical movements which +tend more and more to make religion an essential +function of life, instead of an activity with which life +is for ever at variance.</p> + +<p>In accordance with this evolution is the great enthroning +of love in the thirteenth century: it means +the replacing of the terror of a divinity, who was little +better than a metaphysical Moloch (sometimes, and +oftener than we think, a metaphysical Ormuzd and +Ahriman of Manichean character), by the idolatry of +an all-gracious Virgin, of an all-compassionate and all-sympathising +Christ.</p> + +<p>It was an effort at self-righting of the unhappy world, +this love-fever which followed on the many centuries of +monastic self-mutilation; for, in sickness of the spirit, +the hot stage, for all its delirium, means a possibility +of life. Moreover, it gave to mankind a plenitude of +happiness such as is necessary, whether reasonable or +unreasonable, for mankind to continue living at all; +art, poetry, freedom, all the things which form the <i>Viaticum</i> +on mankind's journey through the dreary ages, +requiring for their production, it would seem, an extra +dose of faith, of hope, and happiness. Indeed, the +Franciscan movement is important not so much for its +humanitarian quality as for its optimism.</p> + +<p>Many other religious movements have asserted, with +equal and greater efficacy, the need for charity and +loving-kindness; but none, as it seems to me, has conceived +like it that charity and loving-kindness are not mitigations +of misery, but aids to joy. The universal brotherhood, +preached by Francis of Assisi, is a brotherhood +not of suffering, but of happiness, nay, of life and of +happiness.</p> + +<p>The sun, in the wonderful song which he made—characteristically—during +his sickness, is the brother of +man because of his radiance and splendour; water and +fire are his brethren on account of their virtues of purity +and humbleness, of jocund and beautiful strength;<a href="#fn1"><sup><small>1</small></sup></a><a name="fn1r" id="fn1r"></a> and +if we find, throughout his legends, the Saint perpetually +accompanied by birds—the swallows he begged to let +him speak, the falcon who called him in the morning, +the turtle-doves whose pairing he blessed, and all the +feathered flock whom Benozzo represents him preaching +to in the lovely fresco at Montefalco—if, as I say, there +is throughout his life and thoughts a sort of perpetual +whir and twitter of birds, it is, one feels sure, because +the creatures of the air, free to come and go, to sit on +beautiful trees, to drink of clear streams, to play in the +sunshine and storm, able above all to be like himself, +poets singing to God, are the symbols, in the eyes of +Francis, of the greatest conceivable felicity.<a href="#fn2"><sup><small>2</small></sup></a><a name="fn2r" id="fn2r"></a></p> + +<p>Indeed, we can judge of what the Franciscan movement +was to the world by what its gospel, the divine +<i>Fioretti</i>, are even to ourselves. This humble collection +of stories and sayings, sometimes foolish, always childlike, +becomes, to those who have read it with more than +the eyes of the body, a beloved and necessary companion, +like the solemn serene books of antique wisdom, the +passionate bitter Book of Job, almost, in a way, like the +Gospels of Christ. But not for the same reason: the +book of Francis teaches neither heroism nor resignation, +nor divine justice and mercy; it teaches love and joyfulness. +It keeps us for ever in the company of creatures +who are happy because they are loving: whether the +creatures be poor, crazy Brother Juniper (the comic +person of the cycle) eating his posset in brotherly +happiness with the superior he had angered; or Brother +Masseo, unable from sheer joy in Christ to articulate +anything save "U-u-u," "like a pigeon;" or King Lewis +of France falling into the arms of Brother Egidio; or +whether they be the Archangel Michael in friendly converse +with Brother Peter, or the Madonna handing the +divine child for Brother Conrad to kiss, or even the +Wolf of Gubbio, converted, and faithfully fulfilling his +bargain. There are sentences in the <i>Fioretti</i> such as +exist perhaps in no other book in the world, and which +teach something as important, after all, as wisdom +even and perfect charity—"And there answered Brother +Egidio: Beloved brethren, know that as soon as he and +I embraced one another, the light of wisdom revealed +and manifested to me his heart, and to him mine; and +thus by divine operation, seeing one into the other's +heart, that which I would have said to him and he to +me, each understood much better than had we spoken +with our tongue, and with greater joyfulness…." +Again, Jesus appeared to Brother Ruffino and said, +"Well didst thou do, my son, inasmuch as thou believedst +the words of St. Francis; for he who saddened +thee was the demon, whereas I am Christ thy teacher; +and for token thereof I will give thee this sign: As +long as thou live, thou shalt never feel affliction of any +sort nor sadness of heart."</p> + +<p>St. Francis, we are told, being infirm of body, was +comforted through God's goodness by a vision of the +joy of the blessed. "Suddenly there appeared to him +an angel in a great radiance, which angel held a viol in +his left hand and a bow in his right. And while St. +Francis remained in stupefaction at the sight, this angel +drew the bow once <i>upwards</i> across the viol, and instantly +there issued such sweetness of melody as melted the +soul of St. Francis, and suspended it from all bodily +sense. And, as he afterwards told his companions, he +was of opinion that if that angel had drawn the bow +<i>downwards</i> (instead of upwards) across the viol, his soul +would have departed from his body for the very excess +of delight."</p> + +<p>It was not so much to save the souls of men from +hell, about which, indeed, there is comparatively +little talk in the <i>Fioretti</i>, but to draw them also into +the mystic circle where such angelic music was heard, +that Francis of Assisi preached throughout Umbria, +and even as far as the Soldan's country; and, if we +interpret it rightly, the strings of that heavenly +viol were the works of creation and the souls of +all creatures, and the bow, whose upward movement +ravished, and whose downward movement would have +almost annihilated with its sweetness, that bow +drawn across the vibrating world was no other +than love.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>Justice preached by Hebrew prophets, charity and +purity taught by Jesus of Nazareth, fortitude recommended +by Epictetus and Aurelius, none of these +great messages to men necessarily produce that special +response which we call Art. But the message of loving +joyfulness, of happiness in the world and the world's +creatures, whether men or birds, or sun or moon,—this +message, which was that of St. Francis, sets the soul +singing; and just such singing of the soul makes art. +Hence, even as the Apennine blazed with supernatural +light, and its forests and rocks became visible to the most +distant wayfarers, when the Eternal Love smote with its +beams the praying saint on La Vernia; so also the +souls of those men of the Middle Ages were made luminous +and visible by the miracle of poetry and painting, +and we can see them still, distinct even at this distance.</p> + +<p>One of the earliest of the souls so revealed is +that of the Blessed Jacopone of Todi. Jacopo dei +Benedetti, a fellow-countryman of St. Francis, must +have been born in the middle of the thirteenth +century, and is said to have died in 1316, when +Dante, presumably, was writing his "Purgatory" and +"Paradise;" to him is ascribed the authorship of +the hymn "Stabat Mater," remembered, and to be +remembered (owing to the embalming power of music) +far beyond his vernacular poems. Tradition has it that +he turned to the religious life in consequence of the +sudden death of his beloved, and the discovery that she +had worn a hair-shirt next her delicate body. Be this +as it may, many allusions in his poems suggest that he +had lived the wild life of the barbarous Umbrian cities, +being a highwayman perhaps, forfeiting his life, and +also having to fly the country before the fury of some +family vendetta. On the other hand, it is plain +at every line that he was a frantic ascetic, taking a +savage pleasure in vilifying all mundane things, and +passionately disdainful of study, of philosophical and +theological subtleties. No poet, therefore, of the troubadour +sort, or of the idealising learned refinement of +Guinicelli or Cavalcanti. Nor was his life one of +apostolic sweetness. Having taken part in the furious +Franciscan schism, and pursued with invectives Boniface +VIII., he was cast by that Pope into a dungeon +at Palestrina. "My dwelling," he writes, "is subterranean, +and a cesspool opens on to it; hence a smell +not of musk. No one can speak to me; the man who +waits on me may, but he is obliged to make confession +of my sayings. I wear jesses like a falcon, and ring +whenever I move: he who comes near my room may +hear a queer kind of dance. When I have laid myself +down, I am tripped up by the irons, and wound round +in a big chain (<i>negli ferri inzampagliato, inguainato +in catenone</i>). I have a little basket hung up so that +the mice may not injure it; it can hold five loaves…. +While I eat them little by little, I suffer great cold."</p> + +<p>Moreover, Pope Boniface refuses him absolution, and +Jacopone's invectives are alternated with heart-rending +petitions that this mercy at least be shown him; as to +his other woes, he will endure them till his death. In +this frightful place Jacopone had visions, which the +Church, giving him therefore the title of Blessed, ratifies +as genuine. One might expect nightmares, such as troubled +the early saints in the wilderness, or John Bunyan +in gaol; but that was not the spirit of the mediæval +revival: terror had been cast out by love. More than +a quarter of Jacopone's huge volume consists in what +is merely love poetry: he is languishing, consumed by +love; when the beloved departs, he sighs and weeps, +and shrieks, and <i>dies alive</i>. Will the beloved have +no mercy? "Jesu, donami la morte, o di te fammi +assaggiare." Then the joys of love, depicted with +equal liveliness, amplifications as usual of the erotic +hyperboles of the Shulamite and her lover; the phenomenon, +to whose uncouth strangeness devotional poetry +accustoms us even now-a-days, which we remarked in +Gottfried von Strasburg and Frauenlob, and on which +it is needless further to insist.</p> + +<p>But there is here in Jacopone something which we +missed in Gottfried and Frauenlob, of which there is +no trace in the Song of Solomon, but which, suggested +in the lovely six lines of Bruder Wernher, makes the +emotionalism of the Italian Middle Ages wholesome +and fruitful. A child-like boy and girlish light-heartedness +that makes love a matter not merely of +sighing and dying, but of singing and dancing; and, +proceeding thence, a fervour of loving delightedness +which is no longer of the man towards the woman, but +of the man and the woman towards the baby. The +pious monk, in his ecstasies over Jesus, intones a song +which might be that of those passionate <i>farandoles</i> +of angels who dance and carol in Botticelli's most +rapturous pictures:—</p> + +<div class="center"> + <table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="text"> +<tr><td align="left">"Amore, amor, dove m'hai tu menato?</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Amore, amor, fuor di me m'hai trattato.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Ciascun amante, amator del Signore,</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> Venga alla danza cantando d'amore."</td></tr> +</table> +</div> + +<p>Can we not see them, the souls of such fervent lovers, +swaying and eddying, with joined hands and flapping +wings, flowers dropping from their hair, above the +thatched roof of the stable at Bethlehem?</p> + +<p>The stable at Bethlehem! It is perpetually returning +to Jacopone's thoughts. The cell, the dreadful +underground prison at Palestrina, is broken through, +irradiated by visions which seem paintings by Lippo +or Ghirlandaio, nay, by Correggio and Titian themselves, +"the tender baby body (<i>il tenerin corpo</i>) of the blood +of Mary has been given in charge to a pure company; +St. Joseph and the Virgin contemplate the +little creature (<i>il piccolino</i>) with stupefaction. <i>O gran +piccolino Jesu nostro diletto</i>, he who had seen Thee between +the ox and the little ass, breathing upon thy +holy breast, would not have guessed thou were begotten +of the Trinity!" But besides the ox and the ass there +are the angels. "In the worthy stable of the sweet +baby the angels are singing round the little one; they +sing and cry out, the beloved angels, quite reverent, +timid and shy (<i>tutti riverenti, timidi e subbietti</i>, this +beautiful expression is almost impossible save in +Italian), round the little baby Prince of the Elect who +lies naked among the prickly hay. He lies naked and +without covering; the angels shout in the heights. And +they wonder greatly that to such lowliness the Divine +Verb should have stooped. The Divine Verb, which +is highest knowledge, this day seems as if He knew +nothing of anything (<i>il verbo divino che è sommo sapiente, +in questo di par che non sappia niente!</i>). Look at him on +the hay, crying and kicking (<i>che gambetta piangente</i>), as +if He were not at all a divine man…." Meanwhile, +other angels, as in Benozzo's frescoes, are busy "picking +rarest flowers in the garden." In the garden! Why +He Himself is a fragrant garden; Jesus is a garden of +many sweet odours; and "what they are those can tell +who are the lovers of this sweet little brother of ours."</p> + +<p><i>Di Questo nostro dolce fratellino</i>: it is such expressions +as these, Bambolino, Piccolino, Garzolino, "el magno +Jesulino," these caressing, ever-varied diminutives, +which make us understand the monk's passionate +pleasure in the child; and which, by the emotion they +testify to and re-awaken, draw more into relief, make +visible and tangible the little kicking limbs on the +straw, the dimpled baby's body.</p> + +<p>And then there are the choruses of angels. "O new +song," writes Jacopone, "which has killed the weeping +of sick mankind! Its melody, methinks, begins upon +the high <i>Fa</i>, descending gently on the <i>Fa</i> below, which +the <i>Verb</i> sounds. The singers, jubilating, forming the +choir, are the holy angels, singing songs in that +hostelry, before the little babe, who is the Incarnate +Word. On lamb's parchment, behold! the divine note +is written, and God is the scribe, Who has opened His +hand, and has taught the song."</p> + +<p>Have we not here, in this odd earliest allegory of +music and theology, this earliest precursor of the organ-playing +of Abt Vogler, one of those choirs, clusters of +singing childish heads—clusters, you might almost say, +of sweet treble notes, tied like nosegays by the score +held scrollwise across them, which are among the +sweetest inventions of Italian art, from Luca della +Robbia to Raphael, "cantatori, guibilatori, che tengon +il coro?"</p> + +<p>And this is the place for a remark which, in the +present uncertainty of all æsthetic psychology, I put +forward as a mere suggestion, but a suggestion less +wide of the truth than certain theories now almost +unquestioned: the theories which arbitrarily assume +that art is the immediate and exact expression of contemporary +spiritual aspirations and troubles. That +such may be the case with literature, particularly the +more ephemeral kinds thereof, is very likely, since +literature, save in the great complex structures of epos, +tragedy, choral lyric, is but the development of daily +speech, and possibly as upstart, as purely passing, as +daily speech itself; moreover, in its less artistic forms, +requiring little science or apprenticeship.</p> + +<p>But art is a thing of older ancestry; you cannot, +however bursting with emotion, embody your feelings +in forms like those of Phidias, of Michelangelo, of Bach, +or Mozart, unless such forms have come ready to hand +through the long, steady working of generations of men: +Phidias and Bach in person, cut off from their precursors, +would not, for all their genius, get as far as a +schoolboy's caricature, or a savage's performance on a +marrow-bone. And these slowly elaborated forms, +representing the steady impact of so many powerful +minds, representing, moreover, the organic necessity by +which, a given movement once started, that movement +is bound to proceed in a given direction, these forms +cannot be altered, save infinitesimally, to represent the +particular state of the human soul at a given moment. +You might as well suppose that the human shape +itself, evolved through these millions of years, could +suddenly be accommodated to perfect representation +of the momentary condition of certain human beings; +even the Tricoteuses of the guillotine had the heads +and arms of ordinary women, not the beaks and claws +of harpies. Hence such expressiveness must be limited +to microscopic alterations; and, indeed, one marvels at +the modest demands of the art critics, who are satisfied +with the pucker of a frontal muscle of a Praxitelean +head as testimony to the terrible deep disorder in the +post-Periclean Greek spirit, and who can still find in +the later paintings of Titian, when all that makes Titian +visible and admirable is deducted, a something, just +a little <i>je ne sais quoi</i>, which proves these later Titians +to have originated in the Catholic reaction. If the +theory of art as the outcome of momentary conditions +be limited to such particularities, I am quite willing to +accept it; only, such particularities do not constitute the +large, important and really valuable characteristics of +art, and it matters very little by what they are produced.</p> + +<p>How then do matters stand between art and civilisation? +Here follows my hypothesis. There is in the +history of every art (and for brevity's sake, I include +in this term every distinct category, say, renaissance +sculpture as distinguished from antique, of the same +art) a moment when, for one reason or other, that art +begins to come to the fore, to bestir itself. The circumstances +of the nation and time make this art +materially advantageous or spiritually attractive; the +opening up of quarries, the discovery of metallic alloys, +the necessity of roofing larger spaces, the demand for +a sedentary amusement, for music to dance to in new +social gatherings—any such humble reason, besides +many others, can cause one art to issue more particularly +out of the limbo of the undeveloped, or out of the +lumber-room of the unused.</p> + +<p>It is during this historic moment—a moment which +may last years or scores of years—that, as it seems +to me, an art can really be deeply affected by its surrounding +civilisation. For is it not called forth by that +civilisation's requirements, material or spiritual; and +is it not, by the very fact of being thus new, or at +all events nascent, devoid of all conditioning factors, +save those which the civilisation and its requirements +impose from without? An art, like everything vital, +takes shape not merely by pressure from without, but +much more by the necessities inherent in its own constitution, +the almost mechanical necessities by which all +variable things <i>can</i> vary only in certain fashions. All +the natural selection, all the outer pressure in the world, +cannot make a stone become larger by cutting, cannot +make colour less complex by mixing, cannot make the +ear perceive a dissonance more easily than a consonance, +cannot make the human mind turn back from problems +once opened up, or revert instantaneously to effects it +is sick of; and a number of such immutable necessities +constitute what we call the organism of an art, which +can therefore respond only in one way and not another +to the influences of surrounding civilisation. Given the +sculpture of the Ægina period, it is impossible we should +not arrive at the sculpture of the time of Alexander: the +very constitution of clay and bronze, of marble, chisel +and mallet, let alone that of the human mind, makes +it inevitable; and you would have it inevitably if you +could invert history, and put Chæronea in the place of +Salamis. But there is no reason why you should eventually +get Lysippian and Praxitelean sculpture instead +of Egyptian or Assyrian, say, in the time of Homer, +whenever that may have been. For the causes which +forced Greek sculpture along the line leading to Praxiteles +and Lysippus were not yet at work; and had other +forces, say, a preference for stone work instead of clay +and bronze work, a habit of Persian or Gaulish garments, +of Lydian effeminate life instead of Dorian +athleticism, supervened, had satraps ordered rock-reliefs +of battles instead of burghers ordering brazen images of +boxers and runners, Praxiteles and Lysippus might have +remained <i>in mente Dei</i>, if, indeed, even there. Similarly, +once given your Pisan sculptors, Giotto, nay, your imaginary +Cimabue, you inevitably get your Donatello, +Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, and eventually your Leonardo, +Michelangelo, and Titian; for the problems of form and +of sentiment, the questions of perspective, anatomy, +dramatic expression, lyric suggestion, architectural decoration, +were established, in however rudimentary a +manner, as soon as painting was ordered to leave off +doing idle, emotionless Christs, rows of gala saints and +symbols of metaphysic theology, and told to set about +showing the episodes of Scripture, the things Christ and +the Apostles did, and the places where they did them, +and the feelings they felt about it all; told to make +visible to the eye the gallant archangels, the lovable +Madonnas, the dear little baby Saviours, the angels with +their flowers and songs, all the human hope and pity +and passion and tenderness which possessed the world +in the days of St. Francis.</p> + +<p>What pictures should we have seen if Christianity +(which was impossible) had continued in the habits of +thought and feeling of the earlier Middle Ages? Byzantine +<i>icones</i> become frightfuler and frightfuler, their +theological piety perhaps sometimes relieved by odd +wicked Manichean symbolism; all talent and sentiment +abandoning painting, perhaps to the advantage of music, +whose solemn period of recondite contrapuntal complexity—something +corresponding to the ingenuities and +mysticism of theology—might have come two centuries +earlier, and delighted the world instead of being unnoticed +by it. Be this as it may, there is no need +for wondering, as people occasionally wonder, how +the solemn terror, the sweetness, pathos, or serenity +of men like Signorelli, Botticelli, or Perugino, nay +Michelangelo, Raphael, or Giorgione, could have originated +among Malatestas, Borgias, Poggios, or Aretines. +It did not. And, therefore, since literature always precedes +its more heavily cumbered fellow-servant art, we +must look for the literary counterpart of the painters +of the Renaissance among the writers who preceded +them by many generations, men more obviously in touch +with the great mediæval revival: Dante, Boccaccio, the +compilers of the "Fioretti di San Francesco," and, as +we have just seen, Fra Jacopone da Todi.</p> +<p> </p> + +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>What art would there have been without that Franciscan +revival, or rather what emotional synthesis of +life would art have had to record? This speculation +has been dismissed as futile, because it is impossible to +conceive that mankind could have gone on without some +such enthusiastic return of faith in the goodness of +things. But another question remains to be answered, +remains to be asked; and that is, what was the spiritual +meaning of the art which immediately preceded the +Franciscan revival? what was the emotional synthesis +of life given by those who had come too early to partake +in the new religion of love?</p> + +<p>The question seems scarcely to have occurred to any +one, perhaps because the Church found it expedient +to obliterate, to the best of her power, all records of her +terrible mediæval vicissitudes, and to misinterpret, for +the benefit of purblind antiquarians, the architectural +symbolism of the earlier Middle Ages.</p> + +<p>Since, in the deciphering of such expressions of mankind's +moods and intuitions, scientific investigation is +scarcely more important than the moods and intuitions +of the looker-on, it seems quite fitting that I should +begin these suggestions about pre-Franciscan Italian +art by saying that some years ago there met by accident +in my mind a certain impression of Lombard twelfth-century +art, and a certain anecdote of Lombard twelfth-century +history.</p> + +<p>It was at Lucca, a place most singularly rich in +round-arched buildings, that I was, so to speak, +overwhelmed by the fact that the Italian churches +of immediately pre-Franciscan days possess by way +of architectural ornamentation nothing but images of +deformity and emblems of wickedness. This fact, apart +from its historical bearing, may serve also to illustrate a +theory I have already put forth, to wit, that the only art +which is necessarily expressive of contemporary thought +and feeling is such as embodies very little skill, and as +expresses but very few organic necessities of form, both +of which can result only from the activity and the +influence of generations of craftsmen; since in these +Lucchese churches the architectural forms proclaim one +thing and the sculptural details another. The first +speak only of logic and serenity; the second only of the +most abominable nightmare. The truth is, that these +churches of Lucca, and their more complex and perfect +prototypes, like Sant' Ambrogio of Milan, and San +Miniato of Florence, are not the real outcome of the +century which built them. It is quite natural that, with +their stately proportions, their harmonious restrained +vaultings, their easy, efficient colonnades, their ample +and equable illumination, above all their obvious pleasure +in constructive logic, these churches should affect us as +being <i>classic</i> as opposed to romantic, and even in a very +large measure actually antique; for they have come, +through generations as long-lived and as scanty as those +of the patriarchs, straight from the classic, the antique; +grandchildren of the courts of law and temples of +Pagan Rome, children of the Byzantine basilicas of +early Christian days; strange survivals from distant +antiquity, testifying to the lack of artistic initiative in +the barbarous centuries between Constantine to +Barbarossa. No period in the world's history could have +produced anything so organic without the work of +previous periods; and when the Middle Ages did in +their turn produce an architecture original to themselves, +it was by altering these still classic forms into +something absolutely different: that thirteenth-century +Gothic which answers to the material and necessities +of the democratic and romantic times heralded by St. +Francis. The twelfth century, therefore, could not +express itself in the architectural forms and harmonies +of those Lucchese churches; but it could express itself +in their rude and thoroughly original sculpture. Hence, +while there is in them no indication of the symbolism +of the coming ogival Gothic, there is no trace either of +the symbolism belonging to Byzantine buildings. None +of the Gothic imagery testifying faith and joy in God +and His creatures; no effigies of saints; at most only of +the particular building's patron; no Madonnas, infant +Christs, burning cherubim, singing and playing angels, +armed romantic St. Michael or St. George; none of +those goodly rows of kings and queens guarding the +portals, or of those charming youthful heads marking +the spring of the pointed arch, the curve of the spandril. +Nor, on the other hand, any remnant of Byzantine +devices of the date-loaded palms, the peacocks and +doves, the bunches of grapes, the serene, almost Pagan +imagery which graces the churches of the Cælian and +Aventine, the basilicas of Ravenna, and which would +seem the necessary accompaniment of this stately +Neo-Byzantine architecture. The churches of Lucca, +like their contemporaries and immediate predecessors +throughout Tuscany and North Italy, are ornamented +only with symbols of terror.<a href="#fn3"><sup><small>3</small></sup></a><a name="fn3r" id="fn3r"></a></p> + +<p>The minds of the sculptors seem haunted by the +terror of wicked wild beasts, irresistible and mysterious, +as in the night fears of children. The chief ornament +of St. Michael of Lucca is a curious band of black and +white inlaid work, of which Mr. Ruskin has said, with +the optimism of an orthodox symbolist, that it shows +that the people of Lucca loved hunting, even as the +people of Florence loved the sciences and crafts symbolised +on their belfry. But the two or three solitary +mannikins of the frieze of St. Michael exemplify not +the pleasures, but the terrors of the chase; or rather +they are not hunting, but being hunted by the wild +beasts all round; attacked rather than pursuing, flying +on their little horses from the unequal fight, or struggling +under the hug of bears, the grip of lions; never +does one of them carry off a dead creature or deal a +mortal blow. The wild beasts are masters of the +situation, the men mere intruders, speedily worsted; +and this is proved by the fact that where the wolves, +lions, and bears are not struggling with human beings, +they are devouring each another, the appearance of the +poor little scared men being only an interlude in the +everlasting massacre of one beast by another. The +people who worked this frieze may have pretended, +perhaps, that they were expressing the pleasures of +hunting; but what they actually realised was evidently +the horrors of a world given over to ravening creatures. +The porch sculptures of this and all the other churches +of Lucca remove all further doubt upon this point. +For here what human beings there lie under the belly +and in the claws (sometimes a mere horrid mangled +human head) of the lions and lionesses who project like +beamheads out of the wall or carry the porch columns +on their back: scowling, murderous creatures, with +which the twelfth and early thirteenth century ornamented +even houses and public tanks like Fonte Branda, +which less terrified generations adorned with personified +virtues. The nightmare of wild beasts is carried on +in the inside of the churches: there again, under the +columns of the pulpits are the lions and lionesses gnashing +their teeth, tearing stags and gazelles and playing +with human heads. And, to increase the horror, there +also loom on the capitals of the nave strange unknown +birds of prey, fantastic terrible vultures and griffins. +Everywhere massacre and nightmare in those churches +of Lucca. And the impression they made on my +mind was naturally strengthened by the recollection of +the similar and often more terrible carvings in other +places, Milan, Pavia, Modena, Volterra, the Pistoiese +and Lucchese hill-towns, in all other places rich +in pre-Franciscan art. Above all, there came to +my mind the image of the human figures which in +most of such pre-Franciscan places express the other +half of all this terror, the feelings of mankind in +this kingdom of wicked, mysterious wild beasts. I +allude to the terrible figures, crushed into dwarfs and +hunchbacks by the weight of porch columns and pulpits, +amid which the tragic creature, with broken spine +and starting eyes, of Sant' Ambrogio of Milan is, +through sheer horrified realisation, a sort of masterpiece. +But there are wild beasts, lions and lionesses, +among the works of thirteenth-century sculptors, and +lions and lionesses continue for a long time as ornaments +of pure Gothic architecture. Of course; but it was the +very nearness of the resemblance of these later creatures +that brought home to me the utterly different, +the uniform and extraordinary character, of those of +earlier date: the emblem was kept by the force of +tradition, but the meaning thereof was utterly changed. +The Pisani, for instance, carved lions and lionesses +under all their pulpits; some of them are merely looking +dignified, others devouring their prey, but they are +conceived by a semi-heraldic decorator or an intelligent +naturalist; nay, the spirit of St. Francis has entered +into the sculptors, the feeling for animal piety and +happiness, to the extent of representing the lionesses +as suckling and tenderly licking their whelps. The +men of that time cannot even conceive, in their newly +acquired faith and joy in God and His creatures, what +feelings must have been uppermost in the men who +first set the fashion of adorning churches with men-devouring +monsters.</p> + +<p>Such were my impressions during those days spent +among the serene Lucchese churches and their terrible +emblems. And under their influence, thinking of +the times which had built the churches and carved +the emblems, there came to my memory a very curious +anecdote, unearthed by the learned ecclesiastical +historian Tocco, and consigned in his extremely suggestive +book on mediæval heresies. A certain priest +of Milan became so revered for his sanctity and learning, +and for the marvellous cures he worked, that the people +insisted on burying him before the high altar, and resorting +to his tomb as to that of a saint. The holy +man became even more undoubtedly saintly after his +death; and in the face of the miracles which were +wrought by his intercession, it became necessary to +proceed to his beatification. The Church was about to +establish his miraculous sainthood, when, in the official +process of collecting the necessary information, it was +discovered that the supposed saint was a Manichean +heretic, a <i>Catharus</i>, a believer in the wicked +Demiurgus, the creating Satan, the defeat of the spiritual +God, and the uselessness of the coming of Christ. It +was quite probable that he had spat upon the crucifix +as a symbol of the devil's triumph; it was quite +possible that he had said masses to Satan as the true +creator of all matter. Be this as it may, that priest's +half-canonised bones were publicly burnt and their +ashes scattered to the wind. The anecdote shows that +the Manichean heresies, some ascetic and tender, others +brutal and foul, had made their way into the most holy +places. And, indeed, when we come to think of it, no +longer startled by so extraordinary a revelation, this +was the second time that Christianity ran the risk of +becoming a dualistic religion—a religion, like some of +its Asiatic rivals, of pessimism, transcendentally spiritual +or cynically base according to the individual believer. +Nor is it surprising that such views, identical with +those of the transcendental theologians of the fourth +century, and equivalent to the philosophical pessimism +of our own day, as expounded particularly by Schopenhauer, +should have found favour among the best and +most thoughtful men of the early Middle Ages. In +those stern and ferocious, yet tender-hearted and most +questioning times, there must have been something +logically satisfying, and satisfying also to the harrowed +sympathies, in the conviction, if not in the dogma, that +the soul of man had not been made by the maker of +the foul and cruel world of matter; and that the suffering +of all good men's hearts corresponded with the +suffering, the humiliation of a mysteriously dethroned +God of the Spirit. And what a light it must have shed, +completely solving all terrible questions, upon the story +of Christ's martyrdom, so constantly uppermost in the +thoughts and feelings of mediæval men!</p> + +<p>Now, the men who built Sant' Ambrogio<a href="#fn4"><sup><small>4</small></sup></a><a name="fn4r" id="fn4r"></a> and San +Miniato a Monte, who carved the stone nightmares, +the ravening lions, the squashed and writhing human +figures of the early Lombard and Tuscan churches, +were the contemporaries of that Manichean priest of +Milan, who, although a saint, had believed in the +triumph of the Devil and the wickedness of the Creator. +And among his fellow-heretics—those heretics lurking +everywhere, and most among the most religious—should +we not expect to find the mysterious guilds of Lombard +freemasons, and the craftsmen to whom they gradually +revealed their secrets, affirming in their stone symbolism +to the already initiated, and suggesting to the +uninitiated, their terrible creed of inevitable misery on +earth? Nay, can we not imagine some of them, even +as the Templars were accused of doing (and the Templars +were patrons, remember, of important guilds of masons), +propitiating the Great Enemy by service and ritual, proclaiming +his Power, even as the ancients propitiated the +divinities of darkness whom they hated? For the God of +Good, we can fancy them reasoning, the Pure Spirit who +will triumph when all this cruel universe goes to pieces, +can wish for no material altars, and can have no use for +churches. Or did not the idea of a dualism become +confused into a vacillating, contradictory notion of a +Power at once good and evil, something inscrutable, +unthinkable, but inspiring less confidence than terror?</p> + +<p>Whatever the secret of those sculptured monsters, +this much is historically certain, that a dualistic, profoundly +pessimist belief had honeycombed Christianity +throughout Provence and Northern and Central Italy. +But for this knowledge it would be impossible to +explain the triumphant reception given to St. Francis +and his sublime, illogical optimism, his train of converted +wolves, sympathising birds, and saints and angels +mixing familiarly with mortal men. The Franciscan +revival has the strength and success of a reaction. +And in sweeping away the pessimistic terrors of mankind, +it swept away, by what is at least a strange +coincidence, the nightmare sculpture of the old Lombard +stonemasons.</p> + +<p>What the things were which made room for the carved +virgins and saints, the lute-playing angels and nibbling +squirrels and twittering birds of Gothic sculpture, I +wish to put before the reader in one significant example. +The Cathedral of Ferrara is a building which, although +finished in the thirteenth century, had been begun and +consecrated so early as 1135, and the porch thereof, as +is frequently the case, appears to have been erected +earlier than other portions. Of this porch two pillars +are supported by life-sized figures, one bearded, one +beardless, both dressed in the girdled smock of the early +Middle Ages. The enormous weight of the porch is +resting, not conventionally (as in the antique caryatid) +on the head, but on the spine; and the head is protruded +forwards in a fearful effort to save itself, the +face most frightfully convulsed: another moment and +the spine must be broken and the head droop freely +down. Before the portals, but not supporting anything, +are six animals of red marble—a griffin, two lions, two +lionesses, or what seem such, and a second griffin. The +central lions are well preserved, highly realistic, but also +decorative; one of them is crushing a large ram, another +an ox, both creatures splendidly rendered. I imagine +these central lions to be more recent (having perhaps +replaced others) than their neighbours, which are obliterated +to the extent of being lions or lionesses only by +guesswork. These nameless feline creatures hold what +appear to be portions of sheep, one of them having at +its flank a curious excrescence like the stinging scorpion +of the Mithra groups. The griffins, on the other hand, +although every detail is rubbed out, are splendid in +power and expression—great lion-bodied creatures, with +gigantic eagle's beak, manifestly birds rather than beasts, +with the muscular neck and probably the movement of +a hawk. Like hawks, they have not swooped on to their +prey, but let themselves drop on to it, arriving not on +their belly like lions, but on their wings like birds. +The prey is about a fourth of the griffin's size. One of +the griffins has swooped down upon a wain, whose two +wheels just protrude on either side of him; the heads +of two oxen are under his paws, and the head, open +mouthed, with terrified streaming hair, of the driver; +beasts and men have come down flat on their knees. +The other griffin has captured a horse and his rider; +the horse has shied and fallen sideways beneath the +griffin's loins, with head protruding on one side and +hoofs on the other, the empty stirrup is still swinging. +The rider, in mail-shirt and Crusader's helmet, has been +thrown forward, and lies between the griffin's claws, his +useless triangular shield clasped tight against his breast. +Perhaps merely because the attitude of the two griffins +had to be symmetrical, and the horse and rider filled up +the space under their belly less closely than the cart, +oxen, and driver, there arises the suggestive fact that +the poor man and his bullocks are crushed more mercilessly +than the rich man and his horse. But be this as +it may, poor and rich, serf and knight, the griffin of +destiny encompasses and pounces upon each; and the +talons of evil pin down and the beak of misery rends +with impartial cruel certainty.</p> + +<p>Such is the account of the world and man, of justice +and mercy, recorded for us by the stonemasons of +Ferrara.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p>As with the emotional, the lyric element in Renaissance +art, so also with the narrative or dramatic; it +belongs not to the original, real, or at all events primitive +Christianity of the time when the Man Jesus +walked on earth in the body, but to that day when He +arose once more, no less a Christ, be sure, in the soul of +those men of the Middle Ages. The Evangelists had +never felt—why should they, good, fervent Jewish +laymen?—the magic of the baby Christ as it was felt +by those mediæval ascetics, suddenly reawakened to +human feeling. There is neither tenderness nor reverence +in the Gospels for the mother of the Lord; some +rather rough words on her motherhood; and that mention +in St. John, intended so evidently to bring the +Evangelist, or supposed Evangelist, into closer communion +with Christ, not to draw attention to Christ's +mother. Yet out of those slight, and perhaps almost +contemptuous indications, the Middle Ages have made +three or four perfect and wonderful types of glorified +womanhood: the Mother in adoration, the crowned, +enthroned Virgin, the Mater Gloriosa; the broken-hearted +Mother, Mater Dolorosa, as found at the foot of +the cross or fainting at the deposition therefrom; types +more complete and more immortal than that of any +Greek divinity; above all, perhaps, the mere young +mother holding the child for kindly, reverent folk to +look at, for the little St. John to play with, or alone, +looking at it, thinking of it in solitude and silence: the +whole lovingness of all creatures rising in a clear flame +to heaven. Nay, is not the suffering Christ a fresh +creation of the Middle Ages, made really to bear the +sorrows of a world more sorrowful than that of Judea? +That strange Christ of the Resurrection, as painted +occasionally by Angelico, by Pier della Francesca, particularly +in a wonderful small panel by Botticelli; the +Christ not yet triumphant at Easter, but risen waist-high +in the sepulchre, sometimes languidly seated on its +rim, stark, bloodless, with scarce seeing eyes, and the +motionless agony of one recovering from a swoon, enduring +the worst of all his martyrdom, the return to life in +that chill, bleak landscape, where the sparse trees bend +in the dawn wind; returning from death to a new, an +endless series of sufferings, even as that legend made +him answer the wayfaring Peter, <i>returning to be crucified +once more—iterum crucifigi</i>.</p> + +<p>All this is the lyric side, on which, in art as in +poetry, there are as many variations as there are individual +temperaments, and the variety in Renaissance +art is therefore endless. Let us consider the narrative +or dramatic side, on which, as I have elsewhere tried to +show, all that could be done was done, only repetition +ensuing, very early in the history of Italian art, by the +Pisans, Giotto and Giotto's followers.</p> + +<p>These have their counterpart, their precursors, in the +writers and reciters of devotional romances.</p> + +<p>Among the most remarkable of these is the "Life of +the Magdalen," printed in certain editions of Frate Domenico +Cavalca's well known charming translations of St. +Jerome's "Lives of the Saints." Who the author may be +seems quite doubtful, though the familiar and popular +style might suggest some small burgher turned Franciscan +late in life. As the spiritual love lyrics of Jacopone +stand to the <i>Canzonieri</i> of Dante and of Dante's circle +of poets, so does this devout novel stand to Boccaccio's +more serious tales, and even to his "<i>Fiammetta</i>;" only, +I think that the relation of the two novelists is the +reverse of that of the poets; for, with an infinitely ruder +style, the biographer of the Magdalen, whoever he was, +has also an infinitely finer psychological sense than +Boccaccio. Indeed, this little novel ought to be reprinted, +like "Aucasin et Nicolette," as one of the +absolutely satisfactory works, so few but so exquisite, +of the Middle Ages.</p> + +<p>It is the story of the relations of Jesus with the +family of Lazarus, whose sister Mary is here identified +with the Magdalen; and it is, save for the account of +the Passion, which forms the nucleus, a perfect tissue of +inventions. Indeed, the author explains very simply +that he is narrating not how he knows of a certainty +that things did happen, but how it pleases him to think +that they might have happened. For the man puts his +whole heart in the story, and alters, amplifies, explains +away till his heart is satisfied. The Magdalen, for +instance, was not all the sort of woman that foolish +people think. If she took to scandalous courses, it was +only from despair at being forsaken by her bridegroom, +who left her on the wedding-day to follow Christ to the +desert, and who was no other than the Evangelist John. +Moreover, let no vile imputations be put upon it; in +those days, when everybody was so good and modest, it +took very little indeed (in fact, nothing which our wicked +times would notice at all) to get a woman into disrepute.</p> + +<p>Judged by our low fourteenth-century standard, this +sinning Magdalen would have been only a little over-cheerful, +a little free, barely what in the fourteenth +century is called (the mere notion would have horrified +the house of Lazarus) <i>a trifle fast</i>; our unknown Franciscan—for +I take him to be a Franciscan—insists very +much on her having sung and whistled on the staircase, +a thing no modest lady of Bethany would then have +done; but which, my dear brethren, is after all….</p> + +<p>This sinful Magdalen, repenting of her sins, such as +they are, is living with her sister Mary and her brother +Lazarus; the whole little family bound to Jesus by the +miracle which had brought Lazarus back to life. Jesus +and his mother are their guests during Passion week; +and the awful tragedy of the world and of heaven +passes, in the anonymous narrative, across the narrow +stage of that little burgher's house. As in the art of +the fifteenth century, the chief emotional interest of +the Passion is thrown not on the Apostles, scarcely +on Jesus, but upon the two female figures, facing each +other as in some fresco of Perugino, the Magdalen and +the Mother of Christ. Facing one another, but how +different! This Magdalen has the terrific gesture of +despair of one of those colossal women of Signorelli's, +flung down, as a town by earthquake, at the foot of the +cross. She was pardoned "because she had loved much"—<i>quia +multo amavit</i>. The unknown friar knew what +<i>that</i> meant as well as his contemporary Dante, when +Love showed him the vision of Beatrice's death. Never +was there such heart-breaking as that of his heroine: +she becomes almost the chief personage of the Passion; +for she knows not merely all the martyrdom of the +Beloved, feels all the agonies of His flesh and His spirit, +but knows—how well!—that she has lost Him. Opposite +this terrible convulsive Magdalen, sobbing, tearing +her hair and rolling on the ground, is the other heart-broken +woman, the mother; but how different! She +remains maternal through her grief, with motherly +thoughtfulness for others; for to the real mother (how +different in this to the lover!) there will always remain +in the world some one to think of. She bridles her +sorrow; when John at last hesitatingly suggests that +they must not stay all night on Calvary, she turns +quietly homeward; and, once at home, tries to make +the mourners eat, tries to eat with them, makes them +take rest that dreadful night. For such a mother there +shall not be mere bitterness in death; and here follows +a most beautiful and touching invention: the glorified +Christ, returning from Limbo, takes the happy, delivered +souls to visit his mother.</p> + +<p>"And Messer Giesù having tarried awhile with them +in that place, said: 'Now let us go and make my mother +happy, who with most gentle tears is calling upon me.' +And they went forthwith, and came to the room where +our Lady was praying, and with gentle tears asking +God to give her back her son, saying it was to-day the +third day. And as she stayed thus, Messer Giesù drew +near to her on one side, and said: 'Peace and cheerfulness +be with thee, Holy Mother.' And straightway she +recognised the voice of her blessed son, and opened her +eyes and beheld him thus glorious, and threw herself +down wholly on the ground and worshipped him. And +the Lord Jesus knelt himself down like her; and then +they rose to their feet and embraced one another most +sweetly, and gave each other peace, and then went and +sat together," while all the holy people from Limbo +looked on in admiration, and knelt down one by one, +first the Baptist, and Adam and Eve, and all the others, +saluting the mother of Christ, while the angels sang the +end of all sorrows.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>VII</h3> + +<p>There would be much to say on this subject. One +might point out, for instance, not only that Dante has +made the lady he loved in his youth into the heroine—a +heroine smiling in fashion more womanlike than +theological—of his vision of hell and heaven; but what +would have been even less possible at any previous +moment of the world's history, he has interwoven +his theogony so closely with strands of most human +emotion and passion (think of that most poignant of +love dramas in the very thick of hell!), that, instead of +a representation, a chart, so to speak, of long-forgotten +philosophical systems, his poem has become a picture, +pattern within pattern, of the life of all things: flowers +blowing, trees waving, men and women moving and +speaking in densest crowds among the flaming rocks of +hell, the steps of purgatory, the planispheres of heaven's +stars making the groundwork of that wondrous tapestry. +But it is better to read Dante than to read about Dante, +so I let him be.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, and lest some one take Puritanic +umbrage at my remarks on early Italian art, and deprecate +the notion that religious painters could be so +very human, I shall say a few parting words about the +religious painter, the saint <i>par excellence</i>, I mean the +Blessed Angelico. Heaven forbid I should attempt to +turn him into a brother Lippo, of the Landor or Browning +pattern! He was very far indeed, let alone from +profanity, even from such flesh and blood feeling as +that of Jacopone and scores of other blessed ones. He +was, emotionally, rather bloodless; and whatsoever +energy he had probably went in tussels with the technical +problems of the day, of which he knew much more, +for all his cloistered look, than I suspected when I wrote +of him before. Angelico, to return to the question, was +not a St. Francis, a Fra Jacopone. But even Angelico +had his passionately human side, though it was only the +humanness of a nice child. In a life of hard study, +and perhaps hard penance, that childish blessed one +nourished childish desires—desires for green grass +and flowers, for gay clothes,<a href="#fn5"><sup><small>5</small></sup></a><a name="fn5r" id="fn5r"></a> for prettily-dressed pink +and lilac playfellows, for the kissing and hugging in +which he had no share, for the games of the children +outside the convent gate. How human, how ineffably +full of a good child's longing, is not his vision of Paradise! +The gaily-dressed angels are leading the little +cowled monks—little baby black and white things, +with pink faces like sugar lambs and Easter rabbits—into +deep, deep grass quite full of flowers, the sort of +grass every child on this wicked earth has been cruelly +forbidden to wade in! They fall into those angels' +arms, hugging them with the fervour of children in the +act of <i>loving</i> a cat or a dog. They join hands with those +angels, outside the radiant pink and blue toy-box towers +of the celestial Jerusalem, and go singing "Round the +Mulberry Bush" much more like the babies in Kate +Greenaway's books than like the Fathers of the Church +in Dante. The joys of Paradise, for this dear man of God, +are not confined to sitting <i>ad dexteram domini</i>….</p> + +<p><i>Di questo nostro dolce Fratellino</i>; that line of Jacopone +da Todi, hymning to the child Christ, sums up, in +the main, the vivifying spirit of early Italian art; nay, is +it not this mingled emotion of tenderness, of reverence, +and deepest brotherhood which made St. Francis claim +sun and birds, even the naughty wolf, for brethren? +This feeling becomes embodied, above all, in the very +various army of charming angels; and more particularly, +perhaps, because Venice had no other means of +expression than painting, in the singing and playing +angels of the old Venetians. These angels, whether +they be the girlish, long-haired creatures, robed in +orange and green, of Carpaccio; or the naked babies, +with dimpled little legs and arms, and filetted silky +curls of Gian Bellini, seem to concentrate into music +all the many things which that strong pious Venice, +tongue-tied by dialect, had no other way of saying; and +we feel to this day that it sounds in our hearts and +attunes them to worship or love or gentle contemplation. +The sound of those lutes and pipes, of those +childish voices, heard and felt by the other holy persons +in those pictures—Roman knight Sebastian, +Cardinal Jerome, wandering palmer Roch, and all +the various lovely princesses with towers and palm +boughs in their hands—moreover brings them together, +unites them in one solemn blissfulness round the +enthroned Madonna. These are not people come together +by accident to part again accidentally; they +are eternal, part of a vision disclosed to the pious +spectator, a crowning of the Mass with its wax-lights +and songs.</p> + +<p>But the Venetian playing and singing angels are +there for something more important still. Those +excellent old painters understood quite well that in +the midst of all this official, doge-like ceremony, it +was hard, very hard lines for the poor little Christ +Child, having to stand or lie for ever, for ever among +those grown-up saints, on the knees of that majestic +throning Madonna; since the oligarchy, until very late, +allowed no little playfellow to approach the Christ +Child, bringing lambs and birds and such-like, and +leading Him off to pick flowers as in the pictures of +those democratic Tuscans and Umbrians. None of +that silly familiarity, said stately Venetian piety. But +the painters were kinder. They incarnated their sympathy +in the baby music-making angels, and bade them +be friendly to the Christ Child. They are so; and +nowhere does it strike one so much as in that fine +picture, formerly called Bellini, but more probably +Alvise Vivarini, at the Redentore, where the Virgin, +in her lacquer-scarlet mantle, has ceased to be human +altogether, and become a lovely female Buddha in contemplation, +absolutely indifferent to the poor little +sleeping Christ. The little angels have been sorry. +Coming to make their official music, they have brought +each his share of heaven's dessert: a little offering of +two peaches, three figs, and three cherries on one stalk +(so precious therefore!), placed neatly, spread out to +look much, not without consciousness of the greatness +of the sacrifice. They have not, those two little +angels, forgotten, I am sure, the gift they have brought, +during that rather weary music-making before the +inattentive Madonna. They keep on thinking how +Christ will awake to find all those precious things, +and they steel their little hearts to the sacrifice. The +little bird who has come (invited for like reason) and +perched on the curtain bar, understands it all, respects +their feelings, and refrains from pecking.</p> + +<p>Such is the heart of the saints, and out of it comes +the painted triumph of <i>El Magno Jesulino</i>.</p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="minimal" /> +<p> </p> +<h3><a name="THE_IMAGINATIVE_ART_OF_THE_RENAISSANCE" id="THE_IMAGINATIVE_ART_OF_THE_RENAISSANCE"></a>THE IMAGINATIVE ART OF THE RENAISSANCE</h3> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>In a Florentine street through which I pass most days, +is a house standing a little back (the place is called +the Square of Purgatory), the sight of which lends to +that sordid street of stained palace backs, stables, and +dingy little shops, a certain charm and significance, in +virtue solely of three roses carved on a shield over a +door. The house is a humble one of the sixteenth +century, and its three roses have just sufficient resemblance +to roses, with their pincushion heads and straight +little leaves, for us to know them as such. Yet that +rude piece of heraldic carving, that mere indication +that some one connected with the house once thought +of roses, is sufficient, as I say, to give a certain pleasurableness +to the otherwise quite unpleasurable street.</p> + +<p>This is by no means an isolated instance. In various +places, as emblems of various guilds or confraternities, +one meets similarly carved, on lintel or escutcheon, +sheaves of lilies, or what is pleasanter still, that +favourite device of the Renaissance (become well known +as the monogram of the painter Benvenuto Garofalo), a +jar with five clove-pinks. And on each occasion of +meeting them, that carved lily and those graven clove-pinks, +like the three roses in the Square of Purgatory, +have shed a charm over the street, given me a pleasure +more subtle than that derived from any bed of real +lilies, or pot of real clove-pinks, or bush of real roses; +colouring and scenting the street with this imaginary +colour and perfume. What train of thought has been +set up? It would be hard to say. Something too +vague to be perceived except as a whole impression of +pleasure; a half-seen vision, doubtless, of the real +flowers, of the places where they grow; perhaps even +a faint reminiscence, a dust of broken and pounded +fragments, of stories and songs into which roses enter, +or lilies, or clove-pinks.</p> + +<p>Hereby hangs a whole question of æsthetics. Those +three stone roses are the type of one sort of imaginative +art; of one sort of art which, beyond or independent +of the charm of visible beauty, possesses a charm +that acts directly upon the imagination. Such charm, +or at least such interest, may be defined as the literary +element in art; and I should give it that name, did it +not suggest a dependence upon the written word which +I by no means intend to imply. It is the element +which, unlike actual representation, is possessed by +literature as well as by art; indeed, it is the essence of +the former, as actual representation is of the latter. +But it belongs to art, in the cases when it belongs to it +at all, not because the artist is in any way influenced +by the writer, but merely because the forms represented +by the artist are most often the forms of really +existing things, and fraught, therefore, with associations +to all such as know them; and because, also, the artist +who presents these forms is a human being, and as +such not only sees and draws, but feels and thinks; +because, in short, literature being merely the expression +of habits of thought and emotion, all such art as +deals with the images of real objects tends more or +less, in so far as it is a human being, to conform to its +type.</p> + +<p>This is one kind of artistic imagination, this which +I have rudely symbolised in the symbol of the three +carved roses—the imagination which delights the mind +by holding before it some charming or uncommon +object, and conjuring up therewith a whole train of +feeling and fancy; the school, we might call it, of intellectual +decoration, of arabesques formed not of lines +and colours, but of associations and suggestions. And +to this school of the three carved roses in the Square +of Purgatory belong, among others, Angelico, Benozzo, +Botticelli, and all those Venetians who painted piping +shepherds, and ruralising magnificent ladies absorbed +in day-dreams.</p> + +<p>But besides this kind of imagination in art, there is +another and totally different. It is the imagination of +how an event would have looked; the power of understanding +and showing how an action would have taken +place, and how that action would have affected the +bystanders; a sort of second-sight, occasionally rising +to the point of revealing, not merely the material aspect +of things and people, but the emotional value of the +event in the eyes of the painter. Thus, for instance, +Tintoret concentrated a beam of sunlight into the +figure of Christ before Pilate, not because he supposed +Christ to have stood in that sunlight, but because the +white figure, shining yet ghost-like, seemed to him, +perhaps unconsciously, to indicate the position of the +betrayed Saviour among the indifference and wickedness +of the world. Hence I would divide all imaginative art, +particularly that of the old Italian masters, into art +which stirs our own associations, and suggests to us +trains of thought and feeling perhaps unknown to the +artist, and art which exhibits a scene or event foreign +to ourselves, and placed before us with a deliberate +intention. Both are categories of imaginative activity +due to inborn peculiarities of character; but one of +them, namely, the suggestive, is probably spontaneous, +and quite unintentional, hence never asked for by the +public, nor sought after by the artist; while the other, +self-conscious and intentional, is therefore constantly +sought after by the artist, and bargained for by the +public. I shall begin with the latter, because it is the +recognised commodity: artistic imagination, as bought +and sold in the market, whether of good quality +or bad.</p> +<p> </p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>The painters of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth +century, developing the meagre suggestions of Byzantine +decoration, incorporating the richer inventions of the +bas-reliefs of the Pisan sculptors and of the medallions +surrounding the earliest painted effigies of holy personages, +produced a complete set of pictorial themes +illustrative of Gospel history and of the lives of the +principal saints. These illustrative themes—definite +conceptions of situations and definite arrangements of +figures—became forthwith the whole art's stock, +universal and traditional; few variations were made +from year to year and from master to master, and +those variations resolved themselves continually back +into the original type. And thus on, through the +changes in artistic means and artistic ends, until the +Italian schools disappeared finally before the schools of +France and Flanders. Let us take a striking example. +The presentation of the Virgin remains unaltered in +main sentiment and significance of composition, despite +the two centuries and more which separate the Gaddi +from Titian and Tintoret, despite the complete change +in artistic aims and methods separating still more +completely the men of the fourteenth century from +the men of the sixteenth. The long flight of steps +stretching across the fresco in Santa Croce stretches +also across the canvas of the great Venetians; and the +little girl climbs up them alike, presenting her profile +to the spectator; although at the top of the steps there +is in one case a Gothic portal, and in the other a +Palladian portico, and at the bottom of the steps in +the fresco stand Florentines who might personally have +known Dante, and at the bottom of the steps in the +pictures the Venetian patrons of Aretino. Yet the +presentation of the little maiden to the High Priest +is quite equally conceivable in many other ways and +from many other points of view. As regards both +dramatic conception and pictorial composition, the +moment might have been differently chosen; the child +might still be with its parents or already with the priest; +and the flight of steps might have been replaced by the +court of the temple. Any man might have invented his +own representation of the occurrence. But the men of +the sixteenth century adhered scrupulously or indifferently +to the inventions of the men of the fourteenth.</p> + +<p>This is merely one instance in a hundred. If we +summon up in our mind as many as we can of the +various frescoes and pictures representing the chief +incidents of Scripture history, we shall find that, while +there are endless differences between them with respect +to drawing, anatomy, perspective, light and shade, +colour and handling, there are but few and slight +variations as regards the conception of the situation +and the arrangement for the figures. In the Marriage +of the Virgin the suitors are dressed, sometimes in the +loose robe and cap with lappets of the days of Giotto, +and sometimes in the tight hose and laced doublet of +the days of Raphael and of Luini; but they break their +wands across their knees with the same gesture and +expression; and although the temple is sometimes close +at hand, and sometimes a little way off, the wedding +ceremony invariably takes place outside it, and not +inside. The shepherds in the Nativity are sometimes +young and sometimes old, but they always come in +broad daylight, and the manger by which the Virgin +is kneeling is always outside the stable, and always in +one corner of the picture. Again, whatever slight +difference there may be in the expression and gesture +of the apostles at the Last Supper, they are always +seated on one side only of a table facing the spectator, +with Judas alone on a stool on the opposite side. And +although there are two themes of the Entombment +of Christ, one where the body is stretched on the +ground, the other where it is being carried to the +sepulchre, the action is always out of doors, and never, +as might sometimes be expected, gives us the actual +burial in the vault. These examples are more than +sufficient. Yet I feel that any description in words is +inadequate to convey the extreme monotony of all +these representations, because the monotony is not +merely one of sentiment by selection of the dramatic +moment, but of the visible composition of the paintings, +of the outlines of the groups and the balancing of them. +A monotony so complete that any one of us almost +knows what to expect, in all save technical matters +and the choice of models, on being told that in such a +place there is an old Italian fresco, or panel, or canvas, +representing some principal episode of Gospel history.</p> + +<p>The explanation of this fidelity to one theme of +representation in an art which was the very furthest +removed from any hieratic prescriptions, in an art +which was perpetually growing—and growing more +human and secular—must be sought for, I think, in +no peculiarities of spiritual condition or national +imagination, but in two facts concerning the merely +technical development of painting, and the results +thereof. These two facts are briefly: that at a given +moment—namely, the end of the thirteenth century +and the beginning of the fourteenth—there existed +just enough power of imitating nature to admit of the +simple indication of a dramatic situation, without +further realisation of detail; and that at this moment, +consequently, there originated such pictorial indications +of the chief dramatic situations as concerned the +Christian world. And secondly, that from then and +until well into the sixteenth century, the whole attention +of artists was engrossed in changing the powers +of indication into powers of absolute representation, +developing completely the drawing, anatomy, perspective, +colour, light and shade, and handling, which +Giotto and his contemporaries had possessed only in a +most rudimentary condition, and which had sufficed for +the creation of just such pictorial themes as they had +invented, and no more.</p> + +<p>Let me explain myself further. The artists of the +fourteenth century, with the exception of Giotto himself—to +whose premature excellence none of his contemporaries +and disciples ever attained—give us, by +means of pictorial representation, just about the same +as could be given to us by the conventional symbolism +of writing. In describing a Giottesque fresco, or +panel, we are not stopped by the difficulty of rendering +visible effects in words, because the visible effects that +meet us are in reality so many words; so that, to +describe the picture, it almost suffices to narrate the +story, no arrangements of different planes and of light +and shade, no peculiarities of form, foreshortening, +colour, or texture requiring to be seen in order to be +fully understood. The artists of the fifteenth century—for +the Giottesques do little more than carry, without +developing them, the themes of Giotto into various +parts of Italy—work at adding to the art exactly +those qualities which belong exclusively to it, and +which baffle the mere written word: they acquire the +means, slowly and laboriously, of showing these events +no longer merely to the mind, but also to the eye; +they place these people in real space, in real relations +of distance and light, they give them a real body +which can stand and move, made of real flesh and +blood and bones, and covered with real clothes; they +turn these abstractions once more into realities like +the realities of nature whence they had been abstracted. +But the work of the fifteenth century does +not go beyond filling up the programme indicated by the +Giottesques; and it is only after the men of the +sixteenth century have been enabled to completely +realise all that the men of the fourteenth century had +indicated, that art, with Michelangelo, Tintoret, and +still more with the great painters of Spain and +Flanders, proceeds to encounter problems of foreshortening, +of light and shade, of atmospheric effect, +that could never have been imagined by the contemporaries +of Giotto, nor even by the contemporaries of +Ghirlandaio and the Bellini. Hence, throughout the +fifteenth century, while there is a steady development +of the artistic means required to realise those narrative +themes which the Giottesques had invented, there is +no introduction of any new artistic means unnecessary +for this result, but which, like the foreshortenings of +Michelangelo, and the light and shade of Tintoret, like +the still further additions to painting represented by +men like Velasquez and Rembrandt, could suggest new +treatment of the old histories and enable the well-known +events to be shown from totally new intellectual +standpoints, and in totally new artistic arrangements. +If we look into the matter, we shall recognise that the +monotony of representation throughout the Renaissance +can be amply accounted for without referring to the +fact, which, however, doubtless went for something, +that the men of the fifteenth century were too much +absorbed in the working out of details to feel any +desire for new pictorial versions of the stories of the +Gospel, and the lives of the Saints.</p> + +<p>Moreover, the Giottesques—among whom I include +the immediate precursors, sculptors as well as painters, +of Giotto—put into their Scripture stories an amount +of logic, of sentiment, of dramatic and psychological +observation and imagination more than sufficient to +furnish out the works of three generations of later +comers. Setting aside Giotto himself, who concentrates +and diffuses the vast bulk of dramatic invention +as well as of artistic observation and skill, there is in +even the small and smallest among his followers, an +extraordinary happiness of individual invention of +detail. I may quote a few instances at random. It +would be difficult to find a humbler piece of work than +the so-called Tree of the Cross, in the Florentine +Academy: a thing like a huge fern, with medallion +histories in each frond, it can scarcely be considered a +work of art, and stands halfway between a picture and +a genealogical tree. Yet in some of its medallions +there is a great vivacity of imaginative rendering; for +instance, the Massacre of the Innocents represented by +a single soldier, mailed and hooded, standing before +Herod on a floor strewn with children's bodies, and +holding up an infant by the arm, like a dead hare, +preparing slowly to spit it on his sword; and the kiss +of Judas, the soldiers crowding behind, while the +traitor kisses Christ, seems to bind him hand and foot +with his embraces, to give him up, with that stealthy +look backwards to the impatient rabble—a representation +of the scene, infinitely superior in its miserable +execution to Angelico's Ave Rabbi! with its elaborate +landscape of towers and fruit trees. Again, in a series +of predella histories of the Virgin, in the same place, +also a very mediocre and anonymous work, there is +extraordinary charm in the conception of the respective +positions of Mary and Joseph at their wedding: he is +quite old and grey; she young, unformed, almost a +child, and she has to stand on two steps to be on his +level, raising her head with a beautiful, childlike +earnestness, quite unlike the conventional bridal +timidity of other painters. Leaving these unknown +mediocrities, I would refer to the dramatic value (besides +the great pictorial beauty) of an Entombment by +Giottino, in the corridor of the Uffizi: the Virgin does +not faint, or has recovered (thus no longer diverting +the attention from the dead Saviour to herself, as elsewhere), +and surrounds the head of her son with her +arms; the rest of the figures restrain themselves before +her, and wink with strange blinking efforts to keep +back their tears. Still more would I speak of two small +frescoes in the Baroncelli Chapel at Santa Croce, which +are as admirable in poetical conception as they are unfortunately +poor in artistic execution. One of them +represents the Annunciation to the Shepherds: they +are lying in a grey, hilly country, wrapped in grey +mists, their flock below asleep, but the dog vigilant, +sniffing the supernatural. One is hard asleep; the other +awakes suddenly, and has turned over and looks up +screwing his eyes at the angel, who comes in a pale +yellow winter sunrise cloud, in the cold, grey mist veined +with yellow. The chilliness of the mist at dawn, the +wonder of the vision, are felt with infinite charm. In +the other fresco the three kings are in a rocky place, +and to them appears, not the angel, but the little child +Christ, half-swaddled, swimming in orange clouds on a +deep blue sky. The eldest king is standing, and points +to the vision with surprise and awe; the middle-aged +one shields his eyes coolly to see; while the youngest, +a delicate lad, has already fallen on his knees, and is +praying with both hands crossed on his breast. For +dramatic, poetic invention, these frescoes can be surpassed, +poor as is their execution, only by Giotto's St. +John ascending slowly from the open grave, floating +upwards, with outstretched arms and illumined face, +to where a cloud of prophets, with Christ at their head, +enwraps him in the deep blue sky.</p> + +<p>These pictorial themes elaborated by the painters of +the school of Giotto were not merely as good, in a way, +as any pictorial themes could be: simple, straightforward, +often very grand, so that the immediately following +generations could only spoil, but not improve +upon them; they were also, if we consider the matter, +the only pictorial representations of Scripture histories +possible until art had acquired those new powers of +foreshortening, and light and shade and perspective, +which were sought for only after the complete attainment +of the more elementary powers which the +Giottesques never fully possessed. Let us ask +ourselves how, in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, +any notable change in general arrangement of any +well-known Scripture subject could well have been +introduced; and, in order to do so, let us realise one +or two cases where the same subjects have been +treated by later masters. Tintoretto's Last Judgment, +where the Heavenly Hosts brood, poised on their +wings, above the river of hell which hurries the +damned down its cataracts, is impossible so long as +perspective and foreshortening will barely admit (as +is the case up to the end of the fifteenth century), +of figures standing firmly on the ground and being +separated into groups at various distances. In Rembrandt's +and Terburg's Adoration of the Shepherds, +the light emanates from the infant Christ; in Ribera's +magnificent Deposition from the Cross, the dead +Saviour and His companions are represented, not, as in +the Entombments of Perugino and Raphael, in the +open air, but in the ghastly light of the mouth of the +sepulchre. These are new variations upon the hackneyed +themes, but how were they possible so long as +the problems of light and shade were limited (as was +the case even with Leonardo), to giving the modelling, +rather in form than in colour, of a face or a limb? +One of the earliest and greatest innovations is Signorelli's +treatment of the Resurrection in the chapel +of San Brizio, at Orvieto; he broke entirely with the +tradition (exemplified particularly by Angelico) of +making the dead come fully fleshed and dressed as in +their lifetime from under the slabs of a burial place, +goaded by grotesque devils with the snouts and horns +of weasels and rams, with the cardboard masks of +those carnival mummers who gave the great pageant +of Hell mentioned by old chroniclers. But Signorelli's +innovation, his naked figures partially fleshed and +struggling through the earth's crust, his naked demons +shooting through the air and tying up the damned, +could not possibly have been executed or even conceived +until his marvellous mastery of the nude and of +the anatomy of movement had been obtained. Indeed, +wherever, in the art of the fifteenth century, we find a +beginning of innovation in the conception and arrangement +of a Scripture history, we shall find also the +beginning of the new technical method which has +suggested such a partial innovation. Thus, in the +case of one of the greatest, but least appreciated, +masters of the early Renaissance, Paolo Uccello. His +Deluge, in the frescoes of the green cloister of S. Maria +Novella, is wonderfully original as a whole conception; +and the figure clinging to the side of the ark, with +soaked and wind-blown drapery; the man in a tub +trying to sustain himself with his hands, the effort +and strain of the people in the water, are admirable +as absolute realisation of the scene. Again, in the +Sacrifice of Noah, there is in the foreshortened figure +of God, floating, brooding, like a cloud, with face downward +and outstretched hands over the altar, something +which is a prophecy, and more than a prophecy, of +what art will come to in the Sixtine and the Loggie. +But these inventions are due to Uccello's special and +extraordinary studies of the problems of modelling and +foreshortening; and when his contemporaries try to +assimilate his achievements, and unite them with the +achievements of other men in other special technical +directions, there is an end of all individual poetical +conception, and a relapse into the traditional arrangements; +as may be seen by comparing the Bible stories +of Paolo Uccello with those of Benozzo Gozzoli at Pisa.</p> + +<p>It is not wonderful that the painters of the fifteenth +century should have been satisfied with repeating the +themes left by the Giottesques. For the Giottesques +had left them, besides this positive heritage, a negative +heritage, a programme to fill up, of which it is difficult +to realise the magnitude. The work of the Giottesques +is so merely poetic, or at most so merely decorative in +the sense of a mosaic or a tapestry, and it is in the +case of Giotto and one or two of his greatest contemporaries, +particularly the Sienese, so well-balanced +and satisfying as a result of its elementary nature +that we are apt to overlook the fact that everything +in the way of realisation as opposed to indication, +everything distinguishing the painting of a story from +the mere telling thereof, remained to be done. And +such realisation could be attained only through a +series of laborious failures. It is by comparing some +of the later Giottesques themselves, notably the Gaddi +with Giotto, that we bring home to ourselves, for +instance, that Giotto did not, at least in his finest +work at Florence, attempt to model his frescoes in +colour. Now the excessive ugliness of the Gaddi +frescoes at St. Croce is largely due to the effort to +make form and boss depend, as in nature, upon colour. +Giotto, in the neighbouring Peruzzi and Bardi chapels, +is quite satisfied with outlining the face and draperies +in dark paint, and laying on the colour, in itself +beautiful, as a child will lay it on to a print or outline +drawing, filling up the lines, but not creating +them. I give this as a solitary instance of one of the +first and most important steps towards pictorial +realisation which the great imaginative theme-inventors +left to their successors. As a fact, the items +at which the fifteenth century had to work are too +many to enumerate; in many cases each man or +group of men took up one particular item, as perspective, +modelling, anatomy, colour, movement, and +their several subdivisions, usually with the result of +painful and grotesque insistency and onesidedness, +from the dreadful bag of bones anatomies of Castagno +and Pollaiolo, down to the humbler, but equally necessary, +architectural studies of Francesco di Giorgio. +Add to this the necessity of uniting the various attainments +of such specialists, of taming down these often +grotesque monomaniacs, of making all these studies +of drawing, anatomy, colour, modelling, perspective, +&c., into a picture. If that picture was lacking in +individual poetic conception; if those studies were +often intolerably silly and wrong-headed from the +intellectual point of view; if the old themes were not +only worn threadbare, but actually maltreated, what +wonder? The themes were there, thank Heaven! no +one need bother about them; and no one did. Moreover, +as I have already pointed out, no one could have +added anything, save in the personal sentiment of the +heads, the hands, the tilt of the figure, or the quality +of the form. Everything which depends upon dramatic +conception, which is not a question of form or sentiment, +tended merely to suffer a steady deterioration. +Thus, nearly two hundred years after Giotto, Ghirlandaio +could find nothing better for his frescoes in St. +Trinità than the arrangement of Giotto's St. Francis, +with the difference that he omitted all the more delicate +dramatic distinctions. I have already alluded to the +poetic conception of an early Marriage of the Virgin +in the Florence Academy; that essential point of the +extreme youth of Mary was never again attended to, +although the rest of the arrangement was repeated for +two centuries. Similarly, no one noticed or reproduced +the delicate distinctions of action which Gaddi had +put into his two Annunciations of the Cappella +Baroncelli; the shepherds henceforth sprawled no +matter how; and the scale of expression in the vision +of the Three Kings was not transferred to the more +popular theme of their visit to the stable at Bethlehem. +In Giotto's Presentation at the Temple in the Arena +chapel at Padua, the little Mary is pushed up the +steps by her mother; in the Baroncelli frescoes the +little girl, ascending gravely, turns round for a minute +to bless the children at the foot of the steps. Here +are two distinct dramatic conceptions, the one more +human, the other more majestic; both admirable. +The fifteenth century, nay, the fourteenth, took no +account of either; the Virgin merely went up the +steps, connected by no emotion with the other characters, +a mere little doll, as she is still in the big +pictures of Titian and Tintoret, and quite subordinate +to any group of richly dressed men or barebacked +women. It is difficult to imagine any miracle quite so +dull as the Raising of the King's Son in the Brancacci +Chapel; its dramatic or undramatic foolishness is +surpassed only by certain little panels of Angelico, +with fiery rain and other plagues coming down upon +the silly blue and pink world of dolls.</p> + +<p>A satisfactory study of the lack of all dramatic invention +of the painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth +centuries is afforded by the various representations of +the Annunciation of the Virgin, one of the favourite +themes of the early Renaissance. It never seems to +have occurred to any one that the Virgin and the +Archangel might be displayed otherwise than each in +one corner of the picture. Such a composition as +that of Rossetti's Ancilla Domini, where the Virgin +cowers on her bed as the angel floats in with flames +round his feet; such a suggestion as that of the unfinished +lily on the embroidery frame, was reserved +for our sceptical and irreverent, but imaginative +times.</p> + +<p>The variety in these Annunciations depends, as I +have remarked, not upon a new dramatic conception, +producing, as in the case of Rossetti's, a new visible +arrangement; but upon the particular kind of form +preferred by the artist, and the particular kind of +expression common in his pictures; the variety, I may +add, is, with one or two exceptions, a variety in inertness. +Let us look at a few, taking merely those in one +gallery, the Uffizi. The Virgin, in that superb piece of +gilding by Simone Martini (did those old painters ever +think of the glorified evening sky when they devised +such backgrounds?), is turning away from the angel in +sheer loathing and anger, a great lady feeling sick at +the sudden intrusion of a cad. In a picture by Angelo +Gaddi, she is standing with her hand on her chest, +just risen from her chair, like a prima donna going to +answer an <i>encore</i>—a gracious, but not too eager recognition +of an expected ovation. In one by Cosimo +Rossetti she lifts both hands with shocked astonishment +as the angel scuddles in; in the lovely one, with +blue Alpine peaks and combed-out hair, now given to +Verocchio, she raises one hand with a vacant smile, as +if she were exclaiming, "Dear me! there's that angel +again." The one slight deviation from the fixed type +of Annunciation, Angelico's, in a cell at St. Mark's, +where he has made the Virgin kneel and the angel +stand, merely because he had painted another Annunciation +with a kneeling angel a few doors off, is due to no +dramatic inspiration. The angel standing upright with +folded arms (how different from Rossetti's standing +angel!) while the Virgin kneels, instead of kneeling to +her as, according to etiquette, results merely in an +impression that this silly, stolid, timid little <i>Ancilla +Domini</i> (here again one thinks of Rossetti's cowering +and dazed Virgin), has been waiting for some time in +that kneeling attitude, and that the Archangel has come +by appointment.</p> + +<p>Among this crowd of unimpressive, nay brainless, +representations of one of the grandest and sweetest of +all stories, there stand out two—an Annunciation by +Signorelli, a small oil painting in the Uffizi, and one by +Botticelli,<a href="#fn6"><sup><small>6</small></sup></a><a name="fn6r" id="fn6r"></a> a large tempera picture in the same room. +But they stand out merely because the one is the +work of the greatest early master of form and movement, +or rather the master whose form and movement +had a peculiar quality of the colossal; and the other +is the work of the man, of all Renaissance painters, +whose soul seems to have known most of human, or +rather feminine wistfulness, and sorrow, and passion.</p> + +<p>The little panel by Signorelli (the lowest compartment, +divided into three, of an altar-piece) is perhaps, +besides the Orvieto <i>Resurrection</i>, his most superb and +poetical work. The figures, only three inches high, +have his highest quality of powerful grandeur, solemnly +rustic in the kneeling shepherds—solemn in the very +swagger, hand on hip, of the parti-coloured bravoes of +the Magi; the landscape, only a few centimetres across, +is one of the amplest and most austere that ever has +been painted: a valley, bounded by blue hills and dark +green ilex groves, wide, silent, inhabited by a race +larger and stronger than the human, with more than +human passions, but without human speech. In it the +Virgin is seated beneath a portico, breathing, as such +creatures must breathe, the vast greenness, the deep +evening breeze. And to her comes bounding, with +waving draperies and loosened hair, the Archangel, +like a rushing wind, the wind which the strong woman +is quietly inhaling. There is no religious sentiment +here, still less any human: the Madonna bows gravely +as one who is never astonished; and, indeed, this race +of giants, living in this green valley, look as if nothing +could ever astonish them—walking miracles themselves, +and in constant relation with the superhuman.</p> + +<p>We must forget all such things in turning to that +Annunciation of Botticelli. The angel has knelt down +vehemently, but drawn himself back, frightened at his +own message; moved overmuch and awed by what he has +to say, and her to whom he must say it; lifting a hand +which seems to beg patience, till the speech which is +throbbing in his heart can pass his lips; eagerness defeating +itself, passionate excitement turned into awe in +this young, delicate, passionate, and imaginative creature. +He has not said the word; but she has understood. +She has seen him before; she knows what he means, this +vehement, tongue-tied messenger; and at his sight she +reels, her two hands up, the beating of her own blood +too loud in her ears, a sudden mist of tears clouding +her eyes. This is no simple damsel receiving the +message, like Rossetti's terrified and awe-stricken girl, +that she is the handmaid of the Lord. This is the nun +who has been waiting for years to become Christ's own +bride, and receives at length the summons to him, in a +tragic overpowering ecstasy, like Catherine in Sodoma's +fresco, sinking down at the touch of the rays from +Christ's wounds. Nay, this is, in fact, the mere long-loving +woman, suddenly overcome by the approach of +bliss ever hungered for, but never expected, hearing +that it is she who is the beloved; and the angel is the +knight's squire, excited at the message he has to carry, +but terrified at the sight of the woman to whom he +must carry it, panting with the weight of another man's +love, and learning, as he draws his breath to say those +words, what love is himself.</p> + +<p>The absence of individual invention, implying the +absence of individual dramatic realisation, strikes one +more than anywhere in the works of Angelico; and +most of all in his frescoes of the cells of St. Mark's. +For, while these are evidently less cared for as art, +indeed scarcely intended, in their hasty execution, to +be considered as paintings at all, they are more strictly +religious in intention than any other of Angelico's +works; indeed, perhaps, of all paintings in the world, +the most exclusively devoted to a religious object. +They are, in fact, so many pages of Scripture stuck up, +like texts in a waiting-room, in the cells of the convent: +an adjunct to the actual written or printed +Bible of each monk. For this reason we expect them +to possess what belongs so completely to the German +engravers of Dürer's school, the very essential of +illustrative art—imaginative realisation of the scenes, +an attempt to seize the attention and fill it with the +subject. This is by no means the case: for Angelico, +although a saint, was a man of the fifteenth century, +and, despite all his obvious efforts, he was not a real +follower of Giotto. What impressiveness of actual +artistic arrangement these frescoes really possess, is +due, I think, to no imaginative effort of the artist, but +to the exigencies of the place; as any similar impressiveness +is due in Signorelli's Annunciation to the +quality of his form, and in Botticelli's Annunciation to +the pervading character of his heads and gestures. +These pale angels and St. Dominicks and Magdalens, +these diaphanous, dazzling Christs and Virgins of +Angelico's, shining out of the dark corner of the cell +made darker, deeper, by the dark green or inky purple +ground on which they are painted, are less the spiritual +conception of the painter than the accidental result of +the darkness of the place, where lines must be simple +and colours light, if anything is to be visible. For in +the more important frescoes in the corridors and +chapter-room, where the light is better, there is a +return to Angelico's hackneyed vapid pinks and blues +and lilacs, and a return also to his niminy-piminy lines, +to all the wax-doll world of the missal painter. The fine +fresco of St. Dominick at the foot of the cross, which +seems to constitute an exception to this rule, really +goes to prove it, since it is intended to be seen very +much like the cell frescoes: white and black on a blue +ground at the end of the first corridor, a thing to be +looked at from a great distance, to impress the lay +world that sees it at the cloister and from outside the +convent railing. The cell frescoes are, I have said, the +most exclusively religious paintings in the world, since +they are to the highest degree, what all absolutely pious +art must be, <i>aids to devotion</i>. Their use is to assist +the monk in that conjuring up of the actual momentary +feelings, nay, sensations, of the life of Christ which +is part of his daily duty. They are such stimuli as the +Church has given sometimes in an artistic, sometimes +in a literary form, to an imagination jaded by the +monotonous contemplation of one subject, or overexcited +to the extent of rambling easily to another: +they are what we fondly imagine will be the portraits +of the dear dead which we place before us, forgetting +that after a while we look without seeing, or see without +feeling. That this is so, that these painted Gospel +leaves stuck on the cell walls are merely such mechanical +aids to devotion, explains the curious and +startling treatment of some of the subjects, which are +yet, despite the seeming novelty and impressiveness, +very cold, undramatic, and unimaginative. Thus, there +is the fresco of Christ enthroned, blindfold, with alongside +of Him a bodiless scoffing head, with hat raised, +and in the act of spitting; buffeting hands, equally +detached from any body, floating also on the blue background. +There is a Christ standing at the foot of the +cross, but with his feet in a sarcophagus, the column +of the flagellation monumentally or heraldically on +one side, the lance of Longinus on the other; and +above, to the right, the floating face of Christ being +kissed by that of Judas; to the left the blindfold +floating head of Christ again, with the floating head of +a soldier spitting at Him; and all round buffeting and +jibing hands, hands holding the sceptre of reed, and +hands counting out money; all arranged very much +like the nails, hammer, tweezers and cock on roadside +crosses; each a thing whereon to fix the mind, so as to +realise that kiss of Judas, that spitting of the soldiers, +those slaps; and to hear, if possible, the chink of the +pieces of silver that sold our Lord. How different, +these two pictorial dodges of the purely mechanical +Catholicism of the fifteenth century from the tender +or harrowing gospel illustrations, where every detail +is conceived as happening in the artist's own town +and to his own kinsfolk, of the Lutheran engravers +of the school of Dürer!</p> + +<p>Thus things go on throughout the fifteenth century, +and, indeed, deep into the sixteenth, where traditional +arrangement and individual conception overlap, according +as a new artistic power does or does not call forth +a new dramatic idea. I have already alluded to the +fact that the Presentation of the Virgin remains the +same, so far as arrangement is concerned, in the pictures +of Titian and Tintoret as in the frescoes of Giotto and +Gaddi. Michelangelo's Creation of Adam seems still +inherited from an obscure painter in the "Green +Cloister," who inherited it from the Pisan sculptors. +On the other hand, the Resurrection and Last Judgment +of Signorelli at Orvieto, painted some years +earlier, constitutes in many of its dramatic details a +perfectly original work. Be this as it may, and however +frequent the recurrence of old themes, with the +sixteenth century commences the era of new individual +dramatic invention. Michelangelo's Dividing of the +Light from the Darkness, where the Creator broods +still in chaos, and commands the world to exist; and +Raphael's Liberation of St. Peter, with its triple +illumination from the moon, the soldier's torches and +the glory of the liberating angel, are witnesses that +henceforward each man may invent for himself, +because each man is in possession of those artistic +means which the Giottesques had indicated and the +artists of the fifteenth century had laboriously acquired. +And now, the Giottesque programme being fulfilled, art +may go abroad and seek for new methods and effects, +for new dramatic conceptions.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>The other day, walking along the river near Careggi +(with its memories of Lorenzo dei Medici and his +Platonists), close to the little cupola and loggia built +by Ghirlandaio, I came upon a strip of new grass, +thickly whitened with daisies, beneath the poplars +beginning to yellow with pale sprouting leaves. And +immediately there arose in my mind, by the side of this +real grass and real budding of trees, the remembrance +of certain early Renaissance pictures: the rusty, green, +stencilled grass and flowers of Botticelli, the faded +tapestry work of Angelico; making, as it were, the +greenness greener, the freshness fresher, of that real +grass and those real trees. And not by the force of +contrast, but rather by the sense that as all this appears +to me green and fresh in the present, so likewise did it +appear to those men of four centuries ago: the fact of +their having seen and felt, making me, all the more, see +and feel.</p> + +<p>This is one of the peculiarities of rudimentary art—of +the art of the early Renaissance as well as of that of +Persia and India, of Constantinople, of every peasant +potter all through the world: that, not knowing very +well its own aims, it fills its imperfect work with suggestion +of all manner of things which it loves, and tries +to gain in general pleasurableness what it loses in actual +achievement; and lays hold of us, like fragments of +verse, by suggestiveness, quite as much as by pictorial +realisation. And upon this depends the other half of +the imaginative art of the Renaissance, the school of +intellectual decoration, of arabesques formed, not of +lines and of colours, but of associations and suggestions.</p> + +<p>The desire which lies at the bottom of it—a desire +masked as religious symbolism in the old mosaicists +and carvers and embroiderers—is the desire to paint +nice things, in default of painting a fine picture. The +beginning of such attempts is naturally connected with +the use of gilding; whether those gold grounds of the +panel pictures of the fourteenth century represented to +the painters only a certain expenditure of gold foil, or +whether (as I have suggested, but I fear fantastically) +their streakings and veinings of coppery or silvery +splendour, their stencillings of rays and dots and fretwork, +their magnificent inequality and variety of brown +or yellow or greenish effulgence, were vaguely connected +in the minds of those men with the splendour +of the heaven in which the Virgin and the Saints really +dwell. It is the cunning use of this gilding, of tools +for ribbing and stencilling and damascening, which +give half of their marvellous exotic loveliness to Simone +Martini's frescoes at Assisi and his Annunciation of the +Florentine Gallery; this, and the feeling for wonderful +gold woven and embroidered stuffs, like that white +cloth of gold of the kneeling angel, fit, in its purity and +splendour, for the robe of Grail king. The want of +mechanical dexterity, however, prevented the Giottesques +from doing very much in the decorative line +except in conjunction with the art—perhaps quite +separate from that of the painter, and exercised by a +different individual—of the embosser and gilder.</p> + +<p>It is with the fifteenth century that begins, in Italy +as in Flanders (we must think of the carved stonework, +the Persian carpets, the damascened armour, the brocade +dresses of Van Eyck's and Memling's Holy Families), +the deliberate habit of putting into pictures as much as +possible of the beautiful and luxurious things of this +world. The house of the Virgin, originally a very +humble affair, or rather, in the authority of the early +Giottesques, a <i>no place, nowhere</i>, develops gradually into +a very delightful residence in the choicest part of the +town, or into a pleasantly situated villa, like the one +described in the Decameron, commanding a fine view. +The Virgin's bedchamber, where we are shown it, as, +for instance, in Crivelli's picture in the National Gallery, +is quite as well appointed in the way of beautiful bedding, +carving, and so forth, as the chamber of the lady +of John Arnolfini of Lucca in Van Eyck's portrait. +Outside it, as we learn from Angelico, Cosimo Rosselli, +Lippi, Ghirlandaio, indeed, from almost every Florentine +painter, stretches a pleasant portico, decorated in +the Ionic or Corinthian style, as if by Brunellesco or +Sangallo, with tesselated floor, or oriental carpet, and +usually a carved or gilded desk and praying stool; +while the privacy of the whole place is guarded by a +high wall, surmounted by vases, overtopped by cypresses, +and in whose shelter grows a row of well-kept roses +and lilies. Sometimes this house, as I have said, +becomes a villa, as is the case, not unfrequently, with +the Lombards, who love to make the angel appear on +the flowery grass against a background of Alpine peaks, +such as you see them, rising blue and fairylike from the +green ricefields about Pavia. Crivelli, however, though +a Lombard, prefers a genteel residence in town, the +magnificent Milan of Galeazzo and Filippo Visconti. +He gives us a whole street, where richly dressed and +well peruked gentlemen look down from the terraces, +duly set with flower-pots, of houses ornamented with +terra-cotta figures and medallions like those of the +hospital at Milan. In this street the angel of the +Annunciation is kneeling, gorgeously got up in silks +and brocades, and accompanied by a nice little bishop +carrying a miniature town on a tray. The Virgin +seems to be receiving the message through the window +or the open door. She has a beautiful bed with a red +silk coverlet, some books, and a shelf covered with plates +and preserve jars. This evident appreciation of jam, +as one of the pleasant things of this world, corresponds +with the pot of flowers on the window, the bird-cage +hanging up: the mother of Christ must have the little +tastes and luxuries of a well-to-do burgess's daughter. +Again, the cell of St. Jerome, painted some thirty years +later by Carpaccio, in the Church of the Slavonians, +contains not only various convenient and ornamental +articles of furniture, but a collection of nick-nacks, +among which some antique bronzes are conspicuous.</p> + +<p>The charm in all this is not so much that of the +actual objects themselves; it is that of their having +delighted those people's minds. We are pleased by +their pleasure, and our imagination is touched by their +fancy. The effect is akin to that of certain kinds of +poetry, not the dramatic certainly, where we are pleased +by the mere suggestion of beautiful things, and quite +as much by finding in the poet a mind appreciative and +desirous of them, constantly collecting them and enhancing +them by subtle arrangements; it is the case +with much lyric verse, with the Italian folk-rhymes, +woven out of names of flowers and herbs, with some of +Shakespeare's and Fletcher's songs, with the "Allegro" +and "Penseroso," Keats, some of Heine, and, despite a +mixture of unholy intention, Baudelaire. The great +master thereof in the early Renaissance, the lyrist, if +I may use the word, of the fifteenth century, is of +course Botticelli. He is one of those who most persistently +introduce delightful items into their works: +elaborately embroidered veils, scarves, and gold fringes. +But being a man of fine imagination and most delicate +sense of form, he does not, like Angelico or Benozzo or +Carpaccio, merely stick pretty things about; he works +them all into his strange arabesque, half intellectual, +half physical. Thus the screen of roses<a href="#fn7"><sup><small>7</small></sup></a><a name="fn7r" id="fn7r"></a> behind certain +of his Madonnas, forming an exquisite Morris +pattern with the greenish-blue sky interlaced; and +those beautiful, carefully-drawn branches of spruce-fir +and cypress, lace-like in his Primavera; above all, that +fan-like growth of myrtles, delicately cut out against +the evening sky, which not merely print themselves as +shapes upon the mind, but seem to fill it with a scent +of poetry.</p> + +<p>This pleasure in the painter's pleasure in beautiful +things is connected with another quality, higher and +rarer, in this sort of imaginative art. It is our appreciation +of the artist's desire for beauty and refinement, +of his search for the exquisite. Herein, to my mind, +lies some of the secret of Botticelli's fantastic grace; the +explanation of that alternate or rather interdependent +ugliness and beauty. Botticelli, as I have said elsewhere, +must have been an admirer of the grace and +sentiment of Perugino, of the delicacy of form of certain +Florentine sculptors—Ghiberti, and those who proceed +from him, Desiderio, Mino, and particularly the +mysterious Florentine sculptor of Rimini; and what +these men have done or do, Botticelli attempts, despite +or (what is worse) by means of the realistic drawing +and ugly models of Florence, the mechanism and +arrangement of coarse men like the Pollaiolos. The +difficulty of attaining delicate form and sentiment with +such materials—it cannot be said to have been attained +in that sense by any other early Tuscan painter, not +even Angelico or Filippo Lippi—makes the desire but +the keener, and turns it into a most persevering and +almost morbid research. Thence the extraordinary ingenuity +displayed, frequently to the detriment of the +work, in the arrangement of hands (witness the tying, +clutching hands, with fingers bent curiously in intricate +knots, of the Calumny of Apelles), and of drapery; in +the poising of bodies and selection of general outline. +This search for elegance and grace, for the refined and +unhackneyed, is frequently baffled by the ugliness of +Botticelli's models, and still more by Botticelli's deficient +knowledge of anatomy and habit of good form. +But, when not baffled, this desire is extraordinarily +assisted by those very defects. This great decorator, +who uses the human form as so much pattern element, +mere lines and curves like those of a Raffaelesque +arabesque, obtains with his imperfect, anatomically +defective, and at all events ill-fashioned figures, a far-fetched +and poignant grace impossible to a man dealing +with more perfect elements. For grace and distinction, +which are qualities of movement rather than of form, +do not strike us very much in a figure which is originally +well made. The momentary charm of movement +is lost in the permanent charm of form; the creature +could not be otherwise than delightful, made as it is; +and we thus miss the sense of selection and deliberate +arrangement, the sense of beauty as movement, that is, +as grace. Whereas, in the case of defective form, any +grace that may be obtained affects us <i>per se</i>. It need +not have been there; indeed, it was unlikely to be +there; and hence it obtains the value and charm of +the unexpected, the rare, the far-fetched. This, I +think, is the explanation of the something of exotic +beauty that attaches to Botticelli: we perceive the +structural form only negatively, sufficiently to value +all the more the ingenuity of arrangement by which it +is made to furnish a beautiful outline and beautiful +movement; and we perceive the great desire thereof. +If we allow our eye to follow the actual structure of +the bodies, even in the Primavera, we shall recognise +that not one of these figures but is downright deformed +and out of drawing. Even the Graces have arms and +shoulders and calves and stomachs all at random; and +the most beautiful of them has a slice missing out of +her head. But if, instead of looking at heads, arms, +legs, bodies, separately, and separate from the drapery, +we follow the outline of the groups against the background, +drapery clinging or wreathing, arms intertwining, +hands combed out into wonderful fingers; if +we regard these groups of figures as a pattern stencilled +on the background, we recognise that no pattern could +be more exquisite in its variety of broken up and +harmonised lines. The exquisite qualities of all graceful +things, flowers, branches, swaying reeds, and certain +animals like the stag and peacock, seem to have been +abstracted and given to these half-human and wholly +wonderful creatures—these thin, ill put together, unsteady +youths and ladies. The ingenious grace of +Botticelli passes sometimes from the realm of art to +that of poetry, as in the case of those flowers, with +stiff, tall stems, which he places by the uplifted foot of +the middle Grace, thus showing that she has trodden +over it, like Virgil's Camilla, without crushing it. +But the element of sentiment and poetry depends +in reality upon the fascination of movement and +arrangement; fascination seemingly from within, a result +of exquisite breeding in those imperfectly made +creatures. It is the grace of a woman not beautiful, +but well dressed and moving well; the exquisiteness of +a song sung delicately by an insufficient or defective +voice: a fascination almost spiritual, since it seems to +promise a sensitiveness to beauty, a careful avoidance +of ugliness, a desire for something more delicate, a +reverse of all things gross and accidental, a possibility +of perfection.</p> + +<p>This imagination of pleasant detail and accessory, +which delights us by the intimacy into which we are +brought with the artist's innermost conception, develops +into what, among the masters of the fifteenth +century, I should call the imagination of the fairy tale. +A small number of scriptural and legendary stories +lend themselves quite particularly to the development +of such beautiful accessory, which soon becomes the +paramount interest, and vests the whole with a totally +new character: a romantic, childish charm, the charm +of the improbable taken for granted, of the freedom to +invent whatever one would like to see but cannot, the +charm of the fairy story. From this unconscious altering +of the value of certain Scripture tales, arises a romantic +treatment which is naturally applied to all other +stories, legends of saints, biographical accounts, Decameronian +tales (Mr. Leyland once possessed some Botticellian +illustrations of the tale of Nastagio degli +Onesti, the hero of Dryden's "Theodore and Honoria," +a sort of pendant to the Griseldis attributed to Pinturicchio), +and mythological episodes: a new kind of +invention, based upon a desire to please, and as different +from the invention of the Giottesques as the Arabian +Nights are different from Homer.</p> + +<p>I have said that it begins with the unconscious +altering of the values of certain scriptural stories, +owing to the preponderance of detail over accessory. +The chief example of this is the Adoration of the Magi. +In the paintings of the Giottesques, and in the paintings +of the serious, or duller, masters of the fifteenth century—Ghirlandaio, +Rosselli, Filippino, those for whom +the fairy tale could exist no more than for Michelangelo +or Andrea del Sarto—the chief interest in this +episode is the Holy Family, the miraculous Babe whom +these great folk came so far to see. The fourteenth century +made very short work of the kings, allowing them +a minimum of splendour; and those of the fifteenth century, +who cared only for artistic improvement, copied +slavishly, giving the kings their retinue only as they +might have introduced any number of studio models +or burgesses aspiring at portraits, after the fashion of +the Brancacci and S. Maria Novella frescoes, where +spectators of miracles make a point never to look at the +miraculous proceedings. But there were men who felt +differently: the men who loved splendour and detail. +To Gentile da Fabriano, that wonderful man in whom +begins the colour and romance of Venetian painting,<a href="#fn8"><sup><small>8</small></sup></a><a name="fn8r" id="fn8r"></a> +the adoration of the kings could not possibly be what +it had been for the Giottesques, or what it still was for +Angelico. The Madonna, St. Joseph, the child Christ +did not cease to be interesting: he painted them with +evident regard, gave the Madonna a beautiful gold +hem to her dress, made St. Joseph quite unusually +amiable, and shed a splendid gilt glory about the child +Christ. But to him the wonderful part of the business +was not the family in the shed at Bethlehem which the +kings came to see; but those kings themselves, who +came from such a long way off. He put himself at the +point of view of a holy family less persuaded of its +holiness, who should suddenly see a bevy of grand folks +come up to their door: the miraculous was here. The +spiritual glory was of course on the side of the family +of Joseph; but the temporal glory, the glory that +delighted Gentile, that went to his brain and made him +childishly happy, was with the kings and their retinue. +That retinue—the trumpeters prancing on white horses, +with gold lace covers, the pages, the armour-bearers, +the treasurers, the huntsmen with the hounds, the +falconers with the hawks, winding for miles down the +hills, and expanding into the circle of strange and +delightful creatures that kings must have about their +persons: jesters with heads thrown back and eyes +squeezed close, while thinking of some funny jest; +dwarfs and negroes, almost as amusing as their camels +and giraffes; tame lynxes chained behind the saddle, +monkeys perched, jabbering, on the horses' manes—all +this was much more wonderful in Gentile da Fabriano's +opinion than all the wonders of the Church, which +grew somehow less wonderful the more implicitly you +believed in them. Then, in the midst of all these +delightful splendours, the kings themselves! The old +grey-beard in the brown pomegranate embossed brocade +going on all fours, and kissing the little child's feet; +the dark young man, with peaked beard and wistful +face, removing his coroneted turban; and last, but +far from least, the youngest king, the beardless boy, +with the complexion of a well-bred young lady, the +almond eyes and golden hair, standing up in his tunic +of white cloth of silver, while one squire unbuckled his +spurs and another removed his cloak. The darling +little Prince Charming, between whom and the romantic +bearded young king there must for some time have been +considerable rivalry, and alternating views in the minds +of men and the hearts of women (particularly when +the second king, the bearded one, became the John +Palæologus of Benozzo), until it was victoriously borne +in upon the public that this delicate, beardless creature, +so much younger and always the last, must evidently +be <i>the</i> prince, the youngest of the king's sons in the +fairy tales, the one who always succeeds where the two +elder have failed, who gets the Water that Dances and the +Apple Branch that Sings, who carries off the enchanted +oranges, slays the ogre, releases the princess, flies +through the air, the hero, the prince of Fairyland….</p> + +<p>The fairy business of the story of the Three Kings takes +even greater proportions in the delightful frescoes of +Benozzo Gozzoli in the Riccardi Chapel. Here the +Holy Family are suppressed, so to speak, altogether, +tucked into the altar in a picture, and the act of +adoration at Bethlehem becomes the mere excuse for +the romantic adventures of three people of the highest +quality. The journey itself, where Gentile da Fabriano +sums up in that procession twisting about the background +of his picture, here occupies a whole series of +frescoes. And on this journey is concentrated all that +the Renaissance knew of splendour, delightfulness, +and romance. The green valleys, watered by twisting +streams, with matted grasses, which Botticelli puts +behind his enthroned Madonna and victorious Judith; +Angelico's favourite hillsides with blossoming fruit +trees and pointing cypresses; the mysterious firwoods—more +mysterious for their remoteness on the high +Apennines—which fascinate the fancy of Filippo +Lippi; all this is here, and through it all winds the +procession of the Three Kings. There are the splendid +stuffs and Oriental jewels and trappings, the hounds and +monkeys, and jesters and negroes, the falcon on the +wrist, the lynxes chained to the saddle, all the magnificence +dreamed by Gentile da Fabriano; and among it +all ride, met by bevies of peacock-winged angels, kneeling +and singing before the flowering rose-hedges, the +Three Kings. The old man, who looks like some Platonist +philosopher, the beardless prince, surrounded by his +noisy huntsmen and pages; and that dark-bearded +youth in the Byzantine dress and shovel hat, the +genuine king from the East, riding with ardent, wistful +eyes, a beautiful kingly young Quixote: Sir Percival +seeking the Holy Grail, or King Cophetua seeking for +his beggar girl. It is a page of fairy tale, retold by +Boiardo or Spenser.</p> + +<p>After such things as these it is difficult to speak of +those more prosaic tales, really intended as such, on +which the painters of the Renaissance spent their +fancy. Still they have all their charm, these fairy +tales, not of the great poets indeed, but of the +nursery.</p> + +<p>There is, for instance, the story of a good young man +(with a name for a fairy tale too, Æneas Sylvius +Piccolomini!) showing his adventures by land and sea +and at many courts, the honours conferred on him by +kings and emperors, and how at last he was made +Pope, having begun as a mere poor scholar on a grey +nag; all painted by Pinturicchio in the Cathedral +library of Siena. There is the lamentable story of a +bride and bridegroom, by Vittore Carpaccio: the +stately, tall bride, St. Ursula, and the dear little foolish +bridegroom, looking like her little brother; a story +containing a great many incidents: the sending of an +embassy to the King; the King being sorely puzzled in +his mind, leaning his arm upon his bed and asking the +Queen's advice; the presence upon the palace steps +of an ill-favoured old lady, with a crutch and basket, +suspiciously like the bad fairy who had been forgotten +at the christening; the apparition of an angel to the +Princess, sleeping, with her crown neatly put away at +the foot of the bed; the arrival of the big ship in +foreign parts, with the Bishop and Clergy putting their +heads out of the port-holes and asking very earnestly, +"Where are we?" and finally, a most fearful slaughter +of the Princess and her eleven thousand ladies-in-waiting. +The same Carpaccio—a regular old gossip +from whom one would expect all the formulas, "and +then he says to the king, Sacred Crown," "and then +the Prince walks, walks, walks, walks." "A company +of knights in armour nice and shining," "three comely +ladies in a green meadow," and so forth of the professional +Italian story-teller—the same Carpaccio, who was +also, and much more than the more solemn Giovanni +Bellini, the first Venetian to handle oil paints like +Titian and Giorgione, painted the fairy tale of St. George, +with quite the most dreadful dragon's walk, a piece of sea +sand embedded with bones and half-gnawed limbs, and +crawled over by horrid insects, that any one could wish +to see; and quite the most comical dragon, particularly +when led out for execution among the minarets +and cupolas and camels and turbans and symbols of a +kind of small Constantinople.</p> + +<p>One of the funniest of all such series of stories, and +which shows that when the Renaissance men were +driven to it they could still invent, though (apparently) +when they had to invent in this fashion, they +ceased to be able to paint, is the tale of Griseldis, attributed +in our National Gallery to Pinturicchio, but +certainly by a very inferior painter of his school. The +Marquis, after hunting deer on a steep little hill, shaded +by elm trees, sees Griseldis going to a well, a pitcher +on her head. He reins in his white horse, and cranes +over in his red cloak, the young parti-coloured lords-in-waiting +pressing forwards to see her, but only as much +as politeness warrants. Scene II.—A stubbly landscape. +The Marquis, in red and gold cloak and well-combed +yellow head of hair, approaches on foot to the +little pink farm-house. Surprise of old Giannucole, +who is coming down the exterior steps. "Bless my +soul! the Lord Marquis!" "Where is your daughter?" +asks the Marquis, with pointing finger. But the +daughter, hearing voices, has come on to the balcony +and throws up her arms astonished. "Dear me! the +cavalier who accosted me in the wood!" The Marquis +and Grizel walk off, he deferentially dapper, she hanging +back a little in her black smock. Scene III.—The +Marquis, still in purple and gold, and red stockings and +Hessian boots, says with some timidity and much grace, +pointing to the magnificent clothes brought by his +courtiers, "Would you mind, dear Grizel, putting on +these clothes to please me?" But Griseldis is extremely +modest. She tightens her white shift about +her, and doesn't dare look at the cloth of gold dress +which is so pretty. Scene IV.—A triumphal arch, with +four gilt figures. The Marquis daintily, with much +wrist-twisting, offers to put the ring on Griseldis' hand, +who obediently accepts, while pages and trumpeters +hold the Marquis's three horses.</p> + +<p>Act II. Scene I.—A portico. Griseldis reluctantly, +but obediently, gives up her baby. Scene II.—A conspirator +in black cloak and red stockings walks off with +it on the tips of his toes, and then returns and tells the +Marquis that his Magnificence's orders have been executed. +Scene III.—Giannucole, father of Griseldis, +having been sent for, arrives in his best Sunday cloak. +The Marquis in red, with a crown on, says, standing +hand on hip, "You see, after that I really cannot keep +her on any longer." Several small dogs sniff at each +other in the background. Scene V.—Triumphal arch, +with bear chained to it, peacock, tame deer, crowd of +courtiers. A lawyer reads the act of divorce. The +Marquis steps forward to Grizel with hands raised, +"After this kind of behaviour, it is quite impossible for +me to live with you any longer." Griseldis is ladylike +and resigned. The Marquis says with acrimonious +politeness, "I am sorry, madam, I must trouble you to +restore to me those garments before departing from +my house." Griseldis slowly let her golden frock fall to +her feet, then walks off (Scene VI.) towards the little +pink farm, where her father is driving the sheep. The +courtiers look on and say, "Dear, dear, what very +strange things do happen!"</p> + +<p>Act III. Scene I.—Outside Giannucole's farm. The +Marquis below. Griseldis at the balcony. He says, +"I want to hire you as a maid." "Yes, my Lord." +Scene II.—A portico, with a large company at dinner. +The Marquis introduces his supposed bride and brother-in-law, +in reality his own children. He turns round +to Griseldis, who is waiting at table, and bids her be a +little more careful what she is about with those dishes. +Scene III.—Dumb show. Griseldis, in her black smock, +is sweeping out the future Marchioness's chamber. +Scene IV.—At table. The Marquis suddenly bids Griseldis, +who is waiting, come and sit by him; he kisses +her, and points at the supposed bride and brother-in-law. +"Those are our children, dear." A young +footman is quite amazed. Scene V.—A procession of +caparisoned horse, and giraffes carrying monkeys. A +grand supper. "And they live happy ever after."</p> + +<p>But the fairy tale, beyond all others, with these +painters of the fifteenth century, is the antique myth. +No Bibbienas and Bembos and Calvos have as yet indoctrinated +them (as Raphael, alas! was indoctrinated) +with the <i>real spirit of classical times</i>, teaching them +that the essence of antiquity was to have no essence at +all; no Ariostos and Tassos have taught the world at +large the real Ovidian conception, the monumental +allegoric nature and tendency to vacant faces and +sprawling, big-toed nudity of the heroes and goddesses +as Giulio Romano and the Caracci so well understood +to paint them. For all the humanists that hung about +courts, the humanities had not penetrated much into +the Italian people. The imaginative form and colour +was still purely mediæval; and the artists of the +early Renaissance had to work out their Ovidian stories +for themselves, and work them out of their own +material. Hence the mythological creatures of these +early painters are all, more or less, gods in exile, with +that charm of a long residence in the Middle Ages +which makes, for instance, the sweetheart of Ritter +Tannhäuser so infinitely more seductive than the +paramour of Adonis; that charm which, when we meet +it occasionally in literature, in parts of Spenser, for +instance, or in a play like Peel's "Arraignment of +Paris," is so peculiarly delightful.</p> + +<p>These early painters have made up their Paganism +for themselves, out of all pleasant things they knew; +their fancy has brooded upon it; and the very details +that make us laugh, the details coming direct from the +Middle Ages, the spirit in glaring opposition occasionally +to that of Antiquity, bring home to us how completely +this Pagan fairyland is a genuine reality to +these men. We feel this in nearly all the work of that +sort—least, in the archæological Mantegna's. We see +it beginning in the mere single figures—the various +drawings of Orpheus, "Orpheus le doux menestrier +jouant de flutes et de musettes," as Villon called him, +much about that time—piping or fiddling among little +toy animals out of a Nuremberg box; the drawing of +fauns carrying sheep, some with a queer look of the +Good Shepherd about them, of Pinturicchio; and rising +to such wonderful exhibitions (to me, with their obscure +reminiscence of pageants, they always seem like ballets) +as Perugino's Ceiling of the Cambio, where, among +arabesqued constellations, the gods of antiquity move +gravely along: the bearded knight Mars, armed <i>cap-à-pie</i> +like a mediæval warrior; the delicate Mercurius, +a beautiful page-boy stripped of his emblazoned clothes; +Luna dragged along by two nymphs; and Venus daintily +poised on one foot on her dove-drawn chariot, the +exquisite Venus in her clinging veils, conquering the +world with the demure gravity and adorable primness +of a high-born young abbess.</p> + +<p>The actual fairy story becomes, little by little, more +complete—the painters of the fifteenth century work, +little guessing it, are the precursors of Walter Crane. +The full-page illustration of a tale of semi-mediæval +romance—of a romance like Spenser's "Fairy Queen" +or Mr. Morris's "Earthly Paradise," exists distinctly +in that picture and drawing, by the young Raphael or +whomsoever else, of Apollo and Marsyas.<a href="#fn9"><sup><small>9</small></sup></a><a name="fn9r" id="fn9r"></a> This piping +Marsyas seated by the tree stump, this naked Apollo, +thin and hectic like an undressed archangel, standing +against the Umbrian valley with its distant blue hills, +its castellated village, its delicate, thinly-leaved trees—things +we know so well in connection with the Madonna +and Saints, that this seems absent for only a few minutes—all +this is as little like Ovid as the triumphant antique +Galatea of Raphael is like Spenser. Again, there is +Piero di Cosimo's Death of Procris: the poor young +woman lying dead by the lake, with the little fishing +town in the distance, the swans sailing and cranes +strutting, and the dear young faun—no Praxitelian god +with invisible ears, still less the obscene beast whom the +late Renaissance copied from Antiquity—a most gentle, +furry, rustic creature, stooping over her in puzzled, +pathetic concern, at a loss, with his want of the practice +of cities and the knowledge of womankind, what to do +for this poor lady lying among the reeds and the flowering +scarlet sage; a creature the last of whose kind +(friendly, shy, woodland things, half bears or half dogs, +frequent in mediæval legend), is the satyr of Fletcher's +"Faithful Shepherdess," the only poetic conception in +that gross and insipid piece of magnificent rhetoric. +The perfection of the style must naturally be sought +from Botticelli, and in his Birth of Venus (but who +may speak of that after the writer of most subtle fancy, +of most exquisite language, among living Englishman?)<a href="#fn10"><sup><small>10</small></sup></a><a name="fn10r" id="fn10r"></a> +This goddess, not triumphant but sad in her pale beauty, +a king's daughter bound by some charm to flit on her +shell over the rippling sea, until the winds blow it in +the kingdom of the good fairy Spring, who shelters +her in her laurel grove and covers her nakedness with +the wonderful mantle of fresh-blown flowers….</p> + +<p>But the imagination born of the love of beautiful and +suggestive detail soars higher; become what I would +call the lyric art of the Renaissance, the art which not +merely gives us beauty, but stirs up in ourselves as +much beauty again of stored-up impression, reaches its +greatest height in certain Venetian pictures of the early +sixteenth century. Pictures of vague or enigmatic subject, +or no subject at all, like Giorgione's Fête Champêtre +and Soldier and Gipsy, Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, +The Three Ages of Man, and various smaller pictures +by Bonifazio, Palma, Basaiti; pictures of young men +in velvets and brocades, solemn women with only the +glory of their golden hair and flesh, seated in the grass, +old men looking on pensive, children rolling about; +with the solemnity of great, spreading trees, of greenish +evening skies: the pathos of the song about to begin +or just finished, lute or viol or pipe still lying hard by. +Of such pictures it is best, perhaps, not to speak. The +suggestive imagination is wandering vaguely, dreaming; +fumbling at random sweet, strange chords out of its +viol, like those young men and maidens. The charm +of such works is that they are never explicit; they tell +us, like music, deep secrets, which we feel, but cannot +translate into words.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>The first new factor in art which meets us at the +beginning of the sixteenth century is not among the +Italians, and is not a merely artistic power. I speak +of the passionate individual fervour for the newly +recovered Scriptures, manifest among the German engravers, +Protestants all or nearly all, and among whose +works is for ever turning up the sturdy, passionate +face of Luther, the enthusiastic face of Melanchthon. +The very nature of these men's art is conceivable only +where the Bible has suddenly become the reading, and +the chief reading, of the laity. These prints, large and +small, struck off in large numbers, are not church ornaments +like frescoes or pictures, nor aids to monastic +devotion like Angelico's Gospel histories at St. Mark's—they +are illustrations to the book which every one +is reading, things to be framed in the chamber of +every burgher or mechanic, to be slipped into the +prayer-book of every housewife, to be conned over +during the long afternoons, by the children near the +big stove or among the gooseberry bushes of the +garden. And they are, therefore, much more than the +Giottesque inventions, the expression of the individual +artist's ideas about the incidents of Scripture; and an +expression not for the multitude at large, fresco or +mosaic that could be elaborated by a sceptical or godless +artist, but a re-explanation as from man to man +and friend: this is how the dear Lord looked, or +acted—see, the words in the Bible are so or so forth. +Therefore, there enters into these designs, which contain +after all only the same sort of skill which was rife +in Italy, so much homeliness at once, and poignancy +and sublimity of imagination. The Virgin, they have +discovered, is not that grandly dressed lady, always in +the very finest brocade, with the very finest manners, +and holding a divine infant that has no earthly wants, +whom Van Eyck and Memling and Meister Stephan +painted. She is a good young woman, a fairer version +of their dear wife, or the woman who might have +been that; no carefully selected creature as with the +Italians, no well-made studio model, with figure unspoilt +by child-bearing, but a real wife and mother, +with real milk in her breasts (the Italian virgin, save +with one or two Lombards, is never permitted to +suckle)<a href="#fn11"><sup><small>11</small></sup></a><a name="fn11r" id="fn11r"></a>, which she very readily and thoroughly gives +to the child, guiding the little mouth with her fingers. +And she sits in the lonely fields by the hedges and +windmills in the fair weather; or in the neat little +chamber with the walled town visible between the +pillar of the window, as in Bartholomew Beham's +exquisite design, reading, or suckling, or sewing, or +soothing the fretful baby; no angels around her, or +rarely: the Scripture says nothing about such a court +of seraphs as the Italians and Flemings, the superstitious +Romanists, always placed round the mother +of Christ. It is all as it might have happened to +them; they translate the Scripture into their everyday +life, they do not pick out of it the mere stately +and poetic incidents like the Giottesques. This everyday +life of theirs is crude enough, and in many cases +nasty enough; they have in those German free towns +a perfect museum of loathsome ugliness, born of ill +ventilation, gluttony, starvation, or brutality: quite +fearful wrinkled harridans and unabashed fat, guzzling +harlots, and men of every variety of scrofula, and wart +and belly, towards none of which (the best far transcending +the worst Italian Judas) they seem to feel +any repugnance. They have also a beastly love of +horrors; their decollations and flagellations are quite +sickening in detail, as distinguished from the tidy, +decorous executions of the early Italians; and one +feels that they do enjoy seeing, as in one of their +prints, the bowels of St. Erasmus being taken out with +a windlass, or Jael, as Altdorfer has shown her in his +romantic print, neatly hammering the nail into the +head of the sprawling, snoring Sisera. There is a +good deal of grossness, too (of which, among the +Italians, even Robetta and similar, there is so little), +in the details of village fairs and adventures of wenches +with their Schatz; and a strange permeating nightmare, +gruesomeness of lewd, warty devils, made up of +snouts, hoofs, bills, claws, and incoherent parts of incoherent +creatures; of perpetual skeletons climbing in +trees, or appearing behind flower-beds. But there is +also—and Holbein's Dance of Death, terrible, jocular, +tender, vulgar and poetic, contains it all, this German +world—a great tenderness. Tenderness not merely in +the heads of women and children, in the fervent embrace +of husband and wife and mother and daughter; but in +the feeling for dumb creatures and inanimate things, the +gentle dogs of St. Hubert, the deer that crouch among +the rocks with Genevieve, the very tangled grasses +and larches and gentians that hang to the crags, +drawn as no Italian ever drew them; the quiet, sentimental +little landscapes of castles on fir-clad hills, of +manor-houses, gabled and chimneyed, among the reeds +and willows of shallow ponds. These feelings, Teutonic +doubtless, but less mediæval than we might think, +for the Middle Ages of the Minnesingers were terribly +conventional, seem to well up at the voice of Luther; +and it is this which make the German engravers, +men not always of the highest talents, invent new +and beautiful Gospel pictures. Of these I would +take two as typical—typical of individual fancy most +strangely contrasting with the conventionalism of the +Italians. Let the reader think of any of the scores +of Flights into Egypt, and of Resurrections by fifteenth-century +Italians, or even Giottesques; and then turn +to two prints, one of each of these subjects respectively, +by Martin Schongauer and Altdorfer. Schongauer gives +a delightful oasis: palms and prickly pears, the latter +conceived as growing at the top of a tree; below, +lizards at play and deer grazing; in this place the +Virgin has drawn up her ass, who browses the thistles +at his feet, while St. Joseph, his pilgrim bottle bobbing +on his back, hangs himself with all his weight to the +branches of a date palm, trying to get the fruit within +reach. Meanwhile a bevy of sweet little angels have +come to the rescue; they sit among the branches, +dragging them down towards him, and even bending +the whole stem at the top so that he may get at the +dates. Such a thing as this is quite lovely, particularly +after the routine of St. Joseph trudging along after the +donkey, the eternal theme of the Italians. In Altdorfer's +print Christ is ascending in a glory of sunrise +clouds, banner in hand, angels and cherubs peering +with shy curiosity round the cloud edge. The sepulchre +is open, guards asleep or stretching themselves, and +yawning all round; and childish young angels look +reverently into the empty grave, rearranging the cerecloths, +and trying to roll back the stone lid. One of +them leans forward, and utterly dazzles a negro watchman, +stepping forward, lantern in hand; in the distance +shepherds are seen prowling about. "This," says +Altdorfer to himself, "is how it must have happened."</p> + +<p>Hence, among these Germans, the dreadful seriousness +and pathos of the Passion, the violence of the mob, +the brutality of the executioners, above all, the awful +sadness of Christ. There is here somewhat of the +realisation of what He must have felt in finding the +world He had come to redeem so vile and cruel. In +what way, under what circumstances, such thoughts +would come to these men, is revealed to us by that +magnificent head of the suffering Saviour—a design +apparently for a carved crucifix—under which Albrecht +Dürer wrote the pathetic words: "I drew this in my +sickness."</p> + +<p>Thus much of the power of that new factor, the +individual interest in the Scriptures. All other innovations +on the treatment of religious themes were due, +in the sixteenth century, but still more in the seventeenth, +to the development of some new artistic +possibility, or to the gathering together in the hands of +one man of artistic powers hitherto existing only in a +dispersed condition. This is the secret of the greatness +of Raphael as a pictorial poet, that he could do all +manner of new things merely by holding all the old +means in his grasp. This is the secret of those wonderful +inventions of his, which do not take our breath +away like Michelangelo's or Rembrandt's, but seem +at the moment the one and only right rendering of +the subject: the Liberation of St. Peter, Heliodorus, +Ezechiel, and the whole series of magnificent Old +Testament stories on the ceiling of the Loggie. In +Raphael we see the perfect fulfilment of the Giottesque +programme: he can do all that the first theme inventors +required for the carrying out of their ideas; and +therefore he can have new, entirely new, themes. +Raphael furnishes, for the first time since Giotto, an +almost complete set of pictorial interpretations of +Scripture.</p> + +<p>We are now, as we proceed in the sixteenth century, +in the region where new artistic powers admit of new +imaginative conceptions on the part of the individual. +We gain immensely by the liberation from the old +tradition, but we lose immensely also. We get the +benefit of the fancy and feelings of this individual, but +we are at the mercy, also, of his stupidity and vulgarity. +Of this the great examples are Tintoretto, and after +him Velasquez and Rembrandt. Of Tintoret I would +speak later, for he is eminently the artist in whom the +gain and the loss are most typified, and perhaps most +equally distributed, and because, therefore, he contrasts +best with the masters anterior to Raphael.</p> + +<p>The new powers in Velasquez and Rembrandt were +connected with the problem of light, or rather, one +might say, in the second case, of darkness. This new +faculty of seizing the beauties, momentary and not +inherent in the object, due to the various effects of +atmosphere and lighting up, added probably a good third +to the pleasure-bestowing faculty of art; it was the +beginning of a kind of democratic movement against +the stern domination of such things as were privileged +in shape and colour. A thousand things, ugly or unimaginative +in themselves, a plain face, a sallow complexion, +an awkward gesture, a dull arrangement of +lines, could be made delightful and suggestive. A wet +yard, a pail and mop, and a servant washing fish under +a pump could become, in the hands of Peter de Hoogh, +and thanks to the magic of light and shade, as beautiful +and interesting in their way as a swirl of angels and +lilies by Botticelli. But this redemption of the vulgar +was at the expense, as I have elsewhere pointed out, of +a certain growing callousness to vulgarity. What holds +good as to the actual artistic, visible quality, holds good +also as to the imaginative value. Velasquez's Flagellation, +if indeed it be his, in our National Gallery, has +a pathos, a something that catches you by the throat, +in that melancholy weary body, broken with ignominy +and pain, sinking down by the side of the column, +which is inseparable from the dreary grey light, the +livid colour of the flesh—there is no joy in the world +where such things can be. But the angel who has +just entered has not come from heaven—such a creature +is fit only to roughly shake up the pillows of +paupers, dying in the damp dawn in the hospital +wards.</p> + +<p>It is, in a measure, different with Rembrandt, exactly +because he is the master, not of light, but of darkness, +or of light that utterly dazzles. His ugly women and +dirty Jews of Rotterdam are either hidden in the gloom +or reduced to mere vague outlines, specks like gnats in +the sunshine, in the effulgence of light. Hence we can +enjoy, almost without any disturbing impressions, the +marvellous imagination shown in his etchings of Bible +stories. Rembrandt is to Dürer as an archangel to a +saint: where the German draws, the Dutchman seems +to bite his etching plate with elemental darkness and +glory. Of these etchings I would mention a few; the +reader may put these indications alongside of his +remembrances of the Arena Chapel, or of Angelico's +cupboard panels in the Academy at Florence: they +show how intimately dramatic imagination depends in +art upon mere technical means, how hopelessly limited +to mere indication were the early artists, how forced +along the path of dramatic realisation are the men of +modern times.</p> + +<p><i>The Annunciation to the Shepherds</i>: The heavens open +in a circular whirl among the storm darkness, cherubs +whirling distantly like innumerable motes in a sunbeam; +the angel steps forward on a ray of light, projecting +into the ink-black night. The herds have +perceived the vision, and rush headlong in all directions, +while the trees groan beneath the blast of that +opening of heaven. A horse, seen in profile, with the +light striking on his eyeball, seems paralysed by terror. +The shepherds have only just awakened. <i>The Nativity</i>: +Darkness. A vague crowd of country folk jostling each +other noiselessly. A lantern, a white speck in the +centre, sheds a smoky, uncertain light on the corner +where the Child sleeps upon the pillows, the Virgin, +wearied, resting by its side, her face on her hand. +Joseph is seated by, only his head visible above his +book. The cows are just visible in the gloom. The +lantern is held by a man coming carefully forward, +uncovering his head, the crowd behind him. <i>A Halt +on the Journey to Egypt</i>: Night. The lantern hung on +a branch. Joseph seated sleepily, with his fur cap +drawn down; the Virgin and Child resting against the +packsaddle on the ground. <i>An Interior</i>: The Virgin +hugging and rocking the Child. Joseph, outside, looks +in through the window. <i>The Raising of Lazarus</i>: A +vault hung with scimitars, turbans, and quivers. +Against the brilliant daylight just let in, the figure of +Christ, seen from behind, stands out in His long robes, +raising His hand to bid the dead arise. Lazarus, pale, +ghost-like in this effulgence, slowly, wearily raises his +head in the sepulchre. The crowd falls back. Astonishment, +awe. This coarse Dutchman has suppressed +the incident of the bystanders holding their nose, to +which the Giottesques clung desperately. This is not +a moment to think of stenches or infection. <i>Entombment</i>: +Night. The platform below the cross. A bier, +empty, spread with a winding-sheet, an old man arranging +it at the head. The dead Saviour being slipped down +from the cross on a sheet, two men on a ladder letting +the body down, others below receiving it, trying to +prevent the arm from trailing. Immense solemnity, +carefulness, hushedness. A distant illuminated palace +blazes out in the night. One feels that they are stealing +Him away.</p> + +<p>I have reversed the chronological order and chosen +to speak of Tintoret after Rembrandt, because, being an +Italian and still in contact with some of the old tradition, +the great Venetian can show more completely, +both what was gained and what was lost in imaginative +rendering by the liberation of the individual artist and +the development of artistic means. First, of the gain. +This depends mainly upon Tintoret's handling of light +and shade, and his foreshortenings: it enables him to +compose entirely in huge masses, to divide or concentrate +the interest, to throw into vague insignificance +the less important parts of a situation in order to insist +upon the more important; it gives him the power also +of impressing us by the colossal and the ominous. The +masterpiece of this style, and probably Tintoret's masterpiece +therefore, is the great Crucifixion at S. Rocco. +To feel its full tragic splendour one must think of the +finest things which the early Renaissance achieved, +such as Luini's beautiful fresco at Lugano; by the side +of the painting at S. Rocco everything is tame, except, +perhaps, Rembrandt's etching called the Three Crosses. +After this, and especially to be compared with the +frescoes of Masaccio and Ghirlandaio of the same subject, +comes the Baptism of Christ. The old details of +figures dressing and undressing, which gave so much +pleasure to earlier painters, for instance, Piero della +Francesca, in the National Gallery, are entirely omitted, +as the nose-holding in the Raising of Lazarus, is omitted +by Rembrandt. Christ kneels in the Jordan, with +John bending over him, and vague multitudes crowding +the banks, distant, dreamlike beneath the yellow storm-light. +Of Tintoret's Christ before Pilate, of that figure +of the Saviour, long, straight, wrapped in white and +luminous like his own wraith, I have spoken already. +But I must speak of the S. Rocco Christ in the Garden, +as imaginative as anything by Rembrandt, and infinitely +more beautiful. The moonlight tips the draperies +of the three sleeping apostles, gigantic, solemn. +Above, among the bushes, leaning His head on His hand, +is seated Christ, weary to death, numbed by grief and +isolation, recruiting for final resistance. The sense of +being abandoned of all men and of God has never been +brought home in this way by any other painter; the +little tear-stained Saviours, praying in broad daylight, +of Perugino and his fellows, are mere distressed mortals. +This betrayed and resigned Saviour has upon Him the +<i>weltschmerz</i> of Prometheus. But even here we begin +to feel the loss, as well as the gain, of the painter +being forced from the dramatic routine of earlier days: +instead of the sweet, tearful little angel of the early +Renaissance, there comes to this tragic Christ, in a +blood-red nimbus, a brutal winged creature thrusting +the cup in His face. The uncertainty of Tintoret's +inspirations, the uncertainty of result of these astonishing +pictorial methods of attaining the dramatic, the +occasional vapidness and vulgarity of the man, unrestrained +by any stately tradition like the vapidness +and vulgarity of so many earlier masters,<a href="#fn12"><sup><small>12</small></sup></a><a name="fn12r" id="fn12r"></a> comes out +already at S. Rocco. And principally in the scene of +the Temptation, a theme rarely, if ever, treated before +the sixteenth century, and which Tintoret has made +unspeakably mean in its unclean and dramatically +impotent suggestiveness: the Saviour parleying from +a kind of rustic edifice with a good-humoured, fat, +half feminine Satan, fluttering with pink wings like +some smug seraph of Bernini's pupils. After this it is +scarce necessary to speak of whatever is dramatically +abortive (because successfully expressing just the wrong +sort of sentiment, the wrong situation) in Tintoret's +work: his Woman taken in Adultery, with the dapper +young Rabbi, offended neither by adultery in general +nor by this adulteress in particular; the Washing of +the Feet, in London, where the conversation appears to +turn upon the excessive hotness or coldness of the +water in the tub; the Last Supper at S. Giorgio Maggiore, +where, among the mysterious wreaths of smoke +peopled with angels, Christ rises from His seat and +holds the cup to His neighbour's lips with the gesture, +as He says, "This is My blood," of a conjuror to an +incredulous and indifferent audience. To Tintoret the +contents of the chalice is the all-important matter: +where is the majesty of the old Giottesque gesture, +preserved by Leonardo, of pushing forward the bread +with one hand, the wine with the other, and thus uncovering +the head and breast of the Saviour, the gesture +which does indeed mean—"I am the bread you shall +eat, and the wine you shall drink"? There remains, +however, to mention another work of Tintoret's which, +coming in contact with one's recollections of earlier +art, may suggest strange doubts and well nigh shake +one's faith in the imaginative efficacy of all that went +before: his enormous canvas of the Last Day, at S. +Maria dell' Orto. The first and overwhelming impression, +even before one has had time to look into this +apocalyptic work, is that no one could have conceived +such a thing in earlier days, not even Michelangelo +when he painted his Last Judgment, nor Raphael when +he designed the Vision of Ezechiel. This is, indeed, +one thinks, a revelation of the end of all things. Great +storm clouds, whereon throne the Almighty and His +Elect, brood over the world, across which, among the +crevassed, upheaving earth, pours the wide glacier +torrent of Styx, with the boat of Charon struggling +across its precipitous waters. The angels, confused with +the storm clouds of which they are the spirit, lash the +damned down to the Hell stream, band upon band, +even from the far distance. And in the foreground +the rocks are splitting, the soil is upheaving with the +dead beneath; here protrudes a huge arm, there a +skull; in one place the clay, rising, has assumed the +vague outline of the face below. In the rocks and +water, among the clutching, gigantic men, the huge, +full-bosomed woman, tosses a frightful half-fleshed +carcass, grass still growing from his finger tips, his +grinning skull, covered half with hair and half with +weeds, greenish and mouldering: a sinner still green +in earth and already arising.</p> + +<p>A wonderful picture: a marvellous imaginative mind, +with marvellous imaginative means at his command. +Yet, let us ask ourselves, what is the value of the +result? A magnificent display of attitudes and forms, +a sort of bravura ghastliness and impressiveness, which +are in a sense <i>barrocco</i>, reminding us of the wax plague +models of Florence and of certain poems of Baudelaire's. +But of the feeling, the poetry of this greatest +of all scenes, what is there? And, standing before it, +I think instinctively of that chapel far off on the windswept +Umbrian rock, with Signorelli's Resurrection: +a flat wall accepted as a flat wall, no place, nowhere. +A half-dozen groups, not closely combined. Colour +reduced to monochrome; light and shade nowhere, as +nowhere also all these devices of perspective. But in +that simply treated fresco, with its arrangement as +simple as that of a vast antique bas-relief, there is an +imaginative suggestion far surpassing this of Tintoret's. +The breathless effort of the youths breaking through +the earth's crust, shaking their long hair and gasping; +the stagger of those rising to their feet; the stolidity, +hand on hip, of those who have recovered their body +but not their mind, blinded by the light, deafened by +the trumpets of Judgment; the absolute self-abandonment +of those who can raise themselves no higher; +the dull, awe-stricken look of those who have found +their companions, clasping each other in vague, weak +wonder; and further, under the two archangels who +stoop downwards with the pennons of their trumpets +streaming in the blast, those figures who beckon to the +re-found beloved ones, or who shade their eyes and +point to a glory on the horizon, or who, having striven +forward, sink on their knees, overcome by a vision +which they alone can behold. And recollecting that +fresco of Signorelli's, you feel as if this vast, tall canvas +at S. Maria dell' Orto, where topple and welter the +dead and the quick, were merely so much rhetorical +rhodomontade by the side of the old hymn of the Last +Day—</p> + +<div class="center"> + <table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="poem"> + <tr><td align="left">"Mors stupebit et natura</td></tr> + <tr><td align="left"> Quum resurget creatura</td></tr> + <tr><td align="left"> Judicanti responsura."</td></tr> + </table> +</div> +<p> </p> +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>Again, in the chaos of newly-developing artistic means, +and of struggling individual imaginations, we get once +more, at the end of the eighteenth century, to what we +found at the beginning of the fourteenth: the art that +does not show, but merely speaks. We find it in what, +of all things, are the apparently most different to the +quiet and placid outline illustration of the Giottesque: +in the terrible portfolio of Goya's etchings, called the +Disasters of War. Like Dürer and Rembrandt, the +great Spaniard is at once extremely realistic and extremely +imaginative. But his realism means fidelity, +not to the real aspect of things, of the <i>thing in itself</i>, +so to speak, but to the way in which things will appear +to the spectator at a given moment. He isolates what +you might call a case, separating it from the multitude +of similar cases, giving you one execution where several +must be going on, one firing off of cannon, one or two +figures in a burning or a massacre; and his technique +conduces thereunto, blurring a lot, rendering only the +outline and gesture, and that outline and gesture frequently +so momentary as to be confused. But he is +real beyond words in his reproduction of the way in +which such dreadful things must stamp themselves +upon the mind. They are isolated, concentrated, distorted: +the multiplicity of horrors making the perceiving +mind more sensitive, morbid as from opium eating, and +thus making the single impression, which excludes all +the rest, more vivid and tremendous than, without that +unconsciously perceived rest, it could possibly be. Nay, +more, these scenes are not merely rather such as they +were recollected than as they really were seen; they are +such as they were recollected in the minds and feelings +of peasants and soldiers, of people who could not free +their attention to arrange all these matters logically, +to give them their relative logical value. The slaughtering +soldiers—Spaniards, English, or French—of the +Napoleonic period become in his plates Turks, Saracens, +huge vague things in half Oriental costumes, whiskered, +almost turbaned in their fur caps, they become almost +ogres, even as they must have done in the popular +mind. The shooting of deserters and prisoners is reduced +to the figures at the stake, the six carbine muzzles +facing them: no shooting soldiers, no stocks to the +carbines, any more than in the feeling of the man who +was being shot. The artistic training, the habit of +deliberately or unconsciously looking for visible effects +which all educated moderns possess, prevents even our +writers from thus reproducing what has been the actual +mental reality. But Goya does not for a moment let +us suspect the presence of the artist, the quasi-writer. +The impression reproduced is the impression, not of the +artistic bystander, but of the sufferer or the sufferer's +comrades. This makes him extraordinarily faithful to +the epigraphs of his plates. We feel that the woman, +all alone, without bystanders, earthworks, fascines, +smoke, &c., firing off the cannon, is the woman as she is +remembered by the creature who exclaims, "Que valor!" +We feel that the half-dead soldier being stripped, the +condemned turning his head aside as far as the rope +will permit, the man fallen crushed beneath his horse +or vomiting out his blood, is the wretch who exclaims, +"Por eso soy nacido!" They are, these etchings of +Goya's, the representation of the sufferings, real and +imaginative, of the real sufferers. In the most absolute +sense they are the art which does not merely show, but +tells; the suggestive and dramatic art of the individual, +unaided and unhampered by tradition, indifferent to +form and technicality, the art which even like the art +of the immediate predecessors of Giotto, those Giuntas +and Berlinghieris, who left us the hideous and terrible +Crucifixions, says to the world, "You shall understand +and feel."</p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="minimal" /> +<p> </p> +<h3><a name="TUSCAN_SCULPTURE" id="TUSCAN_SCULPTURE"></a>TUSCAN SCULPTURE</h3> +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>We are all of us familiar with the two adjacent rooms +at South Kensington which contain, respectively, the +casts from antique sculpture and those from the sculpture +of the Renaissance; and we are familiar also with +the sense of irritation or of relief which accompanies +our passing from one of them to the other. This feeling +is typical of our frame of mind towards various +branches of the same art, and, indeed, towards all +things which might be alike, but happen to be unlike. +Times, countries, nations, temperaments, ideas, and +tendencies, all benefit and suffer alternately by our +habit of considering that if two things of one sort +are not identical, one must be in the right and the +other in the wrong. The act of comparison evokes at +once our innate tendency to find fault; and having +found fault, we rarely perceive that, on better comparing, +there may be no fault at all to find.</p> + +<p>As the result of such comparison, we shall find that +Renaissance sculpture is unrestful, huddled, lacking +selection of form and harmony of proportions; it reproduces +ugliness and perpetuates effort; it is sometimes +grotesque, and frequently vulgar. Or again, that +antique sculpture is conventional, insipid, monotonous, +without perception for the charm of detail or the interest +of individuality; afraid of movement and expression, +and at the same time indifferent to outline +and grouping; giving us florid nudities which never +were alive, and which are doing and thinking nothing +whatever. Thus, according to which room or which +mood we enter first, we are sure to experience either +irritation at wrong-headedness or relief at right-doing; +whether we pass from the sculpture of ancient +Greece to the sculpture of mediæval Italy, or <i>vice +versâ</i>.</p> + +<p>But a more patient comparison of these two branches +of sculpture, and of the circumstances which made +each what it was, will enable us to enjoy the very +different merits of both, and will teach us also something +of the vital processes of the particular spiritual +organism which we call an art.</p> + +<p>In the early phase of the philosophy of art—a phase +lingering on to our own day in the works of certain +critics—the peculiarities of a work of art were explained +by the peculiarities of character of the artist: +the paintings of Raphael and the music of Mozart partook +of the gentleness of their life; while the figures +of Michelangelo and the compositions of Beethoven +were the outcome of their misanthropic ruggedness of +temper. The insufficiency, often the falseness, of such +explanations became evident when critics began to +perceive that the works of one time and country usually +possessed certain common peculiarities which did not +correspond to any resemblance between the characters +of their respective artists; peculiarities so much +more dominant than any others, that a statue or a picture +which was unsigned and of obscure history was +constantly attributed to half-a-dozen contemporary +sculptors or painters by half-a-dozen equally learned +critics. The recognition of this fact led to the substitution +of the <i>environment</i> (the <i>milieu</i> of Monsieur Taine) +as an explanation of the characteristics, no longer of a +single work of art, but of a school or group of kindred +works. Greek art henceforth was the serene outcome +of a serene civilisation of athletes, poets, and philosophers, +living with untroubled consciences in a good +climate, with slaves and helots to char for them while +they ran races, discussed elevated topics, and took part +in Panathenaic processions, riding half naked on prancing +horses, or carrying olive branches and sacrificial +vases in honour of a divine patron, in whom they +believed only as much as they liked. And the art of +the Middle Ages was the fantastic, far-fetched, and +often morbid production of nations of crusaders and +theologians, burning heretics, worshipping ladies, seeing +visions, and periodically joining hands in a vertiginous +death-reel, whose figures were danced from country +to country. This new explanation, while undoubtedly +less misleading than the other one, had the disadvantage +of straining the characteristics of a civilisation +or of an art in order to tally with its product or +producer; it forgot that Antiquity was not wholly +represented by the frieze of the Parthenon, and that +the Gothic cathedrals and the frescoes of Giotto had +characteristics more conspicuous than morbidness and +insanity.</p> + +<p>Moreover, in the same way that the old personal +criticism was unable to account for the resemblance +between the works of different individuals of the same +school, so the theory of the environment fails to explain +certain qualities possessed in common by various schools +of art and various arts which have arisen under the +pressure of different civilisations; and it is obliged +to slur over the fact that the sculpture of the time +of Pericles and Alexander, the painting of the early +sixteenth century, and the music of the age of Handel, +Haydn, and Mozart are all very much more like one +another in their serene beauty than they are any of +them like the other productions, artistic or human, +of their environment. Behind this explanation there +must therefore be another, not controverting the portion +of truth it contains, but completing it by the +recognition of a relation more intimate than that of +the work of art with its environment: the relation +of form and material. The perceptions of the artist, +what he sees and how he sees it, can be transmitted to +others only through processes as various as themselves: +hair seen as colour is best imitated with paint, hair +seen as form with twisted metal wire. It is as impossible +to embody certain perceptions in some stages +of handicraft as it would be to construct a complex +machine in a rudimentary condition of mechanics. +Certain modes of vision require certain methods of +painting, and these require certain kinds of surface +and pigment. Until these exist, a man may see correctly, +but he cannot reproduce what he is seeing. +In short, the work of art represents the meeting of +a mode of seeing and feeling (determined partly by +individual characteristics, partly by those of the age +and country) and of a mode of treating materials, a +craft which may itself be, like the mind of the artist, +in a higher or lower stage of development.</p> + +<p>The early Greeks had little occasion to become +skilful carvers of stone. Their buildings, which reproduced +a very simple wooden structure, were ornamented +with little more than the imitation of the original +carpentering; for the Ionic order, poor as it is of +ornament, came only later; and the Corinthian, which +alone offered scope for variety and skill of carving, +arose only when figure sculpture was mature. But the +Greeks, being only just in the iron period (and iron, +by the way, is the tool for stone), were great moulders +of clay and casters of metal. The things which later +ages made of iron, stone, or wood, they made of clay or +bronze. The thousands of exquisite utensils, weapons, +and toys in our museums make this apparent; from +the bronze greaves delicately modelled like the legs +they were to cover, to the earthenware dolls, little +Venuses, exquisitely dainty, with articulated legs and +go-carts.</p> + +<p>Hence the human figure came to be imitated by a +process which was not sculpture in the literal sense of +carving. It is significant that the Latin word whence +we get <i>effigy</i> has also given us <i>fictile</i>, the making of +statues being thus connected with the making of pots; +and that the whole vocabulary of ancient authors +shows that they thought of statuary not as akin to +cutting and chiselling, but to moulding (πλάσσω = +<i>fingo</i>), shaping out of clay on the wheel or with the +modelling tool.<a href="#fn13"><sup><small>13</small></sup></a><a name="fn13r" id="fn13r"></a> It seems probable that marble-work +was but rarely used for the round until the sixth century; +and the treatment of the hair, the propping of +projecting limbs and drapery, makes it obvious that a +large proportion of the antiques in our possession are +marble copies of long-destroyed bronzes.<a href="#fn14"><sup><small>14</small></sup></a><a name="fn14r" id="fn14r"></a> So that the +Greek statue, even if eventually destined for marble, +was conceived by a man having the habit of modelling +in clay.</p> + +<p>Let us turn from early Greece to mediæval Italy. +Hammered iron had superseded bronze for weapons +and armour, and silver and gold, worked with the +chisel, for ornaments. On the other hand, the introduction +from the East of glazed pottery had banished +to the art of the glass-blower all fancy in shaping +utensils. There was no demand in common life for +cast metal-work, and there being no demand for +casting, there was no practice either in its cognate +preliminary art of moulding clay. Hence, such bronze +work as originated was very unsatisfactory; the lack +of skill in casting, and the consequent elaboration of +bronze-work with the file, lasting late into the Renaissance. +But the men of the Middle Ages were +marvellously skilful carvers of stone. Architecture, +ever since the Roman time, had given more and more +importance to sculptured ornament: already exquisite +in the early Byzantine screens and capitals, it developed +through the elaborate mouldings, traceries, and +columns of the Lombard style into the art of elaborate +reliefs and groups of the full-blown Gothic; +indeed the Gothic church is, in Italy, the work no +longer of the mason, but of the sculptor. It is no +empty coincidence that the hillside villages which still +supply Florence with stone and with stonemasons +should have given their names to three of its greatest +sculptors, Mino da Fiesole, Desiderio da Settignano, +and Benedetto da Maiano; that Michelangelo should +have told Vasari that the chisel and mallet had come +to him with the milk of his nurse, a stonecutter's wife +from those same slopes, down which jingle to-day the +mules carting ready-shaped stone from the quarries. +The mediæval Tuscans, the Pisans of the thirteenth, and +the Florentines of the fifteenth century, evidently made +small wax or clay sketches of their statues; but their +works are conceived and executed in the marble, and +their art has come out of the stone without interposition +of other material, even as the figures which +Michelangelo chopped, living and colossal, direct out +of the block.<a href="#fn15"><sup><small>15</small></sup></a><a name="fn15r" id="fn15r"></a></p> + +<p>The Greek, therefore, was a moulder of clay, a caster +of bronze, in the early time when the art acquires its +character and takes its direction; in that period, on +the contrary, the Tuscan was a chaser of silver, a hammerer +of iron, above all a cutter of stone. Now clay +(and we must remember that bronze is originally clay) +means the modelled plane and succession of planes +smoothed and rounded by the finger, the imitation of +all nature's gently graduated swellings and depressions, +the absolute form as it exists to the touch; but clay +does not give interesting light and shade, and bronze is +positively blurred by high lights; and neither clay nor +bronze has any resemblance to the texture of human +limbs or drapery: it gives the form, but not the stuff. +It is the exact reverse with marble. Granulated like +a living fibre, yet susceptible of a delicate polish, it can +imitate the actual substance of human flesh, with its +alternations of opacity and luminousness; it can reproduce, +beneath the varied strokes of the chisel, the +grain, running now one way, now another, which is +given to the porous skin by the close-packed bone and +muscle below. Moreover, it is so docile, so soft, yet so +resistant, that the iron can cut it like butter or engrave +it lightly like agate; so that the shadows may pour +deep into chasms and pools, or run over the surface in a +network of shallow threads; light and shade becoming +the artist's material as much as the stone itself.</p> + +<p>The Greek, as a result, perceived form not as an +appearance, but as a reality; saw with the eye the +complexities of projection and depression perceivable +by the hand. His craft was that of measurements, of +minute proportion, of delicate concave and convex—in +one word, of <i>planes</i>. His dull, malleable clay, and +ductile, shining bronze had taught him nothing of the +way in which light and shadow corrode, blur, and +pattern a surface. His fancy, his skill, embraced the +human form like the gypsum of the moulder, received +the stamp of its absolute being. The beauty he sought +was concrete, actual, the same in all lights and from +all points of view: the comely man himself, not the +beautiful marble picture.</p> + +<p>The marble picture, on the other hand—a picture +in however high and complete relief—a picture for a +definite point of view, arranged by receiving light projected +at a given angle on a surface cut deep or shallow +especially to receive it—was produced by the sculpture +that spontaneously grew out of the architectural stone-cutting +of the Byzantine and Lombard schools. The +mouldings on a church, still more the stone ornaments +of its capitals, pulpit, and choir rails, seen, as they are, +each at various and peculiar heights above the eye, +under light which, however varying, can never get +behind or above them if outdoor, below or in flank if +indoor—these mouldings, part of a great architectural +pattern of black and white, inevitably taught the +masons all the subtle play of light and surface, all the +deceits of position and perspective. And the mere +manipulation of the marble taught them, as we have +seen, the exquisite finenesses of surface, texture, crease, +accent, and line. What the figure actually was—the +real proportions and planes, the actual form of the +model—did not matter; no hand was to touch it, no +eye to measure; it was to be delightful only in the +position which the artist chose, and in no other had it +a right to be seen.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p>II</p> + +<p>These were the two arts, originating from a material +and a habit of work which were entirely different, and +which produced artistic necessities diametrically opposed. +It might be curious to speculate upon what +would have resulted had their position in history been +reversed; what statues we should possess had the +marble-carving art born of architectural decoration +originated in Greece, and the art of clay and bronze +flourished in Christian and mediæval Italy. Be this +as it may, the accident of the surroundings—of the +habits of life and thought which pressed on the artist, +and combined with the necessities of his material +method—appears to have intensified the peculiarities +organic in each of the two sculptures. I say <i>appears</i>, +because we must bear in mind that the combination +was merely fortuitous, and guard against the habit of +thinking that because a type is familiar it is therefore +alone conceivable.</p> + +<p>We all know all about the antique and the mediæval +<i>milieu</i>. It is useless to recapitulate the influence, on +the one hand, of antique civilisation, with its southern +outdoor existence, its high training of the body, its +draped citizens, naked athletes, and half-clothed work-folk, +its sensuous religion of earthly gods and muscular +demigods; or the influence, on the other hand, of the +more complex life of the Middle Ages, essentially northern +in type, sedentary and manufacturing, huddled +in unventilated towns, with its constant pre-occupation, +even among the most sordid grossness, of the +splendour of the soul, the beauty of suffering, the +ignominy of the body, and the dangers of bodily +prosperity. Of all this we have heard even too +much, thanks to the picturesqueness which has recommended +the <i>milieu</i> of Monsieur Taine to writers +more mindful of literary effect than of the philosophy +of art. But there is another historical circumstance +whose influence, in differentiating Greek sculpture +from the sculpture of mediæval Italy, can scarcely +be overrated. It is that, whereas in ancient Greece +sculpture was the important, fully developed art, +and painting merely its shadow; in mediæval Italy +painting was the art which best answered the requirements +of the civilisation, the art struggling with +the most important problems; and that painting therefore +reacted strongly upon sculpture. Greek painting +was the shadow of Greek sculpture in an almost +literal sense: the figures on wall and base, carefully +modelled, without texture, symmetrically arranged +alongside of each other regardless of pictorial pattern, +seem indeed to be projected on to the flat surface by +the statues; they are, most certainly, the shadow of +modelled figures cast on the painter's mind.</p> + +<p>The sculptor could learn nothing new from paintings +where all that is proper to painting is ignored:—plane +always preferred to line, the constructive details, perceptible +only as projection, not as colour or value (like +the insertion of the leg and the thigh), marked by deep +lines that look like tattoo marks; and perspective +almost entirely ignored, at least till a late period. It +is necessary thus to examine Greek painting<a href="#fn16"><sup><small>16</small></sup></a><a name="fn16r" id="fn16r"></a> in order +to appreciate, by comparison with this negative art, the +very positive influence of mediæval painting or mediæval +sculpture. The painting on a flat surface—fresco or +panel—which became more and more the chief artistic +expression of those times, taught men to consider +perspective; and, with perspective and its possibility +of figures on many planes, grouping: the pattern that +must arise from juxtaposed limbs and heads. It +taught them to perceive form no longer as projection +or plane; but as line and light and shade, as something +whose charm lay mainly in the boundary curves, +the silhouette, so much more important in one single, +unchangeable position than where, the eye wandering +round a statue, the only moderate interest of one +point of view is compensated by the additional interest +of another. Moreover, painting, itself the product of +a much greater interest in colour than Antiquity had +known, forced upon men's attention the important +influence of colour upon form. For, although the +human being, if we abstract the element of colour, +if we do it over with white paint, has indeed the +broad, somewhat vague form, the indecision of lines +which characterises antique sculpture; yet the human +being as he really exists, with his coloured hair, eyes, +and lips, his cheeks, forehead, and chin patterned +with tint, has a much greater sharpness, precision, +contrast of form, due to the additional emphasis of +the colour. Hence, as pictorial perspective and composition +undoubtedly inclined sculptors to seek greater +complexities of relief and greater unity of point of +view, so the new importance of drawing and colouring +suggested to them a new view of form. A human +being was no longer a mere arrangement of planes +and of masses, homogeneous in texture and colour. +He was made of different substances, of hair, skin +over fat, muscle, or bone, skin smooth, wrinkled, or +stubbly, and, besides this, he was painted different +colours. He had, moreover, what the Greeks had +calmly whitewashed away, or replaced by an immovable +jewel or enamel: that extraordinary and +extraordinarily various thing called an Eye.</p> + +<p>All these differences between the monochrome creature—colour +abstracted—of the Greeks and the mottled +real human being, the sculptors of the Renaissance +were led to perceive by their brothers the painters; +and having perceived, they were dissatisfied at having +to omit in their representation. But how show that +they too had seen them?</p> + +<p>Here return to our notice two other peculiarities +which distinguish mediæval sculpture from antique: +first, that mediæval sculpture, rarely called upon for +free open-air figures, was for ever producing architectural +ornament, seen at a given height and against a +dark background; and indoor decoration seen under an +unvarying and often defective light; and secondly, that +mediæval sculpture was the handicraft of the subtle +carver in delicate stone.</p> + +<p>The sculpture which was an essential part of Lombard +and Gothic architecture required a treatment that +should adapt it to its particular place and subordinate +it to a given effect. According to the height above the +eye and the direction of the light, certain details had +to be exaggerated, certain others suppressed; a sculptured +window, like those of Orsanmichele, would not +give the delightful pattern of black and white unless +some surfaces were more raised than others, some +portions of figure or leafage allowed to sink into +quiescence, others to start forward by means of the +black rim of undercutting; and a sepulchral monument, +raised thirty feet above the spectator's eye, like +those inside Sta. Maria Novella, would present a mere +intricate confusion unless the recumbent figure, the +canopy, and various accessories, were such as to seem +unnatural at the level of the eye. Thus, the heraldic +lions of one of these Gothic tombs have the black +cavity of the jaw cut by marble bars which are +absolutely out of proportion to the rest of the creature's +body, and to the detail of the other features, but render +the showing of the teeth even at the other side of the +transept. Again, in the more developed art of the +fifteenth century, Rossellino's Cardinal of Portugal +has the offside of his face shelved upwards so as to +catch the light, because he is seen from below, and the +near side would otherwise be too prominent; while +the beautiful dead warrior, by an unknown sculptor, at +Ravenna has had a portion of his jaw and chin deliberately +cut away, because the spectator is intended to +look down upon his recumbent figure. If we take a +cast of the Cardinal's head and look down upon it, or +hang a cast of the dead warrior on the wall, the whole +appearance alters; the expression is almost reversed +and the features are distorted. On the other hand, a +cast from a real head, placed on high like the Cardinal's, +would become insignificant, and laid at the height of +a table, like the dead warrior's, would look lumbering +and tumid. Thus, again, the head of Donatello's +Poggio, which is visible and intelligible placed high up +in the darkness of the Cathedral of Florence, looks as +if it had been gashed and hacked with a blunt knife +when seen in the cast at the usual height in an ordinary +light.</p> + +<p>Now this subtle circumventing of distance, height, +and darkness; this victory of pattern over place; this +reducing of light and shadow into tools for the sculptor, +mean, as we see from the above examples, sacrificing +the reality to the appearance, altering the proportions +and planes so rigorously reproduced by the Greeks, +mean sacrificing the sacred absolute form. And such +a habit of taking liberties with what can be measured +by the hand, in order to please the eye, allowed the +sculptors of the Renaissance to think of their model +no longer as the homogeneous <i>white man</i> of the Greeks, +but as a creature in whom structure was accentuated, +intensified, or contradicted by colour and texture.</p> + +<p>Furthermore, these men of the fifteenth century +possessed the cunning carving which could make stone +vary in texture, in fibre, and almost in colour.</p> + +<p>A great many biographical details substantiate the +evidence of statues and busts that the sculptors of the +Renaissance carried on their business in a different +manner from the ancient Greeks. The great development +in Antiquity of the art of casting bronze, carried +on everywhere for the production of weapons and +household furniture, must have accustomed Greek +sculptors (if we may call them by that name) to limit +their personal work to the figure modelled in clay. +And the great number of their works, many tediously +constructed of ivory and gold, shows clearly that they +did not abandon this habit in case of marble statuary, +but merely gave the finishing strokes to a copy of their +clay model, produced by workmen whose skill must +have been fostered by the apparently thriving trade in +marble copies of bronzes.</p> + +<p>It was different in the Renaissance. Vasari recommends, +as obviating certain miscalculations which frequently +happened, that sculptors should prepare large +models by which to measure the capacities of their +block of marble. But these models, described as made +of a mixture of plaster, size, and cloth shavings over +tow and hay, could serve only for the rough proportions +and attitude; nor is there ever any allusion to +any process of minute measurement, such as pointing, +by which detail could be transferred from the model to +the stone. Most often we hear of small wax models +which the sculptors enlarged directly in the stone. +Vasari, while exaggerating the skill of Michelangelo in +making his David out of a block mangled by another +sculptor, expresses no surprise at his having chopped +the marble himself; indeed, the anecdote itself affords +evidence of the commonness of such a practice, since +Agostino di Duccio would not have spoilt the block if +he had not cut into it rashly without previous +comparison with a model.<a href="#fn17"><sup><small>17</small></sup></a><a name="fn17r" id="fn17r"></a> "We hear, besides, that Jacopo +della Quercia spent twelve years over one of the gates +of S. Petronio, and that other sculptors carried out +similar great works with the assistance of one man, or +with no assistance at all,—a proceeding which would +have seemed the most frightful waste except in a time +and country where half of the sculptors were originally +stone-masons and the other half goldsmiths, that is to +say, men accustomed to every stage, coarse or subtle, +of their work. The absence of replicas of Renaissance +sculpture, so striking a contrast to the scores of repetitions +of Greek works, proves, moreover, that the actual +execution in marble was considered an intrinsic part +of the sculpture of the fifteenth century, in the same +way as the painting of a Venetian master. Phidias +might leave the carving of his statues to skilful workmen, +once he had modelled the clay, even as the +painters of the merely designing and linear schools, +Perugino, Ghirlandaio, or Botticelli, might employ +pupils to carry out their designs on panel or wall. +But in the same way as a Titian is not a Titian without +a certain handling of the brush, so a Donatello +is not a Donatello, or a Mino not a Mino, without a +certain individual excellence in the cutting of the +marble.</p> + +<p>These men brought, therefore, to the cutting of +marble a degree of skill and knowledge of which the +ancients had no notion, as they had no necessity. In +their hands the chisel was not merely a second modelling +tool, moulding delicate planes, uniting insensibly +broad masses of projection and depression. It was a +pencil, which, according as it was held, could emphasise +the forms in sharp hatchings or let them die away +unnoticed in subdued, imperceptible washes. It was +a brush which could give the texture and the values +of the colour—a brush dipped in various tints of light +and darkness, according as it poured into the marble the +light and the shade, and as it translated into polishings +and rough hewings and granulations and every variety +of cutting, the texture of flesh, of hair, and of drapery; +of the blonde hair and flesh of children, the coarse +flesh and bristly hair of old men, the draperies of wool, +of linen, and of brocade. The sculptors of Antiquity +took a beautiful human being—a youth in his perfect +flower, with limbs trained by harmonious exercise and +ripened by exposure to the air and sun—and, correcting +whatever was imperfect in his individual forms by +their hourly experience of similar beauty, they copied +in clay as much as clay could give of his perfections: +the subtle proportions, the majestic ampleness +of masses, the delicate finish of limbs, the harmonious +play of muscles, the serene simplicity of look and +gesture, placing him in an attitude intelligible and +graceful from the greatest possible distance and from +the largest variety of points of view. And they preserved +this perfect piece of loveliness by handing it +over to the faithful copyist in marble, to the bronze, +which, more faithful still, fills every minutest cavity +left by the clay. Being beautiful in himself, in all his +proportions and details, this man of bronze or marble +was beautiful wherever he was placed and from wheresoever +he was seen; whether he appeared foreshortened +on a temple front, or face to face among the laurel +trees, whether shaded by a portico, or shining in the +blaze of the open street. His beauty must be judged +and loved as we should judge and love the beauty of +a real human being, for he is the closest reproduction +that art has given of beautiful reality placed in +reality's real surroundings. He is the embodiment of +the strength and purity of youth, untroubled by the +moment, independent of place and of circumstance.</p> + +<p>Of such perfection, born of the rarest meeting of happy +circumstances, Renaissance sculpture knows nothing. +A lesser art, for painting was then what sculpture had +been in Antiquity; bound more or less closely to the +service of architecture; surrounded by ill-grown, untrained +bodies; distracted by ascetic feelings and scientific +curiosities, the sculpture of Donatello and Mino, of +Jacopo della Quercia and Desiderio da Settignano, of +Michelangelo himself, was one of those second artistic +growths which use up the elements that have been +neglected or rejected by the more fortunate and vigorous +efflorescence which has preceded. It failed in +everything in which antique sculpture had succeeded; it +accomplished what Antiquity had left undone. Its +sense of bodily beauty was rudimentary; its knowledge +of the nude alternately insufficient and pedantic; the +forms of Donatello's David and of Benedetto's St. John +are clumsy, stunted, and inharmonious; even Michelangelo's +Bacchus is but a comely lout. This sculpture +has, moreover, a marvellous preference for ugly old men—gross, +or ascetically imbecile; and for ill-grown striplings: +except the St. George of Donatello, whose body, +however, is entirely encased in inflexible leather and +steel, it never gives us the perfection and pride of youth. +These things are obvious, and set us against the art as +a whole. But see it when it does what Antiquity never +attempted; Antiquity which placed statues side by side +in a gable, balancing one another, but not welded into +one pattern; which made relief the mere repetition of +one point of view of the round figure, the shadow of +the gable group; which, until its decline, knew nothing +of the pathos of old age, of the grotesque exquisiteness +of infancy, of the endearing awkwardness of adolescence; +which knew nothing of the texture of the skin, the silkiness +of the hair, the colour of the eye.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>Let us see Renaissance sculpture in its real achievement.</p> + +<p>Here are a number of children by various sculptors +of the fifteenth century. This is the tiny baby whose +little feet still project from a sort of gaiter of flesh, +whose little boneless legs cannot carry the fat little +paunch, the heavy big head. Note that its little skull +is still soft, like an apple, under the thin floss hair. Its +elder brother or sister is still vaguely contemplative of +the world, with eyes that easily grow sleepy in their +blueness. Those a little older have learned already that +the world is full of solemn people on whom to practise +tricks; their features have scarcely accentuated, their +hair has merely curled into loose rings, but their eyes +have come forward from below the forehead, eyes and +forehead working together already; and there are great +holes, into which you may dig your thumb, in the cheeks. +Those of fourteen or fifteen have deplorably thin arms, +and still such terrible calves; and a stomach telling +of childish gigantic meals; but they have the pert, +humorous frankness of Verrocchio's David, who certainly +flung a jest at Goliath's unwieldy person together +with his stone; or the delicate, sentimental pretty +woman's grace of Donatello's St. John of the Louvre, +and Benedetto da Maiano's: they will soon be poring +over the <i>Vita Nuova</i> and Petrarch. Two other St. +Johns—I am speaking of Donatello's—have turned out +differently. One, the first beard still doubtful round +his mouth, has already rushed madly away from earthly +loves; his limbs are utterly wasted by fasting; except +his legs, which have become incredibly muscular from +continual walking; he has begun to be troubled by +voices in the wilderness—whether of angels or of +demons—and he flies along, his eyes fixed on his scroll, +and with them fixing his mind on unearthly things; he +will very likely go mad, this tempted saint of twenty-one. +Here he is again, beard and hair matted, almost +a wild man of the woods, but with the gravity and self-possession +of a preacher; he has come out of the wilderness, +overcome all temptations, his fanaticism is now +militant and conquering. This is certainly not the +same man, but perhaps one of his listeners, this old +King David of Donatello—a man at no time intelligent, +whose dome-shaped head has taken back, with the thin +white floss hair that recalls infancy, an infantine lack +of solidity; whose mouth is drooping already, perhaps +after a first experience of paralysis, and his eyes getting +vague in look; but who, in this intellectual and +physical decay, seems to have become only the more +full of gentleness and sweetness; misnamed David, a +Job become reconciled to his fate by becoming indifferent +to himself, an Ancient Mariner who has seen +the water-snakes and blessed them and been filled with +blessing.</p> + +<p>These are all statues or busts intended for a given +niche or bracket, a given portico or window, but in a +measure free sculpture. Let us now look at what is +already decoration. Donatello's Annunciation, the big +coarse relief in friable grey stone (incapable of a sharp +line), picked out with delicate gilding; no fluttering or +fainting, the angel and the Virgin grave, decorous, like +the neighbouring pilasters. Again, his organ-loft of +flat relief, with granulated groundwork: the flattened +groups of dancing children making, with deep, wide +shadows beneath their upraised, linked arms, a sort +of human trellis-work of black and white. Mino's +Madonna at Fiesole: the relief turned and cut so as +to look out of the chapel into the church, so that the +Virgin's head, receiving the light like a glory on the +pure, polished forehead, casts a nimbus of shadow round +itself, while the saints are sucked into the background, +their accessories only, staff and gridiron, allowed to +assert themselves by a sharp shadow; a marvellous +vision of white heavenly roses, their pointed buds and +sharp spines flourishing on martyrs' blood and incense, +grown into the close lips and long eyes, the virginal +body and thin hands of Mary. From these reliefs we +come to the compositions, group inside group, all +shelving into portico and forest vista, of the pulpit of +Sta. Croce, the perspective bevelling it into concavities, +like those of panelling; the heads and projecting +shoulders lightly marked as some carved knob or +ornament; to the magnificent compositions in light +and shade, all balancing and harmonising each other, +and framed round by garlands of immortal blossom +and fruit, of Ghiberti's gates.</p> + +<p>Nor is this all. The sculpture of the Renaissance, +not satisfied with having portrayed the real human +being made of flesh and blood, of bone and skin, dark-eyed +or flaxen-haired, embodied in the marble the +impalpable forms of dreams. Its latest, greatest, works +are those sepulchres of Michelangelo, whose pinnacle +enthrones strange ghosts of warriors, and whose steep +sides are the unquiet couch of divinities hewn, you +would say, out of darkness and the light that is as +darkness.</p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="minimal" /> +<p> </p> + +<h3><a name="A_SEEKER_OF_PAGAN_PERFECTION" id="A_SEEKER_OF_PAGAN_PERFECTION"></a>A SEEKER OF PAGAN PERFECTION</h3> + +<div class="center"> + <p class="noindent"><small>BEING THE LIFE OF DOMENICO NERONI, PICTOR SACRILEGUS</small> + </p> +</div> +<p> </p> + +<p>Every time, of late years, of my being once more in +Rome, I have been subject to a peculiar mental obsession: +retracing my steps, if not materially, in fancy at +least, to such parts of the city as bear witness to the +strange meeting of centuries, where the Middle Ages +have altered to their purposes, or filled with their +significance, the ruined remains of Antiquity.</p> + +<p>Such places are scarcer than one might have expected, +and for that reason perhaps more impressive, +more fragmentary and enigmatic. There are the colossal +columns—great trickles and flakes of black etching as +with acid their marble—of the temple of Mars Ultor, +with that Tuscan palace of Torre della Milizia rising +from among them. There is, inside Ara Cœli—itself +commemorating the legend of Augustus and the Sibyl—the +tomb of Dominus Pandulphus Sabelli, its borrowed +vine-garlands and satyrs and Cupids surmounted +by mosaic crosses and Gothic inscriptions; and outside +the same church, on a ground of green and gold, a +Mother of God looking down from among gurgoyles +and escutcheons on to the marble river-god of the yard +of the Capitol below. Then also, where pines and +laurels still root in the unrifled tombs, the skeleton +feudal fortress, gutted as by an earthquake, alongside +of the tower of Cæcilia Metella. These were the places +to which my thoughts were for ever recurring; to +them, and to nameless other spots, the street-corner, +for instance, where an Ionic pillar, with beaded and +full-horned capital, is walled into the side of an insignificant +modern house. I know not whether, in consequence +of this straining to see the meeting-point of +Antiquity and the Middle Ages (like the fancy, sometimes +experienced, to reach the confluence of rivers), or +rather as a cause thereof, but a certain story has long +lurked in the corners of my mind. Twenty years have +passed since first I was aware of its presence, and +it has undergone many changes. It is presumably a +piece of my inventing, for I have neither read it nor +heard it related. But by this time it has acquired a +certain traditional veracity in my eyes, and I give to +the reader rather as historical fact than as fiction the +study which I have always called to myself: <i>Pictor +Sacrilegus</i>.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>Domenico, the son of Luca Neroni, painter, sculptor, +goldsmith, and engraver, about whom, owing either to +the scarcity of his works or the scandal of his end, +Vasari has but a few words in another man's +biography, must have been born shortly before or shortly +after the year 1450, a contemporary of Perugino, of +Ghirlandaio, of Filippino Lippi, and of Signorelli, by +all of whom he was influenced at various moments, and +whom he influenced by turns.</p> + +<p>He was born and bred in the Etruscan town of +Volterra, of a family which for generations had exercised +the art of the goldsmith, stimulated, perhaps, by +the sight of ornaments discovered in Etruscan tombs, +and carrying on, peradventure, some of the Etruscan +traditions of two thousand years before. The mountain +city, situate on the verge of the malarious seaboard of +Southern Tuscany, is reached from one side through +windings of barren valleys, where the dried-up brooks +are fringed, instead of reed, with the grey, sand-loving +tamarisk; and from the other side, across a high-lying +moorland of stunted heather and sere grass, whence the +larks rise up scared by only a flock of sheep or a mare +and her foal, and you journey for miles without meeting +a house or a clump of cypresses. In front, with the +white road zigzagging along their crests, is a wilderness +of barren, livid hillocks, separated by huge fissures and +crevassed by huge cracks, with here and there separate +rocks, projecting like Druidic stones from the valley of +gaping ravines; and beyond them all a higher mountain, +among whose rocks and ilexes you doubtfully +distinguish the walls and towers of the Etruscan city. +A mass of Cyclopean wall and great black houses, grim +with stone brackets and iron hooks and stanchions, all +for defence and barricade, Volterra looks down into the +deep valleys, like the vague heraldic animal, black and +bristly, which peers from the high tower of the municipal +palace. One wonders how this could ever have +been a city of the fat, voluptuous Etruscans, whose +images lie propped up and wide-eyed on their stone +coffin-lids. The long wars of old Italic times, in which +Etruria fell before Rome, must have burned and destroyed, +as one would think, the land as well as the inhabitants, +leaving but grey cinders and blackened stone +behind. Siena and Florence ruined Volterra once more +in the Middle Ages, isolating it near the pestilential +Maremma and checking its growth outward and inward. +The cathedral, the pride of a mediæval commonwealth, +is still a mean and unfinished building of the twelfth +century. There is no native art, of any importance, of +a later period; what the town possesses has come from +other parts, the altar-pieces by Matteo di Giovanni +and Signorelli, for instance, and the marble candelabra, +carried by angels, of the school of Mino da Fiesole.</p> + +<p>In this remote and stagnant town, the artistic training +of Domenico Neroni was necessarily imperfect and +limited throughout his boyhood to the paternal goldsmith's +craft. Indeed, it seems likely that some +peculiarities of his subsequent life as an artist, his +laboriousness disproportionate to all results, his persistent +harping on unimportant detail, and his exclusive +interest in line and curve, were due not merely to +an unhappy and laborious temperament, but also to +the long habit of an art full of manual skill and +cunning tradition, which presented the eye with ingenious +patterns, but rarely attempted, save in a few +church ornaments, more of the domain of sculpture, to +tell a story or express a feeling.</p> + +<p>Besides this influence of his original trade, we find +in Domenico Neroni's work the influence of his early +surroundings. His native country is such as must +delight, or help to form, a painter of pale anatomies. +The painters of Southern Tuscany loved as a background +the arid and mountainous country of their +birth. Taddeo di Bartolo placed the Death of the +Virgin among the curious undulations of pale clay and +sandy marl that stretch to the southernmost gates of +Siena; Signorelli was amused and fascinated by the +odd cliffs and overhanging crags, unnatural and grotesque +like some Druidic monument, of the valleys +of the Paglia and the Chiana; and Pier della Francesca +has left, in the allegorical triumphs of Frederick +of Urbino and his duchess, studies most exquisite and +correct, of what meets the traveller's eyes on the watersheds +of the central Apennine, sharp-toothed lines of +mountain peaks pale against the sky, dim distant +whiteness of sea, and valleys and roads and torrents +twisting intricately as on a map. The country about +Volterra, revealing itself with rosy lividness at dawn, +with delicate periwinkle blue at sunset, through an +open city gate or a gap between the tall black houses, +helped to make Neroni a lover of muscle and sinew, +of the strength and suppleness of movement, of the +osseous structure divined within the limbs; and made +him shrink all his life long, not merely from drapery +or costume that blunted the lines of the body, but from +any warmth and depth of colour; till the figures stood +out like ghosts, or people in faded tapestries, from the +pale lilacs and greys and washed out cinnamons of his +backgrounds. For the bold peaks and swelling mountains +of the valleys of the Arno and the Tiber, and the +depths of colour among vegetation and rivers, seemed +crude and emphatic to a man who carried in his +memory those bosses of hill, pearly where the waters +have washed the sides, pale golden buff where a little +sere grass covers the rounded top; those great cracks +and chasms, with the white road snaking along the +narrow table-land and the wide valleys; and the ripple +of far-off mountain chains, strong and restrained in +curves, exquisite in tints, like the dry white and +purpled hemlock, and the dusty lilac scabius, which +seem to flower alone in that arid and melancholy and +beautiful country.</p> + +<p>"Colour," wrote Domenico Neroni, among a mass +of notes on his art, measurements, and calculations, "is +the enemy of noble art. It is the enemy of all precise +and perfect form, since where colour exists form can +be seen only as juxtaposition of colour. For this +reason it has pleased the Creator to lend colour only +to the inanimate world, as to senseless vegetables and +plants, and to the lower kinds of living creatures, as +birds, fishes, and reptiles; whereas nobler creatures, as +lions, tigers, horses, cattle, stags, and unicorns, are +robed in white or dull skins, the noblest breeds, indeed, +both of horses, as those of the Soldans of Egypt +and Numidia, and of oxen, as those of the valleys of +the Clitumnus and Chiana, being white; whence, indeed, +the poet Virgil has said that such latter are +fittest for sacrifice to the immortal gods; 'hinc albi, +Clitumne, greges,' and what follows. And man, the +masterpiece of creation, is white; and only in the +less noble portions of his body, which have no sensitiveness +and no shape (being, indeed, vegetative and +deciduous), as hair and beard, partaking of colour. +Wherefore the ancient Romans and Greeks, portraying +their gods, chose white marble for material, and not +gaudy porphyry or jasper, and portrayed them naked. +Whence certain moderns, calling themselves painters, +who muffle our Lord and the Holy Apostles in many-coloured +garments, thinking thereby to do a seemly +and honourable thing, but really proceeding basely like +tailors, might take a lesson if they could."</p> + +<p>The quotation from Virgil, and the allusion to the +statues of the immortal gods, shows that Neroni must +have written these lines in the later part of his career, +when already under the influence of that humanist +Filarete, who played so important a part in his life, +and when possessed already by those notions which +brought him to so strange and fearful an end. But +from his earliest years he sought for form, despising +other things. He passed with contempt through a +six months' apprenticeship at Perugia, railing at the +great factory of devotional art established there by +Perugino, of whom, with his rows of splay-footed +saints and spindle-shanked heroes, he spoke with the +same sweeping contempt as later Michelangelo. At +Siena, which he described (much as its earlier artists +painted it) as a town of pink toy-houses and scarlet +toy-towers, he found nothing to admire save the +marble fountain of Jacopo della Quercia, for the +antique group of the Three Graces, later to be drawn +by the young Raphael, had not yet been given to +the cathedral by the nephew of Pius II. The sight of +these noble reliefs, particularly of the one representing +Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise, with their +strong and well-understood nudities, determined him +to exchange painting for sculpture, and made him +hasten to Florence to see the works of Donatello and +of Ghiberti.</p> + +<p>Domenico Neroni must have spent several years of +his life—between 1470 and 1480—in Florence, but +little of his work has remained in that city,—little, at +least, that we can identify with certainty. For taking +service, as he did, with the Pollaiolos, Verrocchio, +Nanni di Banco, and even with Filippino and Botticelli, +wherever his inquisitive mind could learn, or his +restless, fastidious, laborious talent gain him bread, it +is presumable that much of his work might be discovered +alongside that of his masters, in the collective +productions of the various workshops. It is possible +thus that he had a hand in much metal and relief +work of the Pollaiolos, and perhaps even in the embroidering +and tapestries of which they were undertakers; +also in certain ornaments, friezes of Cupids +and dolphins, and exquisite shell and acanthus carving +of the monuments of Santa Croce; and it may be surmised +that he occasionally assisted Botticelli in his +perspective and anatomy, since that master took him +to Rome when commissioned to paint in the chapel of +Pope Sixtus. Indeed, in certain little-known studies +for Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Calumny of Apelles +one may discover, in the strong sweep of the outline, +in the solid fashion in which the figures are planted on +their feet—all peculiarities which disappear in the +painted pictures, where grace of motion and exquisitive +research take the place of solid draughtsman-ship—the +hand of the artist whom the restless desire +to confront ever new problems alone prevented from +attaining a place among the great men of his time.</p> + +<p>For there was in Domenico Neroni, from the very +outset of his career, a curiosity after the hidden, a +passion for the unattainable, which kept him, with +greater power than many of his contemporaries, and +vastly greater science, a mere student throughout his +lifetime. He resembled in some respects his great contemporary +Leonardo, but while the eager inquisitiveness +of the latter was tempered by a singular power +of universal enjoyment, a love of luxury and joyousness +in every form, the intellectual activity of Neroni +was exasperated into a kind of unhappy mania by the +fact that its satisfaction was the only happiness that +he could conceive. He would never have understood, +or understanding would have detested, the luxurious +<i>dilettante</i> spirit which made Leonardo prefer painting +to sculpture, because whereas the sculptor is covered +with a mud of marble dust, and works in a place disorderly +with chips and rubbish, the painter "sits at +his easel, well dressed and at ease, in a clean house +adorned with pictures, his work accompanied by music +or the reading of delightful books, which, untroubled +by the sound of hammering and other noises, may be +listened to with very great pleasure." The workshop +of Neroni, when he had one of his own, was full of +cobwebs and dust, littered with the remains of frugal +and unsavoury meals, and resolutely closed to the rich +and noble persons in whose company Leonardo delighted. +And if Neroni, in his many-sided activity, +eventually put aside sculpture for painting, it was +merely because, as he was wont to say, a figure must +needs look real when it is solid and you can walk +round it; but to make men and women rise out of a +flat canvas or plastered wall, and stand and move as +if alive, is truly the work of a god.</p> + +<p>Men and women, said Neroni; and he should have +added men and women nude. For the studies which he +made of the anatomy of horses and dogs were destined +merely to shed light on the construction of human +creatures; and his elaborate and exquisite drawings of +undulating hills and sinuous rivers, nay, of growths of +myrtle and clumps of daffodils, were intended as practice +towards drawing the more subtle lines and curves +of man's body. And as to clothes, he could not understand +that great anatomists like Signorelli should +huddle their figures quite willingly in immense cloaks +and gowns; still less how exquisite draughtsmen like his +friend Botticelli (who had the sense of line like no other +man since Frate Lippo, although his people were oddly +out of joint) could take pleasure in putting half-a-dozen +veils atop of each other, and then tying them all into +bunches and bunches with innumerable bits of tape! +As to himself, he invariably worked out every detail of +the nude, in the vain hope that the priests and monks +for whom he worked would allow at least half of those +beautiful anatomies to remain visible; and when, with +infinite difficulties and bad language, he gradually gave +in to the necessity of some sort of raiment, it was of +such a nature—the hose and jerkins of the men-at-arms +like a second skin, the draperies of the womankind as +clinging as if they had been picked out of the river, +that a great many pious people absolutely declined to +pay the agreed on sum for paintings more suited to +Pagan than to Christian countries; and indeed Fra +Girolamo Savonarola included much work of Domenico's +in his very finest burnings.</p> + +<p>Such familiarity with nude form was not easily +attained in the fifteenth century. Mediæval civilisation +gave no opportunities for seeing naked or half-naked +people moving freely as in the antique palæstra; +and there had yet been discovered too few antique +marbles for the empiric knowledge of ancient sculptors +to be empirically inherited by modern ones. Observation +of the hired model, utterly insufficient in itself, +required to be supplemented by a thorough science of +the body's mechanism. But physiology and surgery were +still in their infancy; and artists could not, as they could +after the teachings of Vesalius, Fallopius, and Cesalpinus, +avail themselves of the science accumulated for +medical purposes. Verrocchio and the Pollaiolos most +certainly, and Donatello almost without a doubt, practised +dissection as a part of their business, as Michelangelo, +with the advantage of twenty years of their +researches behind him, practised it passionately in his +turn. Of all the men of his day, Domenico Neroni, +however, was the most fervent anatomist. He ran +every risk of contagion and of punishment in order to +procure corpses from the hospital and the gibbet. He +undermined his constitution by breathing and handling +corruption, and when his friends implored him to spare +his health, he would answer, although unable to touch +food for sickness, by paraphrasing the famous words of +Paolo Uccello, and exclaiming from among his grisly +and abominable properties, "Ah! how sweet a thing is +not anatomy!"</p> + +<p>There was nothing, he said—for he spoke willingly +to any one who questioned him on these subjects—more +beautiful than the manner in which human beings +are built, or indeed living creatures of any kind; for, +in the scarcity of corpses and skeletons, he would pick +up on his walks the bones of sheep that had died on +the hill-sides, or those of horses and mules furbished +up by the scavenger dogs of the river-edge. It was +marvellous to listen to him when he was in the vein. +He sat handling horrible remains and talking about +them like a lover about his mistress or a preacher about +God; indeed, bones, muscles, and tendons were mistress +and god all in one to this fanatical lover of human form. +He would insist on the loveliness of line of the scapula, +finding in the sweep of the <i>acromion</i> ridge a fanciful +resemblance to the pinion, and in the angular shape of +the <i>coracoid</i> process to the neck and head of a raven in +full flight. Following with his finger the triangular +outline of the bone, he went on to explain how its freedom +of movement is due to its singular independence; +laid loosely on the flat muscles behind the upper ribs, +it moves with absolute freedom, backwards and forwards, +up and down, unconnected with any other bone, +till, turning the corner of the shoulder, it is hinged +rather than tied to the collar-bone; the collar-bone +itself free to move upwards from its articulation in the +sternum. And then talk of the great works of man! +Talk of Brunellesco and his cupola, of the engineers of +the Duke of Calabria! Look at the human arm: what +engineer would have dared to fasten anything to such +a movable base as that? Yet an arm can swing round +like a windmill, and lift weights like the stoutest crane +without being wrenched out of its sockets, because the +muscles act as pulleys in four different directions. +And see, under the big <i>deltoid</i>, which fits round the +shoulder like an epaulette and pulls the arm up, is the +scapular group, things like tidily sorted skeins, thick +on the shoulder-blades, diminished to a tendon string +at their insertion in the arm; their business is to pull +the arm back, in opposition to the big pectoral muscle +which pulls it forwards. Here you have your arm +working up, backwards or forwards; but how about +pulling it down? An exquisite little arrangement +settles that. Instead of being inserted with the rest +on the outside of the arm-bone, the lowest muscle takes +another road, and is inserted in the under part of the +bone, in company with the great <i>latissimus dorsi</i>, and +these tightening while the <i>deltoid</i> slackens, pull the arm +down. No other arrangement could have done it with +so little bulk; and an additional muscle on the under-arm +or the ribs would have spoilt the figure of Apollo himself.</p> + +<p>Among the paintings of contemporary artists, the +one which at that time afforded Domenico the most +unmingled satisfaction was Pollaiolo's tiny panel of +Hercules and the Hydra. There! You might cover +it with the palm of your hand; but in that hand you +would be holding the concentrated strength and valour +of the world, the true son of Jove, the most beautiful +muscles that ever were seen! At least the most +beautiful save in the statues of Donatello; for, of +course, Donato was the greatest craftsman that had ever +lived; and Domenico spoke of him as, in Vasari's day, +men were to speak of Michelangelo.</p> + +<p>For I ask you, who save an angel in human shape +could have modelled that David, so young and triumphant +and modest, treading on Goliath's head, with +toes just slightly turned downwards, and those sandals, +of truly divine workmanship? And that St. John in +the Wilderness—how beautiful are not his ribs, showing +under the wasted pectoral muscles; and how one sees +that the <i>radius</i> rolls across the <i>ulna</i> in the forearm; +surely one's heart, rather than the statue, must be +made of stone if one can contemplate without rapture +the exquisite rendering of the texture where the shin-bone +stands out from the muscles of the leg. Such +must have been the works of those famous Romans +and Greeks, Phidias and Praxiteles.</p> + +<p>Such were the notions of Domenico of Volterra in +the earlier part of his career. For a change came +gradually upon him after his first visit to Rome, +whither, about 1480, he accompanied Botticelli, Rosselli, +and Ghirlandaio, whom His Beatitude Pope Sixtus +had sent for to decorate the new chapel of the palace.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>We must not be deluded, like Domenico Neroni during +his Florentine days, into the easy mistake of considering +mere realism as the veritable aim of the art of +his days. Deep in the life of that art, and struggling +for ever through whatever passion for scientific accuracy, +technical skill, or pathetic expression, is the sense +of line and proportion, the desire for pattern, growing +steadily till its triumph under Michelangelo and +Raphael.</p> + +<p>This reveals itself earliest in architecture. The men +of the fifteenth century had lost all sense of the logic +of construction. Columns, architraves, friezes, and +the various categories of actual stone and brick work, +occurred to them merely as so much line and curve, +applicable to the surface of their buildings, with not +more reference to their architecture than a fresco or +an arras. The Pazzi Chapel, for instance, is one agglomeration +of architectural members which perform no +architectural function; but, taken as a piece of surface +decoration, say as a stencilling, what could be more harmonious? +Or take Alberti's famous church at Rimini; +it is but a great piece of architectural veneering, nothing +that meets the eye doing any real constructive +duty, its exquisite decoration no more closely connected +with the building than the strips of damask and yards +of gold braid used in other places on holidays. As +the fifteenth century treats the architectural detail of +Græco-Roman art, so likewise does it proceed with its +sculptured ornament; all meaning vanishes before the +absorbing interest in pattern. For there is in antique +architectural ornament a much larger proportion of +significance than can strike us at first. Thus the +garlands of ivy and fruit had actually hung round the tomb +before being carved on its sides; before ornamenting +its corners the rams' heads and skulls of oxen had lain +for centuries on the altar. The medallions of nymphs, +centaurs, tritons, which to us are so meaningless and +irrelevant, had a reference either to the divinity or to +the worshippers; and there is probably almost as much +spontaneous symbolism in the little cinerary box in the +Capitol (of a person called Felix), with its variously +employed genii, making music, carrying lanterns and +torches, burning or extinguished under a trellis hung +with tragic masks, as in any Gothic tomb with angels +drawing the curtains of the deathbed. There has been, +with the change of religion, an interruption in the +symbolic tradition; yet, though we no longer interpret +with readiness this dead language of paganism, we feel, +if we are the least attentive, that it contains a real +meaning. We feel that the sculptors cared not merely +for the representation, but also for the object represented. +These things were dear to them, a part of +their life, their worship, their love; and they put as +much observation into their work as any Gothic sculptor, +and often as much fancy and humour (though both more +beautiful), as one may judge, with plenty of comparison +at hand, by a certain antique altar in Siena Cathedral, +none of whose Gothic animals come up to the wonderful +half-human rams' heads and bored, cross griffins of +this forlorn fragment of paganism. The significance +of classic ornament the men of the fifteenth century +straightway overlooked. They laid hold of it as merely +so much form, joining sirens, griffins, garlands, rams' +heads, victories, without a suspicion that they might +mean or suggest anything. They do, in fact, mean +nothing, in most Florentine work, besides exquisite +pattern; in the less subtle atmosphere of Venice they +reach that frank senselessness which has moved the +wrath of Ruskin. But what a charm have not even +those foolish monuments of doges and admirals, tier +upon tier of triumphal arch, of delicately flowered +column and scalloped niche, and then rows of dainty +warriors and virtues; how full of meaning to the eye +and spirit is not this art so meaningless to the literary +mind!</p> + +<p>Of course the painting of that age never became an +art of mere pattern like the architecture. The whole +life and thought of the time was poured into it; and +the art itself developed in its upward movement a number +of scientific interests—perspective, anatomy, expression—which +counteracted that tendency to seek for +mere beauty of arrangement and detail. Yet the perfection +of Renaissance art never lies in any realism in +our modern sense, still less in such suggestiveness as +belongs to our literary age; and its triumph is when +Raphael can vary and co-ordinate the greatest number +of heads, of hands, feet, and groups, as in the School of +Athens, the Parnassus, the marvellous little Bible histories +of the Loggie; above all, in that "Vision of +Ezekiel," which is the very triumph of compact and +harmonious composition; when Michelangelo can tie +human beings into the finest knots, twist them into the +most shapely brackets, frameworks, and key-stones. +Even throughout the period of utmost realism, while +art was struggling with absorbing problems, men never +dreamed of such realism as ours. They never painted +a corner of nature at random, merely for the sake of +veracity; they never modelled a modern man or woman +in their real everyday dress and at their real everyday +business. In the midst of everything composition +ruled supreme, and each object must needs find its echo, +be worked into a scheme of lines, or, with the Venetians, +of symmetrically arranged colours. There is an anatomical +engraving by Antonio Pollaiolo, one of the +strongest realists of his time, which sums up the +tendencies of fifteenth-century art. It is a combat +of twelve naked men, extraordinarily hideous and in +hideous attitudes, but they are so arranged that their +ungainly and flayed-looking limbs form with the background +of gigantic ivy tendrils an intricate and beautiful +pattern, such as we find in Morris's paper and stuffs.</p> + +<p>This hankering after pattern, this desire for beauty +as such, became manifest in Domenico Neroni after his +first sojourn in Rome.</p> + +<p>The Roman basilicas, with their stately rows of +columns, Corinthian and Ionic, taken from some former +temple, and their sunken floor, solemn with Byzantine +patterns of porphyry and serpentine, had impressed +with their simplicity and harmony the mind of this +Florentine, surrounded hitherto by the intricacies of +Gothic buildings. They had formed the link to those +fragments of ancient architecture, more intact but also +more hidden than in our days, whose dignity of proportion +and grace of detail—vast rosetted arches and +slender rows of fluted pillars—our modern and Hellenicised +taste has treated with too ready contempt. For +this Vitruvian art, unoriginal and bungling in the eyes +of our purists, was yet full of the serenity, the ampleness +which the Middle Ages lacked, and affected the men +of the fifteenth century much like a passage of Virgil +after a canto of Dante. It formed the fit setting for +those remains of antique sculpture which were then +gradually beginning to be drawn from the earth. Of +such statues and reliefs—which the men of the Renaissance +regarded as the work rather of ancient Rome than +of Greece—a certain amount was beginning to be carried +all over Italy, and notably to the houses of the rich +Florentine merchants, who incrusted their staircase +walls with inscriptions and carvings, and set statues +and sarcophagi under the columns of their courtyards. +But such sculpture was chosen rather for its portable +character than its excellence; and although single busts +and slabs were diligently studied by Florentine artists, +there could not have existed in Florence a number of +antiques sufficient to impress the ideal of ancient art +upon men surrounded on all sides by the works of +medieval painters and sculptors.</p> + +<p>To the various sights of Rome must be due that +sudden enlarging of style, that kind of new classicism, +which distinguishes the work of fifteenth-century +masters after their visit to the Eternal City, enabling +Ghirlandaio, Signorelli, Perugino, and Botticelli to +make the Sixtine Chapel, and even the finical Pinturicchio, +the Vatican library, into centres of fresh +influence for harmony and beauty.</p> + +<p>The result upon Domenico Neroni was a momentary +confusion in all his artistic conceptions. Too much of +a seeker for new things, for secret and complicated +knowledge, to undergo a mere widening of style like +his more gifted or more placid contemporaries, he fell +foul of his previous work and his previous masters, +without finding a new line or new ideals. The frescoes +of Castagno, the little panels of the Pollaiolos, nay, even +the works of Donatello, were no longer what they had +seemed before his Roman journey, and even what he +had remembered them in Rome; for it is with more +noble things, even as with the rooms which we inhabit, +which strike us as small and dingy only on returning +from larger and better lighted ones.</p> + +<p>It is to this period of incipient but ill-understood +classicism that belongs the only work of Domenico +Neroni—at least the only work still extant nowadays—which +possesses, over and above its artistic or scientific +merit, that indefinable quality which we must +simply call <i>charm</i>; to this time, with the one exception +of the famous woodcuts done for Filarete. Domenico +began about this time, and probably under the +stress of necessity, to make frontispieces for the books +with which Florentine printers were rapidly superseding +the manuscripts of twenty years before: collections +of sermons, of sonnets, lives of saints, editions of Virgil +and Terence, quaint versified encyclopædias, and even +books on medicine and astrology. From these little +woodcuts, groups of saints round the Cross, with Giotto's +tower and Brunellesco's dome in the distance, pictures +of Fathers of the Church or ancient poets seated at +desks in neatly panelled closets—always with their +globes, books, and pot of lilies, and a vista of cloisters; +or battles between chaste viragos, in flying Botticellian +draperies, and slim, naked Cupids; from such frontispieces +Domenico passed on to larger woodcuts, destined +to illustrate books never printed, or perhaps, like the +so-called <i>playing cards of Mantegna</i> and certain prints +of Robetta, to be bought as cheap ornaments for walls. +Some of those that remain to us have a classical stiffness, +reminding one of the Paduan school; others, and these +his best, remind one of the work of Botticelli. There +is, for instance, the figure of a Muse, elaborately +modelled under her ample drapery, seated cross-legged +by a playing fountain, on a carpet of exquisitely +designed ground-ivy, a little bare trellis behind her, a +tortoise lyre in her hand; which has in it somewhat of +that odd, vague, questioning character, half of eagerness, +half of extreme lassitude, which we find in Botticelli. +Only that in Neroni's work it seems not the +outcome of a certain dreamy spiritual dissatisfaction—the +dissatisfaction which makes us feel that Botticelli's +flower-wreathed nymphs may end in the pool under +the willows like Ophelia—but rather of a torturing +of line and attitude in search of grace. Grace! Unclutchable +phantom, which had appeared tantalisingly +in Neroni's recollections of the antique, a something +ineffable, which he could not even see clearly when it +was there before him, accustomed as he had been to all +the hideousness of anatomised reality. In these woodcuts +he seems hunting it for ever; and there is one +of them which is peculiarly significant, of a nymph in +elaborately wound robes and veils, striding, with an +odd, mad, uncertain swing, through fields of stiff grass +and stunted rushes, a baby faun in her bosom, another +tiny goat-legged creature led by the hand, while she +carries uncomfortably, in addition to this load, a silly +trophy of wild-flowers tied to a stick; the personification +almost, this lady with the wide eyes and crazy +smile, of the artist's foolishly and charmingly burdened +journey in quest of the unattainable. The imaginative +quality, never intended or felt by the painter himself, +here depends on his embodying longings after the calm +and stalwart goddesses on sarcophagus and vase, in the +very thing he most seeks to avoid, a creature borrowed +from a Botticelli allegory, or one of the sibyls of the +unspeakable Perugino himself! The circumstances of +this quest, and the accidental meeting in it of the +antique and the mediæval, the straining, the Quixote-riding +or Three-King pilgrimaging after a phantom, +gives to such work of Domenico's that indefinable +quality of <i>charm</i>; the man does not indeed become a +poet, but in a measure a subject for poetry.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>In order to understand what must have passed in the +mind of one of those Florentines of the fifteenth century, +we must realise the fact that, unlike ourselves, +they had not been brought up under the influence of +the antique, and, unlike the ancients, they had not +lived in intimacy with Nature. The followers of Giotto +had studied little beyond the head and hands, and as +much of the body as could be guessed at under drapery +or understood from movement; and this achievement, +with no artistic traditions save those of the basest +Byzantine decay, was far greater than we easily appreciate. +It remained for the men of the fifteenth century, +Donatello, Ghiberti, Masaccio, and their illustrious +followers, to become familiar with the human body. +To do so is easy for every one in our day, when we are +born, so to speak, with an unconscious habit of antique +form, diffused not merely by ancient works of art in +marble or plaster, but by more recent schools of art, +painting as well as sculpture, themselves the outcome +of classical imitation. The early Italian Renaissance +had little or none of these facilitations. Fragments of +Greek and Roman sculpture were still comparatively +uncommon before the great excavations of the sixteenth +century; nor was it possible for men so unfamiliar, not +merely with the antique, but with Nature itself, to +profit very rapidly by the knowledge and taste stored +up even in those fragments. It was necessary to learn +from reality to appreciate the antique, however much +the knowledge of the antique might later supplement, +and almost supplant, the study of reality. So these +men of the fifteenth century had to teach themselves, +in the first instance, the very elements of this knowledge. +And here their position, while yet so unlike +ours, was even more utterly unlike that of the ancients +themselves. The great art of Greece undoubtedly had +its days of ignorance; but for those ancient painters +and sculptors, who for generations had watched naked +lads exercising in the school or racecourse, and draped, +half-naked men and women walking in the streets and +working in the fields, their ignorance was of the means +of representation, not of the object represented. It is +the hand, the tool which is at fault in those constrained, +simpering warriors of the schools of Ægina, in those +slim-waisted dæmonic dancers of the Apulian vases; +the eye is as familiar with the human body, the mind +as accustomed to select its beauty from its ugliness, as +the eye and mind of such of us as cannot paint are +familiar nowadays with the shapes and colours, with +the charm of the trees and meadows that we love. +The contemporaries, on the contrary, of Donatello had +received from the sculptors of the very farthest Middle +Ages, those who carved the magnificent patterns of +Byzantine coffins and the exquisite leafage of Longobard +churches, a remarkable mastery over the technical +part of their craft. The hand was cunning, but the eye +unfamiliar. Hence it comes that the sculpture of the +earlier Renaissance displays perfection of workmanship, +which occasionally blinds us to its poverty of form, and +even to its deficiency of science. And hence also the +rapidity with which every additional item of knowledge +is put into practice that seems to argue perfect familiarity. +But these men were not really familiar with +their work. The dullest modern student, brought up +among casts and manuals, would not be guilty of the +actual anatomical mistakes committed every now and +then by these great anatomists, so passionately curious +of internal structure, so exquisitely faithful to minute +peculiarity, let alone the bunglings of men so certain +of their pencil, so exquisitely keen to form, as Botticelli. +As a matter of fact, every statue or drawn figure of this +period represents a hard fight with ignorance and with +unfamiliarity worse than ignorance. The grosser the +failure hard-by, the more splendid the real achievement. +For every limb modelled truthfully from the +life, every gesture rendered correctly, every bone or +muscle making itself felt under the skin, every crease +or lump in the surface, is so much conquered from +the unknown.</p> + +<p>So long as this study, or rather this ignorance, continued, +the antique could be appreciated only very +partially, and almost exclusively in the points in +which it differed least from the works of these modern +men. It must have struck them by its unerring +science, its great truthfulness to nature, but its +superior beauty could not have appealed to artists too +unfamiliar with form to think of selecting it.</p> + +<p>The study of antique proportion, the reproduction +of antique types, so visible in the sculptures of Michelangelo, +of Cellini, and of Sansovino, and no less in the +painting of Raphael, of Andrea, and even of the later +Venetians, was very unimportant in the school of +Donatello; and it is probable that he and his pupils +did not even perceive the difference between their +own works and the old marbles, which they studied +merely as so many realistic documents.</p> + +<p>During his Florentine days Domenico Neroni, like +his masters, was unconscious of the real superiority of +the antique, and blind to its difference from what his +contemporaries and himself were striving to produce. +He did not perceive that the David of Donatello and +that of Verrocchio were unlike the marble gods and +heroes with whom he would complacently compare +them, nor that the bas-reliefs of the divine Ghiberti +were far more closely connected with the Gothic +work of Orcagna, even of the Pisans, than with those +sculptured sarcophagi collected by Cosimo and Piero +dei Medici. It was only when his insatiate curiosity +had exhausted those problems of anatomy which had +still troubled his teachers that he was able to see +what the antique really was, or rather to see that the +modern was not the same thing. Ghirlandaio, Filippino, +Signorelli, and Botticelli undoubtedly were affected +by a similar intuition of the Antique; but they were +diverted from its thorough investigation by the manifold +other problems of painting as distinguished from +sculpture, and by the vagueness, the unconsciousness +of great creative activity: the antique became one of +the influences in their development, helping very quietly +to enlarge and refine their work.</p> + +<p>It was different with Domenico, in whom the man +of science was much more powerful than the artist. +His nature required definite decisions and distinct +formulas. It took him some time to understand that +the school of Donatello differed absolutely from the +antique, but the difference once felt, it appeared to +him with extraordinary clearness.</p> + +<p>He never put his thoughts into words, and probably +never admitted even to himself that the works he had +most admired were lacking in beauty; he merely +asserted that the statues of the old Romans and +Greeks were astonishingly beautiful. In reality, however, +he was perpetually comparing the two, and +always to the disadvantage of the moderns. It is +possible in our day to judge justly the comparative +merits of antique sculpture and of that of the early +Renaissance; or rather to appreciate them as two +separate sorts of art, delightful in quite different ways, +letting ourselves be charmed not more by the actual +beauty of form, and nobility of movement of the one +than by the simplicity, the very homeliness, the +essentially human quality of the other. To us there +is something delightful in the very fact that the +Davids of Donatello and Verrocchio are mere ordinary +striplings from the street and the workshop, that the +singers of Luca della Robbia are simple unfledged +choir-boys, and the Virgins of Mino Florentine fine +ladies; we have enough of antique perfection, we have +had too much of pseudo-antique faultlessness, and we +feel refreshed by this unconsciousness of beauty and +ugliness. A contemporary could not enter into such +feelings, he could not enjoy his own and his fellows' +<i>naïveté</i>; besides, the antique was only just becoming +manifest, and therefore triumphant. To Domenico, +Donatello's David became more and more unsatisfactory, +faulty above the waist, positively ungainly below, +weak and lubberly; how could so divine an artist +have been satisfied with that flat back, those narrow +shoulders and thick thighs? He felt freer to dislike +the work of Verrocchio, his own teacher, and a man +without Donatello's overwhelming genius; that David +of his, with his immense head and wizen face, his +pitiful child's arms and projecting clavicles, straddling +with hand on hip; was it possible that a great hero, +the slayer of a giant (Domenico's notions of giants +were taken rather from the romances of chivalry recited +in the market than from study of Scripture) +should have been made like that? And so, like his +great contemporary Mantegna in far-off Lombardy, +Domenico turned that eager curiosity with which he +had previously sought for the secret of flayed limbs +and fleshless skeletons, to studying the mystery of +proportion and beauty which was hidden, more subtly +and hopelessly, in the broken marbles of the Pagans.</p> + +<p>It happened one day, somewhere about the year +1485, that he was called to examine a group of +Bacchus and a Faun, recently brought from Naples by +the banker Neri Altoviti, of the family which once +owned a charming house, recently destroyed, whose +triple row of pillared balconies used to put an odd +Florentine note into the Papal Rome, turning the +swirl of the Tiber opposite Saint Angelo's into a reach +of the Arno. The houses of the Altovitis in Florence +were in that portion of the town most favoured by +the fifteenth century, already a little way from the +market: the lion on the tower of the Podestà, and the +Badia steeple printing the sky close by; while not far +off was the shop where the good bookseller Vespasiano +received orders for manuscripts, and conversed with the +humanists whose lives he was to write. The Albizis +and Pandolfinis, illustrious and numerous families, +struck in so many of their members by the vindictiveness +of the Medicis, had their houses in the same quarter, +and at the corner of the narrow street hung the carved +escutcheon—two fishes rampant—of the Pazzis: their +house shut up and avoided by the citizens, who had so +recently seen the conspirators dangling in hood and +cape from the windows of the public palace. The +house of the Altovitis was occupied on the ground floor +by great warehouses, whose narrow, grated windows +were attainable only by a steep flight of steps. The +court was surrounded on three sides by a cloister or +portico, which repeated itself on the first and second +floors, with the difference that the lowest arches were +supported by rude square pillars, ornamented with only +a carved marigold, while the uppermost weighed on +stout oaken shafts, between which ropes were stretched +for the drying of linen; and the middle colonnade consisted +of charming Tuscan columns, where Sirens and +Cupids and heraldic devices replaced the acanthus or +rams' horns of the capitals. It was to this middle portion +of the house that Domenico ascended up a noble +steep-stepped staircase, protected from the rain by a +vaulted and rosetted roof, for it was external and +occupied the side of the yard left free from cloisters. +The great banker had bidden Domenico to his midday +meal, which was served with a frugality now fast disappearing, +but once habitual even among the richest +Florentines. But though the food was simple and +almost scanty, nearly forty persons sat down to meat +together, for Neri Altoviti held to the old plan, commended +by Alberti in his dialogue on the governing of +a household, that the clerks and principal servants of +a merchant were best chosen among his own kinsfolk, +living under his roof, and learning obedience from the +example of his children. Despite this frugality, the +dining-room was, though bare, magnificent. There were +none of those carpets and Eastern stuffs which surprised +strangers from the North in the voluptuous little +palaces of contemporary Venetians, and the benches +were hard and narrow. But the ceiling overhead was +magnificently arranged in carved compartments, great +gold sunflowers and cherubs projecting from a dark blue +ground among the brown raftering; in the middle of +the stencilled wall was one of those high sideboards so +frequently shown in old paintings, covered with gold and +silver dishes and platters embossed by the most skilful +craftsmen; and at one end a great washing trough and +fountain, such as still exist in sacristies, ornamented +with groups of dancing children by Benedetto da +Maiano; while behind the high seat of the father of +the family a great group of saints, emerging from +blooming lilies and surrounded by a glory of angels, +was hanging in a frame divided into carved compartments: +the work, panel and frame, of the late Brother +Filippo Lippi. At one end of the board sat all the +men, arranged hierarchically, from the father in his +black loose robe to lads in short plaited tunic and +striped hose; the womankind were seated together, and +the daughters, even the mother of the house, modest +and almost nunlike in apparel and head-dress, would +rise and help to wait on the men, with that silent and +grave courtesy which, according to Vespasiano, had disappeared +from Florence with Alessandra dei Bardi. +There was little speech, and only in undertones; a +Franciscan said a long grace, and afterwards, and in +the middle of the meal, a young student, educated by +the frequent munificence of the Altovitis, read out +loud a chapter of Cicero's "De Senectute;" for Neri, +although a busy banker, with but little time for study, +was not behind his generation in the love of letters +and philosophy.</p> + +<p>After meat Messer Neri dismissed the rest of the +company to their various avocations; the ladies silently +retired to superintend the ironing and mending of the +house linen, and Domenico was escorted by his host to see +the newly arrived piece of statuary. It had been placed +already in the banker's closet, where he could feast his +eyes on its perfection while attending to his business +or improving his mind by study. This closet, compared +to the rest of the house, was small and low-roofed. +At its end, as we see in the pictures of Van Eyck and +Memling, opened out the conjugal chamber, reflecting +its vast, red-covered bed, raised several steps, its crucifix +and praying-stool, and its latticed window in a circular +mirror framed in cut facets, which hung opposite on +the wall of the closet. The latter was dark, a single +trefoiled window admitting on either side of its column +and through its greenish bottle-glass but little light +from the narrow street. The chief furniture consisted +of shelves carrying books, small antique bronzes, some +globes, a sand-glass, and panel cupboards, ornamented +with pictures of similar objects, and with ingenious +perspectives of inlaid wood. An elaborate iron safe, +painted blue and studded with beautiful metal roses, +stood in a corner. There were two or three arm chairs +of carved oak for visitors. The master sat upon a bench +behind an oaken counter or desk, very much like St. +Jerome in his study. On the wall behind, and above +his head, hung a precious Flemish painting (Flemish +paintings were esteemed for their superior devoutness) +representing the Virgin at the foot of the Cross, with +a Nativity and a Circumcision on either of the opened +shutters. It made a glowing patch of vivid geranium +and wine colour, of warm yellow glazing on the oak +of the wall. On the counter or writing-table stood a +majolica pot with three lilies in it, a pile of manuscript +and ledgers, and a human skull alongside of a crucifix, +beautifully wrought of bronze by Desiderio da Settignano. +A Latin translation of Plato's "Phædo" was +spread open on the desk, together with one of the +earliest printed copies of the "Divine Comedy."</p> + +<p>Messer Neri did not take his seat at the counter, +but, after a pause, and with some solemnity, drew a +curtain of dark brocade which had been spread across +one end of the closet, and displayed his new purchase.</p> + +<p>"I have it from the king, for the settling of a debt +of a thousand crowns contracted with my father, when +he was Duke of Calabria," said the banker, with due +appreciation of the sum. "'Tis said they found it +among the ruins of that famous palace of the Emperor +Tiberius of which Tacitus has told us."</p> + +<p>The two marble figures, to which time and a long +sojourn underground had given a brownish yellow +colour, reddish in places with rust stains, stood out +against a background of Flemish tapestry, whose emaciated +heads of kings and thin bodies of warrior saints +made a confused pattern on the general dusky blue +and green. The group was in wonderful preservation: +the figure of Bacchus intact, that of the young faun +lacking only the arm, which had evidently been freely +extended.</p> + +<p>It exists in many repetitions and variations in most +of our museums; a work originally of the school of +Praxiteles, but in none of the copies handed to us of +excellence sufficient to display the hand of the original +sculptor. Besides, we have been spoilt by familiarity +with an older and more powerful school, by knowledge +of a few great masterpieces, for complete appreciation +of such a work. But it was different four hundred +years ago; and Domenico Neroni stood long and +entranced before the group. The principal figure embodied +all those beauties which he had been striving +so hard to understand: it was, in the most triumphant +manner, the absolute reverse of the figures of Donatello.</p> + +<p>The young god was represented walking with +leisurely but vigorous step, supporting himself upon +the shoulder of the little satyr as the vine supports +itself, with tendrils trailed about branches and trunk, +on the propping tree from which the child Ampelos +took his name. Like the head with its elaborately +dressed curls, the beautiful body had an ampleness and +tenderness that gave an impression almost womanly +till you noticed the cuirass-like sit of the chest on the +loins, and the compressed strength of the long light +thighs. The creature, as you looked at him, seemed +to reveal more and more, beneath the roundness and +fairness of surface, the elasticity and strength of an +athlete in training. But when the eye was not exploring +the delicate, hard, and yet supple depressions +and swellings of the muscles, the slender shapeliness +of the long legs and springy feet, the back bulging +with strong muscles above, and going in, tight, with +a magnificent dip at the waist; all impressions were +merged in a sense of ease, of suavity, of full-blown +harmony. Here was no pomp of anatomical lore, of +cunning handicraft, but the life seemed to circulate +strong and gentle in this exquisite effortless body. +And the creature was not merely alive with a life +more harmonious than that of living men or carved +marbles, but beautiful, equally in simple outline if you +chose that, and in subtle detail when that came under +your notice, with a beauty that seemed to multiply +itself, existing in all manners, as it can only in things +that have life, in perfect flowers and fruits, or high-bred +Oriental horses. Of such things did the under-strata +of consciousness consist in Neroni—vague impressions +of certain bunches of grapes with their great rounded +leaves hanging against the blue sky, of the flame-like +tapered petals of wild tulips in the fields, of the golden +brown flanks of certain horses, and the broad white +foreheads of the Umbrian bullocks; forming as it were +a background for the perception of this god, for no +man or woman had ever been like unto him.</p> + +<p>Domenico remained silent, his arms folded on his +breast; it was not a case for talking.</p> + +<p>But the young man who had read Cicero aloud at +table had come up behind him, and thought it more +seemly to praise his patron's new toy, while at the +same time displaying his learning; so he cleared his +throat, and said in a pompous manner:—</p> + +<p>"It is stated in the fifth chapter of the Geography +of Strabo that the painter Parrhasius, having been +summoned by the inhabitants of Lindos to make them +an image of their tutelary hero Hercules, obtained +from the son of Jupiter that he should appear to him +in a dream, and thus enable him worthily to portray +the perfections of a demigod. Might we not be +tempted to believe that the divine son of Semele had +vouchsafed a similar boon to the happy sculptor of this +marble?"</p> + +<p>But Domenico only bit his thumb and sighed very +heavily.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>To the men of those days, which have taken their name +from the revival of classical studies, Antiquity, although +studied and aped till its phrases, feelings, and thoughts +had entered familiarly into all life, remained, nevertheless, +a period of permanent miracle. It was natural, +therefore, to the contemporaries of Poggius and Æneas +Sylvius, of Ficinus and Politian, that the art of the +Romans and Greeks should, like their poetry, philosophy, +and even their virtues, be of transcendent and +unqualified splendour. Why it should be thus they +asked as little as why the sun shines, mediæval men +as they really were, and accepting quite simply certain +phenomena as the result of inscrutable virtues. Even +later, when Machiavelli began to examine why the +ancients had been more valorous and patriotic than his +contemporaries, nay, when Montaigne expounded with +sceptical cynicism the superior sanity and wisdom of +Pagan days, people were satisfied to think—when they +thought at all—that antique art was excellent because +it belonged to antiquity. And it was not till the middle +of the eighteenth century that the genius of Winkelmann +brought into fruitful contact the study of ancient +works of art, and that of the manners and notions of +antiquity, showing the influence of a civilisation which +cultivated bodily beauty as an almost divine quality, +and making us see behind that beautiful nation of +marble the generations of living athletes, among whom +the sculptor had found his critics and his models.</p> + +<p>To a man like Domenico Neroni, devoid of classical +learning and accustomed to struggling with anatomy +and perspective, the problem of ancient art was not +settled by the fact of its antiquity. He had gone once +more to Rome on purpose to see as many old marbles +as possible, and he brought to their study the feverish +curiosity with which in former years he had flayed and +cut up corpses and spent his nights in calculations of +perspective. To such a mind, where modern scientific +methods were arising among mediæval habits of allegory +and mysticism, the statues and reliefs which he +was perpetually analysing became a sort of subsidiary +nature, whose riddles might be read by other means +than mere investigation; for do not the forces of Nature, +its elemental spirits, give obedience to wonderful words +and potent combinations of numbers?</p> + +<p>Certain significant facts had flashed across his mind +in his studies of that almost abstract, nay, almost cabalistic +thing, the science of bodily proportions. It was +plain that the mystery of antique beauty—the ancient +symmetry, <i>symmetria prisca</i> as a humanist designs it +in his epitaph for Leonardo da Vinci—was but a matter +of numbers. For a man's length, if he stand with outstretched +arms, is the same from finger tip to finger tip +as his length when erect from head to feet, namely, +eight times the length of his head. Now eight heads, +if divided into halves, give four as the measure of +throat and thorax; and four heads to the length of the +leg from the acetabulum to the heel, divided themselves +into two heads going to the thigh and two heads to the +shank; while in the cross measurement two heads equal +the breadth of the chest, and three measure the length +from the shoulder to the middle finger. These measures—a +mere rough rule of thumb in our eyes—contained +to this mediæval mind the promise of some great +mystery. To him, accustomed to hear all the +occurrences of Nature, and all human concerns referred to +astrological calculations, and conceiving the universe as +governed by spirits—in shape, perhaps, like the Primum +Mobile, the Mercurius and Jupiter of Mantegna's playing +cards, crowned with stars and poised upon globes—it +was as if the divining rod were turning pertinaciously +to one spot in the earth, where, had he but the necessary +tools, he must strike upon veins of the purest gold, +or cause water to spirt high in the air. This number +<i>eight</i>, and the pertinacity of its recurrence, puzzled him +intensely. It seemed to point so clearly, much as in +music the sensitive seventh points to the tonic, to a sort +of resolution on the number nine. And if only nine +could be established, it would seem to explain so much…. For +five being man's numeral in creation (and is +not the measurement of his face also <i>five eyes</i>?), it +makes, when added to four, the number of the material +elements over which he dominates, <i>nine</i>, which would +thus represent the supremacy or perfection of man. +Man's power of reproduction being represented by +three, its multiple nine would be still more obviously +important. How to turn this eight into nine became +Domenico's study, and he took measurement after +measurement for this purpose. At length he remembered +that man's body is a unity, therefore represented +by the number one, and that will, judgment, and supremacy +are also comprised in the unit. Now one and +eight make nine beyond all possibility of doubt, and +the formula—"man's body is a unity—or one"—composed +of harmonies of eight, would give the formula +<i>nine</i> meaning <i>man's supremacy is expressed in his body</i>. +The importance of working round to this famous nine +will be clear when we reflect that, according to the +Kabbala and the lost sacred book of Hermes Trismegistus—the +Pimandra, doubtless, which he is represented, +on the floor of Siena Cathedral, as offering to a Jew and +a Gentile—nine represents the sun and all beautiful +bright things that draw their influence from it, as the +gleam of beaten gold, the rustle of silken stuffs, the +smell of the flower heliotrope, and all such men as delineate +human beings with colours, or make their effigy +in stone or metal; moreover, Phœbus Apollo, whom the +poets describe as the most beautiful of the gods, as +indeed he is represented in all statues and reliefs.</p> + +<p>Domenico would often discuss these matters with +a learned man who greatly frequented his company. +This was the humanist Niccolò Feo, known as Filarete. +Filarete was a native of Southern Apulia, a bastard of +the house of the Counts of Sulmona, who, in order to +prevent any plots against the legitimate branch, had +handsomely provided for him in an abbey of which they +enjoyed the patronage. But his restless spirit drove +him from the cloister, and impelled him to long and +adventurous journeys. He had travelled in India and +the East, and in Greece, returning to Italy only when +Constantinople fell before the Turks. During these +years he had acquired immense learning, considerable +wealth, and a vaguely sinister reputation. He had been +persecuted by Paul II. for taking part in the famous +banquets, savouring oddly of Paganism, of Pomponius +Lætus; but the late Pontiff Sixtus IV. had taken him +into his favour together with Platina, one of his fellow-sufferers +in the castle of Saint Angelo. He was now +old, and, after a life of study, adventure, and possibly +of sin, was living in affluence in a house given him by +the illustrious Cardinal at St. Peter ad Vincula, who +had also obtained him a canonry of St. John Lateran. +He was busying his last year in a great work of fancy +and erudition, for which he required the assistance of a +skilful draughtsman and connoisseur of antiquities, than +whom none could suit him so well as Domenico Neroni.</p> + +<p>The book of Filarete, of which the rare copies are +among the most precious relics of the Renaissance, was +a strange mixture of romance, allegory, and encyclopædic +knowledge, such as had been common in the +Middle Ages, and was still fashionable during the +revival of letters, which merely added the element of +classical learning. Like the <i>Hypnerotomachia Poliphili</i> +of Francesco Colonna, of which it was doubtless the +prototype, the <i>Alcandros</i> of Filarete, though never +carried beyond the first volume, is an amazing and +wearisome display of the author's archæological learning. +It contains exact descriptions of all the rarities +of ancient art, and of things Oriental which he had +seen, and pages of transcripts from obscure Latin and +Greek authors, descriptive of religious ceremonies; +varied with Platonic philosophy, Decameronian obscenities, +in laboured pseudo-Florentine style, and Dantesque +visions, all held together by the confused narrative of +an allegorical journey performed by the author. It +is profusely ornamented with woodcuts, representing +architectural designs of a fantastic, rather Oriental +description, restorations of ancient buildings, reproductions +of antique inscriptions and designs, and last, +but far from least, a certain number of small compositions, +of Mantegnesque quality, but Botticellian charm, +showing the various adventures of the hero in terrible +woods, delicious gardens, and in the company of nymphs, +demigods, and allegorical personages. These latter are +undoubtedly from the hand of Domenico Neroni; and +it was while discussing these delightful damsels seated +with lutes and psalteries under vine-trellises, these +scholars in cap and gown, weeping in quaint chambers +with canopied beds and carnations growing on the +window, these processions—suggesting Mantegna's +Triumph of Julius Cæsar—of priests and priestesses +with victories and trophies, that the painter from +Volterra and the Apulian humanist would discuss the +secret of antique beauty—discuss it for hours, surrounded +by the precious manuscripts and inscriptions, +the fragments of sculpture, the Eastern rarities, of +Filarete's little house on the Quirinal hill, or among +the box-hedges, clipped cypresses, and fountains of his +garden; while the riots and massacres, the fanatical +processions and feudal wars, of mediæval Rome raged +unnoticed below. For Pope Sixtus and his Riarios, +and Pope Innocent and his Cybos, thirsting for power +and gold, drunken with lust and bloodshed, were +benign and courteous patrons of all art and all +learning.</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>V</h3> + +<p>But that number nine, attained with so much difficulty, +although it put the human proportion into +visible connection with the sun, with beaten gold, the +smell of the heliotrope, and the god Apollo, and opened +a vista of complicated astral influences, did not in +reality bring Domenico one step nearer the object of +his desires. It had enabled those ancient men to make +statues that were perfectly beautiful, that was obvious; +but it did not make his own figures one tittle less +hideous, for he felt them now to be absolutely hideous. +One wintry day, as he was roaming amongst the fallen +pillars and arches, thickly covered with myrtle and +ilex, of the desolate region beyond what had once been +the Forum and was now the cattle-market, there came +across Domenico's mind, while he watched a snake +twisting in the grass, the remembrance of a certain +anecdote about a Greek painter, to whom Hercules had +shown himself in a vision. He had heard it, without +taking any notice, two years before, from the young +scholar who read Cicero at table for Messer Neri +Altoviti; and although he had thought of it several +times, it had never struck him except as one of the +usual impudent displays of learning of the parasitic +tribe of humanists.</p> + +<p>But at this moment the remembrance of this fact +came as a great light into Domenico's soul. For what +were these statues save the idols of the heathens; and +what wonder they should be divinely beautiful, when +those who made them might see the gods in visions?</p> + +<p>This explanation, which to us must sound far-fetched +and fantastic, knowing, as we do, the real reason that +made a people of athletes into a people of sculptors, +savoured of no strangeness to a man of the Middle +Ages. Visions of superhuman creatures were among +the most undisputed articles of his belief, and among +the commonest subjects of his art. Had not the Blessed +Virgin appeared to St. Bernard, the Saviour among His +cherubim to St. Francis—the very stones shown at +La Vernia where it had happened—the Divine Bridegroom +to Catherine of Siena? Had not St. Anthony +of Padua held the Divine Child in his arms? And all +not so long ago? Besides, every year there was some +nun or monk claiming to have conversed with Christ +and His court; and the heavens were opening quite +frequently in the walls of cells and the clefts of hermitages. +And did not Dante relate a journey into Hell, +Purgatory, and Paradise? It was perfectly natural +that what was constantly happening to holy men and +women nowadays should have happened in Pagan times +also; and what men could so well have deserved a visit +from gods as those who spent their lives faithfully +portraying them? The story of Parrhasius and his +vision was familiar ground to a man accustomed to see, +in all corners of Italy, portraits of the Saviour painted +by St. Luke, or finished, like the famous Holy Face of +Lucca, by angels. For an absolute contempt for the +artistic value of such miraculous images did not, in the +mind of Neroni, throw any doubt on their authenticity; +in the same way that the passion for antiquity, the +hankering after Pagan beliefs, did not probably interfere +with the orthodoxy of so many of the humanists. +Domenico, besides, remembered that Virgil and +Ovid, whom he had not read, but whose fables he had +sometimes been asked to illustrate, were constantly +talking of visions of gods and goddesses, nay, of their +descending upon earth to unite themselves with mortals +in love or friendship, for he had had to furnish designs +for woodcuts representing Diana and Endymion, Jupiter +and Ganymede, the gods coming to Philemon and +Baucis, and Apollo tending the herds of Admetus. +Neither did it occur to Domenico's mind that the +existence of the old gods might be a mere invention, or +a mere delusion of the heathen. For all their classic +culture, the men of the fifteenth century, as the men of +the thirteenth for all their scholasticism, were in an +intellectual condition such as we rarely meet with +nowadays among educated persons; and Domenico, a +mere handicraftsman, had not learned from the study +of Cicero and Plato to examine and understand the +difference between reality and fiction. To him a scene +which was frequently painted, an adventure which +was written down and could be read, was necessarily a +reality. Dante had spoken of the gods, and what +Dante said was evidently true, the allegorical meaning, +the metaphor, entirely escaping this simple mind; and +Virgil, Homer, Ovid told the most minute details +about gods and goddesses, and they themselves were +grave and learned men. Domenico did not even think +that the ancient gods were dead. Of course heaven +was now occupied by Christ and His saints, those +heavenly hosts of whom he would think, when he +thought of them at all, as seated stepwise on a great +stand, blue and pink and green in dress, golden discs +about their heads, and an atmosphere of fretted gold, +of swirling stencilled golden angels' wings all round +them, and God the Father, a great triangle blazing +with Alpha and Omega, above Jesus enthroned, and +His mother; and it was they who ruled things here, +and to them he said his prayers night and morning, +and knelt in church. But <i>here</i>, somehow did not +cover the whole universe, nor did that pink and blue +and gold miniature painter's heaven extend everywhere, +although, of course, somehow or other it did. +Anyhow, it was certain that not so very far off there +were Saracens and Turks—why he had seen some of +the Duke of Calabria's Turkish garrison—who believed +in Macomet, Trevigant, and Apollinis; these to be sure +were false gods (the word <i>false</i> carried no clear meaning +to his mind, or if any, one rather equivalent to +<i>wrong, objectionable</i> rather than to non-existent), but they +certainly worked wonderful miracles for their people. +And indeed—here Domenico's placid contemplation of +the kingdom of Macomet, Trevigant, and Apollinis was +exchanged for a vague horror, shot with gleams of +curiosity—the devil also had his place in the world, a +place much nearer and universal, and did marvellous +things, pointing out treasures, teaching the future, +lending invulnerable strength to the men and women +who worshipped him, of whom some might be pointed +out to you in every town—yes, grave and respectable +men, priests and monks among them, and even Cardinals +of Holy Church, as every one knew quite well…. So +that, in a confused manner, rather negative +than positive, Domenico considered that the Pagan +gods must be somewhere or other, the past and present +not very clearly separated in his mind, or rather the +past existing in a peculiar simultaneous manner with +the present, as a sort of St. Brandan's isle, in distant, +unattainable seas; or as Dante's mountain of +Purgatory, a very solid mountain indeed, yet which, +for some mysterious and unquestioned reason, people +never stumbled upon except after death. All this +was scarcely an actual series of arguments; it was +rather the arguments which, with much effort, Domenico +might have fished out of his obscure consciousness +had you summoned him to explain how the +ancient gods could possibly be immortal. As to him, +he had always heard of them as immortal, and +although he had not been taught any respect or love +for them as for Christ, the Madonna, and the saints, +they must be existing somewhere since <i>immortal</i> means +that which cannot die.</p> + +<p>But now he began to feel a certain shyness about +immortal gods, for they had begun to occupy his +thoughts, and it was with much cunning that he put +questions to his friend Filarete, desirous to gain information +on certain points without actually seeming to +ask it. The humanist, summoned to explain what the +Fathers of the Church—those worthies crowned with +mitres and offering rolls of manuscript, whom Domenico +had occasionally to portray for his customers—said +about the ancient gods, answered with much +glibness but considerable contempt, for the Greek and +Latin of these saintly philosophers inspired the learned +man with a feeling of nausea. He got out of a chest +several volumes covered with dust, and began to quote +the "Apology" of Justin Martyr, the "Legation" of +Athenagoras, the "Apology" of Tertullian and Lactantius, +whose very name caused him to writhe with +philological loathing. And he told Domenico that it +was the opinion of these holy but ill-educated persons +that dæmons assumed the name and attributes of Jupiter, +of Venus, of Apollo and Bacchus, lurking in temples, instituting +festivals and sacrifices, and were often allowed +by Heaven to distract the faithful by a display of miracles.</p> + +<p>"Then they are devils?" asked Domenico, trying to +follow.</p> + +<p>A smile passed over the beautifully cut mouth, the +noble, wrinkled face—like that of the marble Seneca—of +the old humanist.</p> + +<p>"Talk of devils to the barefoot friar who preaches +in the midst of the market-place," he said, "not to +Filarete. The whole world, air, fire, earth, water, the +entire universe is governed by dæmons, and they inspire +our noblest thoughts. Hast never heard of the +familiar dæmon of Socrates, whispering to him superhuman +wisdom? Yes, indeed, Venus, Apollo, Æsculapius, +Jove, the stars and planets, the winds and tides +are dæmons. But thou canst not understand such +matters, my poor Domenico. So get thee to Brother +Baldassare of Palermo, and ask him questions."</p> + +<p>But Filarete's expression was very different when, +one day, Domenico shyly inquired concerning the +truth of that story of Parrhasius and the Hercules of +Lindos. Strange rumours were current in Rome of +unholy festivities in which Filarete and other learned +men—some of those whom Paul II. had thrown into +prison—had once taken part. They had not merely +laid their tables and spread their couches according +to descriptions contained in ancient authors; but, +crowned with roses, laurel, myrtle, or parsley, had sung +hymns to the heathen gods, and, it was whispered, +poured out libations and burned incense in their honour. +Their friends, indeed, had answered scornfully +that these were but amusements of learned men; not +to be taken more seriously than the invocations to the +gods and muses in their poems, than the mythological +subjects which the Popes themselves selected to adorn +their dwellings. And doubtless this explanation was +correct. Yet the pleasure of these little pedantic and +artistic mummeries, which took place in suburban +gardens, while the townsfolk streamed in the hot June +nights, decked with bunches of cloves and of lavender, +to make bonfires in the empty places near the Lateran, +little guessing that their ancestors had once done the +same in honour of the neighbouring Venus—the innocent +childishness of these learned men was perhaps +spiced, for some individuals at least, by a momentary +belief in the gods of the old poets, by a sudden forbidden +fervour for the exiled divinities of Virgil and Ovid, +under whose reign the world had been young, men had +been free to love and think, and Rome, now the object +of the world's horror and contempt, had been the +world's triumphant mistress. But these had been mere +mummeries, mere child's play, and the soul of Filarete +had thirsted for a reality. He could not have answered +had you asked whether he believed in the absolute +existence and power of the old gods, any more than +whether he disbelieved in the power of Christ and His +avenging angels; his cultivated and sceptical mind was, +after all, in a state of disorder similar to that of +Domenico's ignorance. All that he knew with certainty +was that Christ and His worship represented to +him all that was unnatural, cruel, foolish, and hypocritical; +while the gods were associated with every +thought of liberty, of beauty, and of glory. And so, +one evening, after working up still further the enthusiasm, +the passionate desire of his friend, he told Domenico +that, if he chose, he too perhaps might see a god.</p> + +<p>In his antiquarian rambles Filarete had discovered, +a mile or two outside the southern gates of Rome, a +subterranean chamber, richly adorned with stuccoes—known +nowadays as the tomb of certain members of +the Flavian family, but which, thanks to the defective +knowledge of his day and the habit of seeing people +buried in churches, the humanist had mistaken for +a temple—intact, and scarcely desecrated, of the +Eleusinian Bacchus. Above its vaults, barely indicated +by a higher mound in the waving ground of the +pasture land, had once stood a Christian church, as +ancient almost as the supposed temple below, whose +Byzantine columns lay half hidden by the high grass, +and the walls of whose apse had become overgrown by +ivy and weeds, the nest of lazy snakes. The Gothic +soldiers, Arians or heathens, who had burned down, in +some drunken bout, the little church above-ground, +had penetrated at the same time into the tomb beneath +in search of treasure, and finding none, dispersed the +bones in the sarcophagi they had opened. They had +left open the aperture leading downward, which had +been matted over by a thick growth of ivy and wild +clematis. One day, while surveying the remains of +the Christian church, always in hopes of discovering in +it a former temple of the Pagans, Filarete had walked +into that tuft of solid green, and found himself, buried +and half stunned, in the mouth of the tomb below. It +was through this that he bade Domenico follow him, +bearing a certain mysterious package in his cloak, one +January day of the year fourteen hundred and eighty-eight.</p> + +<p>Above-ground it had frozen in the night; here +below, when they had descended the rugged sepulchral +stairs, the air had a damp warmth, an odd feel of +inhabitation. Above-ground, also, everything lay in +ruins, while here all was intact. As the light of the +torches moved slowly along the vaulted and stuccoed +ceilings, it showed the delicate lines of a profusion of +little reliefs and ornaments, fresh as if cast and coloured +yesterday. Slender garlands of leaves, and long knotted +ribbons and veils in lowest relief partitioned the space; +and framed by them, now round, now oval, now oblong, +were medallions of naked gods banqueting and playing +games, of satyrs and nymphs dancing, nereids swinging +on the backs of hippocamps, tritons curling their tails +and blowing their horns, Cupids fluttering among +griffins and chimæras; a life of laughter and love, +which mocked the eye, starting into vividness in one +place, dying away in a mere film where the torchlight +pressed on too closely in others. All along the walls, +below the line of the stuccoes, were excavated shelves, +on which stood numbers of small cinerary boxes, each +bearing a name. In the middle of the vaulted chamber +was a huge stone coffin, carved with revelling Bacchantes, +and grim tragic masks at its corners; and all round the +coffin, broken in one of its flanks by the tools of the +treasure-seeker, lay bones and skulls, dispersed on the +damp ground even as the Goths had left them.</p> + +<p>It was this sarcophagus which, with its Dionysiac +revels, and the name of one Dionysius carved on it, a +freedman of the Flavians, had led Filarete to consider +the tomb as a kind of temple consecrated to Bacchus.</p> + +<p>Filarete bade Domenico stick the pointed end of +his torch into the mouth of an amphora standing erect +in a corner, and began to unpack the load they had +brought on a mule. It looked like the preparation for +a feast: there were loaves of bread, fruit, a flask of +choice wine; and Domenico, for a moment, thought +the old man mad. But his feelings changed when +Filarete produced a set of silver lamps, and bade him +trim and light them, placing them on the ledges alongside +of the cinerary urns; and when he lit some strange +incense and filled the place with its smoke. Despite +the many descriptions of ancient sacrifices with which +the humanist had entertained him, Domenico had +brought a vague notion of a raising of devils, and felt +relieved at the absence of brimstone fumes, and of the +magic books that accompanied them.</p> + +<p>Although more passionately longing—he knew not, +he dared not tell himself for what—Domenico did not +come with the curious exaltation of spirits of his +companion, all whose antiquarian lore had gone to his +head, and who really imagined himself to be a genuine +Pagan engaged in Pagan rites. For Filarete the ceremony +was everything; for Domenico it was merely +a means, a sort of sacrilegious juggling, into which he +had not inquired more particularly, which was to give +him the object of his wishes at the price of great peril +to his soul. But when the subterranean chamber was +filled with a cloud of incense, through which, in the +dim yellow light of the lamp, the naked gods and +goddesses on the vault, the satyrs and nymphs, the +Tritons and Bacchantes seemed to float in and out of +sight, a feeling of awe, of an unknown kind of reverence +and rapture, began to fill his soul, and his eyes +became fixed on the lid of the carved sarcophagus—vague +images of Christian resurrections mingling with +his hopes—Would the god appear?</p> + +<p>Filarete, meanwhile, had enveloped his head in a +long linen veil, and, after washing his hands thrice in +a golden basin brought for the purpose, he placed some +faggots on the sarcophagus, lit them, and throwing +grains of incense and of salt alternately into the +flames, began to chant in an unknown tongue, which +Domenico guessed to be Greek. Then beckoning to +the painter, who was kneeling, as at church, in a +corner, he bade him unpack a basket matted over +with leaves, whose movements and sounds had puzzled +Domenico as he carried it down. In great surprise, +and with a vague sense of he knew not what, he handed +its contents to Filarete. It was a miserable little +lamb, newly born, its long, soft legs tied together, its +almost sightless, pale eyes half-started from its sockets. +As the humanist took it, it bleated with sudden shrill +strength, and Domenico could not help thinking of +certain images he had seen on monastery walls of the +Good Shepherd carrying the lame lamb on his shoulders. +This was very different. For, with an odd ferocity, +Filarete placed the miserable young creature on the +stone before the fire, and slit its throat and chest with +a long knife.</p> + +<p>The god did not appear. They extinguished the +lamps, left the carcase of the lamb half charred in a +pool of blood on the stone, and slowly reascended into +the daylight, leaving behind them, in the vaulted +chamber, a stifling fume of incense, of burnt flesh, and +mingled damp.</p> + +<p>Up above, among the ruins of the Christian church, +where they had left their mules, it was cold and sunny, +and the light seemed curiously blue, almost grey and +dusty, after the yellow illumination below. Before +them, interrupted here and there by a mass of ruined +masonry, or a few arches of aqueduct, waved the grey-green, +billowy plain, where the wind, which rolled the +great winter cloud-balls overhead, danced and sang +with the tall, dry hemlocks and sere white thistles, +shining and rattling like skeletons. And on to it seemed +to descend cloud-mountains, vague blueness and darkness—cloud +or hill, you could not tell which—out of +whose flank, ever and anon, a sunbeam conjured up a +visionary white resplendent city.</p> + +<p>The short winter day was beginning to draw in +when they approached silently the city walls, solemn +with their towers and gates, endless as it seemed, and +enclosing, one felt vaguely, an endless, distant, invisible +city.</p> + +<p>The sound of its bells came as from afar to meet the +sacrilegious men.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>VI</h3> + +<p>The culminating sacrilege was yet to come. The +place that witnessed it remains unchanged—a half-deserted +church among the silent grass-grown lanes, +the crumbling convent walls, and ill-tended vineyards +of the Aventine; a hill that has retained in Christian +times a look of its sinister fame in Pagan ones. Among +the cypresses, which seem to wander up the hillside, +rises the square belfry, among whose brickwork, flushed +in the sunset, are inlaid discs of porphyry torn from +some temple pavement, and plates of green majolica +brought from the East, it is said, by pilgrims or +Crusaders. The arum-fringed lane widens before the +outer wall of the church, overtopped by its triangular +gable. Behind this wall is a yard or atrium, the pavement +grass-grown, the walls stained with great patches +of mildew, and showing here and there in their dilapidation +the shaft and capital of a bricked-up Ionic +pillar. The place tells of centuries of neglect, of the +gradual invasion of resistless fever; and it was fitly +chosen, some fifty years ago, for the abode of a community +of Trappists. In the reign of Innocent VIII. it was +still nominally in the hands of certain Cistercians; but +the fever had long driven these monks to the more +wholesome end of the hill, where they had erected a +smaller church; and the convent had served for years +as a fortress of the turbulent family of the Capranicas, +one of whose members was always the nominal abbot, +with the Cardinal's hat, and title Jervase and Protasius. +And now, at the end of the fifteenth century, +a Cardinal Ascanio Capranica, famous for his struggle +in magnificence and sinfulness with the magnificent +and sinful young nephews of Pope Sixtus, had determined +to restore the fortified monastery, to combat +the fever by abundant plantations, and to make the +church a monument of his splendour. And, in order +to secure some benefit by his own munificence, he had +begun by commissioning Domenico Neroni to design +and execute a sepulchre three storeys high, full of +carvings, and covered with statues, so that his soul, +if sent untimely to heaven, might not be dishonoured +by the unworthy resting-place of its trusty companion, +the Cardinal's handsome and well-tended body.</p> + +<p>This church of SS. Jervase and Protasius, which +imitated, like most churches of the early Christian +period, the form of a basilica or court of law, was constructed +out of fragments of Pagan edifices, and occupied +the site of a Pagan edifice, whose columns had +been employed to carry the roof of the church, or, when +of porphyry or serpentine, had been sawed into discs +for the pavement. On the slant of the hill, supporting +the apse, encircled by pillarets, is a round mass of +masonry, overgrown with ivy and ilex scrub, the remains +of some antique bath or grotto; and under the battlemented +walls, the cloistered courts of the convent, there +stretches, it is said, a network of subterranean passages +running down to the Tiber. Four hundred years ago +they were not to be discovered if looked for, being +completely hidden by the fallen masonry and the +cypress roots and growths of poisonous plants—nightshade, +and hemlock, and green-flowered hellebore; but +wicked monks had sometimes been sucked into them +while digging the ground, or decoyed into their labyrinths +by devils. Was it possible that there had +lingered on through the ages a vague and horrified +remembrance of those rites, the discovery of whose +mysterious and wide-spread abominations had frozen +Rome with horror in her most high and palmy days; +and was there a connection between those neophytes, +wandering with blood-stained limbs and dishevelled +locks among the groves of the Aventine, then rushing +to quench their burning torches in the Tiber, two +centuries before Christ, and the devils who troubled +the Benedictines of SS. Jervase and Protasius? These +evil spirits would appear, it had been said, in the +cloisters of the convent, processions carrying lights +and garlands; and on certain nights, when the monks +were in prayer in their cells, strange sounds would +issue from the church itself, of flutes and timbrels, and +demon laughter, and demon voices chanting some +unknown litany, and clearly aping the mass; and Cardinal +Capranica was blamed by many pious persons for +his rash intention of filling once more the deserted +convent, and exposing holy men to the wrath of such +very pertinacious devils. Meanwhile mass upon mass +was said to clear the place of this demoniac infection. +It was in this church that the sacrilege of Domenico +and Filarete rose to its highest, and that an event took +place which the men of the fifteenth century could +scarce find words to designate.</p> + +<p>Domenico had grown tired of his friend's archæological +impieties. It gave him no satisfaction to pour +out wine, burn incense, arrange garlands, and even cut +the throats of animals according to a correct Pagan +ritual. It was nothing to him that Horace and Ovid +and Tibullus should have done alike. He was a good +Christian, never doubting for a moment the power of +the Blessed Virgin, the saints, and even the smallest +and meanest priest, nor the heat of hell-fire. But he +wanted to have the secret of antique proportions, and +he was convinced that this secret could be communicated +only by a Pagan divinity, just as certain theological +mysteries, such as the use of the rosary, had been +revealed to the saints by Christ or the Virgin. The +Pagan gods were devils, and to hold communication +with devils was mortal sin and sure damnation. But +lots of people communicated with devils for much more +paltry motives, for greed of gold or love of woman, +and were yet saved by the intercession of some heavenly +patron, or found it worth while not to be saved at all. +Domenico, like them, put the question of salvation +behind him. He might think of that afterwards, when +he had possessed himself of the proportion of the +ancients. At all events, at present he was willing to +risk everything in order to attain that. He was determined +to see that god of the heathens, not as he had +seen him once in the house of Messer Neri Altoviti, +cut out of marble, but alive, moving, speaking; for <i>that</i> +was the god.</p> + +<p>The god was a devil. Now it is well known that +there is a way of compelling every devil to show himself, +providing you use sufficiently strong spells. They +had sacrificed goats and lambs enough, also doves, and +had burned perfumes, and spilt wine sufficient for one +of Cardinal Riario's suppers. It was evidently not +that sort of sacrifice which would rejoice the god or +compel him to show himself. For weeks and weeks +Domenico ruminated over the subject. And little by +little the logical, inevitable answer dawned upon his +horrified but determined mind. For what was the +sacrifice which witches and warlocks notoriously offered +their Master?</p> + +<p>The place could not be better chosen. This church +was full, every one knew, of demons, who were certainly +none other than the gods of the heathen, as Tertullian, +Lactantius, Athenagoras, Justin Martyr, and all those +other holy doctors had written. It was deserted, its +keys in the hands of Cardinal Capranica's confidential +architect and decorator; and there were masses being +said every holiday to scare the evil spirits. The sacrament +was frequently left on the altar.</p> + +<p>All this Domenico expounded frequently to Filarete. +But Filarete's classic taste did not approve of Domenico's +methods, which savoured of vulgar witchcraft; perhaps +also the learned man, who did not want the secret of +antique proportion, recoiled from a degree of profanity +and of danger, both to body and soul, which his companion +willingly incurred in such a quest as his. So +Filarete demurred for a time, until at length his feebler +nature took fire at Domenico's determination, and the +guilty pair fixed upon the day and place for this +unspeakable sacrilege.</p> + +<p>The Church of SS. Jervase and Protasius has undergone +no change since the feast of Corpus Christi of the +year 1488. The damp that lies in the atrium outside, +making the grass and poppies sprout round the Byzantine +pillar which carries a cross over a pine-cone, has +invaded the flat-roofed nave and the wide aisles, separated +from it by a single colonnade. A greenish mildew +marks the fissures in the walls, rent here and there +by landslips and earthquakes. The cipolline columns +carrying the round arches on their square capitals are +lustreless, and their green-veined marble looks like +long-buried wood. The mosaic pavement stretches its +discs and volutes of porphyry and serpentine or yellowed +Parian marble, a tarnished and uneven carpet, to the +greenish-white marble steps of the chancel. The +mosaics have long fallen out of the circle of the apse; +and the frescoes, painted by some obscure follower of +Giotto, have left only a green vague stain over the +arches of the aisle. Pictures or statues there are none, +and no conspicuous sepulchre. Only, over the low +entrance, a colossal wooden crucifix of the thirteenth +century hangs at an angle from the wall, a painted +Christ, stretching his writhing livid limbs in agony +opposite the high altar. It was in this stately and +desolate church, under the misty light that pours in +through the wide windows of grey coarse glass, and +on the marble altar, facing that effigy of the dying +Saviour, that, in derision as it were of the miracle which +the church commemorates on that feast-day, Domenico +and Filarete were about to offer up to the demons +Apollo, Bacchus, and Jove the freshly consecrated +wafer, the very body and blood of Christ.</p> + +<p>But an accomplice of theirs, a certain monk well +versed in magic, whom they employed in sundry details +of devil-raising, on the score that they were seeking +treasure hidden in the church, had suddenly been seized +with qualms of conscience. Instead of appearing at +the appointed time alone, and bearing certain necessaries +of his art, he kept them waiting a full hour, until +they began their proceedings without his assistance. +And even as Domenico was reaching his companion +the ostensorium, which had remained on the altar after +the morning's mass, the church was surrounded by the +officers of the Podestà, on horseback, and by a crowd of +monks and priests, and rabble who had followed them. +Of these persons, not a few affirmed in after years, that, +as they arrived at the church door, they had heard +sounds of flutes and timbrels, and mocking songs filling +the place; and that the devil, dressed in skins and garlands +like a wild man of the woods, had cleft the roof +with his head, and disappeared with many blasphemous +yells as they entered.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>VII</h3> + +<p>In those last years of the fifteenth century, Rome +was a city of the Middle Ages. The cupola of the +Pantheon, the circular hulk of the Colosseum, and the +twin columns of Trajan and Antoninus projected, like +the fantastic antiquities of some fresco of Benozzo +Gozzoli, above domeless church roofs, battlemented +palace walls, and innumerable Gothic belfries and +feudal towers. In the theatre of Marcellus rose the +fortress of the Orsinis; against the tower whence Nero, +as the legend ran, had watched the city burning, were +clustered the fortifications of the Colonnas; and in +every quarter the stern palaces of their respective +partisans frowned with their rough-hewn fronts, their +holes for barricade beams, and hooks for chains. The +bridge of St. Angelo was covered with the shops of +armourers, as the old bridge of more peaceful Florence +with those of silversmiths. Walls and towers encircled +the Leonine City where the Pope sat unquietly in the +big battlemented donjon by the Sixtine Chapel; and in +its midst was still old St. Peter's, half Lombard, half +Byzantine. In Rome there was no industry, no order, +no safety. Through its gates rushed raids of Colonnas +and Orsinis, sold to or betrayed by the Popes, from +their castles of Umbria or the Campagna to their castles +in town; and their feuds meant battles also between +the citizens who obeyed or thwarted them. Houses +were sacked and burnt, and occasionally razed to the +ground, for the ploughshare and the salt-sower to go +over their site. A few years later, when Pope Borgia +dredged the Tiber for the body of his son, the boatmen +of Ripetta reported that so many bodies were thrown +over every night that they no longer heeded such occurrences. +And when, two centuries later, the Corsinis +dug the foundations of their house on the Longara, +there were discovered quantities of human bones in +what had been the palace of Pope della Rovere's +nephew. Meanwhile Ghirlandaio and Perugino were +painting the walls of the Sixtine; Pinturicchio was +designing the blue and gold allegorical ceilings of the +library; Bramante building the Chancellor's palace, +and the Pollaiolas and Mino da Fiesole carving the +tombs in St. Peter's, while learned men translated Plato +and imitated Horace.</p> + +<p>Of this Rome there remains nowadays nothing, or +next to nothing. Sometimes, indeed, looking up the +green lichened sides of some mediæval tower, with its +hooks for chains, and its holes for beams, a vague vision +thereof rises in our mind. And in the presence of +certain groups by Signorelli, representing murderous +scuffles or supernatural destruction, we feel as if we +had come in contact with the other reality of those +times, the thing which serene art and literature and +the love of antiquity have driven into the background. +But the complete vision of the time and place, the certain +knowledge of that Rome of Sixtus IV. and Innocent +VIII., we can now no longer grasp, a dreadful phantom +passing too rapidly across the centuries.</p> + +<p>It is with this feeling of impotence in my attempt +to follow the thoughts of an illiterate artist of the Renaissance, +that I prefer to conclude this strange story +of the quest after antique beauty and antique gods by +quoting a page from one of the barbarous chroniclers +of mediæval Rome. The entry in the continuation of +Infessura's diary is headed "Pictor Sacrilegus":—</p> + +<p>"On the 20th July of the year of salvation fourteen +hundred and eighty-eight, there were placed for three +days in a cage on high in the Campo dei Fiori, Messer +Niccolò Filarete, Canon of Sancto Joanne; also Domenico, +the Volterran, painter and architect to the magnificent +Cardinal Ascanio, and Frate Garofalo of Valmontone, +they having been discovered in the act of desecrating +the Church of SS. Jervase and Protasius, and stealing +for magic purposes the ostensorium and many gold +chalices and reliquaries with precious stones; and it +was Frate Garofalo who, being versed in witchcraft +and treasure finding, was the accomplice of the above, +and denounced them on the feast of Corpus Domini. +And the twenty-third of the said month of July they +were justiced, and in this manner. <i>Videlicet</i>, Filarete +and Domenico, having been removed from the cage, +were dragged on hurdles as far as the square of San +Joanni, and Frate Garofalo went on an ass, all of +them crowned with paper mitres. Frate Garofalo was +hanged to the elm-tree of the square. Of Filarete and +Domenico, the right hand was chopped off, after which +they were burned in the said square. And their +chopped off right hands were taken to the Capitol and +nailed up above the gate, alongside of the She-wolf of +metal. Laus Deo."</p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="minimal" /> +<p> </p> + +<h3><a name="VALEDICTORY" id="VALEDICTORY"></a>VALEDICTORY</h3> +<h3>I</h3> + +<p>While gathering together the foregoing pages, written +at different periods and in different phases of thought, +the knowledge has grown on me that I was saying +farewell to some of the ambitions and to most of the +plans of my youth.</p> + +<p>All writers start with the hope of solving a problem +or establishing a formula, however fragmentary or +humble; and many, the most fortunate, and probably +the most useful, continue to work out their program, +or at least to think that they do so. Life to them is +but the framework for work; and that is why they +manage to leave a fair amount of work behind them,—work +for other workers to employ or to undo. But +with some persons, life somehow gets the better of +work, becomes, whether in the form of circumstance or +of new problems, infinitely the stronger; and scatters +work, tossing about such fragments as itself, in its +irregular, irresistible fashion, has torn into insignificance, +or (once in a blue moon!) shaped into more +complete meaning.</p> + +<p>As regards my own case, I began by believing I +should be an historian and a philosopher, as most +young people have done before me; then, coming in +contact with the concrete miseries of others, called +social and similar problems, I sought to apply some +of my historical or philosophic lore (such as it was) +to their removal; and finally, life having manifested +itself as offering problems (unexpected occurrence!) +not merely concerning the Past, nor even the abstract +Present, but respecting my own comfort and discomfort, +I have found myself at last wondering in what +manner thoughts and impressions could make the +world, the Past and Present, the near and the remote, +more satisfying and useful to myself. Circumstances +of various kinds, and particularly ill-health, have thus +put me, although a writer, into the position of a +reader; and have made me ask myself, as I collected +these fragments of my former studies, what can the +study of history, particularly of the history of art and +of other manifestations of past conditions of soul, do +for us in the present?</p> + +<p>All knowledge is bound to be useful. Apart from +this truism, I believe that all study of past conditions +and activities will eventually result, if not in the +better management of present conditions and activities +(as all partisan historians have hoped, from Machiavelli +to Macaulay), at all events in a greater familiarity +with the various kinds of character expressed in historical +events and in the way of looking at them; for +even if we cannot learn to guide and employ such +multifold forces as make, for instance, a French revolution, +we may learn to use for the best the individual +minds and temperaments of those who describe them: +a Carlyle, a Michelet, a Taine, are natural forces also, +which may serve or may damage us.</p> + +<p>Moreover, I hold by the belief, expressed years ago, +in my previous volume of Renaissance studies, to wit, +that historical reading (and in historical I include the +history of thoughts and feelings as much as of events and +persons) is a useful exercise for our sympathies, bringing +us wider and more wholesome notions of justice and +charity. And I feel sure that other uses for historical +studies could be pointed out by other persons, apart +from the satisfaction they afford to those who pursue +them, which, considered merely as so much spiritual +gymnastics, or cricket, or football, or alpineering, is +surely not to be despised.</p> + +<p>But now, having dropped long since out of the ranks +of those who study in order to benefit others, or even +to benefit only themselves, I would say a few words +about the advantage which mere readers, as distinguished +from writers, may get from familiarity with +the Past.</p> + +<p>This advantage is that they may find in the Past +not merely a fine field for solitary and useless delusions +(though that also seems necessary), but an additional +world for real companionship and congenial activity. +Our individual activities and needs of this kind are +innumerable, and of infinite delicate variety; and there +is reason to suppose that the place in which our lot is +cast does not necessarily fit them to perfection. For +things in this world are very roughly averaged; and +although averaging is a useful, rapid way of despatching +business, it does undoubtedly waste a great deal +which is too good for wasting. Hence, it seems to me, +the need which many of us feel, which most of us +would feel, if secured of food and shelter, of spending +a portion of their life of the spirit in places and +climates beyond that River Oceanus which bounds the +land of the living.</p> + +<p>As I write these words, I am conscious that this +will strike many readers as the expression of a superfine +and selfish dilettantism, arising no doubt from +morbid lack of sympathy with the world into which +Heaven has put us. What! become absentees from +the poor, much troubled Present; turn your backs to +Realities, become idle strollers in the Past? And why +not, dear friends? why not recognise the need for a +holiday? why not admit, just because work has to be +done and loads to be borne, that we cannot grind and +pant on without interruption? Nay, that the bearing +of the load, the grinding of the work, is useless save to +diminish the total grinding and panting on this earth. +Moreover, I maintain that we have but a narrow conception +of life if we confine it to the functions which +are obviously practical, and a narrow conception of +reality if we exclude from it the Past. And not because +the Past has been, has actually existed outside some one, +but because it may, and often does, actually exist within +ourselves. The things in our mind, due to the mind's +constitution and its relation with the universe, are, +after all, realities; and realities to count with, as much +as the tables and chairs, and hats and coats, and other +things subject to gravitation outside it. It would +seem, indeed, as if the chief outcome of the spiritualising +philosophy which maintains the immaterial and +independent quality of mind had been to make mind, +the contents of our consciousness, ideas, images, and +feelings, into something quite separate from this real +material universe, and hence unworthy of practical +consideration. But granted that mind is not a sort of +independent and foreign entity, we must admit that +what exists in it has a place in reality, and requires, +like the rest of reality, to be dealt with. But to +return to my thesis: that we require occasionally to +live in the Past (and I shall go on to state that it may +be a Past of our own making); Do we not require to +travel in foreign parts which know us not, to sojourn +for our welfare in cities where we can neither elect +members nor exercise professions, but whence we bring +back, not merely wider views, but sounder nerves, +tempers more serene and elastic? Nor is this all. We +think poorly of a man or woman who, besides practical +cases for self or others, does not require to come in +contact also with the tangible, breathable, visible, +audible universe for its own sake; require to wander in +fields and on moors, to steep in sunshine or be battered +by winds, for the sake of a certain specific emotion of +participation in, of closer union with, the universal. +Now the Past—the joys and sufferings of the men long +dead, their efforts, ideals, emotions, nay, their very +sensations and temperaments as registered in words or +expressed in art, are but another side of the universe, +of that universal life, to participate ever deeper in +which is the condition of our strength and serenity, +the imperious necessity of our ever giving, ever taking +soul.</p> + +<p>And so, for our greater nobility and happiness, we +require, all of us, to live to some extent in the Past, as +to live to some extent in what we significantly call +<i>nature</i>. We require, as we require mountain air or sea +scents, hayfields or wintry fallows, sun, storm, or rain, +each individual according to individual subtle affinities, +certain emotions, ideals, persons, or works of art from +out of the Past. For one it will be Socrates; for another +St. Francis; for every one something somewhat +different, or at all events something differently conceived +and differently felt: some portion of the universe +in time, as of the universe in space, which answers in +closest and most intimate way to the complexion and +habits of that individual soul.</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>II</h3> + +<p>The satisfaction which it can bring to every individual +soul: this is, therefore, one of the uses of the Past to +the Present, and surely not one of the smallest. It is, +I venture to insist, the special, the essential use of all +art and all poetry; any additional knowledge of Nature's +proceedings, any additional discipline of thought and +observation which may accrue in the study of art as +an historic or psychological phenomenon being, after +all, valuable eventually for the amount of such mere +satisfaction of the spirit as that additional knowledge +or additional discipline can conduce towards. Scientific +results are important for the maintenance of life, +doubtless; but the sense of satisfaction, whether simple +or complex, high or low, is the sign that the processes +we call life are being fulfilled and not thwarted; so, +since satisfaction is no such contemptible thing, why +not allow art to furnish it unmixed?</p> + +<p>I am sure to be misunderstood. I do not in the least +mean to imply that art can best be appreciated with +the least trouble. The mere fact that the pleasure of +a faculty is proportioned to its activity negatives that; +and the fact that the richness, fulness, and hence +also the durability, of all artistic pleasure answers +to the amount of our attention: the mine, the ore, +will yield, other things equal, according as we dig, and +wash, and smelt, and separate to the last possibility +of separation what we want from what we do not +want.</p> + +<p>The historic or psychological study of art does thus +undoubtedly increase our familiarity, and hence our +enjoyment. The mere scientific inquiry into the difference +between originals and copies, into the connection +between master and pupil, makes us alive to the special +qualities which can delight us. As long as we looked in +a manner so slovenly that a spurious Botticelli could +pass for a genuine one, we could evidently never benefit +by the special quality, the additional excellence of +Botticelli's own work. And similarly in the case of +archæology. Indeed, in the few cases where I have +myself hazarded an hypothesis on some point of artistic +history, as, for instance, regarding the respective origin +of antique and mediæval sculpture, I am inclined to +think that the chief use (if any at all) of my work, will +be to make my readers more sensitive to the specific +pleasure they may get from Praxiteles or from Mino +da Fiesole, than they could have been when the works +of both were so little understood as to be judged by +one another's standards.</p> + +<p>But to return. It seems as if at present the development, +the contagion, so to speak, of scientific methods +applied to art were making people forget a little that +art, besides being, like everything else, the passive +object of scientific treatment, is (what most other things +are not) an active, positive, special factor of pleasure; +and that, therefore, save to special students, the greater, +more efficacious form of art should occupy an immensely +larger share of attention than the lesser and +more inefficient. We are made, nowadays, to look at +too much mediocre art on the score of its historical +value; we are kept too long in contemplation of pictures +and statues which cannot give much pleasure, +on the score that they led to or proceeded from other +pictures or statues which can.</p> + +<p>As regards Greek sculpture, the insistance on archaic +forms is becoming, if I may express my own feelings, +a perfect bore. Why should we be kept in the kitchen +tasting half-cooked stuff out of ladles, when most of us +have barely time to eat our fully cooked dinner, which +we like and thrive on, in peace? Similarly with such +painters as are mainly precursors. They are taking +up too much of our attention; and one might sometimes +be tempted to think that the only use of great +artists, like the only functions of those patriarchs +who kept begetting one another, was to produce other +great artists: Giotto to produce eventually Masaccio, +Masaccio through various generations Michelangelo and +Raphael, and Michelangelo and Raphael, through even +more, Manet and Degas, who in their turn doubtless +dutifully…. Meanwhile why should art have gone +on evolving, artists gone on making <i>filiations of schools</i>, +if art, if artists, if schools of artists had not answered +an imperious, undying wish for the special pleasures +which painting can give?</p> + +<p>Therefore it seems to me that, desirable for all reasons +as may be the study of art, the knowledge of <i>filiations +and influences</i>, it is still more desirable that each of us +should find out some painter whom he can care for individually; +and that all of us should find out certain +painters who can, almost infallibly, give immense pleasure +to all of us; painters who, had they been produced +out of nothingness and been followed by nobody, +would yet stand in the most important relation in +which an artist can be: the relation of being beloved +by the whole world, or even by a few solitary individuals.</p> + +<p>For this reason let not the mere reader, who comes to +art not for work, but for refreshment, let not the mere +reader (I call him reader, to note his passive, leisurely +character) be vexed with too much study of Florentine +and Paduan <i>precursors</i>, but go straight to the masters, +whom those useful and dreary persons rendered possible +by their grinding. Our ancestors, or rather those cardinals +and superb lords with whom we have neither +spiritual nor temporal relationship, who made the great +collections of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, +placing statues under delicate colonnades and green +ilex hedges, and hanging pictures in oak-panelled corridors +and tapestried guard-rooms, were occasionally +mistaken in thinking that a Roman emperor much +restored, or a chalky, sprawling Guido Reni, could afford +lasting æsthetic pleasure; but, bating such errors, +were they not nearer good sense than we moderns, who +arrange pictures and statues as we might minerals or +herbs in a museum, and who, for instance, insist that +poor tired people, longing for a little beauty, should +carefully examine the works of Castagno, of Rosselli, +and of that artist, so interesting as a specimen of the +minimum of talent, Neri di Bicci? They were unscientific, +those lords and cardinals, and desperately +pleasure-seeking; but surely, surely they were more +sensible than we.</p> + +<p>Connected with this fact, and to be borne in mind +by those not called upon to elucidate art scientifically, +is the further fact, which I have analogically pointed +out, when I said that every individual has in the Past +affinities, possibilities of spiritual satisfaction differing +somewhat from those of every other. It is well +that we should try to enlarge those possibilities; and +we must never make up our mind that a picture, +statue, piece of music or poetry, says little to us until +we have listened to its say. But although we strive to +make new friends, let us waste no further time on such +persons as we have vainly tried to make friends of; and +let each of us, in heaven's name, cherish to the utmost +his natural affinities. There are persons to whom, for +instance, Botticelli can never be what he truly is to +some of their neighbours: the very quality which gives +such marvellous poignancy of pleasure to certain temperaments +causing almost discomfort to others; and +similarly about many other artists, representing very +special conditions of being, and appealing to special +conditions in consequence. High Alpine air, sea-water, +Roman melting westerly winds, so vitalising, so soothing +to some folk, are mere worry, or fever, or lassitude +to others, without its being correct to say that one set +of persons is healthy and the other morbid: each +being, in truth, healthy or morbid just in proportion as +it realises its necessities of existence, fitting equally +into the universe providing it be fitted each into the +proper piece thereof.</p> + +<p>On the other hand (and this, rather than <i>filiations of +schools</i> and <i>influences</i> of artistic <i>milieus</i>, it were well we +should know), it becomes daily more empirically certain, +and will some day doubtless become scientifically +obvious, that there are works of art which awaken +such emotion that they can be delectable only to +creatures with instincts out of gear and perception +upside down; while there are others, infinitely more +plentiful, which, in greater or lesser degree, must delight +all persons who are sane, as all such are delighted +by fine weather, normal exercise, and kindly sympathy; +and, <i>vice versâ</i>, that as these wholesome works of art +merely bore or actually distress the poor morbid exceptions, +so the unwholesome ones sicken or harrow +the sound generality; the world of art, moreover, like +every other world, being best employed in keeping +alive its sound, not its unsound, clients.</p> + +<p>Such works of art, such artists of widest wholesome +appealingness, there are in all periods of artistic development; +more in certain fortunate moments, say the +Periklean age and the early sixteenth century, than in +others; and most perhaps in certain specially favoured +regions—in Attica during Antiquity, and during painting +times, in the happy Venetian country. These we +all know of; but by the grace of Nature, which creates +men occasionally so fortunately balanced that their +work, learned or unlearned, must needs be fortunately +balanced also, they arise sometimes in the midst of +mere artistic worry and vexation of spirit, or of artist +bleakness, perfect like the almond and peach trees, +which blossom, white and pink, on the frost-bitten +green among the sapless vines of wintry Tuscan hills; +and to some natures, doubtless, these are more pleasant +and health-giving than more mature or mellow summer +or autumnal loveliness. But, as I have said, each must +find his own closest affinities in art and history as in +friendship.</p> + +<p> </p> +<h3>III</h3> + +<p>There are some more things, and more important, +still to be said, from the reader's standpoint rather +than the writer's, about the influence on our lives of +the Past and of its art, and more particularly of the +vague period called the Renaissance.</p> + +<p>When the Renaissance began to attract attention, +some twenty or twenty-five years ago, there happened +among English historians and writers on art, and among +their readers, something very similar to what had happened, +apparently, when the Englishmen of the sixteenth +century first came in contact with the Italian +Renaissance itself, or whatever remained of it. Their +conscience was sickened, their imagination hag-ridden, +by the discovery of so much beauty united to so +much corruption; and, among our latter-day students +of the Renaissance, there became manifest the same +morbid pre-occupation, the same exaggerated repulsion, +which is but inverted attraction, which were rife +among the playwrights who wrote of <i>Avengers</i> and +<i>Atheists</i>, Giovannis and Annabellas, Brachianos and +Corombonas, and other <i>White Devils</i>, as old Webster +picturesquely put it, <i>of Italy</i>. Indeed, the second discovery +of the Renaissance by Englishmen had spiritual +consequences so similar to those of the first, that in an +essay written fifteen years ago I analysed the feelings +of the Elizabethan playwrights towards Italian things +in order to vent the intense discomfort of spirit which +I shared assuredly with students older and more competent +than myself.</p> + +<p>This kind of feeling has passed away among writers, +together with much of the fascination of the Renaissance +itself. But it has left, I see, vague traces in the +mind of readers, rendering the Renaissance a little distasteful +(and no wonder) to the majority; or worse, +a little too congenial to an unsound minority; worst +of all, tarnishing a little the fair fame of Art; and +as a writer now turned reader, I am anxious to deliver, +to the best of my powers, other readers from this +perhaps inevitable but false and unprofitable view of +such matters.</p> + +<p>The conscience of writers on history and art has +long become quite comfortable about the Renaissance; +and the Websterian or (in some cases John Fordian) +phenomenon of twenty years ago been forgotten as a +piece of childish morbidness. Does this mean that the +conscience has become hardened, that evil has ceased +to repel us, or that beauty has been accepted calmly +as a pleasant and necessary, but somewhat immoral +thing? Very far from it. Our conscience has become +quieter, not because it has grown more callous, but +because it has become more healthily sensitive, more +perceptive of many sides, instead of only one side of +life. For with experience and maturity there surely +comes, to every one of us in his own walk of life, a +growing, at length an intuitive sense that evil is a +thing incidentally to fight, but not to think very much +about, because if it is evil, it is in so far sporadic, +deciduous, and eminently barren; while good, that is +to say, soundness, harmony of feeling, thought, and +action with themselves, with others' feeling, thought, +and action, and with the great eternities, is organic, +fruitful and useful, as well as delightful to contemplate. +Hence that the evil of past ages should not concern us, +save in so far as the understanding thereof may teach +us to diminish the evil of the Present. In any case, +that evil must be handled not with terror, which +enervates and subjects to contagion, but with the +busy serenity of the physician, who studies disease for +the sake of health, and eats his wholesome food after +washing his hands, confident in the ultimate wholesomeness +of nature.</p> + +<p>And in such frame of mind the corruption of the +Renaissance leaves us calm, and we know we had +better turn our backs on it, and get from the Renaissance +only what was good. Only, if we are physicians, +or more correctly (since in a private capacity +we all are) only <i>when</i> we are physicians, must we +handle the unwholesome. Meanwhile, if we wish to +be sound, let us fill our soul with images and emotions +of good; we shall tackle evil, when need be, +only the better. And here, by the way, let me open +a parenthesis to say that, of the good we moderns +may get from occasional journeys into the Past, +there is a fine example in our imaginary and emotional +commerce with St. Francis and his joyous theology. +For while other times, our own among them, +have given us loftier morality and severer good sense, +no period save that of St. Francis could have given us +a blitheness of soul so vivifying and so cleansing. For +the essence of his teaching, or rather the essence of his +personality, was the trust that serenity and joyfulness +must be incompatible with evil; that simple, spontaneous +happiness is, even like the air and the sunshine +in which his beloved brethren the birds flew +about and sang, the most infallible antidote to evil, +and the most sovereign disinfectant. And because we +require such doctrine, such personal conviction, for the +better living of our lives, we must, even as to better +climates, journey forth occasionally into that distant +Past of mediæval Italy; and as to the Ezzelinos, +Borgias, and Riarios, and the foul-mouthed humanists, +good heavens! why should we sicken ourselves with +the thought of this long dead and done for abomination?</p> + +<p>So much for the history of the Renaissance and the +good it can be to us. Now as to the art. That +more organic mode of feeling and thinking which +results in active maturity, from the ever-increasing +connections between our individual soul and the surrounding +world; that same intuition which told us that +historic evil was no subject for contemplation, does also +admonish us never to be suspicious of true beauty, of +thoroughly delightful art. Nay, beauty and art in any +case; for though beauty may be adulterated, and art +enslaved to something not itself, be sure that the element +of beauty, the activity of art, so far as they are +themselves specific, are far above suspicion even in the +most suspicious company. For even if beauty is united +to perverse fashions, and art (as with Baudelaire and +the decadents) employed to adorn the sentiments of +maniacs and gaol-birds, the beauty and the art remain +sound; and if we must needs put them behind us, on +account of too inextricable a fusion, we should remember +it is as we sometimes throw away noble ore, +for lack of skill to separate it from a base alloy. As +regards the nightmare anomaly of perfect art arisen +in times of moral corruption, those unconscious analogies +I have spoken of, and which perhaps are our +most cogent reasons, have taught us that such anomalies +are but nightmares and horrid delusions. For, +taking the phenomenon historically, we shall see that +although art has arisen in periods of stress and change, +and therefore of moral anarchy, it has never arisen +among the immoral classes nor to serve any immoral +use: the apparent anomaly in the Renaissance, for +instance, was not an anomaly, but a coincidence of +contrary movements: a materially prosperous, intellectually +innovating epoch, producing on the one hand +moral anarchy, on the other artistic perfection, connected +not as cause and effect, but as coincidence, the +one being the drawback, the other the advantage, of +that particular phase of being. The Malatestas and +Borgias, of whom we have heard too much, did not +employ Alberti and Pier della Francesca, Pinturicchio +and Bramante, to satisfy their convict wickedness, +but to satisfy their artistic taste, which, in so far, was +perfectly sound, as various others among their faculties, +their eye and ear, and sense of cause and effect, +were apparently sound also. And the architecture of +Alberti, the decorations of Pinturicchio, remain as +spotless of all contact with their evil instincts as the +hills they may have looked at, the sea they may have +listened to, the eternal verity that two and two make +four, which had doubtless passed through their otherwise +badly inhabited minds. And, moreover, the sea +is still sonorous, the mountains are still hyacinth +blue, and the buildings and frescoes still noble, while +the rest of those disagreeable mortals' cravings and +strivings are gone, and on the whole were best forgotten.</p> + +<p>But there is another side of this same question, and +of it we are admonished, as it seems to me, still louder +by our growing intellectual instincts—those instincts, +let us remember, which do but represent whatever has +been congruous and uniform in repeated experience. +Art is a much greater and more cosmic thing than the +mere expression of man's thoughts or opinions on any +one subject, of man's attitude towards his neighbour +or towards his country, much as all this concerns us. +Art is the expression of man's life, of his mode of being, +of his relations with the universe, since it is, in fact, +man's inarticulate answer to the universe's unspoken +message. Hence it represents not the details of his +existence, which, more's the pity, are rarely what they +should be, whether in thought or action, but the bulk +of his existence, <i>when that bulk is unusually sound</i>. +This clause contains the whole philosophy of art. For +art is the outcome of a surplus of human energy, the +expression of a state of vital harmony, striving for and +partly realising a yet greater energy, a more complete +harmony in one sphere or another of man's relations with +the universe. Now if evil is a non-vital, deciduous, and +sterile phenomenon <i>par excellence</i>, art must be necessarily +opposed to it, and opposed in proportion to art's vigour. +While, on the other hand, the seeking, the realisation +of greater harmony, whether harmony visible, audible, +thinkable, and livable, is as necessarily opposed to +anomaly and perversity as the great healthinesses of +air and sunshine are opposed to bodily disease. Hence, +in whatever company we find art, even as in whatever +company we find bodily health and vigour, let us +understand that <i>in so far as truly art</i>, it is good and a +source of good. Let us never waver in our faith in +art, for in so doing we should be losing (what, alas! +Puritan contemners of art, and decadent defilers +thereof, are equally doing) much of our faith in +nature and much of our faith in man. For art is the +expression of the harmonies of nature, conceived and +incubated by the harmonious instincts of man.</p> + +<p>I have given the influence of St. Francis as an +example of what added strength our modern soul may +get by a sojourn in the Past. What our soul may get +of similar but more sober joy may be shown by another +example from that wonderful Umbrian district, one of +the earth's oases of spiritual rest and refreshment. +Among all the sane and satisfying art of the Renaissance, +Umbria, on the whole, has surely grown for us the +highest and the holiest. I am not speaking of the fact +that Perugino painted saints in devout contemplation, +nor of their type of face and expression. Whatever his +people might be doing, or if they were not people at +all, but variations only of his little slender trees or +distant domes and steeples, his art would have been +equally high and holy. And this because of its effect, +direct, unreasoning, on our spirit, making us, while we +look, live with a deeper, more devoutly joyful life. +What the man Perugino was, in his finite dealings with +his clients and neighbours, has mattered nothing in the +painting of these pictures and frescoes; still less what +samples of conduct he was shown by the ephemeral +magnificos who bought his works.</p> + +<p>The tenderness and strength of the mediæval Italian +temper (as shown in Dante when he is human, but above +all in Francis of Assisi) has been working through +generations toward these paintings, interpreting in its +spirit, selecting and emphasising for its meaning the +country in all the world most naturally fit to express +it; and thus in these paintings we have the incomparable +visible manifestation of a perfect mood: that +wide pale shimmering valley, circular like a temple, and +domed by the circular vault of sky, really turned, for +our feelings, into a spiritual church, wherein not +merely saints meditate and Madonnas kneel, but ourselves +in deepest devout happiness.</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>IV</h3> + +<p>Thoughts such as these bring with them the memory +of the master we have recently lost, of the master who, +in the midst of æsthetical anarchy, taught us once more, +and with subtle and solemn efficacy, the old Platonic +and Goethian doctrine of the affinity between artistic +beauty and human worthiness.</p> + +<p>The spiritual evolution of the late Walter Pater—with +whose name I am proud to conclude my second, +as with it I began my first book on Renaissance matters—had +been significantly similar to that of his own +Marius. He began as an æsthete, and ended as a +moralist. By faithful and self-restraining cultivation +of the sense of harmony, he appears to have risen from +the perception of visible beauty to the knowledge of +beauty of the spiritual kind, both being expressions of +the same perfect fittingness to an ever more intense +and various and congruous life.</p> + +<p>Such an evolution, which is, in the highest meaning, +an æsthetic phenomenon in itself, required a wonderful +spiritual endowment and an unflinchingly discriminating +habit. For Walter Pater started by being above +all a writer, and an æsthete in the very narrow sense +of twenty years ago: an æsthete of the school of Mr. +Swinburne's <i>Essays</i>, and of the type still common on the +Continent. The cultivation of sensations, vivid sensations, +no matter whether healthful or unhealthful, which +that school commended, was, after all, but a theoretic +and probably unconscious disguise for the cultivation +of something to be said in a new way, which is the +danger of all persons who regard literature as an end, +and not as a means, feeling in order that they may +write, instead of writing because they feel. And of +this Mr. Pater's first and famous book was a very clear +proof. Exquisite in technical quality, in rare perception +and subtle suggestion, it left, like all similar +books, a sense of caducity and barrenness, due to the +intuition of all sane persons that only an active synthesis +of preferences and repulsions, what we imply in +the terms <i>character</i> and <i>moral</i>, can have real importance +in life, affinity with life—be, in short, vital; and +that the yielding to, nay, the seeking for, variety and +poignancy of experience, must result in a crumbling +away of all such possible unity and efficiency of living. +But even as we find in the earliest works of a painter, +despite the predominance of his master's style, indications +already of what will expand into a totally different +personality, so even in this earliest book, examined +retrospectively, it is easy to find the characteristic +germs of what will develop, extrude all foreign admixture, +knit together congruous qualities, and give us +presently the highly personal synthesis of <i>Marius</i> and +the <i>Studies on Plato</i>.</p> + +<p>These characteristic germs may be defined, I think, +as the recurrence of impressions and images connected +with physical sanity and daintiness; of aspiration +after orderliness, congruity, and one might almost say +<i>hierarchy</i>; moreover, a certain exclusiveness, which is +not the contempt of the craftsman for the <i>bourgeois</i>, +but the aversion of the priest for the profane uninitiated. +Some day, perhaps, a more scientific study +of æsthetic phenomena will explain the connection +which we all feel between physical sanity and +purity and the moral qualities called by the same +names; but even nowadays it might have been prophesied +that the man who harped upon the clearness +and livingness of water, upon the delicate bracingness +of air, who experienced so passionate a preference for +the whole gamut, the whole palette, of spring, of temperate +climates and of youth and childhood; a person +who felt existence in the terms of its delicate vigour +and its restorative austerity, was bound to become, like +Plato, a teacher of self-discipline and self-harmony. +Indeed, who can tell whether the teachings of Mr. +Pater's maturity—the insistance on scrupulously disciplined +activity, on cleanness and clearness of thought +and feeling, on the harmony attainable only through +moderation, the intensity attainable only through +effort—who can tell whether this abstract part of his +doctrine would affect, as it does, all kindred spirits if +the mood had not been prepared by some of those +descriptions of visible scenes—the spring morning +above the Catacombs, the Valley of Sparta, the paternal +house of Marius, and that temple of Æsculapius with +its shining rhythmical waters—which attune our whole +being, like the music of the Lady in <i>Comus</i>, to modes of +<i>sober certainty of waking bliss</i>?</p> + +<p>This inborn affinity for refined wholesomeness made +Mr. Pater the natural exponent of the highest æsthetic +doctrine—the search for harmony throughout all orders +of existence. It gave the nucleus of what was his +soul's synthesis, his system (as Emerson puts it) of +rejection and acceptance. Supreme craftsman as he +was, it protected him from the craftsman's delusion—rife +under the inappropriate name of "art for art's +sake" in these uninstinctive, over-dextrous days—that +subtle treatment can dignify all subjects equally, and +that expression, irrespective of the foregoing <i>impression</i> +in the artist and the subsequent <i>impression</i> in the +audience, is the aim of art. Standing as he did, as all +the greatest artists and thinkers (and he was both) do, +in a definite, inevitable relation to the universe—the +equation between himself and it—he was utterly unable +to turn his powers of perception and expression +to idle and irresponsible exercises; and his conception +of art, being the outcome of his whole personal mode +of existence, was inevitably one of art, not for art's +sake, but of art for the sake of life—art as one of the +harmonious functions of existence.</p> + +<p>Harmonious, and in a sense harmonising. For, as +I have said, he rose from the conception of physical +health and congruity to the conception of health and +congruity in matters of the spirit; the very thirst for +healthiness, which means congruity, and congruity +which implies health, forming the vital and ever-expanding +connection between the two orders of phenomena. +Two orders, did I say? Surely to the +intuition of this artist and thinker, the fundamental +unity—the unity between man's relations with external +nature, with his own thoughts and with others' +feelings—stood revealed as the secret of the highest +æsthetics.</p> + +<p>This which we guess at as the completion of Walter +Pater's message, alas! must remain for ever a matter of +surmise. The completion, the rounding of his doctrine, +can take place only in the grateful appreciation of his +readers. We have been left with unfinished systems, +fragmentary, sometimes enigmatic, utterances. Let us +meditate their wisdom and vibrate with their beauty; +and, in the words of the prayer of Socrates to the +Nymphs and to Pan, ask for beauty in the inward soul, +and congruity between the inner and the outer man; +and reflect in such manner the gifts of great art and +of great thought in our soul's depths. For art and +thought arise from life; and to life, as principle of +harmony, they must return.</p> +<p> </p> + +<p>Many years ago, in the fulness of youth and ambition, +I was allowed, by him whom I already reverenced +as a master, to write the name of Walter Pater on the +flyleaf of a book which embodied my beliefs and hopes +as a writer. And now, seeing books from the point of +view of the reader, I can find no fitter ending to this +present volume than to express what all we readers +have gained, and lost, alas! in this great master.</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>THE END</h3> +<p> </p> +<div class="center"> + <p class="noindent"> + <i><small>Printed by</small></i> <span class="smallcaps"><small>Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.</small></span><br /> + + <i><small>Edinburgh and London</small></i> + </p> +</div> +<p> </p> +<hr class="narrow" /> +<p> </p> + +<h3>FOOTNOTES</h3> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn1" id="fn1"></a><a href="#fn1r">1</a>: <small>St. Francis's hymn (Sabatier, <i>St. François d'Assise</i>):—</small></p> +<div class="center"> + <table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="poem"> + <tr><td align="left">Laudato sie, mi signore, cum tucte le tue creature,</td></tr> + <tr><td align="left">Spetialimento messer lo frate sole,</td></tr> + <tr><td align="left">Lo quale jorna, et illumini per lui;</td></tr> + <tr><td align="left"><i>Et ello è bello e radiante cum grande splendore.</i></td></tr> + <tr><td align="left"></td></tr> + <tr><td align="left">Laudato si, mè signore per frate Vento</td></tr> + <tr><td align="left">Et per aere et nubilo et sereno et omne tempo</td></tr> + <tr><td align="left"></td></tr> + <tr><td align="left">Laudato, si, mi signore, per sor acqua</td></tr> + <tr><td align="left">La quale è multo utile et humele et pretiosa et casta;</td></tr> + <tr><td align="left">Laudato si, mi signore, per frate focu</td></tr> + <tr><td align="left">Per lo quale ennallumini la nocte</td></tr> + <tr><td align="left"><i>Et ello è bello et jocundo e robustioso e forte.</i></td></tr> + </table> +</div> + +<p><small>In its rudeness, how magnificent is this last line!</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn2" id="fn2"></a><a href="#fn2r">2</a>: <small>St. +Francis's sermon to the birds in the valley of Bevagna (<i>Fioretti</i> +xvi.): "Ancora gli (a Dio) siete tenuti per lo elemento dell' aria che egli +ha diputato a voi … e Iddio vi pasce, e davvi li fiumi e le fonti per +vostro bere; davvi li monti e le valli per vostro rifugio e gli alberi alti +per fare li vostri nidi … e però guardatevi, sirocchie mie, del peccato +della ingratitudine, e sempre vi studiate di lodare Iddio … e allora +tutti qugli uccilli si levarons in aria con maraviglios canti."<br /> +<br /> +<i>Fioretti</i> xxviii. "… Questo dono, che era dato a frate Bernardo +da Quintevalle, cioè, che volando si pascesse come la rondine." <i>Fioretti</i> +xxii., Considerazioni i.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn3" id="fn3"></a><a href="#fn3r">3</a>: <small>The +Cathedral of Assisi, a very early mediæval building, affords a +singular instance of the meeting of the last remnant of that serene +symbolism of Roman and Byzantine-Roman churches with the usual +Lombard horrors. A fine passion-flower or vine encircles the porch, +peacocks strut and drink from an altar, while, on the other hand, lions +mangle a man and a sheep, and horrible composite monsters, resembling +the prehistoric plesiosaurus, bite each other's necks. A Madonna +and Christ are enthroned on Byzantine seats, the weight resting on +human beings, not so realistically crushed as those of Ferrara and +Milan, but suffering. There is a similar meeting of symbols in the +neighbouring Cathedral of Foligno; and, so far as I could see, the +Umbrian valley is rich in very early churches of this type, sometimes +lovely in ornamentation, like S. Pietro of Spoleto, sometimes very rude, +like the tiny twin churches of Bevagna.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn4" id="fn4"></a><a href="#fn4r">4</a>: <small>Here +are a few dates, as given by Murray's Handbooks. +Fiesole Cathedral begun 1028; S. Miniato a Monte, 1013; Pisa +Cathedral consecrated 1118; baptistery (lower storey), 1153. Lucca +façade (interior later), 1204; S. Frediano of Lucca begun by Perharit +671, altered in twelfth century; S. Michele façade, 1188. Pistoia: S. +Giovanni Evangelista by Gruamons, 1166; S. Andrea, also by Gruamons; +S. Bartolomeo by Rudolphinus, 1167. Pulpit of S. Ambrogio +of Milan, 1201; church traditionally begun about 868, probably much +more modern.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn5" id="fn5"></a><a href="#fn5r">5</a>: <small>Mme. +Darmesteter's charming essays "The End of the Middle +Ages," contain some amusing instances of such repressed love of +finery on the part of saints. Compare Fioretti xx., "And these +garments of such fair cloth, which we wear (in Heaven) are given +us by God in exchange for our rough frocks."</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn6" id="fn6"></a><a href="#fn6r">6</a>: <small>Probably +executed from Botticelli's design, by Raffaellino del Garbo.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn7" id="fn7"></a><a href="#fn7r">7</a>: <small>I +learn from the learned that the Florence and Louvre Madonnas, +with the roses, are not Botticelli's; but Botticelli, I am sure, would not +have been offended by those lovely bushes being attributed to him.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn8" id="fn8"></a><a href="#fn8r">8</a>: <small>This +quality, particularly in the Adoration of the Magi, is already +very marked in the very charming and little known frescoes of Ottaviano +Nelli, in the former Trinci Palace at Foligno. Nelli was the +master of Gentile, and through him greatly influenced Venice.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn9" id="fn9"></a><a href="#fn9r">9</a>: <small>I +believe now unanimously given to Pinturicchio.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn10" id="fn10"></a><a href="#fn10r">10</a>: <small>Alas! +no longer among the living, though among those whose +spiritual part will never die. Walter Pater died July 1894: a man +whose sense of loveliness and dignity made him, in mature life, as +learned in moral beauty as he had been in visible.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn11" id="fn11"></a><a href="#fn11r">11</a>: <small>And +the circular so-called Botticelli (now given, I believe, to San +Gallo) in the National Gallery.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn12" id="fn12"></a><a href="#fn12r">12</a>: <small>How +peccable is the individual imagination, unchastened by tradition! +I find among the illustrations of Mr. Berenson's very valuable +monograph on Lotto, a most curious instance in point. This psychological, +earnest painter has been betrayed, by his morbid nervousness +of temper, into making the starting of a cat into the second most +important incident in his Annunciation.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn13" id="fn13"></a><a href="#fn13r">13</a>: <small>I +am confirmed in these particulars by my friend Miss Eugenie +Sellers, whose studies of the ancient authorities on art—Lucian, +Pausanias, Pliny, and others, will be the more fruitful that they are +associated with knowledge—uncommon in archæologists—of more +modern artistic processes.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn14" id="fn14"></a><a href="#fn14r">14</a>: <small>This +becomes overwhelmingly obvious on reading Professor +Furtwängler's great "Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture." Praxiteles +appears to have been exceptional in his preference for marble.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn15" id="fn15"></a><a href="#fn15r">15</a>: <small>Interesting +details in Vasari's treatise, and in his Lives of J. +della Quercia, Ferrucci, and other sculptors.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn16" id="fn16"></a><a href="#fn16r">16</a>: <small>At +all events, Greek painting preceding or contemporaneous with +the great period of sculpture. Later painting was, of course, much +more pictorial.</small></p> + +<p class="revind"><a name="fn17" id="fn17"></a><a href="#fn17r">17</a>: <small>Several +Greek vases and coins show the sculptor modelling his +figure; while in Renaissance designs, from that of Nanni di Banco to +a mediocre allegorical engraving in an early edition of Vasari, the +sculptor, or the personified art of Sculpture, is actually working with +chisel and mallet.</small></p> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="narrow" /> +<p> </p> + +<table class="sm" border="0" style="background-color: #E6F6FA; margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="10" summary="NOTES"> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> + <div class="center">TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE</div> + +<p class="noindent" style="background-color: #E6F6FA"> +The following changes have been made and can be identified +in the body of the text by a grey dotted underline:</p> +</td> +</tr> + +<tr> + <td align="left" valign="top">and will bare (…) new spiritual wonders</td> + <td align="left" valign="top">and will <i>bear</i> (…) new spiritual wonders</td> +</tr> + +<tr> + <td align="left" valign="top">per speculum et ænigmata</td> +<td align="left" valign="top">per speculum <i>in ænigmate</i></td> +</tr> + +<tr> + <td align="left" valign="top">In was in this church that</td> +<td align="left" valign="top"><i>It</i> was in this church that</td> +</tr> +</table> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Renaissance Fancies and Studies, by +Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee) + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE FANCIES AND STUDIES *** + +***** This file should be named 30693-h.htm or 30693-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/6/9/30693/ + +Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Renaissance Fancies and Studies + Being a Sequel to Euphorion + +Author: Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee) + +Release Date: December 17, 2009 [EBook #30693] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE FANCIES AND STUDIES *** + + + + +Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + + + + + + + + +RENAISSANCE FANCIES AND STUDIES: + +BEING A SEQUEL TO +EUPHORION + + +BY +VERNON LEE + + +LONDON +SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE +1895 + + +[_All rights reserved_] + +_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. +_At the Ballantyne Press_ + + + + +_TO_ + +_MY DEAR FRIENDS_ +_MARIA AND PIER DESIDERIO PASOLINI_ + + +_EASTER 1895_ + + + + +PREFACE + +These essays being mainly the outcome of direct personal impressions of +certain works of art and literature, and of the places in which they +were produced, I have but few acknowledgments to make to the authors of +books treating of the same subject. Among the exceptions to this rule, I +must mention foremost Professor Tocco's _Eresia nel Medio Evo_, Monsieur +Gebhart's _Italie Mystique_, and Monsieur Paul Sabatier's _St. Francois +d'Assise_. + +I am, on the other hand, very deeply indebted to the conversation and +advice of certain among my friends, for furnishing me second-hand a +little of that archaeological and critical knowledge which is now-a-days +quite unattainable save by highly trained specialists. My best thanks, +therefore, to Miss Eugenie Sellers, editor of Furtwaengler's "Masterpieces +of Greek Sculpture;" to Mr. Bernhard Berenson, author of "Venetian +Painters," and a monograph on Lorenzo Lotto; and particularly to my +friend Mrs. Mary Logan, whose learned catalogue of the Italian paintings +at Hampton Court is sufficient warrant for the correctness of my +art-historical statements, which she has had the kindness to revise. + +MAIANO, NEAR FLORENCE, + +_April_ 1895. + + + + + CONTENTS + PAGE + + PREFACE ix + + THE LOVE OF THE SAINTS 1 + + THE IMAGINATIVE ART OF THE RENAISSANCE 65 + + TUSCAN SCULPTURE 135 + + A SEEKER OF PAGAN PERFECTION, BEING THE LIFE + OF DOMENICO NERONI, PICTOR SACRILEGUS 163 + + VALEDICTORY 233 + + + + +THE LOVE OF THE SAINTS + + +I + +"Panis Angelicus fit panis hominum. O res mirabilis, manducat Dominum +Pauper, Servus et Humilis." These words of the Matins of the Most Holy +Sacrament I heard for the first time many years ago, to the beautiful +and inappropriate music of Cherubini. They struck me at that time as +foolish, barbarous, and almost gross; but since then I have learned to +think of them, and in a measure to feel of them, as of something greater +and more solemn than all the music that Cherubini ever wrote. + +All the hymns of the same date are, indeed, things to think upon. They +affect one--the "Stabat Mater," for instance, and the "Ave Verum"--very +much in the same way as the figures which stare down, dingy green and +blue, from the gold of the Cosmati's mosaics: childish, dreary, all +stiff and agape, but so solemn and pathetic, and full of the greatest +future. For out of those Cosmati mosaics, and those barbarous frescoes +of the old basilicas, will come Giotto and all the Renaissance; and out +of those Church songs will come Dante; they are all signs, poor primitive +rhymes and primitive figures, that the world is teeming again, and will +bear, for centuries to come, new spiritual wonders. Hence the importance, +the venerableness of all those mediaeval hymns. But of none so much, to +my mind, as of those words I have quoted from the Matins of the Most +Holy Sacrament-- + + "O res mirabilis, manducat Dominum, + Pauper, Servus et Humilis." + +For their crude and pathetic literality, their image of the Godhead +actually giving Himself, as they emphatically say, to be _chewed_ by the +poor and humble man and the serf, show them to have been most especially +born, abortions though they be, in the mightiest throes of mystical +feeling, after the incubation of whole nations, born of the great mediaeval +marriage, sublime, grotesque, morbid, yet health-bringing, between +abstract idealising religious thought and the earthly affections of +lovers and parents--a strange marriage, like that of St. Francis and +Poverty, of which the modern soul also had to be born anew. + +Indeed, if we realise in the least what this hymn must have meant, +shouted in the processions of Flagellants, chaunted in the Pacts of +Peace after internecine town wars; above all, perhaps, muttered in +the cell of the friar, in the den of the weaver; if we sum up, however +inadequately, the state of things whence it arose, and whence it helped +to deliver us, we may think that the greatest music is scarcely reverent +enough to accompany these poor blundering rhymes. + +The Feast of the Most Holy Sacrament, to whose liturgy this hymn, "O Res +Mirabilis," belongs, was instituted to commemorate the miracle of Bolsena, +which, coming late as it did, in the country of St. Francis, and within +two years of the birth of Dante, seems in its significant coincidences, +in its startling symbolism, the fit material summing up of what is +conveniently designated as the Franciscan revival: the introduction into +religious matters of passionate human emotion. For in the year 1263, at +Bolsena in Umbria, the consecrated wafer dropped blood upon the hands of +an unbelieving priest. + +This trickery of a single individual, or more probably hallucination--this +lie and self-delusion of interested or foolish bystanders--just happened +to symbolise a very great reality. For during the earlier Middle Ages, +before the coming of Francis of Assisi, the souls of men, or, more +properly, their hearts, had been sorely troubled and jeopardised. + +The mixture of races and civilisations, southern and northern and +eastern, antique and barbarian, which had been slowly taking place ever +since the fall of the Roman Empire, had seemed, in its consummation of +the twelfth century, less fertile on the whole than poisonous. The old +tribal system, the old civic system, triumphant centralising imperialism, +had all been broken up long since; and now feudalism was going to pieces +in its turn, leaving a chaos of filibustering princelets, among whom +loomed the equivocal figures of Provencal counts, of Angevin and Swabian +kings, brutal as men of the North, and lax as men of the South; moreover, +suspiciously oriental; brilliant and cynical persons, eventually to be +typified in Frederick II., who was judiciously suspected of being +Antichrist in person. In the midst of this anarchy, over-rapid industrial +development had moreover begotten the tendencies to promiscuity, to +mystical communism, always expressive of deep popular misery. The Holy +Land had become a freebooter's Eldorado; the defenders of Christ's +sepulchre were turned half-Saracen, infected with unclean mixtures of +creeds. Theology was divided between neo-Aristotelean logic, abstract +and arid, and Alexandrian esoteric mysticism, quietistic, nay, nihilistic; +and the Church had ceased to answer to any spiritual wants of the people. +Meanwhile, on all sides everywhere, heresies were teeming, austere and +equivocal, pure and unclean according to individuals, but all of them +anarchical, and therefore destructive at a moment when, above all, order +and discipline were wanted. The belief in the world's end, in the speedy +coming of Antichrist and the Messiah, was rife among all sects; and +learned men, the disciples of Joachim of Flora, were busy calculating +the very year and month. Lombardy, and most probably the south of France, +Flanders and the Rhine towns, were full of strange Manichean theosophies, +pessimistic dualism of God and devil, in which God always got the worst +of it, when God did not happen to be the devil himself. The ravening +lions, the clawing, tearing griffins, the nightmare brood carved on the +capitals, porches, and pulpits of pre-Franciscan churches, are surely +not, as orthodox antiquarians assure us, mere fanciful symbols of the +Church's vigilance and virtues: they express too well the far-spread +occult Manichean spirit, the belief in a triumphant power of evil. + +Michelet, I think, has remarked that there was a moment in the early +Middle Ages when, in the mixture of all contrary things, in the very +excess of spiritual movement, there seemed a possibility of dead level, +of stagnation, of the peoples of Europe becoming perhaps bastard +Saracens, as in Merovingian times they had become bastard Romans; a +chance of Byzantinism in the West. Be this as it may, it seems certain +that, towards the end of the twelfth century, men's souls were shaken, +crumbling, and what was worse, excessively arid. There was as little +certainty of salvation as in the heart of that Priest saying Mass at +Bolsena; but the miracle came to mankind at large some seventy years +before it came to him. It had begun, no doubt, unnoticed in scores +of obscure heresies, in hundreds of unnoticed individuals; it became +manifest to all the world in the persons of Dominick, of Elizabeth of +Hungary, of King Lewis--above all, of Francis of Assisi. As in the +hands of the doubting priest, so in the hands of all suffering mankind, +the mystic wafer broke, proving itself true food for the soul: the +life-blood of hope and love welled forth and fertilised the world. For +the second time, and in far more humble and efficacious way, Christ had +been given to man. + +To absorb the Eternal Love, to feed on the Life of the World, to make +oneself consubstantial therewith, these passionate joys of poor mediaeval +humanity are such as we should contemplate with sympathy only and respect, +even when the miracle is conceived and felt in the grossest, least +spiritual manner. That act of material assimilation, that feeding off +the very Godhead in most literal manner, as described in the hymn to +the Most Holy Sacrament, was symbolic of the return from exile of the +long-persecuted instincts of mankind. It meant that, spiritually or +grossly, each according to his nature, men had cast fear behind them, +and--O res mirabilis!--grown proud once more to love. + +Of this new wonder--questionable enough at times, but, on the whole, +marvellously beneficent--the German knightly poets, so early in the +field, are naturally among the earliest (for the Provencals belonged to +a sceptical, sensual country) to give us a written record. Nearly all of +the Minnesingers composed what we must call religious erotics, in no +way different, save for names of Christ and the Virgin, from their most +impassioned secular ones. The Song of Solomon, therefore, is one of the +few pieces of written literature of which we find constant traces in the +works of these very literally illiterate poets. Yet the quality of their +love, if one may say so, is very different from anything Hebrew, or, +for the matter of that, Greek or Roman; their ardour is not a transient +phenomenon which disturbs them, like that of the Shulamite, or the lover +described by Sappho or Plato, but a chief business of their life, as in +the case of Dante, of Petrarch, of Francesca and Paolo, or Tristram and +Yseult. Indeed, it is difficult to guess whether this self-satisfied, +self-glorifying quality, which distinguishes mediaeval passion from the +passion (always regarded as an interlude, harmless or hurtful, in civic +concerns) of unromantic Antiquity--whether, I say, this peculiarity of +mediaeval love is due to its having served for religious as well as +for secular use, or whether the possibility of its being brought into +connection with the highest mysteries and aspirations was not itself a +result of the dignity in which mere earthly ardours had come to be held. +Be this as it may, these German devotional rhapsodies display their +essentially un-Hebrew, un-antique characters only the more by the traces +of the _canticus canticorum_ in them, as in all devout love lyrics. + +Any one curious in such matters may turn to a very striking poem by +Dante's contemporary, Frauenlob, in Von der Hagen's great collection. +Also to a very strange composition, from the heyday of minne-song, +by Heinrich von Meissen. This is not the furious love ode, but the +ceremonious epithalamium of devotional poetry. It is the bearing in +triumph, among flare of torches and incense smoke, over flower-strewn +streets and beneath triumphal arches, of the Bride of the Soul, her +enthroning on a stately couch, like some new-wed Moorish woman, for +men to come and covet and admire. Above all, and giving one a shock of +surprise by association with the man's other work, is a very long and +elaborate poem addressed to Christ or God by no less a minnesinger than +Master Gottfried of Strasburg. In it the Beloved is compared to all the +things desired by eye or ear or taste or smell: cool water and fruit +slaking feverish thirst, lilies with vertiginous scent, wine firing the +blood, music wakening tears, precious stones of Augsburger merchants, +essences and spices of an Eastern cargo:-- + + "Ach herzen Trut, genaden vol, + Ach wol u je mer mere wol, + Ein suez in Arzenie + Ach herzen bruch, ach herzen not. + Ach Rose rot, + Ach rose wandels vrie! + Ach jugend in jugent, ach jugender Muot, + Ach bluejender herzen Minne!" + +And so on for pages; the sort of words which poor Brangwain may have +overheard on the calm sea, when the terrible knowledge rushed cold to +her heart that Tristram and Yseult had drained the fatal potion. + +All this is foolish and unwholesome enough, just twice as much so, for +its spiritual allegorising, as the worldly love poetry of these often +foolish and unwholesome German chivalrous poets. But, for our consolation, +in that same huge collection of Von der Hagen's Minnesingers, stand the +following six lines, addressed to the Saviour, if tradition is correct, +by a knightly monk, Bruder Wernher von der Tegernsee:-- + + "Du bist min, ih bin din; + Des solt du gewis sin. + Du bist beslozzen + In minem herzen; + _Verlorn ist daz sluzzelin: + Du muost immer drinne sin._" + +"Thou art locked up in my heart; the little key is lost; thou must +remain inside." + +This is a way of loving not logically suitable, perhaps, to a divine +essence, but it is the lovingness which fertilises the soul, and makes +flowers bud and birds sing in the heart of man. Out of it, through +simple creatures like Bruder Wernher, through the simplicity of scores +of obscurer singers and craftsmen than he, of hundreds of nameless good +men and women, comes one large half of the art of Dante and Giotto, nay, +of Raphael and Shakespeare: the tenderness of the modern world, unknown +to stoical Antiquity. + + +II + +The early Middle Ages--the times before Love came, and with it the +gradual dignifying of all realities which had been left so long to mere +gross or cunning or violent men--the early Middle Ages have left behind +them one of the most complete and wonderful of human documents, the +letters of Abelard and Heloise. This is a book which each of us should +read, in order to learn, with terror and self-gratulation, how the +aridity of the world's soul may neutralise the greatest individual +powers for happiness and good. These letters are as chains which we +should keep in our dwelling-place, to remind us of past servitude, +perhaps to warn us against future. + +No other two individuals could have been found to illustrate, by the +force of contrast, the intellectual and moral aridity of that eleventh +century, which yet, in a degree, was itself a beginning of better things. +For Heloise and Abelard were not merely among the finest intellects +of the Middle Ages; they were both, in different ways, to the highest +degree passionately innovating natures. No woman has ever been more rich +and bold and warm of mind and heart than Heloise; nor has any woman ever +questioned the unquestioned ideas and institutions of her age, of any +age, with such vehemence and certainty of intuition. She judges questions +which are barely asked and judged of now-a-days, applying to consecrated +sentimentality the long-lost instinctive human rationalism of the ancient +philosophers. How could St. Luke recommend us to desist from getting +back our stolen property? She feels, however obscurely, that this is +foolish, antisocial, unnatural. Nay, why should God prefer the penitence +of one sinner to the constant goodness of ninety-nine righteous men? She +is, this learned theologian of the eleventh century, as passionately +human in thought as any Mme. Roland or Mary Wolstonecraft of a hundred +years ago. + +Abelard, on the other hand, we know to have been one of the most subtle +and solvent thinkers of the Middle Ages; pursued by the greatest +theologians, crushed by two Councils, and remaining, in the popular +fancy, as a sort of Friar Bacon, a forerunner of the wizard Faustus; a +man whom Bernard of Clairvaux called a thief of souls, a rapacious wolf, +a Herod; a man who reveals himself a Pagan in his attempts to turn Plato +into a Christian; a man who disputes about Faith in the teeth of Faith, +and criticises the Law in the name of the Law; a man, most enormous of +all, who sees nothing as symbol or emblem (_per speculum in aenigmate_), +but dares to look all things in the face (_facie ad faciem omnia +intuetur_). _Facie ad faciem omnia intuetur_, this, which is the +acknowledged method of all modern, as it had been of all antique, thought, +nay, of all modern, all antique, all healthy spiritual life--this was +the most damnable habit of Abelard; and, as the letters show, of Heloise. +What shall we think, in consequence, of the intellectual and moral +sterility of the orthodox world of the eleventh century, when we find +this heretical man, this rebellious woman, arguing incessantly about +unrealities, crushing out all human feeling, judging all questions of +cause and effect, settling all relations of life, with reference to a +system of intricate symbolical riddles? These things are exceedingly +difficult for a modern to realise; we feel as though we had penetrated +into some Gulliver's world or kingdom of the Moon; for theology and +its methods have been relegated, these many hundred years, to a sort +of _Hortus inclusus_ where nothing human grows. These mediaeval men +of science apply their scientific energies to mastering, collecting, +comparing and generalising, not of any single fact of nature, but of the +words of other theologians. The magnificent sense of intellectual duty, +so evident in Abelard, and in a dozen monastic authors quoted by him, +is applied solely to fantasticating over Scripture and its expositors, +and diverting their every expression from its literal, honest, sane +meaning. And indeed, are some of the high efforts of mediaeval genius, the +calculations of Joachim and the Eternal Gospel, any better than the Book +of Dreams and the Key to the Lottery? Most odious, perhaps, in this +theology triumphant (sickening enough, in good sooth, even in the timid +official theology of later days), is the loss of all sense of what's +what, of fitness and decency, which interprets allegorically the grosser +portions of Scripture, and, by a reverse process, lends to the soul +the vilest functions of the body, and discusses virtue in the terms +of fleshliness. No knowledge can come out of this straw-splitting _in +vacuo_; and certainly no art out of this indecent pedant's symbolism: +all things are turned to dusty, dirty lumber. + +As with the intellectual, so also, in large degree, with the moral: +a splendid will to do right is applied, in its turn, to phantoms. +Here again the letters of Abelard and Heloise are extraordinarily +instructive. The highest virtue, the all-including (how differently +Dante feels, whatever he may say!), is _obedience_. Thus Abelard, +having quoted from St. Augustine that all which is done for obedience' +sake is well done, proceeds very logically: "It is more advantageous for +us to act rightly than to do good.... We should think not so much of the +action itself, as of the manner in which it is performed." + +Do not imagine that this care for the motive and contempt of the action +arises from an estimate of the importance of a man's sum-total of +tendencies, contrasted with his single, perhaps unintentional, acts; +still less that the advantage thus referred to has anything to do with +other men's happiness. The advantage is merely to the individual soul, +or in a cruder, truer view, to the individual combustible body to which +that soul shall be eternally reunited hereafter. And the spirit which +makes virtue alone virtuous is the spirit of obedience: obedience +theoretically to a god, but practically to a father of the Church, a +Council, an abbot or abbess. In this manner right-doing is emptied of +all rational significance, becomes dependent upon what itself, having +no human, practical reason, is mere arbitrary command. Chastity, for +instance, which is, together with mansuetude, the especial Christian +virtue, becomes in this fashion that mere guarding of virginity which, +for some occult reason, is highly prized in Heaven; as to clean living +being indispensable for bearable human relations, which even the unascetic +ancients recognised so clearly, there is never an inkling of that. Whence, +indeed, such persons as do not _go in for_ professionally pleasing the +divinity, who are neither priests, monks, nor nuns, need not stickle +about it; and the secular literature of the Middle Ages, with its +Launcelots, Tristrams, Flamencas, and all its German and Provencal +lyrists, becomes the glorification of illicit love. Indeed, in the +letters before us, Abelard regrets his former misconduct only with +reference to religious standards: as a layman he was perfectly free to +seduce Heloise; the scandal, the horrible sin, was not the seduction, +but the profanation by married love of the dress of a nun, the sanctuary +of the virgin. So it is with the renunciation of all the world's pleasures +and interests. The ascetic sacrifice of inclination, which the stoics +had conceived as resistance to the tyrant without and the tyrant within, +as a method for serene and independent life and death, this ascetic +renunciation becomes, in this arid theological world, the mere giving up +to please a jealous God of all that is not He. Abelard's regulations for +the nuns, which he gives as rules of perfection (save in the matter of +that necessary half sin, marriage) to devout lay folk, come after all to +this: give human nature enough to keep it going, so that it may be able +to sacrifice everything else to the jealousy of the Godhead. Eating, +clothing oneself, washing (though, by the way, there is no mention +of this save for the sick), nay, speaking and thinking, are merely +instrumental to the contemplation of God; any more than suffices for +this is sinful. On this point Abelard quotes, with stolidest approval, +one of the most heart-rending of anecdotes. A certain monk being asked +why he had fled humankind, answered, on account of his great love for +it, and the impossibility of loving God and it at the same time. + +Think upon that. Think on the wasted treasure of loving-kindness of +which that monk and the thousands he represents cheated his fellow-men. +O love of human creatures, of man for woman, parents and children, of +brethren, love of friends; fuel and food, which keeps the soul alive, +balm curing its wounds, or, if they be incurable, helps the poor dying +thing to die at last in peace--this was those early saints' notion of +thee! + +To refuse thus to love is to refuse not merely the highest usefulness, +but to refuse also the best kind of justice. Here again, nay, here more +than ever, we may learn from those wonderful letters. They constitute, +indeed, a document of the human soul to which, in my recollection, one +other only, Benjamin Constant's _Adolphe_, can be compared. But in these +letters,--hers of grief, humiliation, hopelessness, making her malign +her noble self; and his, bitter, self-righteous, crammed with theological +moralisings--we see not merely the dual drama of two ill-assorted +creatures, but the much more terrible tragedy, superadded by the +presence, looming, impassive, as of Cypris in Euripides' Hippolytus, of +a third all-powerful and superhuman entity: the spirit of monasticism. +The unequal misery, the martyrdom of Heloise arises herefrom, that she +rebels against this _Deus ex machina_; that this nun of the eleventh +century is a strong warm-hearted modern woman, fit for Browning. While +Abelard is her whole life, the intimate companion of her highest thoughts, +she is only a toy to him, and a toy which his theologian's pride, his +monkish self-debasement, makes him afraid and ashamed of. Abelard has +been for her, and ever remains, something like Brahma to Goethe's +Bayadere; her love, her love above all for his intrepid intellect, has +raised him to a sacredness so great, that his whim, his fame, his peace, +his very petulance can be refused nothing; and that, on the other hand, +any concession taken from him seems positive sacrilege. Hence her refusal +of marriage, her answer, "that she would be prouder as his mistress--the +Latin word is harlot--than as the wife of Caesar." Fifty years later, in +the kind, passionate, poetical days of St. Francis, Heloise might have +given this loving fervour to Christ, and been a happy, if a deluded, +woman; but in those frigid monkish days, there was no one for her to +love, save this frigid monkish Abelard. As it is, therefore, she loves +Christ and God in obedience to Abelard; she passionately cons the fathers, +the Scriptures, merely because, so to speak, the hand of Abelard has +lain on the page, the eyes of Abelard have followed the characters; and +finally, after all her vain entreaties for (she scarce knows what!) love, +sympathy, one personal word, she feeds her starving heart on the only +answer to her supplications--the dialectic exercises, metaphysical +treatises, and theological sermons (containing even the forms applicable +only to a congregation) which he doles out to her. Thankful for anything +which comes _from_ him, however little it comes _to_ her. + +How different with Abelard! Despite occasional atrocious misery and +unparalleled temporal misfortunes (which on the whole act upon him as +tonics), this great metaphysician is well suited to his times, and +spiritually thrives in their exhausted, chill atmosphere. The public +rumour (which Heloise hurls at him in a fit of broken-hearted rage), +that his passion for her had been but a passing folly of the flesh, +he never denies, but, on the contrary, reiterates perpetually for +her spiritual improvement; let her understand clearly from what +inexpressible degradation God in His mercy has saved them, at least +saved him; let her realise that he wanted only carnal indulgence, and +would have got it, if need be, through threats and blows. He recognises, +in his past, only a feeling which, now it is over, fills his ascetic +mind with nothing but disgust and burning shame, and hence he tries, by +degrading it still more, by cynically raking up all imaginable filth, +to separate that past from his present. So far, were only he himself +concerned, one would sympathise, though contemptuously, with this +agonised reaction of a proud, perhaps a vain, _man_ of mere intellect. +But the atrocious thing is, that he treats her as a loathsome relic of +this past dishonour; and answers her prayer (after twelve years' +silence!) for a word of loving-kindness by elaborate denunciations of +their former love, and reiterated jubilations that _he_, at least, has +long been purged thereof; not unmixed with sharp admonishment that she +had better not try to infect his soul afresh, but set about, if needful, +cleansing her own. Now it so happens that what he would cure her of is +incurable, being, in fact, eternal, divine--simple human love. So, to +his pious and cynical admonitions she answers with strange inconsistency. +Long brooding over his taunts will sometimes make her, to whom he is +always the divinity, actually believe, despite her reiteration, that +she had sinned out of obedience to him, that she really is a polluted +creature, guilty of the unutterable crime of contaminating a man of God, +nay, a god himself. And then, unable to silence affection, she cries +out in agony at the perversity of her nature, incapable even of hating +sincerely its sinfulness; for would she not do it again, is she not the +same Heloise who would have left the very altar, the very communion with +Christ, at Abelard's word? At other times she is pious, resigned, almost +serene; for is that not Abelard's wish? a careful mother to her nuns. +But when, encouraged by her docility and blind to her undying love, +Abelard believes that he has succeeded in quieting her down, and rewards +her piety by some rhetorical phrase of Monkish eulogy, she suddenly +turns round, a terrible tragic figure. She repudiates the supposed +purity and piety, blazons out her wickedness and hypocrisy, and cries +out, partly with the horror of the sacrilegious nun, mainly with the +pride of the faithful wife, that it is not God she loves but Abelard. + +After the most violent of these outbreaks there is a dead silence. One +guesses that some terrible message has come, warning her that unless she +promised that she would never write to Abelard save as the Abbess of the +Paraclete to the monk of Cluny, not a word from him shall ever come; +and that, in order to keep this last miserable comfort, she has bitten +out that truth-speaking tongue of hers. For after this there are only +questions on theological points and on the regulation of nunneries; and +Abelard becomes as liberal of words as he used to be chary, as full of +encouragement as he once was of insult, now that he feels comfortably +certain that Heloise has changed from a mistress to a penitent, and that +in her also there is an end at last of all that sinful folly of love. +And thus, upon Heloise pacified, numbed, dead of soul, among her praying +and scrubbing and cooking and linen-mending nuns; and Abelard reassured, +serene, spiritually proud once more among the raging controversies, the +ecclesiastical persecutions in which his soul prospered, the volume +closes; the curtain falls upon one of the most terrible tragedies of the +heart, as poignant after seven hundred years as in those early Middle +Ages, before St. Francis claimed sun and swallows as brethren, and the +baby Christ was given to hold to St. Anthony of Padua. + + +III + +The humanising movement, due no doubt to greater liberty and prosperity, +to the growing importance of honest burgher life, which the Church +authorised in the person of Francis of Assisi, doubtless after persecuting +it in the persons of dozens of obscure heresiarchs--this great revival +of religious faith was essentially the triumph of profane feeling in the +garb of religious: the sanctification, however much disguised, of all +forms of human love. One is fully aware of the moral dangers attendant +upon every such equivocation; and the great saints (like their last modern +representatives, the fervent, shrewd, and kindly leaders of certain +Protestant revivals) were probably, for all their personal extravagances, +most fully prepared for every sort of unwholesome folly among their +disciples. The whole of a certain kind of devotional literature, manuals +of piety, Church hymns, lives and correspondence of saintly persons, is +unanimous in testifying to the hysterical self-consciousness, intellectual +enervation, emotional going-to-bits, and moral impotence produced by +such vicarious and barren expenditure of feeling. Yet it seems to me +certain that this enthroning of human love in matters spiritual was an +enormous, indispensable improvement, which, whatever detriment it may +have brought in individual and, so to say, professionally religious +cases, nay, perhaps to all religion as a whole, became perfectly +wholesome and incalculably beneficent in the enormous mass of +right-minded laity. + +For human emotion, although so often run to waste, had been at least +elicited, and, once elicited, could find, in nine cases out of ten, its +true and beneficent channel; whereas, in the earlier mediaeval days, the +effort to crush out all human feeling (as with that holy man quoted by +Abelard), to break all human solidarity, had not merely left the world +in the hands of unscrupulous and brutal persons, but had imprisoned all +finer souls in solitary and selfish thoughts of their individual salvation. +Things were now different. The story of Lucchesio of Poggibonsi, recovered +from oblivion by M. Paul Sabatier, is the most lovely expression of +Franciscan tenderness and reverence towards the affections of the +laymen, and ought to be remembered in company with the legend of the +wood-pigeons, whom St. Francis established in his cabin and blessed in +their courtship and nesting. This Lucchesio had exercised a profession +which has ever savoured of damnation to the minds of the poor and their +lovers, that of corn merchant or speculator in grain; but touched by +Franciscan preaching, he had kept only one small garden, which, together +with his wife, he cultivated half for the benefit of the poor. One day +the wife, known in the legend only as Bona Donna, sickened and knew +she must die, and the sacrament was brought to her accordingly. But +Lucchesio never thought that it could be God's will that he should +remain on earth after his wife had been taken from him. So he got +himself shriven, received the last sacraments with her, held her hands +while she died; and when she was dead, stretched himself out, made +the sign of the cross, called on Jesus, Mary, and St. Francis, and +peacefully died in his turn: God could not have wished him to live on +without her. The passionate Franciscan sympathy with human love makes +light of all the accepted notions of bereavement being acceptable as a +divine dispensation. Lucchesio of Poggibonsi was, we are told, a member of +the Third Order of Franciscans, and his legend may help us to appreciate +the value of such institutions, which gave heaven to the laity, to +the married burgher, the artisan, the peasant; which fertilised the +religious ideal with the simplest and sweetest instincts of mankind. +But, Third Order apart, the mission of the regular Franciscans and +Dominicans is wholly different from that of the earlier orders of +monasticism proper. The earlier monks, however useful and venerable as +tillers of the soil and students of all sciences, were, nevertheless, +only agglomerated hermits, retired from the world for the safety each of +his own soul; whereas the preaching, wandering friars are men who mix +with the world for the sake of souls of others. Thus, throughout the +evolution of religious communities, down to the Jesuits and Oratorians, +to the great nursing brother-and sisterhoods of the seventeenth century, +we can watch the substitution of care for lay souls in the place of +more saintly ones--a gradual secularisation in unsuspected harmony with +the heretical and philosophical movements which tend more and more to +make religion an essential function of life, instead of an activity with +which life is for ever at variance. + +In accordance with this evolution is the great enthroning of love in the +thirteenth century: it means the replacing of the terror of a divinity, +who was little better than a metaphysical Moloch (sometimes, and oftener +than we think, a metaphysical Ormuzd and Ahriman of Manichean character), +by the idolatry of an all-gracious Virgin, of an all-compassionate and +all-sympathising Christ. + +It was an effort at self-righting of the unhappy world, this love-fever +which followed on the many centuries of monastic self-mutilation; for, +in sickness of the spirit, the hot stage, for all its delirium, means +a possibility of life. Moreover, it gave to mankind a plenitude of +happiness such as is necessary, whether reasonable or unreasonable, for +mankind to continue living at all; art, poetry, freedom, all the things +which form the _Viaticum_ on mankind's journey through the dreary ages, +requiring for their production, it would seem, an extra dose of faith, +of hope, and happiness. Indeed, the Franciscan movement is important not +so much for its humanitarian quality as for its optimism. + +Many other religious movements have asserted, with equal and greater +efficacy, the need for charity and loving-kindness; but none, as it +seems to me, has conceived like it that charity and loving-kindness are +not mitigations of misery, but aids to joy. The universal brotherhood, +preached by Francis of Assisi, is a brotherhood not of suffering, but of +happiness, nay, of life and of happiness. + +The sun, in the wonderful song which he made--characteristically--during +his sickness, is the brother of man because of his radiance and splendour; +water and fire are his brethren on account of their virtues of purity +and humbleness, of jocund and beautiful strength;[1] and if we find, +throughout his legends, the Saint perpetually accompanied by birds--the +swallows he begged to let him speak, the falcon who called him in the +morning, the turtle-doves whose pairing he blessed, and all the feathered +flock whom Benozzo represents him preaching to in the lovely fresco at +Montefalco--if, as I say, there is throughout his life and thoughts a +sort of perpetual whir and twitter of birds, it is, one feels sure, +because the creatures of the air, free to come and go, to sit on +beautiful trees, to drink of clear streams, to play in the sunshine and +storm, able above all to be like himself, poets singing to God, are the +symbols, in the eyes of Francis, of the greatest conceivable +felicity.[2] + + [Footnote 1: St. Francis's hymn (Sabatier, _St. Francois d'Assise_):-- + + Laudato sie, mi signore, cum tucte le tue creature, + Spetialimento messer lo frate sole, + Lo quale jorna, et illumini per lui; + _Et ello e bello e radiante cum grande splendore._ + * * * * * + Laudato si, me signore per frate Vento + Et per aere et nubilo et sereno et omne tempo + * * * * * + Laudato, si, mi signore, per sor acqua + La quale e multo utile et humele et pretiosa et casta; + Laudato si, mi signore, per frate focu + Per lo quale ennallumini la nocte + _Et ello e bello et jocundo e robustioso e forte._ + + In its rudeness, how magnificent is this last line!] + + [Footnote 2: St. Francis's sermon to the birds in the valley of Bevagna + (_Fioretti_ xvi.): "Ancora gli (a Dio) siete tenuti per lo elemento + dell' aria che egli ha diputato a voi ... e Iddio vi pasce, e davvi li + fiumi e le fonti per vostro bere; davvi li monti e le valli per vostro + rifugio e gli alberi alti per fare li vostri nidi ... e pero guardatevi, + sirocchie mie, del peccato della ingratitudine, e sempre vi studiate di + lodare Iddio ... e allora tutti qugli uccilli si levarons in aria con + maraviglios canti." + + _Fioretti_ xxviii. "... Questo dono, che era dato a frate Bernardo da + Quintevalle, cioe, che volando si pascesse come la rondine." _Fioretti_ + xxii., Considerazioni i.] + +Indeed, we can judge of what the Franciscan movement was to the world by +what its gospel, the divine _Fioretti_, are even to ourselves. This humble +collection of stories and sayings, sometimes foolish, always childlike, +becomes, to those who have read it with more than the eyes of the body, +a beloved and necessary companion, like the solemn serene books of antique +wisdom, the passionate bitter Book of Job, almost, in a way, like the +Gospels of Christ. But not for the same reason: the book of Francis +teaches neither heroism nor resignation, nor divine justice and mercy; +it teaches love and joyfulness. It keeps us for ever in the company of +creatures who are happy because they are loving: whether the creatures +be poor, crazy Brother Juniper (the comic person of the cycle) eating +his posset in brotherly happiness with the superior he had angered; or +Brother Masseo, unable from sheer joy in Christ to articulate anything +save "U-u-u," "like a pigeon;" or King Lewis of France falling into the +arms of Brother Egidio; or whether they be the Archangel Michael in +friendly converse with Brother Peter, or the Madonna handing the divine +child for Brother Conrad to kiss, or even the Wolf of Gubbio, converted, +and faithfully fulfilling his bargain. There are sentences in the +_Fioretti_ such as exist perhaps in no other book in the world, and +which teach something as important, after all, as wisdom even and perfect +charity--"And there answered Brother Egidio: Beloved brethren, know that +as soon as he and I embraced one another, the light of wisdom revealed +and manifested to me his heart, and to him mine; and thus by divine +operation, seeing one into the other's heart, that which I would have +said to him and he to me, each understood much better than had we spoken +with our tongue, and with greater joyfulness...." Again, Jesus appeared +to Brother Ruffino and said, "Well didst thou do, my son, inasmuch as +thou believedst the words of St. Francis; for he who saddened thee was +the demon, whereas I am Christ thy teacher; and for token thereof I will +give thee this sign: As long as thou live, thou shalt never feel +affliction of any sort nor sadness of heart." + +St. Francis, we are told, being infirm of body, was comforted through +God's goodness by a vision of the joy of the blessed. "Suddenly there +appeared to him an angel in a great radiance, which angel held a viol +in his left hand and a bow in his right. And while St. Francis remained +in stupefaction at the sight, this angel drew the bow once _upwards_ +across the viol, and instantly there issued such sweetness of melody as +melted the soul of St. Francis, and suspended it from all bodily sense. +And, as he afterwards told his companions, he was of opinion that if +that angel had drawn the bow _downwards_ (instead of upwards) across the +viol, his soul would have departed from his body for the very excess of +delight." + +It was not so much to save the souls of men from hell, about which, +indeed, there is comparatively little talk in the _Fioretti_, but to +draw them also into the mystic circle where such angelic music was +heard, that Francis of Assisi preached throughout Umbria, and even +as far as the Soldan's country; and, if we interpret it rightly, the +strings of that heavenly viol were the works of creation and the souls +of all creatures, and the bow, whose upward movement ravished, and whose +downward movement would have almost annihilated with its sweetness, that +bow drawn across the vibrating world was no other than love. + + +IV + +Justice preached by Hebrew prophets, charity and purity taught by Jesus +of Nazareth, fortitude recommended by Epictetus and Aurelius, none of +these great messages to men necessarily produce that special response +which we call Art. But the message of loving joyfulness, of happiness +in the world and the world's creatures, whether men or birds, or sun +or moon,--this message, which was that of St. Francis, sets the soul +singing; and just such singing of the soul makes art. Hence, even as +the Apennine blazed with supernatural light, and its forests and rocks +became visible to the most distant wayfarers, when the Eternal Love +smote with its beams the praying saint on La Vernia; so also the souls +of those men of the Middle Ages were made luminous and visible by the +miracle of poetry and painting, and we can see them still, distinct even +at this distance. + +One of the earliest of the souls so revealed is that of the Blessed +Jacopone of Todi. Jacopo dei Benedetti, a fellow-countryman of St. +Francis, must have been born in the middle of the thirteenth century, +and is said to have died in 1316, when Dante, presumably, was writing +his "Purgatory" and "Paradise;" to him is ascribed the authorship of +the hymn "Stabat Mater," remembered, and to be remembered (owing to the +embalming power of music) far beyond his vernacular poems. Tradition has +it that he turned to the religious life in consequence of the sudden +death of his beloved, and the discovery that she had worn a hair-shirt +next her delicate body. Be this as it may, many allusions in his poems +suggest that he had lived the wild life of the barbarous Umbrian cities, +being a highwayman perhaps, forfeiting his life, and also having to fly +the country before the fury of some family vendetta. On the other hand, +it is plain at every line that he was a frantic ascetic, taking a savage +pleasure in vilifying all mundane things, and passionately disdainful of +study, of philosophical and theological subtleties. No poet, therefore, +of the troubadour sort, or of the idealising learned refinement of +Guinicelli or Cavalcanti. Nor was his life one of apostolic sweetness. +Having taken part in the furious Franciscan schism, and pursued with +invectives Boniface VIII., he was cast by that Pope into a dungeon at +Palestrina. "My dwelling," he writes, "is subterranean, and a cesspool +opens on to it; hence a smell not of musk. No one can speak to me; the +man who waits on me may, but he is obliged to make confession of my +sayings. I wear jesses like a falcon, and ring whenever I move: he who +comes near my room may hear a queer kind of dance. When I have laid +myself down, I am tripped up by the irons, and wound round in a big +chain (_negli ferri inzampagliato, inguainato in catenone_). I have a +little basket hung up so that the mice may not injure it; it can hold +five loaves.... While I eat them little by little, I suffer great +cold." + +Moreover, Pope Boniface refuses him absolution, and Jacopone's +invectives are alternated with heart-rending petitions that this mercy +at least be shown him; as to his other woes, he will endure them till +his death. In this frightful place Jacopone had visions, which the +Church, giving him therefore the title of Blessed, ratifies as genuine. +One might expect nightmares, such as troubled the early saints in the +wilderness, or John Bunyan in gaol; but that was not the spirit of the +mediaeval revival: terror had been cast out by love. More than a quarter +of Jacopone's huge volume consists in what is merely love poetry: he is +languishing, consumed by love; when the beloved departs, he sighs and +weeps, and shrieks, and _dies alive_. Will the beloved have no mercy? +"Jesu, donami la morte, o di te fammi assaggiare." Then the joys of +love, depicted with equal liveliness, amplifications as usual of the +erotic hyperboles of the Shulamite and her lover; the phenomenon, to +whose uncouth strangeness devotional poetry accustoms us even now-a-days, +which we remarked in Gottfried von Strasburg and Frauenlob, and on which +it is needless further to insist. + +But there is here in Jacopone something which we missed in Gottfried +and Frauenlob, of which there is no trace in the Song of Solomon, but +which, suggested in the lovely six lines of Bruder Wernher, makes the +emotionalism of the Italian Middle Ages wholesome and fruitful. A +child-like boy and girlish light-heartedness that makes love a matter +not merely of sighing and dying, but of singing and dancing; and, +proceeding thence, a fervour of loving delightedness which is no longer +of the man towards the woman, but of the man and the woman towards the +baby. The pious monk, in his ecstasies over Jesus, intones a song which +might be that of those passionate _farandoles_ of angels who dance and +carol in Botticelli's most rapturous pictures:-- + + "Amore, amor, dove m'hai tu menato? + Amore, amor, fuor di me m'hai trattato. + Ciascun amante, amator del Signore, + Venga alla danza cantando d'amore." + +Can we not see them, the souls of such fervent lovers, swaying and +eddying, with joined hands and flapping wings, flowers dropping from +their hair, above the thatched roof of the stable at Bethlehem? + +The stable at Bethlehem! It is perpetually returning to Jacopone's +thoughts. The cell, the dreadful underground prison at Palestrina, is +broken through, irradiated by visions which seem paintings by Lippo or +Ghirlandaio, nay, by Correggio and Titian themselves, "the tender baby +body (_il tenerin corpo_) of the blood of Mary has been given in charge +to a pure company; St. Joseph and the Virgin contemplate the little +creature (_il piccolino_) with stupefaction. _O gran piccolino Jesu +nostro diletto_, he who had seen Thee between the ox and the little +ass, breathing upon thy holy breast, would not have guessed thou were +begotten of the Trinity!" But besides the ox and the ass there are the +angels. "In the worthy stable of the sweet baby the angels are singing +round the little one; they sing and cry out, the beloved angels, quite +reverent, timid and shy (_tutti riverenti, timidi e subbietti_, this +beautiful expression is almost impossible save in Italian), round the +little baby Prince of the Elect who lies naked among the prickly hay. He +lies naked and without covering; the angels shout in the heights. And +they wonder greatly that to such lowliness the Divine Verb should have +stooped. The Divine Verb, which is highest knowledge, this day seems as +if He knew nothing of anything (_il verbo divino che e sommo sapiente, +in questo di par che non sappia niente!_). Look at him on the hay, crying +and kicking (_che gambetta piangente_), as if He were not at all a divine +man...." Meanwhile, other angels, as in Benozzo's frescoes, are busy +"picking rarest flowers in the garden." In the garden! Why He Himself +is a fragrant garden; Jesus is a garden of many sweet odours; and "what +they are those can tell who are the lovers of this sweet little brother +of ours." + +_Di Questo nostro dolce fratellino_: it is such expressions as these, +Bambolino, Piccolino, Garzolino, "el magno Jesulino," these caressing, +ever-varied diminutives, which make us understand the monk's passionate +pleasure in the child; and which, by the emotion they testify to and +re-awaken, draw more into relief, make visible and tangible the little +kicking limbs on the straw, the dimpled baby's body. + +And then there are the choruses of angels. "O new song," writes Jacopone, +"which has killed the weeping of sick mankind! Its melody, methinks, +begins upon the high _Fa_, descending gently on the _Fa_ below, which +the _Verb_ sounds. The singers, jubilating, forming the choir, are the +holy angels, singing songs in that hostelry, before the little babe, who +is the Incarnate Word. On lamb's parchment, behold! the divine note is +written, and God is the scribe, Who has opened His hand, and has taught +the song." + +Have we not here, in this odd earliest allegory of music and theology, +this earliest precursor of the organ-playing of Abt Vogler, one of those +choirs, clusters of singing childish heads--clusters, you might almost +say, of sweet treble notes, tied like nosegays by the score held +scrollwise across them, which are among the sweetest inventions of +Italian art, from Luca della Robbia to Raphael, "cantatori, guibilatori, +che tengon il coro?" + +And this is the place for a remark which, in the present uncertainty +of all aesthetic psychology, I put forward as a mere suggestion, but +a suggestion less wide of the truth than certain theories now almost +unquestioned: the theories which arbitrarily assume that art is the +immediate and exact expression of contemporary spiritual aspirations and +troubles. That such may be the case with literature, particularly the +more ephemeral kinds thereof, is very likely, since literature, save in +the great complex structures of epos, tragedy, choral lyric, is but the +development of daily speech, and possibly as upstart, as purely passing, +as daily speech itself; moreover, in its less artistic forms, requiring +little science or apprenticeship. + +But art is a thing of older ancestry; you cannot, however bursting +with emotion, embody your feelings in forms like those of Phidias, of +Michelangelo, of Bach, or Mozart, unless such forms have come ready to +hand through the long, steady working of generations of men: Phidias +and Bach in person, cut off from their precursors, would not, for all +their genius, get as far as a schoolboy's caricature, or a savage's +performance on a marrow-bone. And these slowly elaborated forms, +representing the steady impact of so many powerful minds, representing, +moreover, the organic necessity by which, a given movement once started, +that movement is bound to proceed in a given direction, these forms +cannot be altered, save infinitesimally, to represent the particular +state of the human soul at a given moment. You might as well suppose +that the human shape itself, evolved through these millions of years, +could suddenly be accommodated to perfect representation of the momentary +condition of certain human beings; even the Tricoteuses of the guillotine +had the heads and arms of ordinary women, not the beaks and claws of +harpies. Hence such expressiveness must be limited to microscopic +alterations; and, indeed, one marvels at the modest demands of the art +critics, who are satisfied with the pucker of a frontal muscle of a +Praxitelean head as testimony to the terrible deep disorder in the +post-Periclean Greek spirit, and who can still find in the later +paintings of Titian, when all that makes Titian visible and admirable +is deducted, a something, just a little _je ne sais quoi_, which proves +these later Titians to have originated in the Catholic reaction. If +the theory of art as the outcome of momentary conditions be limited +to such particularities, I am quite willing to accept it; only, such +particularities do not constitute the large, important and really +valuable characteristics of art, and it matters very little by what +they are produced. + +How then do matters stand between art and civilisation? Here follows +my hypothesis. There is in the history of every art (and for brevity's +sake, I include in this term every distinct category, say, renaissance +sculpture as distinguished from antique, of the same art) a moment when, +for one reason or other, that art begins to come to the fore, to bestir +itself. The circumstances of the nation and time make this art materially +advantageous or spiritually attractive; the opening up of quarries, the +discovery of metallic alloys, the necessity of roofing larger spaces, +the demand for a sedentary amusement, for music to dance to in new social +gatherings--any such humble reason, besides many others, can cause one +art to issue more particularly out of the limbo of the undeveloped, or +out of the lumber-room of the unused. + +It is during this historic moment--a moment which may last years or +scores of years--that, as it seems to me, an art can really be deeply +affected by its surrounding civilisation. For is it not called forth by +that civilisation's requirements, material or spiritual; and is it not, +by the very fact of being thus new, or at all events nascent, devoid +of all conditioning factors, save those which the civilisation and +its requirements impose from without? An art, like everything vital, +takes shape not merely by pressure from without, but much more by the +necessities inherent in its own constitution, the almost mechanical +necessities by which all variable things _can_ vary only in certain +fashions. All the natural selection, all the outer pressure in the +world, cannot make a stone become larger by cutting, cannot make colour +less complex by mixing, cannot make the ear perceive a dissonance more +easily than a consonance, cannot make the human mind turn back from +problems once opened up, or revert instantaneously to effects it is sick +of; and a number of such immutable necessities constitute what we call +the organism of an art, which can therefore respond only in one way and +not another to the influences of surrounding civilisation. Given the +sculpture of the AEgina period, it is impossible we should not arrive at +the sculpture of the time of Alexander: the very constitution of clay +and bronze, of marble, chisel and mallet, let alone that of the human +mind, makes it inevitable; and you would have it inevitably if you could +invert history, and put Chaeronea in the place of Salamis. But there +is no reason why you should eventually get Lysippian and Praxitelean +sculpture instead of Egyptian or Assyrian, say, in the time of Homer, +whenever that may have been. For the causes which forced Greek sculpture +along the line leading to Praxiteles and Lysippus were not yet at work; +and had other forces, say, a preference for stone work instead of clay +and bronze work, a habit of Persian or Gaulish garments, of Lydian +effeminate life instead of Dorian athleticism, supervened, had satraps +ordered rock-reliefs of battles instead of burghers ordering brazen +images of boxers and runners, Praxiteles and Lysippus might have +remained _in mente Dei_, if, indeed, even there. Similarly, once +given your Pisan sculptors, Giotto, nay, your imaginary Cimabue, you +inevitably get your Donatello, Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, and eventually +your Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Titian; for the problems of form and of +sentiment, the questions of perspective, anatomy, dramatic expression, +lyric suggestion, architectural decoration, were established, in however +rudimentary a manner, as soon as painting was ordered to leave off doing +idle, emotionless Christs, rows of gala saints and symbols of metaphysic +theology, and told to set about showing the episodes of Scripture, the +things Christ and the Apostles did, and the places where they did them, +and the feelings they felt about it all; told to make visible to the +eye the gallant archangels, the lovable Madonnas, the dear little baby +Saviours, the angels with their flowers and songs, all the human hope +and pity and passion and tenderness which possessed the world in the +days of St. Francis. + +What pictures should we have seen if Christianity (which was impossible) +had continued in the habits of thought and feeling of the earlier Middle +Ages? Byzantine _icones_ become frightfuler and frightfuler, their +theological piety perhaps sometimes relieved by odd wicked Manichean +symbolism; all talent and sentiment abandoning painting, perhaps to +the advantage of music, whose solemn period of recondite contrapuntal +complexity--something corresponding to the ingenuities and mysticism of +theology--might have come two centuries earlier, and delighted the world +instead of being unnoticed by it. Be this as it may, there is no need +for wondering, as people occasionally wonder, how the solemn terror, the +sweetness, pathos, or serenity of men like Signorelli, Botticelli, or +Perugino, nay Michelangelo, Raphael, or Giorgione, could have originated +among Malatestas, Borgias, Poggios, or Aretines. It did not. And, +therefore, since literature always precedes its more heavily cumbered +fellow-servant art, we must look for the literary counterpart of the +painters of the Renaissance among the writers who preceded them by +many generations, men more obviously in touch with the great mediaeval +revival: Dante, Boccaccio, the compilers of the "Fioretti di San +Francesco," and, as we have just seen, Fra Jacopone da Todi. + + +V + +What art would there have been without that Franciscan revival, or +rather what emotional synthesis of life would art have had to record? +This speculation has been dismissed as futile, because it is impossible +to conceive that mankind could have gone on without some such enthusiastic +return of faith in the goodness of things. But another question remains +to be answered, remains to be asked; and that is, what was the spiritual +meaning of the art which immediately preceded the Franciscan revival? +what was the emotional synthesis of life given by those who had come too +early to partake in the new religion of love? + +The question seems scarcely to have occurred to any one, perhaps because +the Church found it expedient to obliterate, to the best of her power, +all records of her terrible mediaeval vicissitudes, and to misinterpret, +for the benefit of purblind antiquarians, the architectural symbolism of +the earlier Middle Ages. + +Since, in the deciphering of such expressions of mankind's moods and +intuitions, scientific investigation is scarcely more important than +the moods and intuitions of the looker-on, it seems quite fitting that +I should begin these suggestions about pre-Franciscan Italian art by +saying that some years ago there met by accident in my mind a certain +impression of Lombard twelfth-century art, and a certain anecdote of +Lombard twelfth-century history. + +It was at Lucca, a place most singularly rich in round-arched buildings, +that I was, so to speak, overwhelmed by the fact that the Italian churches +of immediately pre-Franciscan days possess by way of architectural +ornamentation nothing but images of deformity and emblems of wickedness. +This fact, apart from its historical bearing, may serve also to illustrate +a theory I have already put forth, to wit, that the only art which is +necessarily expressive of contemporary thought and feeling is such as +embodies very little skill, and as expresses but very few organic +necessities of form, both of which can result only from the activity +and the influence of generations of craftsmen; since in these Lucchese +churches the architectural forms proclaim one thing and the sculptural +details another. The first speak only of logic and serenity; the second +only of the most abominable nightmare. The truth is, that these churches +of Lucca, and their more complex and perfect prototypes, like Sant' +Ambrogio of Milan, and San Miniato of Florence, are not the real outcome +of the century which built them. It is quite natural that, with their +stately proportions, their harmonious restrained vaultings, their easy, +efficient colonnades, their ample and equable illumination, above all +their obvious pleasure in constructive logic, these churches should +affect us as being _classic_ as opposed to romantic, and even in a very +large measure actually antique; for they have come, through generations +as long-lived and as scanty as those of the patriarchs, straight from +the classic, the antique; grandchildren of the courts of law and temples +of Pagan Rome, children of the Byzantine basilicas of early Christian +days; strange survivals from distant antiquity, testifying to the lack +of artistic initiative in the barbarous centuries between Constantine to +Barbarossa. No period in the world's history could have produced anything +so organic without the work of previous periods; and when the Middle +Ages did in their turn produce an architecture original to themselves, +it was by altering these still classic forms into something absolutely +different: that thirteenth-century Gothic which answers to the material +and necessities of the democratic and romantic times heralded by St. +Francis. The twelfth century, therefore, could not express itself in +the architectural forms and harmonies of those Lucchese churches; but +it could express itself in their rude and thoroughly original sculpture. +Hence, while there is in them no indication of the symbolism of the coming +ogival Gothic, there is no trace either of the symbolism belonging to +Byzantine buildings. None of the Gothic imagery testifying faith and +joy in God and His creatures; no effigies of saints; at most only of +the particular building's patron; no Madonnas, infant Christs, burning +cherubim, singing and playing angels, armed romantic St. Michael or +St. George; none of those goodly rows of kings and queens guarding the +portals, or of those charming youthful heads marking the spring of the +pointed arch, the curve of the spandril. Nor, on the other hand, any +remnant of Byzantine devices of the date-loaded palms, the peacocks +and doves, the bunches of grapes, the serene, almost Pagan imagery which +graces the churches of the Caelian and Aventine, the basilicas of +Ravenna, and which would seem the necessary accompaniment of this +stately Neo-Byzantine architecture. The churches of Lucca, like their +contemporaries and immediate predecessors throughout Tuscany and North +Italy, are ornamented only with symbols of terror.[3] + + [Footnote 3: The Cathedral of Assisi, a very early mediaeval building, + affords a singular instance of the meeting of the last remnant of that + serene symbolism of Roman and Byzantine-Roman churches with the usual + Lombard horrors. A fine passion-flower or vine encircles the porch, + peacocks strut and drink from an altar, while, on the other hand, lions + mangle a man and a sheep, and horrible composite monsters, resembling + the prehistoric plesiosaurus, bite each other's necks. A Madonna and + Christ are enthroned on Byzantine seats, the weight resting on human + beings, not so realistically crushed as those of Ferrara and Milan, but + suffering. There is a similar meeting of symbols in the neighbouring + Cathedral of Foligno; and, so far as I could see, the Umbrian valley + is rich in very early churches of this type, sometimes lovely in + ornamentation, like S. Pietro of Spoleto, sometimes very rude, like + the tiny twin churches of Bevagna.] + +The minds of the sculptors seem haunted by the terror of wicked wild +beasts, irresistible and mysterious, as in the night fears of children. +The chief ornament of St. Michael of Lucca is a curious band of black +and white inlaid work, of which Mr. Ruskin has said, with the optimism +of an orthodox symbolist, that it shows that the people of Lucca loved +hunting, even as the people of Florence loved the sciences and crafts +symbolised on their belfry. But the two or three solitary mannikins of +the frieze of St. Michael exemplify not the pleasures, but the terrors +of the chase; or rather they are not hunting, but being hunted by the +wild beasts all round; attacked rather than pursuing, flying on their +little horses from the unequal fight, or struggling under the hug of +bears, the grip of lions; never does one of them carry off a dead +creature or deal a mortal blow. The wild beasts are masters of the +situation, the men mere intruders, speedily worsted; and this is proved +by the fact that where the wolves, lions, and bears are not struggling +with human beings, they are devouring each another, the appearance of +the poor little scared men being only an interlude in the everlasting +massacre of one beast by another. The people who worked this frieze may +have pretended, perhaps, that they were expressing the pleasures of +hunting; but what they actually realised was evidently the horrors of a +world given over to ravening creatures. The porch sculptures of this +and all the other churches of Lucca remove all further doubt upon this +point. For here what human beings there lie under the belly and in the +claws (sometimes a mere horrid mangled human head) of the lions and +lionesses who project like beamheads out of the wall or carry the porch +columns on their back: scowling, murderous creatures, with which the +twelfth and early thirteenth century ornamented even houses and public +tanks like Fonte Branda, which less terrified generations adorned with +personified virtues. The nightmare of wild beasts is carried on in the +inside of the churches: there again, under the columns of the pulpits +are the lions and lionesses gnashing their teeth, tearing stags and +gazelles and playing with human heads. And, to increase the horror, +there also loom on the capitals of the nave strange unknown birds of +prey, fantastic terrible vultures and griffins. Everywhere massacre and +nightmare in those churches of Lucca. And the impression they made on +my mind was naturally strengthened by the recollection of the similar +and often more terrible carvings in other places, Milan, Pavia, Modena, +Volterra, the Pistoiese and Lucchese hill-towns, in all other places +rich in pre-Franciscan art. Above all, there came to my mind the image +of the human figures which in most of such pre-Franciscan places express +the other half of all this terror, the feelings of mankind in this kingdom +of wicked, mysterious wild beasts. I allude to the terrible figures, +crushed into dwarfs and hunchbacks by the weight of porch columns and +pulpits, amid which the tragic creature, with broken spine and starting +eyes, of Sant' Ambrogio of Milan is, through sheer horrified realisation, +a sort of masterpiece. But there are wild beasts, lions and lionesses, +among the works of thirteenth-century sculptors, and lions and lionesses +continue for a long time as ornaments of pure Gothic architecture. Of +course; but it was the very nearness of the resemblance of these later +creatures that brought home to me the utterly different, the uniform and +extraordinary character, of those of earlier date: the emblem was kept +by the force of tradition, but the meaning thereof was utterly changed. +The Pisani, for instance, carved lions and lionesses under all their +pulpits; some of them are merely looking dignified, others devouring +their prey, but they are conceived by a semi-heraldic decorator or an +intelligent naturalist; nay, the spirit of St. Francis has entered into +the sculptors, the feeling for animal piety and happiness, to the extent +of representing the lionesses as suckling and tenderly licking their +whelps. The men of that time cannot even conceive, in their newly acquired +faith and joy in God and His creatures, what feelings must have been +uppermost in the men who first set the fashion of adorning churches with +men-devouring monsters. + +Such were my impressions during those days spent among the serene +Lucchese churches and their terrible emblems. And under their influence, +thinking of the times which had built the churches and carved the +emblems, there came to my memory a very curious anecdote, unearthed +by the learned ecclesiastical historian Tocco, and consigned in his +extremely suggestive book on mediaeval heresies. A certain priest of +Milan became so revered for his sanctity and learning, and for the +marvellous cures he worked, that the people insisted on burying him +before the high altar, and resorting to his tomb as to that of a saint. +The holy man became even more undoubtedly saintly after his death; and +in the face of the miracles which were wrought by his intercession, it +became necessary to proceed to his beatification. The Church was about +to establish his miraculous sainthood, when, in the official process +of collecting the necessary information, it was discovered that the +supposed saint was a Manichean heretic, a _Catharus_, a believer in the +wicked Demiurgus, the creating Satan, the defeat of the spiritual God, +and the uselessness of the coming of Christ. It was quite probable that +he had spat upon the crucifix as a symbol of the devil's triumph; it was +quite possible that he had said masses to Satan as the true creator of +all matter. Be this as it may, that priest's half-canonised bones were +publicly burnt and their ashes scattered to the wind. The anecdote shows +that the Manichean heresies, some ascetic and tender, others brutal and +foul, had made their way into the most holy places. And, indeed, when we +come to think of it, no longer startled by so extraordinary a revelation, +this was the second time that Christianity ran the risk of becoming a +dualistic religion--a religion, like some of its Asiatic rivals, of +pessimism, transcendentally spiritual or cynically base according to the +individual believer. Nor is it surprising that such views, identical +with those of the transcendental theologians of the fourth century, and +equivalent to the philosophical pessimism of our own day, as expounded +particularly by Schopenhauer, should have found favour among the best +and most thoughtful men of the early Middle Ages. In those stern and +ferocious, yet tender-hearted and most questioning times, there must +have been something logically satisfying, and satisfying also to the +harrowed sympathies, in the conviction, if not in the dogma, that the +soul of man had not been made by the maker of the foul and cruel world +of matter; and that the suffering of all good men's hearts corresponded +with the suffering, the humiliation of a mysteriously dethroned God of +the Spirit. And what a light it must have shed, completely solving all +terrible questions, upon the story of Christ's martyrdom, so constantly +uppermost in the thoughts and feelings of mediaeval men! + +Now, the men who built Sant' Ambrogio[4] and San Miniato a Monte, +who carved the stone nightmares, the ravening lions, the squashed and +writhing human figures of the early Lombard and Tuscan churches, were +the contemporaries of that Manichean priest of Milan, who, although a +saint, had believed in the triumph of the Devil and the wickedness of +the Creator. And among his fellow-heretics--those heretics lurking +everywhere, and most among the most religious--should we not expect to +find the mysterious guilds of Lombard freemasons, and the craftsmen to +whom they gradually revealed their secrets, affirming in their stone +symbolism to the already initiated, and suggesting to the uninitiated, +their terrible creed of inevitable misery on earth? Nay, can we not +imagine some of them, even as the Templars were accused of doing (and +the Templars were patrons, remember, of important guilds of masons), +propitiating the Great Enemy by service and ritual, proclaiming his +Power, even as the ancients propitiated the divinities of darkness whom +they hated? For the God of Good, we can fancy them reasoning, the Pure +Spirit who will triumph when all this cruel universe goes to pieces, +can wish for no material altars, and can have no use for churches. +Or did not the idea of a dualism become confused into a vacillating, +contradictory notion of a Power at once good and evil, something +inscrutable, unthinkable, but inspiring less confidence than terror? + + [Footnote 4: Here are a few dates, as given by Murray's Handbooks. + + Fiesole Cathedral begun 1028; S. Miniato a Monte, 1013; Pisa Cathedral + consecrated 1118; baptistery (lower storey), 1153. Lucca facade + (interior later), 1204; S. Frediano of Lucca begun by Perharit 671, + altered in twelfth century; S. Michele facade, 1188. Pistoia: S. + Giovanni Evangelista by Gruamons, 1166; S. Andrea, also by Gruamons; S. + Bartolomeo by Rudolphinus, 1167. Pulpit of S. Ambrogio of Milan, 1201; + church traditionally begun about 868, probably much more modern.] + +Whatever the secret of those sculptured monsters, this much is +historically certain, that a dualistic, profoundly pessimist belief had +honeycombed Christianity throughout Provence and Northern and Central +Italy. But for this knowledge it would be impossible to explain the +triumphant reception given to St. Francis and his sublime, illogical +optimism, his train of converted wolves, sympathising birds, and saints +and angels mixing familiarly with mortal men. The Franciscan revival +has the strength and success of a reaction. And in sweeping away the +pessimistic terrors of mankind, it swept away, by what is at least +a strange coincidence, the nightmare sculpture of the old Lombard +stonemasons. + +What the things were which made room for the carved virgins and saints, +the lute-playing angels and nibbling squirrels and twittering birds of +Gothic sculpture, I wish to put before the reader in one significant +example. The Cathedral of Ferrara is a building which, although finished +in the thirteenth century, had been begun and consecrated so early as +1135, and the porch thereof, as is frequently the case, appears to have +been erected earlier than other portions. Of this porch two pillars +are supported by life-sized figures, one bearded, one beardless, both +dressed in the girdled smock of the early Middle Ages. The enormous +weight of the porch is resting, not conventionally (as in the antique +caryatid) on the head, but on the spine; and the head is protruded +forwards in a fearful effort to save itself, the face most frightfully +convulsed: another moment and the spine must be broken and the head +droop freely down. Before the portals, but not supporting anything, are +six animals of red marble--a griffin, two lions, two lionesses, or what +seem such, and a second griffin. The central lions are well preserved, +highly realistic, but also decorative; one of them is crushing a large +ram, another an ox, both creatures splendidly rendered. I imagine these +central lions to be more recent (having perhaps replaced others) than +their neighbours, which are obliterated to the extent of being lions or +lionesses only by guesswork. These nameless feline creatures hold what +appear to be portions of sheep, one of them having at its flank a curious +excrescence like the stinging scorpion of the Mithra groups. The griffins, +on the other hand, although every detail is rubbed out, are splendid in +power and expression--great lion-bodied creatures, with gigantic eagle's +beak, manifestly birds rather than beasts, with the muscular neck and +probably the movement of a hawk. Like hawks, they have not swooped on +to their prey, but let themselves drop on to it, arriving not on their +belly like lions, but on their wings like birds. The prey is about a +fourth of the griffin's size. One of the griffins has swooped down +upon a wain, whose two wheels just protrude on either side of him; the +heads of two oxen are under his paws, and the head, open mouthed, with +terrified streaming hair, of the driver; beasts and men have come down +flat on their knees. The other griffin has captured a horse and his +rider; the horse has shied and fallen sideways beneath the griffin's +loins, with head protruding on one side and hoofs on the other, the +empty stirrup is still swinging. The rider, in mail-shirt and Crusader's +helmet, has been thrown forward, and lies between the griffin's claws, +his useless triangular shield clasped tight against his breast. Perhaps +merely because the attitude of the two griffins had to be symmetrical, +and the horse and rider filled up the space under their belly less +closely than the cart, oxen, and driver, there arises the suggestive +fact that the poor man and his bullocks are crushed more mercilessly +than the rich man and his horse. But be this as it may, poor and rich, +serf and knight, the griffin of destiny encompasses and pounces upon +each; and the talons of evil pin down and the beak of misery rends with +impartial cruel certainty. + +Such is the account of the world and man, of justice and mercy, recorded +for us by the stonemasons of Ferrara. + + +VI + +As with the emotional, the lyric element in Renaissance art, so also +with the narrative or dramatic; it belongs not to the original, real, +or at all events primitive Christianity of the time when the Man Jesus +walked on earth in the body, but to that day when He arose once more, no +less a Christ, be sure, in the soul of those men of the Middle Ages. +The Evangelists had never felt--why should they, good, fervent Jewish +laymen?--the magic of the baby Christ as it was felt by those mediaeval +ascetics, suddenly reawakened to human feeling. There is neither +tenderness nor reverence in the Gospels for the mother of the Lord; +some rather rough words on her motherhood; and that mention in St. John, +intended so evidently to bring the Evangelist, or supposed Evangelist, +into closer communion with Christ, not to draw attention to Christ's +mother. Yet out of those slight, and perhaps almost contemptuous +indications, the Middle Ages have made three or four perfect and wonderful +types of glorified womanhood: the Mother in adoration, the crowned, +enthroned Virgin, the Mater Gloriosa; the broken-hearted Mother, Mater +Dolorosa, as found at the foot of the cross or fainting at the deposition +therefrom; types more complete and more immortal than that of any Greek +divinity; above all, perhaps, the mere young mother holding the child +for kindly, reverent folk to look at, for the little St. John to play +with, or alone, looking at it, thinking of it in solitude and silence: +the whole lovingness of all creatures rising in a clear flame to heaven. +Nay, is not the suffering Christ a fresh creation of the Middle Ages, +made really to bear the sorrows of a world more sorrowful than that of +Judea? That strange Christ of the Resurrection, as painted occasionally +by Angelico, by Pier della Francesca, particularly in a wonderful small +panel by Botticelli; the Christ not yet triumphant at Easter, but risen +waist-high in the sepulchre, sometimes languidly seated on its rim, stark, +bloodless, with scarce seeing eyes, and the motionless agony of one +recovering from a swoon, enduring the worst of all his martyrdom, the +return to life in that chill, bleak landscape, where the sparse trees +bend in the dawn wind; returning from death to a new, an endless series +of sufferings, even as that legend made him answer the wayfaring Peter, +_returning to be crucified once more--iterum crucifigi_. + +All this is the lyric side, on which, in art as in poetry, there are as +many variations as there are individual temperaments, and the variety in +Renaissance art is therefore endless. Let us consider the narrative or +dramatic side, on which, as I have elsewhere tried to show, all that +could be done was done, only repetition ensuing, very early in the +history of Italian art, by the Pisans, Giotto and Giotto's followers. + +These have their counterpart, their precursors, in the writers and +reciters of devotional romances. + +Among the most remarkable of these is the "Life of the Magdalen," +printed in certain editions of Frate Domenico Cavalca's well known +charming translations of St. Jerome's "Lives of the Saints." Who the +author may be seems quite doubtful, though the familiar and popular +style might suggest some small burgher turned Franciscan late in life. +As the spiritual love lyrics of Jacopone stand to the _Canzonieri_ of +Dante and of Dante's circle of poets, so does this devout novel stand to +Boccaccio's more serious tales, and even to his "_Fiammetta_;" only, I +think that the relation of the two novelists is the reverse of that of +the poets; for, with an infinitely ruder style, the biographer of the +Magdalen, whoever he was, has also an infinitely finer psychological +sense than Boccaccio. Indeed, this little novel ought to be reprinted, +like "Aucasin et Nicolette," as one of the absolutely satisfactory +works, so few but so exquisite, of the Middle Ages. + +It is the story of the relations of Jesus with the family of Lazarus, +whose sister Mary is here identified with the Magdalen; and it is, save +for the account of the Passion, which forms the nucleus, a perfect tissue +of inventions. Indeed, the author explains very simply that he is +narrating not how he knows of a certainty that things did happen, but +how it pleases him to think that they might have happened. For the man +puts his whole heart in the story, and alters, amplifies, explains away +till his heart is satisfied. The Magdalen, for instance, was not all +the sort of woman that foolish people think. If she took to scandalous +courses, it was only from despair at being forsaken by her bridegroom, +who left her on the wedding-day to follow Christ to the desert, and who +was no other than the Evangelist John. Moreover, let no vile imputations +be put upon it; in those days, when everybody was so good and modest, it +took very little indeed (in fact, nothing which our wicked times would +notice at all) to get a woman into disrepute. + +Judged by our low fourteenth-century standard, this sinning Magdalen +would have been only a little over-cheerful, a little free, barely +what in the fourteenth century is called (the mere notion would +have horrified the house of Lazarus) _a trifle fast_; our unknown +Franciscan--for I take him to be a Franciscan--insists very much on her +having sung and whistled on the staircase, a thing no modest lady of +Bethany would then have done; but which, my dear brethren, is after +all.... + +This sinful Magdalen, repenting of her sins, such as they are, is living +with her sister Mary and her brother Lazarus; the whole little family +bound to Jesus by the miracle which had brought Lazarus back to life. +Jesus and his mother are their guests during Passion week; and the awful +tragedy of the world and of heaven passes, in the anonymous narrative, +across the narrow stage of that little burgher's house. As in the art of +the fifteenth century, the chief emotional interest of the Passion is +thrown not on the Apostles, scarcely on Jesus, but upon the two female +figures, facing each other as in some fresco of Perugino, the Magdalen +and the Mother of Christ. Facing one another, but how different! This +Magdalen has the terrific gesture of despair of one of those colossal +women of Signorelli's, flung down, as a town by earthquake, at the foot +of the cross. She was pardoned "because she had loved much"--_quia +multo amavit_. The unknown friar knew what _that_ meant as well as his +contemporary Dante, when Love showed him the vision of Beatrice's death. +Never was there such heart-breaking as that of his heroine: she becomes +almost the chief personage of the Passion; for she knows not merely all +the martyrdom of the Beloved, feels all the agonies of His flesh and +His spirit, but knows--how well!--that she has lost Him. Opposite this +terrible convulsive Magdalen, sobbing, tearing her hair and rolling on the +ground, is the other heart-broken woman, the mother; but how different! +She remains maternal through her grief, with motherly thoughtfulness +for others; for to the real mother (how different in this to the lover!) +there will always remain in the world some one to think of. She bridles +her sorrow; when John at last hesitatingly suggests that they must not +stay all night on Calvary, she turns quietly homeward; and, once at home, +tries to make the mourners eat, tries to eat with them, makes them take +rest that dreadful night. For such a mother there shall not be mere +bitterness in death; and here follows a most beautiful and touching +invention: the glorified Christ, returning from Limbo, takes the happy, +delivered souls to visit his mother. + +"And Messer Giesu having tarried awhile with them in that place, said: +'Now let us go and make my mother happy, who with most gentle tears is +calling upon me.' And they went forthwith, and came to the room where +our Lady was praying, and with gentle tears asking God to give her +back her son, saying it was to-day the third day. And as she stayed +thus, Messer Giesu drew near to her on one side, and said: 'Peace and +cheerfulness be with thee, Holy Mother.' And straightway she recognised +the voice of her blessed son, and opened her eyes and beheld him thus +glorious, and threw herself down wholly on the ground and worshipped +him. And the Lord Jesus knelt himself down like her; and then they rose +to their feet and embraced one another most sweetly, and gave each other +peace, and then went and sat together," while all the holy people from +Limbo looked on in admiration, and knelt down one by one, first the +Baptist, and Adam and Eve, and all the others, saluting the mother of +Christ, while the angels sang the end of all sorrows. + + +VII + +There would be much to say on this subject. One might point out, for +instance, not only that Dante has made the lady he loved in his youth +into the heroine--a heroine smiling in fashion more womanlike than +theological--of his vision of hell and heaven; but what would have been +even less possible at any previous moment of the world's history, he +has interwoven his theogony so closely with strands of most human +emotion and passion (think of that most poignant of love dramas in the +very thick of hell!), that, instead of a representation, a chart, so to +speak, of long-forgotten philosophical systems, his poem has become a +picture, pattern within pattern, of the life of all things: flowers +blowing, trees waving, men and women moving and speaking in densest +crowds among the flaming rocks of hell, the steps of purgatory, the +planispheres of heaven's stars making the groundwork of that wondrous +tapestry. But it is better to read Dante than to read about Dante, so I +let him be. + +On the other hand, and lest some one take Puritanic umbrage at my +remarks on early Italian art, and deprecate the notion that religious +painters could be so very human, I shall say a few parting words about +the religious painter, the saint _par excellence_, I mean the Blessed +Angelico. Heaven forbid I should attempt to turn him into a brother +Lippo, of the Landor or Browning pattern! He was very far indeed, let +alone from profanity, even from such flesh and blood feeling as that of +Jacopone and scores of other blessed ones. He was, emotionally, rather +bloodless; and whatsoever energy he had probably went in tussels with +the technical problems of the day, of which he knew much more, for +all his cloistered look, than I suspected when I wrote of him before. +Angelico, to return to the question, was not a St. Francis, a Fra +Jacopone. But even Angelico had his passionately human side, though it +was only the humanness of a nice child. In a life of hard study, and +perhaps hard penance, that childish blessed one nourished childish +desires--desires for green grass and flowers, for gay clothes,[5] for +prettily-dressed pink and lilac playfellows, for the kissing and hugging +in which he had no share, for the games of the children outside the +convent gate. How human, how ineffably full of a good child's longing, +is not his vision of Paradise! The gaily-dressed angels are leading the +little cowled monks--little baby black and white things, with pink faces +like sugar lambs and Easter rabbits--into deep, deep grass quite full +of flowers, the sort of grass every child on this wicked earth has been +cruelly forbidden to wade in! They fall into those angels' arms, hugging +them with the fervour of children in the act of _loving_ a cat or a dog. +They join hands with those angels, outside the radiant pink and blue +toy-box towers of the celestial Jerusalem, and go singing "Round the +Mulberry Bush" much more like the babies in Kate Greenaway's books than +like the Fathers of the Church in Dante. The joys of Paradise, for this +dear man of God, are not confined to sitting _ad dexteram domini_.... + + [Footnote 5: Mme. Darmesteter's charming essays "The End of the Middle + Ages," contain some amusing instances of such repressed love of finery + on the part of saints. Compare Fioretti xx., "And these garments of + such fair cloth, which we wear (in Heaven) are given us by God in + exchange for our rough frocks."] + +_Di questo nostro dolce Fratellino_; that line of Jacopone da Todi, +hymning to the child Christ, sums up, in the main, the vivifying spirit +of early Italian art; nay, is it not this mingled emotion of tenderness, +of reverence, and deepest brotherhood which made St. Francis claim sun +and birds, even the naughty wolf, for brethren? This feeling becomes +embodied, above all, in the very various army of charming angels; +and more particularly, perhaps, because Venice had no other means of +expression than painting, in the singing and playing angels of the +old Venetians. These angels, whether they be the girlish, long-haired +creatures, robed in orange and green, of Carpaccio; or the naked babies, +with dimpled little legs and arms, and filetted silky curls of Gian +Bellini, seem to concentrate into music all the many things which that +strong pious Venice, tongue-tied by dialect, had no other way of saying; +and we feel to this day that it sounds in our hearts and attunes them to +worship or love or gentle contemplation. The sound of those lutes and +pipes, of those childish voices, heard and felt by the other holy persons +in those pictures--Roman knight Sebastian, Cardinal Jerome, wandering +palmer Roch, and all the various lovely princesses with towers and palm +boughs in their hands--moreover brings them together, unites them in one +solemn blissfulness round the enthroned Madonna. These are not people +come together by accident to part again accidentally; they are eternal, +part of a vision disclosed to the pious spectator, a crowning of the +Mass with its wax-lights and songs. + +But the Venetian playing and singing angels are there for something more +important still. Those excellent old painters understood quite well that +in the midst of all this official, doge-like ceremony, it was hard, very +hard lines for the poor little Christ Child, having to stand or lie for +ever, for ever among those grown-up saints, on the knees of that majestic +throning Madonna; since the oligarchy, until very late, allowed no little +playfellow to approach the Christ Child, bringing lambs and birds and +such-like, and leading Him off to pick flowers as in the pictures of those +democratic Tuscans and Umbrians. None of that silly familiarity, said +stately Venetian piety. But the painters were kinder. They incarnated +their sympathy in the baby music-making angels, and bade them be friendly +to the Christ Child. They are so; and nowhere does it strike one so much +as in that fine picture, formerly called Bellini, but more probably Alvise +Vivarini, at the Redentore, where the Virgin, in her lacquer-scarlet +mantle, has ceased to be human altogether, and become a lovely female +Buddha in contemplation, absolutely indifferent to the poor little +sleeping Christ. The little angels have been sorry. Coming to make their +official music, they have brought each his share of heaven's dessert: a +little offering of two peaches, three figs, and three cherries on one +stalk (so precious therefore!), placed neatly, spread out to look much, +not without consciousness of the greatness of the sacrifice. They have +not, those two little angels, forgotten, I am sure, the gift they have +brought, during that rather weary music-making before the inattentive +Madonna. They keep on thinking how Christ will awake to find all those +precious things, and they steel their little hearts to the sacrifice. +The little bird who has come (invited for like reason) and perched on +the curtain bar, understands it all, respects their feelings, and refrains +from pecking. + +Such is the heart of the saints, and out of it comes the painted triumph +of _El Magno Jesulino_. + + + + +THE IMAGINATIVE ART OF THE RENAISSANCE + + +I + +In a Florentine street through which I pass most days, is a house +standing a little back (the place is called the Square of Purgatory), +the sight of which lends to that sordid street of stained palace backs, +stables, and dingy little shops, a certain charm and significance, in +virtue solely of three roses carved on a shield over a door. The house +is a humble one of the sixteenth century, and its three roses have just +sufficient resemblance to roses, with their pincushion heads and straight +little leaves, for us to know them as such. Yet that rude piece of +heraldic carving, that mere indication that some one connected with the +house once thought of roses, is sufficient, as I say, to give a certain +pleasurableness to the otherwise quite unpleasurable street. + +This is by no means an isolated instance. In various places, as emblems +of various guilds or confraternities, one meets similarly carved, on +lintel or escutcheon, sheaves of lilies, or what is pleasanter still, +that favourite device of the Renaissance (become well known as the +monogram of the painter Benvenuto Garofalo), a jar with five clove-pinks. +And on each occasion of meeting them, that carved lily and those graven +clove-pinks, like the three roses in the Square of Purgatory, have shed +a charm over the street, given me a pleasure more subtle than that derived +from any bed of real lilies, or pot of real clove-pinks, or bush of real +roses; colouring and scenting the street with this imaginary colour and +perfume. What train of thought has been set up? It would be hard to say. +Something too vague to be perceived except as a whole impression of +pleasure; a half-seen vision, doubtless, of the real flowers, of the +places where they grow; perhaps even a faint reminiscence, a dust of +broken and pounded fragments, of stories and songs into which roses +enter, or lilies, or clove-pinks. + +Hereby hangs a whole question of aesthetics. Those three stone roses +are the type of one sort of imaginative art; of one sort of art which, +beyond or independent of the charm of visible beauty, possesses a charm +that acts directly upon the imagination. Such charm, or at least such +interest, may be defined as the literary element in art; and I should +give it that name, did it not suggest a dependence upon the written word +which I by no means intend to imply. It is the element which, unlike +actual representation, is possessed by literature as well as by art; +indeed, it is the essence of the former, as actual representation is of +the latter. But it belongs to art, in the cases when it belongs to it at +all, not because the artist is in any way influenced by the writer, but +merely because the forms represented by the artist are most often the +forms of really existing things, and fraught, therefore, with associations +to all such as know them; and because, also, the artist who presents +these forms is a human being, and as such not only sees and draws, +but feels and thinks; because, in short, literature being merely the +expression of habits of thought and emotion, all such art as deals with +the images of real objects tends more or less, in so far as it is a +human being, to conform to its type. + +This is one kind of artistic imagination, this which I have rudely +symbolised in the symbol of the three carved roses--the imagination +which delights the mind by holding before it some charming or uncommon +object, and conjuring up therewith a whole train of feeling and fancy; +the school, we might call it, of intellectual decoration, of arabesques +formed not of lines and colours, but of associations and suggestions. +And to this school of the three carved roses in the Square of Purgatory +belong, among others, Angelico, Benozzo, Botticelli, and all those +Venetians who painted piping shepherds, and ruralising magnificent +ladies absorbed in day-dreams. + +But besides this kind of imagination in art, there is another and +totally different. It is the imagination of how an event would have +looked; the power of understanding and showing how an action would have +taken place, and how that action would have affected the bystanders; a +sort of second-sight, occasionally rising to the point of revealing, not +merely the material aspect of things and people, but the emotional value +of the event in the eyes of the painter. Thus, for instance, Tintoret +concentrated a beam of sunlight into the figure of Christ before Pilate, +not because he supposed Christ to have stood in that sunlight, but +because the white figure, shining yet ghost-like, seemed to him, perhaps +unconsciously, to indicate the position of the betrayed Saviour among +the indifference and wickedness of the world. Hence I would divide all +imaginative art, particularly that of the old Italian masters, into art +which stirs our own associations, and suggests to us trains of thought +and feeling perhaps unknown to the artist, and art which exhibits a +scene or event foreign to ourselves, and placed before us with a +deliberate intention. Both are categories of imaginative activity +due to inborn peculiarities of character; but one of them, namely, the +suggestive, is probably spontaneous, and quite unintentional, hence +never asked for by the public, nor sought after by the artist; while the +other, self-conscious and intentional, is therefore constantly sought +after by the artist, and bargained for by the public. I shall begin +with the latter, because it is the recognised commodity: artistic +imagination, as bought and sold in the market, whether of good quality +or bad. + + +II + +The painters of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, +developing the meagre suggestions of Byzantine decoration, incorporating +the richer inventions of the bas-reliefs of the Pisan sculptors and +of the medallions surrounding the earliest painted effigies of holy +personages, produced a complete set of pictorial themes illustrative +of Gospel history and of the lives of the principal saints. These +illustrative themes--definite conceptions of situations and definite +arrangements of figures--became forthwith the whole art's stock, universal +and traditional; few variations were made from year to year and from +master to master, and those variations resolved themselves continually +back into the original type. And thus on, through the changes in artistic +means and artistic ends, until the Italian schools disappeared finally +before the schools of France and Flanders. Let us take a striking example. +The presentation of the Virgin remains unaltered in main sentiment and +significance of composition, despite the two centuries and more which +separate the Gaddi from Titian and Tintoret, despite the complete change +in artistic aims and methods separating still more completely the men of +the fourteenth century from the men of the sixteenth. The long flight of +steps stretching across the fresco in Santa Croce stretches also across +the canvas of the great Venetians; and the little girl climbs up them +alike, presenting her profile to the spectator; although at the top +of the steps there is in one case a Gothic portal, and in the other a +Palladian portico, and at the bottom of the steps in the fresco stand +Florentines who might personally have known Dante, and at the bottom +of the steps in the pictures the Venetian patrons of Aretino. Yet the +presentation of the little maiden to the High Priest is quite equally +conceivable in many other ways and from many other points of view. As +regards both dramatic conception and pictorial composition, the moment +might have been differently chosen; the child might still be with its +parents or already with the priest; and the flight of steps might have +been replaced by the court of the temple. Any man might have invented +his own representation of the occurrence. But the men of the sixteenth +century adhered scrupulously or indifferently to the inventions of the +men of the fourteenth. + +This is merely one instance in a hundred. If we summon up in our mind +as many as we can of the various frescoes and pictures representing the +chief incidents of Scripture history, we shall find that, while there +are endless differences between them with respect to drawing, anatomy, +perspective, light and shade, colour and handling, there are but few and +slight variations as regards the conception of the situation and the +arrangement for the figures. In the Marriage of the Virgin the suitors +are dressed, sometimes in the loose robe and cap with lappets of the +days of Giotto, and sometimes in the tight hose and laced doublet of +the days of Raphael and of Luini; but they break their wands across +their knees with the same gesture and expression; and although the temple +is sometimes close at hand, and sometimes a little way off, the wedding +ceremony invariably takes place outside it, and not inside. The shepherds +in the Nativity are sometimes young and sometimes old, but they always +come in broad daylight, and the manger by which the Virgin is kneeling +is always outside the stable, and always in one corner of the picture. +Again, whatever slight difference there may be in the expression and +gesture of the apostles at the Last Supper, they are always seated on +one side only of a table facing the spectator, with Judas alone on a +stool on the opposite side. And although there are two themes of the +Entombment of Christ, one where the body is stretched on the ground, the +other where it is being carried to the sepulchre, the action is always +out of doors, and never, as might sometimes be expected, gives us the +actual burial in the vault. These examples are more than sufficient. Yet +I feel that any description in words is inadequate to convey the extreme +monotony of all these representations, because the monotony is not merely +one of sentiment by selection of the dramatic moment, but of the visible +composition of the paintings, of the outlines of the groups and the +balancing of them. A monotony so complete that any one of us almost +knows what to expect, in all save technical matters and the choice of +models, on being told that in such a place there is an old Italian +fresco, or panel, or canvas, representing some principal episode of +Gospel history. + +The explanation of this fidelity to one theme of representation in an +art which was the very furthest removed from any hieratic prescriptions, +in an art which was perpetually growing--and growing more human and +secular--must be sought for, I think, in no peculiarities of spiritual +condition or national imagination, but in two facts concerning the merely +technical development of painting, and the results thereof. These two +facts are briefly: that at a given moment--namely, the end of the +thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth--there existed +just enough power of imitating nature to admit of the simple indication +of a dramatic situation, without further realisation of detail; and +that at this moment, consequently, there originated such pictorial +indications of the chief dramatic situations as concerned the Christian +world. And secondly, that from then and until well into the sixteenth +century, the whole attention of artists was engrossed in changing the +powers of indication into powers of absolute representation, developing +completely the drawing, anatomy, perspective, colour, light and shade, +and handling, which Giotto and his contemporaries had possessed only in +a most rudimentary condition, and which had sufficed for the creation of +just such pictorial themes as they had invented, and no more. + +Let me explain myself further. The artists of the fourteenth century, +with the exception of Giotto himself--to whose premature excellence none +of his contemporaries and disciples ever attained--give us, by means of +pictorial representation, just about the same as could be given to us +by the conventional symbolism of writing. In describing a Giottesque +fresco, or panel, we are not stopped by the difficulty of rendering +visible effects in words, because the visible effects that meet us are +in reality so many words; so that, to describe the picture, it almost +suffices to narrate the story, no arrangements of different planes and +of light and shade, no peculiarities of form, foreshortening, colour, +or texture requiring to be seen in order to be fully understood. The +artists of the fifteenth century--for the Giottesques do little more +than carry, without developing them, the themes of Giotto into various +parts of Italy--work at adding to the art exactly those qualities which +belong exclusively to it, and which baffle the mere written word: they +acquire the means, slowly and laboriously, of showing these events no +longer merely to the mind, but also to the eye; they place these people +in real space, in real relations of distance and light, they give them +a real body which can stand and move, made of real flesh and blood and +bones, and covered with real clothes; they turn these abstractions once +more into realities like the realities of nature whence they had been +abstracted. But the work of the fifteenth century does not go beyond +filling up the programme indicated by the Giottesques; and it is only +after the men of the sixteenth century have been enabled to completely +realise all that the men of the fourteenth century had indicated, that +art, with Michelangelo, Tintoret, and still more with the great painters +of Spain and Flanders, proceeds to encounter problems of foreshortening, +of light and shade, of atmospheric effect, that could never have been +imagined by the contemporaries of Giotto, nor even by the contemporaries +of Ghirlandaio and the Bellini. Hence, throughout the fifteenth century, +while there is a steady development of the artistic means required to +realise those narrative themes which the Giottesques had invented, there +is no introduction of any new artistic means unnecessary for this result, +but which, like the foreshortenings of Michelangelo, and the light +and shade of Tintoret, like the still further additions to painting +represented by men like Velasquez and Rembrandt, could suggest new +treatment of the old histories and enable the well-known events to be +shown from totally new intellectual standpoints, and in totally new +artistic arrangements. If we look into the matter, we shall recognise +that the monotony of representation throughout the Renaissance can +be amply accounted for without referring to the fact, which, however, +doubtless went for something, that the men of the fifteenth century were +too much absorbed in the working out of details to feel any desire for +new pictorial versions of the stories of the Gospel, and the lives of +the Saints. + +Moreover, the Giottesques--among whom I include the immediate precursors, +sculptors as well as painters, of Giotto--put into their Scripture +stories an amount of logic, of sentiment, of dramatic and psychological +observation and imagination more than sufficient to furnish out the works +of three generations of later comers. Setting aside Giotto himself, who +concentrates and diffuses the vast bulk of dramatic invention as well +as of artistic observation and skill, there is in even the small and +smallest among his followers, an extraordinary happiness of individual +invention of detail. I may quote a few instances at random. It would be +difficult to find a humbler piece of work than the so-called Tree of +the Cross, in the Florentine Academy: a thing like a huge fern, with +medallion histories in each frond, it can scarcely be considered a work +of art, and stands halfway between a picture and a genealogical tree. +Yet in some of its medallions there is a great vivacity of imaginative +rendering; for instance, the Massacre of the Innocents represented by +a single soldier, mailed and hooded, standing before Herod on a floor +strewn with children's bodies, and holding up an infant by the arm, like +a dead hare, preparing slowly to spit it on his sword; and the kiss of +Judas, the soldiers crowding behind, while the traitor kisses Christ, +seems to bind him hand and foot with his embraces, to give him up, with +that stealthy look backwards to the impatient rabble--a representation +of the scene, infinitely superior in its miserable execution to Angelico's +Ave Rabbi! with its elaborate landscape of towers and fruit trees. +Again, in a series of predella histories of the Virgin, in the same +place, also a very mediocre and anonymous work, there is extraordinary +charm in the conception of the respective positions of Mary and Joseph +at their wedding: he is quite old and grey; she young, unformed, almost +a child, and she has to stand on two steps to be on his level, raising +her head with a beautiful, childlike earnestness, quite unlike the +conventional bridal timidity of other painters. Leaving these unknown +mediocrities, I would refer to the dramatic value (besides the great +pictorial beauty) of an Entombment by Giottino, in the corridor of the +Uffizi: the Virgin does not faint, or has recovered (thus no longer +diverting the attention from the dead Saviour to herself, as elsewhere), +and surrounds the head of her son with her arms; the rest of the figures +restrain themselves before her, and wink with strange blinking efforts +to keep back their tears. Still more would I speak of two small frescoes +in the Baroncelli Chapel at Santa Croce, which are as admirable in +poetical conception as they are unfortunately poor in artistic execution. +One of them represents the Annunciation to the Shepherds: they are lying +in a grey, hilly country, wrapped in grey mists, their flock below asleep, +but the dog vigilant, sniffing the supernatural. One is hard asleep; the +other awakes suddenly, and has turned over and looks up screwing his +eyes at the angel, who comes in a pale yellow winter sunrise cloud, in +the cold, grey mist veined with yellow. The chilliness of the mist at +dawn, the wonder of the vision, are felt with infinite charm. In the +other fresco the three kings are in a rocky place, and to them appears, +not the angel, but the little child Christ, half-swaddled, swimming +in orange clouds on a deep blue sky. The eldest king is standing, and +points to the vision with surprise and awe; the middle-aged one shields +his eyes coolly to see; while the youngest, a delicate lad, has already +fallen on his knees, and is praying with both hands crossed on his breast. +For dramatic, poetic invention, these frescoes can be surpassed, poor as +is their execution, only by Giotto's St. John ascending slowly from the +open grave, floating upwards, with outstretched arms and illumined face, +to where a cloud of prophets, with Christ at their head, enwraps him in +the deep blue sky. + +These pictorial themes elaborated by the painters of the school of +Giotto were not merely as good, in a way, as any pictorial themes could +be: simple, straightforward, often very grand, so that the immediately +following generations could only spoil, but not improve upon them; they +were also, if we consider the matter, the only pictorial representations +of Scripture histories possible until art had acquired those new powers +of foreshortening, and light and shade and perspective, which were +sought for only after the complete attainment of the more elementary +powers which the Giottesques never fully possessed. Let us ask ourselves +how, in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, any notable change in +general arrangement of any well-known Scripture subject could well have +been introduced; and, in order to do so, let us realise one or two cases +where the same subjects have been treated by later masters. Tintoretto's +Last Judgment, where the Heavenly Hosts brood, poised on their wings, +above the river of hell which hurries the damned down its cataracts, is +impossible so long as perspective and foreshortening will barely admit +(as is the case up to the end of the fifteenth century), of figures +standing firmly on the ground and being separated into groups at various +distances. In Rembrandt's and Terburg's Adoration of the Shepherds, the +light emanates from the infant Christ; in Ribera's magnificent Deposition +from the Cross, the dead Saviour and His companions are represented, +not, as in the Entombments of Perugino and Raphael, in the open air, +but in the ghastly light of the mouth of the sepulchre. These are new +variations upon the hackneyed themes, but how were they possible so long +as the problems of light and shade were limited (as was the case even +with Leonardo), to giving the modelling, rather in form than in colour, +of a face or a limb? One of the earliest and greatest innovations is +Signorelli's treatment of the Resurrection in the chapel of San Brizio, +at Orvieto; he broke entirely with the tradition (exemplified particularly +by Angelico) of making the dead come fully fleshed and dressed as in +their lifetime from under the slabs of a burial place, goaded by grotesque +devils with the snouts and horns of weasels and rams, with the cardboard +masks of those carnival mummers who gave the great pageant of Hell +mentioned by old chroniclers. But Signorelli's innovation, his naked +figures partially fleshed and struggling through the earth's crust, his +naked demons shooting through the air and tying up the damned, could +not possibly have been executed or even conceived until his marvellous +mastery of the nude and of the anatomy of movement had been obtained. +Indeed, wherever, in the art of the fifteenth century, we find a beginning +of innovation in the conception and arrangement of a Scripture history, +we shall find also the beginning of the new technical method which has +suggested such a partial innovation. Thus, in the case of one of the +greatest, but least appreciated, masters of the early Renaissance, Paolo +Uccello. His Deluge, in the frescoes of the green cloister of S. Maria +Novella, is wonderfully original as a whole conception; and the figure +clinging to the side of the ark, with soaked and wind-blown drapery; +the man in a tub trying to sustain himself with his hands, the effort +and strain of the people in the water, are admirable as absolute +realisation of the scene. Again, in the Sacrifice of Noah, there is in +the foreshortened figure of God, floating, brooding, like a cloud, with +face downward and outstretched hands over the altar, something which is +a prophecy, and more than a prophecy, of what art will come to in the +Sixtine and the Loggie. But these inventions are due to Uccello's +special and extraordinary studies of the problems of modelling and +foreshortening; and when his contemporaries try to assimilate his +achievements, and unite them with the achievements of other men in other +special technical directions, there is an end of all individual poetical +conception, and a relapse into the traditional arrangements; as may be +seen by comparing the Bible stories of Paolo Uccello with those of +Benozzo Gozzoli at Pisa. + +It is not wonderful that the painters of the fifteenth century should +have been satisfied with repeating the themes left by the Giottesques. +For the Giottesques had left them, besides this positive heritage, a +negative heritage, a programme to fill up, of which it is difficult to +realise the magnitude. The work of the Giottesques is so merely poetic, +or at most so merely decorative in the sense of a mosaic or a tapestry, +and it is in the case of Giotto and one or two of his greatest +contemporaries, particularly the Sienese, so well-balanced and +satisfying as a result of its elementary nature that we are apt to +overlook the fact that everything in the way of realisation as opposed +to indication, everything distinguishing the painting of a story from +the mere telling thereof, remained to be done. And such realisation +could be attained only through a series of laborious failures. It is by +comparing some of the later Giottesques themselves, notably the Gaddi +with Giotto, that we bring home to ourselves, for instance, that Giotto +did not, at least in his finest work at Florence, attempt to model his +frescoes in colour. Now the excessive ugliness of the Gaddi frescoes at +St. Croce is largely due to the effort to make form and boss depend, as +in nature, upon colour. Giotto, in the neighbouring Peruzzi and Bardi +chapels, is quite satisfied with outlining the face and draperies in +dark paint, and laying on the colour, in itself beautiful, as a child +will lay it on to a print or outline drawing, filling up the lines, but +not creating them. I give this as a solitary instance of one of the +first and most important steps towards pictorial realisation which the +great imaginative theme-inventors left to their successors. As a fact, +the items at which the fifteenth century had to work are too many to +enumerate; in many cases each man or group of men took up one particular +item, as perspective, modelling, anatomy, colour, movement, and their +several subdivisions, usually with the result of painful and grotesque +insistency and onesidedness, from the dreadful bag of bones anatomies +of Castagno and Pollaiolo, down to the humbler, but equally necessary, +architectural studies of Francesco di Giorgio. Add to this the necessity +of uniting the various attainments of such specialists, of taming down +these often grotesque monomaniacs, of making all these studies of drawing, +anatomy, colour, modelling, perspective, &c., into a picture. If that +picture was lacking in individual poetic conception; if those studies +were often intolerably silly and wrong-headed from the intellectual +point of view; if the old themes were not only worn threadbare, but +actually maltreated, what wonder? The themes were there, thank Heaven! +no one need bother about them; and no one did. Moreover, as I have +already pointed out, no one could have added anything, save in the +personal sentiment of the heads, the hands, the tilt of the figure, +or the quality of the form. Everything which depends upon dramatic +conception, which is not a question of form or sentiment, tended merely +to suffer a steady deterioration. Thus, nearly two hundred years after +Giotto, Ghirlandaio could find nothing better for his frescoes in +St. Trinita than the arrangement of Giotto's St. Francis, with the +difference that he omitted all the more delicate dramatic distinctions. +I have already alluded to the poetic conception of an early Marriage of +the Virgin in the Florence Academy; that essential point of the extreme +youth of Mary was never again attended to, although the rest of the +arrangement was repeated for two centuries. Similarly, no one noticed +or reproduced the delicate distinctions of action which Gaddi had put +into his two Annunciations of the Cappella Baroncelli; the shepherds +henceforth sprawled no matter how; and the scale of expression in the +vision of the Three Kings was not transferred to the more popular theme +of their visit to the stable at Bethlehem. In Giotto's Presentation at +the Temple in the Arena chapel at Padua, the little Mary is pushed up +the steps by her mother; in the Baroncelli frescoes the little girl, +ascending gravely, turns round for a minute to bless the children at +the foot of the steps. Here are two distinct dramatic conceptions, the +one more human, the other more majestic; both admirable. The fifteenth +century, nay, the fourteenth, took no account of either; the Virgin +merely went up the steps, connected by no emotion with the other +characters, a mere little doll, as she is still in the big pictures +of Titian and Tintoret, and quite subordinate to any group of richly +dressed men or barebacked women. It is difficult to imagine any miracle +quite so dull as the Raising of the King's Son in the Brancacci Chapel; +its dramatic or undramatic foolishness is surpassed only by certain +little panels of Angelico, with fiery rain and other plagues coming down +upon the silly blue and pink world of dolls. + +A satisfactory study of the lack of all dramatic invention of the +painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is afforded by the +various representations of the Annunciation of the Virgin, one of the +favourite themes of the early Renaissance. It never seems to have +occurred to any one that the Virgin and the Archangel might be displayed +otherwise than each in one corner of the picture. Such a composition as +that of Rossetti's Ancilla Domini, where the Virgin cowers on her bed +as the angel floats in with flames round his feet; such a suggestion as +that of the unfinished lily on the embroidery frame, was reserved for +our sceptical and irreverent, but imaginative times. + +The variety in these Annunciations depends, as I have remarked, not upon +a new dramatic conception, producing, as in the case of Rossetti's, a new +visible arrangement; but upon the particular kind of form preferred by +the artist, and the particular kind of expression common in his pictures; +the variety, I may add, is, with one or two exceptions, a variety in +inertness. Let us look at a few, taking merely those in one gallery, the +Uffizi. The Virgin, in that superb piece of gilding by Simone Martini +(did those old painters ever think of the glorified evening sky when +they devised such backgrounds?), is turning away from the angel in sheer +loathing and anger, a great lady feeling sick at the sudden intrusion of +a cad. In a picture by Angelo Gaddi, she is standing with her hand on her +chest, just risen from her chair, like a prima donna going to answer an +_encore_--a gracious, but not too eager recognition of an expected +ovation. In one by Cosimo Rossetti she lifts both hands with shocked +astonishment as the angel scuddles in; in the lovely one, with blue +Alpine peaks and combed-out hair, now given to Verocchio, she raises one +hand with a vacant smile, as if she were exclaiming, "Dear me! there's +that angel again." The one slight deviation from the fixed type of +Annunciation, Angelico's, in a cell at St. Mark's, where he has made +the Virgin kneel and the angel stand, merely because he had painted +another Annunciation with a kneeling angel a few doors off, is due to +no dramatic inspiration. The angel standing upright with folded arms +(how different from Rossetti's standing angel!) while the Virgin kneels, +instead of kneeling to her as, according to etiquette, results merely +in an impression that this silly, stolid, timid little _Ancilla Domini_ +(here again one thinks of Rossetti's cowering and dazed Virgin), has +been waiting for some time in that kneeling attitude, and that the +Archangel has come by appointment. + +Among this crowd of unimpressive, nay brainless, representations of one +of the grandest and sweetest of all stories, there stand out two--an +Annunciation by Signorelli, a small oil painting in the Uffizi, and +one by Botticelli,[6] a large tempera picture in the same room. But +they stand out merely because the one is the work of the greatest +early master of form and movement, or rather the master whose form and +movement had a peculiar quality of the colossal; and the other is the +work of the man, of all Renaissance painters, whose soul seems to have +known most of human, or rather feminine wistfulness, and sorrow, and +passion. + + [Footnote 6: Probably executed from Botticelli's design, by Raffaellino + del Garbo.] + +The little panel by Signorelli (the lowest compartment, divided into +three, of an altar-piece) is perhaps, besides the Orvieto _Resurrection_, +his most superb and poetical work. The figures, only three inches high, +have his highest quality of powerful grandeur, solemnly rustic in the +kneeling shepherds--solemn in the very swagger, hand on hip, of the +parti-coloured bravoes of the Magi; the landscape, only a few centimetres +across, is one of the amplest and most austere that ever has been painted: +a valley, bounded by blue hills and dark green ilex groves, wide, silent, +inhabited by a race larger and stronger than the human, with more than +human passions, but without human speech. In it the Virgin is seated +beneath a portico, breathing, as such creatures must breathe, the vast +greenness, the deep evening breeze. And to her comes bounding, with +waving draperies and loosened hair, the Archangel, like a rushing wind, +the wind which the strong woman is quietly inhaling. There is no religious +sentiment here, still less any human: the Madonna bows gravely as one +who is never astonished; and, indeed, this race of giants, living in +this green valley, look as if nothing could ever astonish them--walking +miracles themselves, and in constant relation with the superhuman. + +We must forget all such things in turning to that Annunciation of +Botticelli. The angel has knelt down vehemently, but drawn himself back, +frightened at his own message; moved overmuch and awed by what he has to +say, and her to whom he must say it; lifting a hand which seems to beg +patience, till the speech which is throbbing in his heart can pass his +lips; eagerness defeating itself, passionate excitement turned into awe +in this young, delicate, passionate, and imaginative creature. He has +not said the word; but she has understood. She has seen him before; she +knows what he means, this vehement, tongue-tied messenger; and at his +sight she reels, her two hands up, the beating of her own blood too loud +in her ears, a sudden mist of tears clouding her eyes. This is no simple +damsel receiving the message, like Rossetti's terrified and awe-stricken +girl, that she is the handmaid of the Lord. This is the nun who has been +waiting for years to become Christ's own bride, and receives at length +the summons to him, in a tragic overpowering ecstasy, like Catherine in +Sodoma's fresco, sinking down at the touch of the rays from Christ's +wounds. Nay, this is, in fact, the mere long-loving woman, suddenly +overcome by the approach of bliss ever hungered for, but never expected, +hearing that it is she who is the beloved; and the angel is the knight's +squire, excited at the message he has to carry, but terrified at the +sight of the woman to whom he must carry it, panting with the weight of +another man's love, and learning, as he draws his breath to say those +words, what love is himself. + +The absence of individual invention, implying the absence of individual +dramatic realisation, strikes one more than anywhere in the works of +Angelico; and most of all in his frescoes of the cells of St. Mark's. +For, while these are evidently less cared for as art, indeed scarcely +intended, in their hasty execution, to be considered as paintings at +all, they are more strictly religious in intention than any other of +Angelico's works; indeed, perhaps, of all paintings in the world, the +most exclusively devoted to a religious object. They are, in fact, so +many pages of Scripture stuck up, like texts in a waiting-room, in the +cells of the convent: an adjunct to the actual written or printed Bible +of each monk. For this reason we expect them to possess what belongs so +completely to the German engravers of Duerer's school, the very essential +of illustrative art--imaginative realisation of the scenes, an attempt +to seize the attention and fill it with the subject. This is by no means +the case: for Angelico, although a saint, was a man of the fifteenth +century, and, despite all his obvious efforts, he was not a real follower +of Giotto. What impressiveness of actual artistic arrangement these +frescoes really possess, is due, I think, to no imaginative effort +of the artist, but to the exigencies of the place; as any similar +impressiveness is due in Signorelli's Annunciation to the quality of his +form, and in Botticelli's Annunciation to the pervading character of his +heads and gestures. These pale angels and St. Dominicks and Magdalens, +these diaphanous, dazzling Christs and Virgins of Angelico's, shining +out of the dark corner of the cell made darker, deeper, by the dark +green or inky purple ground on which they are painted, are less the +spiritual conception of the painter than the accidental result of the +darkness of the place, where lines must be simple and colours light, if +anything is to be visible. For in the more important frescoes in the +corridors and chapter-room, where the light is better, there is a return +to Angelico's hackneyed vapid pinks and blues and lilacs, and a return +also to his niminy-piminy lines, to all the wax-doll world of the missal +painter. The fine fresco of St. Dominick at the foot of the cross, which +seems to constitute an exception to this rule, really goes to prove it, +since it is intended to be seen very much like the cell frescoes: white +and black on a blue ground at the end of the first corridor, a thing +to be looked at from a great distance, to impress the lay world that +sees it at the cloister and from outside the convent railing. The cell +frescoes are, I have said, the most exclusively religious paintings in +the world, since they are to the highest degree, what all absolutely +pious art must be, _aids to devotion_. Their use is to assist the monk +in that conjuring up of the actual momentary feelings, nay, sensations, +of the life of Christ which is part of his daily duty. They are such +stimuli as the Church has given sometimes in an artistic, sometimes in a +literary form, to an imagination jaded by the monotonous contemplation +of one subject, or overexcited to the extent of rambling easily to +another: they are what we fondly imagine will be the portraits of the +dear dead which we place before us, forgetting that after a while we +look without seeing, or see without feeling. That this is so, that these +painted Gospel leaves stuck on the cell walls are merely such mechanical +aids to devotion, explains the curious and startling treatment of +some of the subjects, which are yet, despite the seeming novelty and +impressiveness, very cold, undramatic, and unimaginative. Thus, there +is the fresco of Christ enthroned, blindfold, with alongside of Him a +bodiless scoffing head, with hat raised, and in the act of spitting; +buffeting hands, equally detached from any body, floating also on the +blue background. There is a Christ standing at the foot of the cross, +but with his feet in a sarcophagus, the column of the flagellation +monumentally or heraldically on one side, the lance of Longinus on the +other; and above, to the right, the floating face of Christ being kissed +by that of Judas; to the left the blindfold floating head of Christ again, +with the floating head of a soldier spitting at Him; and all round +buffeting and jibing hands, hands holding the sceptre of reed, and +hands counting out money; all arranged very much like the nails, hammer, +tweezers and cock on roadside crosses; each a thing whereon to fix +the mind, so as to realise that kiss of Judas, that spitting of the +soldiers, those slaps; and to hear, if possible, the chink of the pieces +of silver that sold our Lord. How different, these two pictorial dodges +of the purely mechanical Catholicism of the fifteenth century from +the tender or harrowing gospel illustrations, where every detail is +conceived as happening in the artist's own town and to his own kinsfolk, +of the Lutheran engravers of the school of Duerer! + +Thus things go on throughout the fifteenth century, and, indeed, +deep into the sixteenth, where traditional arrangement and individual +conception overlap, according as a new artistic power does or does not +call forth a new dramatic idea. I have already alluded to the fact that +the Presentation of the Virgin remains the same, so far as arrangement +is concerned, in the pictures of Titian and Tintoret as in the frescoes +of Giotto and Gaddi. Michelangelo's Creation of Adam seems still inherited +from an obscure painter in the "Green Cloister," who inherited it from +the Pisan sculptors. On the other hand, the Resurrection and Last Judgment +of Signorelli at Orvieto, painted some years earlier, constitutes in many +of its dramatic details a perfectly original work. Be this as it may, and +however frequent the recurrence of old themes, with the sixteenth century +commences the era of new individual dramatic invention. Michelangelo's +Dividing of the Light from the Darkness, where the Creator broods still +in chaos, and commands the world to exist; and Raphael's Liberation of +St. Peter, with its triple illumination from the moon, the soldier's +torches and the glory of the liberating angel, are witnesses that +henceforward each man may invent for himself, because each man is in +possession of those artistic means which the Giottesques had indicated +and the artists of the fifteenth century had laboriously acquired. And +now, the Giottesque programme being fulfilled, art may go abroad and +seek for new methods and effects, for new dramatic conceptions. + + +III + +The other day, walking along the river near Careggi (with its memories +of Lorenzo dei Medici and his Platonists), close to the little cupola +and loggia built by Ghirlandaio, I came upon a strip of new grass, +thickly whitened with daisies, beneath the poplars beginning to yellow +with pale sprouting leaves. And immediately there arose in my mind, by +the side of this real grass and real budding of trees, the remembrance +of certain early Renaissance pictures: the rusty, green, stencilled +grass and flowers of Botticelli, the faded tapestry work of Angelico; +making, as it were, the greenness greener, the freshness fresher, of +that real grass and those real trees. And not by the force of contrast, +but rather by the sense that as all this appears to me green and fresh +in the present, so likewise did it appear to those men of four centuries +ago: the fact of their having seen and felt, making me, all the more, +see and feel. + +This is one of the peculiarities of rudimentary art--of the art of +the early Renaissance as well as of that of Persia and India, of +Constantinople, of every peasant potter all through the world: that, +not knowing very well its own aims, it fills its imperfect work with +suggestion of all manner of things which it loves, and tries to gain in +general pleasurableness what it loses in actual achievement; and lays +hold of us, like fragments of verse, by suggestiveness, quite as much +as by pictorial realisation. And upon this depends the other half of +the imaginative art of the Renaissance, the school of intellectual +decoration, of arabesques formed, not of lines and of colours, but of +associations and suggestions. + +The desire which lies at the bottom of it--a desire masked as religious +symbolism in the old mosaicists and carvers and embroiderers--is the +desire to paint nice things, in default of painting a fine picture. The +beginning of such attempts is naturally connected with the use of gilding; +whether those gold grounds of the panel pictures of the fourteenth century +represented to the painters only a certain expenditure of gold foil, or +whether (as I have suggested, but I fear fantastically) their streakings +and veinings of coppery or silvery splendour, their stencillings of rays +and dots and fretwork, their magnificent inequality and variety of brown +or yellow or greenish effulgence, were vaguely connected in the minds of +those men with the splendour of the heaven in which the Virgin and the +Saints really dwell. It is the cunning use of this gilding, of tools +for ribbing and stencilling and damascening, which give half of their +marvellous exotic loveliness to Simone Martini's frescoes at Assisi and +his Annunciation of the Florentine Gallery; this, and the feeling for +wonderful gold woven and embroidered stuffs, like that white cloth of +gold of the kneeling angel, fit, in its purity and splendour, for the +robe of Grail king. The want of mechanical dexterity, however, prevented +the Giottesques from doing very much in the decorative line except +in conjunction with the art--perhaps quite separate from that of the +painter, and exercised by a different individual--of the embosser and +gilder. + +It is with the fifteenth century that begins, in Italy as in Flanders (we +must think of the carved stonework, the Persian carpets, the damascened +armour, the brocade dresses of Van Eyck's and Memling's Holy Families), +the deliberate habit of putting into pictures as much as possible of the +beautiful and luxurious things of this world. The house of the Virgin, +originally a very humble affair, or rather, in the authority of the +early Giottesques, a _no place, nowhere_, develops gradually into a +very delightful residence in the choicest part of the town, or into a +pleasantly situated villa, like the one described in the Decameron, +commanding a fine view. The Virgin's bedchamber, where we are shown it, +as, for instance, in Crivelli's picture in the National Gallery, is +quite as well appointed in the way of beautiful bedding, carving, and +so forth, as the chamber of the lady of John Arnolfini of Lucca in Van +Eyck's portrait. Outside it, as we learn from Angelico, Cosimo Rosselli, +Lippi, Ghirlandaio, indeed, from almost every Florentine painter, +stretches a pleasant portico, decorated in the Ionic or Corinthian +style, as if by Brunellesco or Sangallo, with tesselated floor, or +oriental carpet, and usually a carved or gilded desk and praying +stool; while the privacy of the whole place is guarded by a high wall, +surmounted by vases, overtopped by cypresses, and in whose shelter +grows a row of well-kept roses and lilies. Sometimes this house, as I +have said, becomes a villa, as is the case, not unfrequently, with the +Lombards, who love to make the angel appear on the flowery grass against +a background of Alpine peaks, such as you see them, rising blue and +fairylike from the green ricefields about Pavia. Crivelli, however, +though a Lombard, prefers a genteel residence in town, the magnificent +Milan of Galeazzo and Filippo Visconti. He gives us a whole street, +where richly dressed and well peruked gentlemen look down from +the terraces, duly set with flower-pots, of houses ornamented with +terra-cotta figures and medallions like those of the hospital at Milan. +In this street the angel of the Annunciation is kneeling, gorgeously +got up in silks and brocades, and accompanied by a nice little bishop +carrying a miniature town on a tray. The Virgin seems to be receiving +the message through the window or the open door. She has a beautiful bed +with a red silk coverlet, some books, and a shelf covered with plates +and preserve jars. This evident appreciation of jam, as one of the +pleasant things of this world, corresponds with the pot of flowers on +the window, the bird-cage hanging up: the mother of Christ must have the +little tastes and luxuries of a well-to-do burgess's daughter. Again, +the cell of St. Jerome, painted some thirty years later by Carpaccio, in +the Church of the Slavonians, contains not only various convenient and +ornamental articles of furniture, but a collection of nick-nacks, among +which some antique bronzes are conspicuous. + +The charm in all this is not so much that of the actual objects +themselves; it is that of their having delighted those people's minds. +We are pleased by their pleasure, and our imagination is touched by +their fancy. The effect is akin to that of certain kinds of poetry, +not the dramatic certainly, where we are pleased by the mere suggestion +of beautiful things, and quite as much by finding in the poet a mind +appreciative and desirous of them, constantly collecting them and +enhancing them by subtle arrangements; it is the case with much lyric +verse, with the Italian folk-rhymes, woven out of names of flowers +and herbs, with some of Shakespeare's and Fletcher's songs, with the +"Allegro" and "Penseroso," Keats, some of Heine, and, despite a mixture +of unholy intention, Baudelaire. The great master thereof in the early +Renaissance, the lyrist, if I may use the word, of the fifteenth century, +is of course Botticelli. He is one of those who most persistently +introduce delightful items into their works: elaborately embroidered +veils, scarves, and gold fringes. But being a man of fine imagination +and most delicate sense of form, he does not, like Angelico or Benozzo +or Carpaccio, merely stick pretty things about; he works them all into +his strange arabesque, half intellectual, half physical. Thus the screen +of roses[7] behind certain of his Madonnas, forming an exquisite Morris +pattern with the greenish-blue sky interlaced; and those beautiful, +carefully-drawn branches of spruce-fir and cypress, lace-like in his +Primavera; above all, that fan-like growth of myrtles, delicately cut +out against the evening sky, which not merely print themselves as shapes +upon the mind, but seem to fill it with a scent of poetry. + + [Footnote 7: I learn from the learned that the Florence and Louvre + Madonnas, with the roses, are not Botticelli's; but Botticelli, I + am sure, would not have been offended by those lovely bushes being + attributed to him.] + +This pleasure in the painter's pleasure in beautiful things is connected +with another quality, higher and rarer, in this sort of imaginative art. +It is our appreciation of the artist's desire for beauty and refinement, +of his search for the exquisite. Herein, to my mind, lies some of +the secret of Botticelli's fantastic grace; the explanation of that +alternate or rather interdependent ugliness and beauty. Botticelli, +as I have said elsewhere, must have been an admirer of the grace and +sentiment of Perugino, of the delicacy of form of certain Florentine +sculptors--Ghiberti, and those who proceed from him, Desiderio, Mino, +and particularly the mysterious Florentine sculptor of Rimini; and what +these men have done or do, Botticelli attempts, despite or (what is +worse) by means of the realistic drawing and ugly models of Florence, +the mechanism and arrangement of coarse men like the Pollaiolos. +The difficulty of attaining delicate form and sentiment with such +materials--it cannot be said to have been attained in that sense by any +other early Tuscan painter, not even Angelico or Filippo Lippi--makes the +desire but the keener, and turns it into a most persevering and almost +morbid research. Thence the extraordinary ingenuity displayed, frequently +to the detriment of the work, in the arrangement of hands (witness the +tying, clutching hands, with fingers bent curiously in intricate knots, +of the Calumny of Apelles), and of drapery; in the poising of bodies and +selection of general outline. This search for elegance and grace, for +the refined and unhackneyed, is frequently baffled by the ugliness of +Botticelli's models, and still more by Botticelli's deficient knowledge +of anatomy and habit of good form. But, when not baffled, this desire is +extraordinarily assisted by those very defects. This great decorator, +who uses the human form as so much pattern element, mere lines and +curves like those of a Raffaelesque arabesque, obtains with his +imperfect, anatomically defective, and at all events ill-fashioned +figures, a far-fetched and poignant grace impossible to a man dealing +with more perfect elements. For grace and distinction, which are +qualities of movement rather than of form, do not strike us very much in +a figure which is originally well made. The momentary charm of movement +is lost in the permanent charm of form; the creature could not be +otherwise than delightful, made as it is; and we thus miss the sense of +selection and deliberate arrangement, the sense of beauty as movement, +that is, as grace. Whereas, in the case of defective form, any grace +that may be obtained affects us _per se_. It need not have been there; +indeed, it was unlikely to be there; and hence it obtains the value and +charm of the unexpected, the rare, the far-fetched. This, I think, is +the explanation of the something of exotic beauty that attaches to +Botticelli: we perceive the structural form only negatively, sufficiently +to value all the more the ingenuity of arrangement by which it is made +to furnish a beautiful outline and beautiful movement; and we perceive +the great desire thereof. If we allow our eye to follow the actual +structure of the bodies, even in the Primavera, we shall recognise that +not one of these figures but is downright deformed and out of drawing. +Even the Graces have arms and shoulders and calves and stomachs all at +random; and the most beautiful of them has a slice missing out of her +head. But if, instead of looking at heads, arms, legs, bodies, separately, +and separate from the drapery, we follow the outline of the groups against +the background, drapery clinging or wreathing, arms intertwining, hands +combed out into wonderful fingers; if we regard these groups of figures +as a pattern stencilled on the background, we recognise that no pattern +could be more exquisite in its variety of broken up and harmonised lines. +The exquisite qualities of all graceful things, flowers, branches, +swaying reeds, and certain animals like the stag and peacock, seem to +have been abstracted and given to these half-human and wholly wonderful +creatures--these thin, ill put together, unsteady youths and ladies. The +ingenious grace of Botticelli passes sometimes from the realm of art +to that of poetry, as in the case of those flowers, with stiff, tall +stems, which he places by the uplifted foot of the middle Grace, thus +showing that she has trodden over it, like Virgil's Camilla, without +crushing it. But the element of sentiment and poetry depends in reality +upon the fascination of movement and arrangement; fascination seemingly +from within, a result of exquisite breeding in those imperfectly made +creatures. It is the grace of a woman not beautiful, but well dressed +and moving well; the exquisiteness of a song sung delicately by an +insufficient or defective voice: a fascination almost spiritual, since +it seems to promise a sensitiveness to beauty, a careful avoidance of +ugliness, a desire for something more delicate, a reverse of all things +gross and accidental, a possibility of perfection. + +This imagination of pleasant detail and accessory, which delights us +by the intimacy into which we are brought with the artist's innermost +conception, develops into what, among the masters of the fifteenth +century, I should call the imagination of the fairy tale. A small number +of scriptural and legendary stories lend themselves quite particularly +to the development of such beautiful accessory, which soon becomes the +paramount interest, and vests the whole with a totally new character: a +romantic, childish charm, the charm of the improbable taken for granted, +of the freedom to invent whatever one would like to see but cannot, the +charm of the fairy story. From this unconscious altering of the value of +certain Scripture tales, arises a romantic treatment which is naturally +applied to all other stories, legends of saints, biographical accounts, +Decameronian tales (Mr. Leyland once possessed some Botticellian +illustrations of the tale of Nastagio degli Onesti, the hero of Dryden's +"Theodore and Honoria," a sort of pendant to the Griseldis attributed to +Pinturicchio), and mythological episodes: a new kind of invention, based +upon a desire to please, and as different from the invention of the +Giottesques as the Arabian Nights are different from Homer. + +I have said that it begins with the unconscious altering of the values +of certain scriptural stories, owing to the preponderance of detail over +accessory. The chief example of this is the Adoration of the Magi. In +the paintings of the Giottesques, and in the paintings of the serious, +or duller, masters of the fifteenth century--Ghirlandaio, Rosselli, +Filippino, those for whom the fairy tale could exist no more than for +Michelangelo or Andrea del Sarto--the chief interest in this episode is +the Holy Family, the miraculous Babe whom these great folk came so far to +see. The fourteenth century made very short work of the kings, allowing +them a minimum of splendour; and those of the fifteenth century, who +cared only for artistic improvement, copied slavishly, giving the kings +their retinue only as they might have introduced any number of studio +models or burgesses aspiring at portraits, after the fashion of the +Brancacci and S. Maria Novella frescoes, where spectators of miracles +make a point never to look at the miraculous proceedings. But there +were men who felt differently: the men who loved splendour and detail. +To Gentile da Fabriano, that wonderful man in whom begins the colour and +romance of Venetian painting,[8] the adoration of the kings could not +possibly be what it had been for the Giottesques, or what it still was +for Angelico. The Madonna, St. Joseph, the child Christ did not cease to +be interesting: he painted them with evident regard, gave the Madonna a +beautiful gold hem to her dress, made St. Joseph quite unusually amiable, +and shed a splendid gilt glory about the child Christ. But to him the +wonderful part of the business was not the family in the shed at Bethlehem +which the kings came to see; but those kings themselves, who came from +such a long way off. He put himself at the point of view of a holy +family less persuaded of its holiness, who should suddenly see a bevy +of grand folks come up to their door: the miraculous was here. The +spiritual glory was of course on the side of the family of Joseph; but +the temporal glory, the glory that delighted Gentile, that went to +his brain and made him childishly happy, was with the kings and their +retinue. That retinue--the trumpeters prancing on white horses, with +gold lace covers, the pages, the armour-bearers, the treasurers, the +huntsmen with the hounds, the falconers with the hawks, winding for +miles down the hills, and expanding into the circle of strange and +delightful creatures that kings must have about their persons: jesters +with heads thrown back and eyes squeezed close, while thinking of some +funny jest; dwarfs and negroes, almost as amusing as their camels +and giraffes; tame lynxes chained behind the saddle, monkeys perched, +jabbering, on the horses' manes--all this was much more wonderful in +Gentile da Fabriano's opinion than all the wonders of the Church, which +grew somehow less wonderful the more implicitly you believed in them. +Then, in the midst of all these delightful splendours, the kings +themselves! The old grey-beard in the brown pomegranate embossed brocade +going on all fours, and kissing the little child's feet; the dark young +man, with peaked beard and wistful face, removing his coroneted turban; +and last, but far from least, the youngest king, the beardless boy, with +the complexion of a well-bred young lady, the almond eyes and golden +hair, standing up in his tunic of white cloth of silver, while one squire +unbuckled his spurs and another removed his cloak. The darling little +Prince Charming, between whom and the romantic bearded young king there +must for some time have been considerable rivalry, and alternating views +in the minds of men and the hearts of women (particularly when the +second king, the bearded one, became the John Palaeologus of Benozzo), +until it was victoriously borne in upon the public that this delicate, +beardless creature, so much younger and always the last, must evidently +be _the_ prince, the youngest of the king's sons in the fairy tales, the +one who always succeeds where the two elder have failed, who gets the +Water that Dances and the Apple Branch that Sings, who carries off the +enchanted oranges, slays the ogre, releases the princess, flies through +the air, the hero, the prince of Fairyland.... + + [Footnote 8: This quality, particularly in the Adoration of the Magi, + is already very marked in the very charming and little known frescoes + of Ottaviano Nelli, in the former Trinci Palace at Foligno. Nelli was + the master of Gentile, and through him greatly influenced Venice.] + +The fairy business of the story of the Three Kings takes even greater +proportions in the delightful frescoes of Benozzo Gozzoli in the Riccardi +Chapel. Here the Holy Family are suppressed, so to speak, altogether, +tucked into the altar in a picture, and the act of adoration at Bethlehem +becomes the mere excuse for the romantic adventures of three people of +the highest quality. The journey itself, where Gentile da Fabriano sums +up in that procession twisting about the background of his picture, here +occupies a whole series of frescoes. And on this journey is concentrated +all that the Renaissance knew of splendour, delightfulness, and romance. +The green valleys, watered by twisting streams, with matted grasses, +which Botticelli puts behind his enthroned Madonna and victorious +Judith; Angelico's favourite hillsides with blossoming fruit trees and +pointing cypresses; the mysterious firwoods--more mysterious for their +remoteness on the high Apennines--which fascinate the fancy of Filippo +Lippi; all this is here, and through it all winds the procession of +the Three Kings. There are the splendid stuffs and Oriental jewels and +trappings, the hounds and monkeys, and jesters and negroes, the falcon +on the wrist, the lynxes chained to the saddle, all the magnificence +dreamed by Gentile da Fabriano; and among it all ride, met by bevies +of peacock-winged angels, kneeling and singing before the flowering +rose-hedges, the Three Kings. The old man, who looks like some Platonist +philosopher, the beardless prince, surrounded by his noisy huntsmen and +pages; and that dark-bearded youth in the Byzantine dress and shovel +hat, the genuine king from the East, riding with ardent, wistful eyes, a +beautiful kingly young Quixote: Sir Percival seeking the Holy Grail, or +King Cophetua seeking for his beggar girl. It is a page of fairy tale, +retold by Boiardo or Spenser. + +After such things as these it is difficult to speak of those more +prosaic tales, really intended as such, on which the painters of the +Renaissance spent their fancy. Still they have all their charm, these +fairy tales, not of the great poets indeed, but of the nursery. + +There is, for instance, the story of a good young man (with a name for +a fairy tale too, AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini!) showing his adventures by +land and sea and at many courts, the honours conferred on him by kings +and emperors, and how at last he was made Pope, having begun as a mere +poor scholar on a grey nag; all painted by Pinturicchio in the Cathedral +library of Siena. There is the lamentable story of a bride and bridegroom, +by Vittore Carpaccio: the stately, tall bride, St. Ursula, and the dear +little foolish bridegroom, looking like her little brother; a story +containing a great many incidents: the sending of an embassy to the King; +the King being sorely puzzled in his mind, leaning his arm upon his bed +and asking the Queen's advice; the presence upon the palace steps of an +ill-favoured old lady, with a crutch and basket, suspiciously like the +bad fairy who had been forgotten at the christening; the apparition of +an angel to the Princess, sleeping, with her crown neatly put away at +the foot of the bed; the arrival of the big ship in foreign parts, with +the Bishop and Clergy putting their heads out of the port-holes and +asking very earnestly, "Where are we?" and finally, a most fearful +slaughter of the Princess and her eleven thousand ladies-in-waiting. The +same Carpaccio--a regular old gossip from whom one would expect all the +formulas, "and then he says to the king, Sacred Crown," "and then the +Prince walks, walks, walks, walks." "A company of knights in armour nice +and shining," "three comely ladies in a green meadow," and so forth of +the professional Italian story-teller--the same Carpaccio, who was also, +and much more than the more solemn Giovanni Bellini, the first Venetian +to handle oil paints like Titian and Giorgione, painted the fairy tale +of St. George, with quite the most dreadful dragon's walk, a piece of +sea sand embedded with bones and half-gnawed limbs, and crawled over +by horrid insects, that any one could wish to see; and quite the most +comical dragon, particularly when led out for execution among the +minarets and cupolas and camels and turbans and symbols of a kind of +small Constantinople. + +One of the funniest of all such series of stories, and which shows that +when the Renaissance men were driven to it they could still invent, +though (apparently) when they had to invent in this fashion, they ceased +to be able to paint, is the tale of Griseldis, attributed in our National +Gallery to Pinturicchio, but certainly by a very inferior painter of his +school. The Marquis, after hunting deer on a steep little hill, shaded +by elm trees, sees Griseldis going to a well, a pitcher on her head. He +reins in his white horse, and cranes over in his red cloak, the young +parti-coloured lords-in-waiting pressing forwards to see her, but only +as much as politeness warrants. Scene II.--A stubbly landscape. The +Marquis, in red and gold cloak and well-combed yellow head of hair, +approaches on foot to the little pink farm-house. Surprise of old +Giannucole, who is coming down the exterior steps. "Bless my soul! the +Lord Marquis!" "Where is your daughter?" asks the Marquis, with pointing +finger. But the daughter, hearing voices, has come on to the balcony and +throws up her arms astonished. "Dear me! the cavalier who accosted me in +the wood!" The Marquis and Grizel walk off, he deferentially dapper, she +hanging back a little in her black smock. Scene III.--The Marquis, still +in purple and gold, and red stockings and Hessian boots, says with some +timidity and much grace, pointing to the magnificent clothes brought by +his courtiers, "Would you mind, dear Grizel, putting on these clothes +to please me?" But Griseldis is extremely modest. She tightens her white +shift about her, and doesn't dare look at the cloth of gold dress which +is so pretty. Scene IV.--A triumphal arch, with four gilt figures. The +Marquis daintily, with much wrist-twisting, offers to put the ring on +Griseldis' hand, who obediently accepts, while pages and trumpeters hold +the Marquis's three horses. + +Act II. Scene I.--A portico. Griseldis reluctantly, but obediently, +gives up her baby. Scene II.--A conspirator in black cloak and red +stockings walks off with it on the tips of his toes, and then returns +and tells the Marquis that his Magnificence's orders have been executed. +Scene III.--Giannucole, father of Griseldis, having been sent for, arrives +in his best Sunday cloak. The Marquis in red, with a crown on, says, +standing hand on hip, "You see, after that I really cannot keep her on +any longer." Several small dogs sniff at each other in the background. +Scene V.--Triumphal arch, with bear chained to it, peacock, tame deer, +crowd of courtiers. A lawyer reads the act of divorce. The Marquis steps +forward to Grizel with hands raised, "After this kind of behaviour, it +is quite impossible for me to live with you any longer." Griseldis is +ladylike and resigned. The Marquis says with acrimonious politeness, +"I am sorry, madam, I must trouble you to restore to me those garments +before departing from my house." Griseldis slowly let her golden frock +fall to her feet, then walks off (Scene VI.) towards the little pink +farm, where her father is driving the sheep. The courtiers look on and +say, "Dear, dear, what very strange things do happen!" + +Act III. Scene I.--Outside Giannucole's farm. The Marquis below. Griseldis +at the balcony. He says, "I want to hire you as a maid." "Yes, my Lord." +Scene II.--A portico, with a large company at dinner. The Marquis +introduces his supposed bride and brother-in-law, in reality his own +children. He turns round to Griseldis, who is waiting at table, and bids +her be a little more careful what she is about with those dishes. Scene +III.--Dumb show. Griseldis, in her black smock, is sweeping out the future +Marchioness's chamber. Scene IV.--At table. The Marquis suddenly bids +Griseldis, who is waiting, come and sit by him; he kisses her, and points +at the supposed bride and brother-in-law. "Those are our children, dear." +A young footman is quite amazed. Scene V.--A procession of caparisoned +horse, and giraffes carrying monkeys. A grand supper. "And they live +happy ever after." + +But the fairy tale, beyond all others, with these painters of the +fifteenth century, is the antique myth. No Bibbienas and Bembos +and Calvos have as yet indoctrinated them (as Raphael, alas! was +indoctrinated) with the _real spirit of classical times_, teaching them +that the essence of antiquity was to have no essence at all; no Ariostos +and Tassos have taught the world at large the real Ovidian conception, +the monumental allegoric nature and tendency to vacant faces and +sprawling, big-toed nudity of the heroes and goddesses as Giulio Romano +and the Caracci so well understood to paint them. For all the humanists +that hung about courts, the humanities had not penetrated much into +the Italian people. The imaginative form and colour was still purely +mediaeval; and the artists of the early Renaissance had to work out their +Ovidian stories for themselves, and work them out of their own material. +Hence the mythological creatures of these early painters are all, more +or less, gods in exile, with that charm of a long residence in the +Middle Ages which makes, for instance, the sweetheart of Ritter Tannhaeuser +so infinitely more seductive than the paramour of Adonis; that charm +which, when we meet it occasionally in literature, in parts of Spenser, +for instance, or in a play like Peel's "Arraignment of Paris," is so +peculiarly delightful. + +These early painters have made up their Paganism for themselves, out of +all pleasant things they knew; their fancy has brooded upon it; and the +very details that make us laugh, the details coming direct from the +Middle Ages, the spirit in glaring opposition occasionally to that of +Antiquity, bring home to us how completely this Pagan fairyland is a +genuine reality to these men. We feel this in nearly all the work of +that sort--least, in the archaeological Mantegna's. We see it beginning +in the mere single figures--the various drawings of Orpheus, "Orpheus le +doux menestrier jouant de flutes et de musettes," as Villon called him, +much about that time--piping or fiddling among little toy animals out of +a Nuremberg box; the drawing of fauns carrying sheep, some with a queer +look of the Good Shepherd about them, of Pinturicchio; and rising to +such wonderful exhibitions (to me, with their obscure reminiscence of +pageants, they always seem like ballets) as Perugino's Ceiling of the +Cambio, where, among arabesqued constellations, the gods of antiquity +move gravely along: the bearded knight Mars, armed _cap-a-pie_ like a +mediaeval warrior; the delicate Mercurius, a beautiful page-boy stripped +of his emblazoned clothes; Luna dragged along by two nymphs; and Venus +daintily poised on one foot on her dove-drawn chariot, the exquisite +Venus in her clinging veils, conquering the world with the demure +gravity and adorable primness of a high-born young abbess. + +The actual fairy story becomes, little by little, more complete--the +painters of the fifteenth century work, little guessing it, are the +precursors of Walter Crane. The full-page illustration of a tale of +semi-mediaeval romance--of a romance like Spenser's "Fairy Queen" or +Mr. Morris's "Earthly Paradise," exists distinctly in that picture +and drawing, by the young Raphael or whomsoever else, of Apollo and +Marsyas.[9] This piping Marsyas seated by the tree stump, this naked +Apollo, thin and hectic like an undressed archangel, standing against +the Umbrian valley with its distant blue hills, its castellated village, +its delicate, thinly-leaved trees--things we know so well in connection +with the Madonna and Saints, that this seems absent for only a few +minutes--all this is as little like Ovid as the triumphant antique +Galatea of Raphael is like Spenser. Again, there is Piero di Cosimo's +Death of Procris: the poor young woman lying dead by the lake, with +the little fishing town in the distance, the swans sailing and cranes +strutting, and the dear young faun--no Praxitelian god with invisible +ears, still less the obscene beast whom the late Renaissance copied from +Antiquity--a most gentle, furry, rustic creature, stooping over her in +puzzled, pathetic concern, at a loss, with his want of the practice of +cities and the knowledge of womankind, what to do for this poor lady +lying among the reeds and the flowering scarlet sage; a creature the +last of whose kind (friendly, shy, woodland things, half bears or half +dogs, frequent in mediaeval legend), is the satyr of Fletcher's "Faithful +Shepherdess," the only poetic conception in that gross and insipid piece +of magnificent rhetoric. The perfection of the style must naturally be +sought from Botticelli, and in his Birth of Venus (but who may speak of +that after the writer of most subtle fancy, of most exquisite language, +among living Englishman?)[10] This goddess, not triumphant but sad in +her pale beauty, a king's daughter bound by some charm to flit on her +shell over the rippling sea, until the winds blow it in the kingdom of +the good fairy Spring, who shelters her in her laurel grove and covers +her nakedness with the wonderful mantle of fresh-blown flowers.... + + [Footnote 9: I believe now unanimously given to Pinturicchio.] + + [Footnote 10: Alas! no longer among the living, though among those + whose spiritual part will never die. Walter Pater died July 1894: a + man whose sense of loveliness and dignity made him, in mature life, + as learned in moral beauty as he had been in visible.] + +But the imagination born of the love of beautiful and suggestive detail +soars higher; become what I would call the lyric art of the Renaissance, +the art which not merely gives us beauty, but stirs up in ourselves as +much beauty again of stored-up impression, reaches its greatest height +in certain Venetian pictures of the early sixteenth century. Pictures of +vague or enigmatic subject, or no subject at all, like Giorgione's Fete +Champetre and Soldier and Gipsy, Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, The +Three Ages of Man, and various smaller pictures by Bonifazio, Palma, +Basaiti; pictures of young men in velvets and brocades, solemn women +with only the glory of their golden hair and flesh, seated in the grass, +old men looking on pensive, children rolling about; with the solemnity +of great, spreading trees, of greenish evening skies: the pathos of +the song about to begin or just finished, lute or viol or pipe still +lying hard by. Of such pictures it is best, perhaps, not to speak. The +suggestive imagination is wandering vaguely, dreaming; fumbling at +random sweet, strange chords out of its viol, like those young men and +maidens. The charm of such works is that they are never explicit; they +tell us, like music, deep secrets, which we feel, but cannot translate +into words. + + +IV + +The first new factor in art which meets us at the beginning of the +sixteenth century is not among the Italians, and is not a merely +artistic power. I speak of the passionate individual fervour for +the newly recovered Scriptures, manifest among the German engravers, +Protestants all or nearly all, and among whose works is for ever turning +up the sturdy, passionate face of Luther, the enthusiastic face of +Melanchthon. The very nature of these men's art is conceivable only +where the Bible has suddenly become the reading, and the chief reading, +of the laity. These prints, large and small, struck off in large numbers, +are not church ornaments like frescoes or pictures, nor aids to monastic +devotion like Angelico's Gospel histories at St. Mark's--they are +illustrations to the book which every one is reading, things to be +framed in the chamber of every burgher or mechanic, to be slipped into +the prayer-book of every housewife, to be conned over during the long +afternoons, by the children near the big stove or among the gooseberry +bushes of the garden. And they are, therefore, much more than the +Giottesque inventions, the expression of the individual artist's +ideas about the incidents of Scripture; and an expression not for the +multitude at large, fresco or mosaic that could be elaborated by a +sceptical or godless artist, but a re-explanation as from man to man +and friend: this is how the dear Lord looked, or acted--see, the words +in the Bible are so or so forth. Therefore, there enters into these +designs, which contain after all only the same sort of skill which was +rife in Italy, so much homeliness at once, and poignancy and sublimity +of imagination. The Virgin, they have discovered, is not that grandly +dressed lady, always in the very finest brocade, with the very finest +manners, and holding a divine infant that has no earthly wants, whom Van +Eyck and Memling and Meister Stephan painted. She is a good young woman, +a fairer version of their dear wife, or the woman who might have been +that; no carefully selected creature as with the Italians, no well-made +studio model, with figure unspoilt by child-bearing, but a real wife and +mother, with real milk in her breasts (the Italian virgin, save with one +or two Lombards, is never permitted to suckle)[11], which she very readily +and thoroughly gives to the child, guiding the little mouth with her +fingers. And she sits in the lonely fields by the hedges and windmills +in the fair weather; or in the neat little chamber with the walled town +visible between the pillar of the window, as in Bartholomew Beham's +exquisite design, reading, or suckling, or sewing, or soothing the +fretful baby; no angels around her, or rarely: the Scripture says +nothing about such a court of seraphs as the Italians and Flemings, the +superstitious Romanists, always placed round the mother of Christ. It +is all as it might have happened to them; they translate the Scripture +into their everyday life, they do not pick out of it the mere stately +and poetic incidents like the Giottesques. This everyday life of theirs +is crude enough, and in many cases nasty enough; they have in those +German free towns a perfect museum of loathsome ugliness, born of ill +ventilation, gluttony, starvation, or brutality: quite fearful wrinkled +harridans and unabashed fat, guzzling harlots, and men of every variety +of scrofula, and wart and belly, towards none of which (the best far +transcending the worst Italian Judas) they seem to feel any repugnance. +They have also a beastly love of horrors; their decollations and +flagellations are quite sickening in detail, as distinguished from the +tidy, decorous executions of the early Italians; and one feels that they +do enjoy seeing, as in one of their prints, the bowels of St. Erasmus +being taken out with a windlass, or Jael, as Altdorfer has shown her +in his romantic print, neatly hammering the nail into the head of the +sprawling, snoring Sisera. There is a good deal of grossness, too (of +which, among the Italians, even Robetta and similar, there is so little), +in the details of village fairs and adventures of wenches with their +Schatz; and a strange permeating nightmare, gruesomeness of lewd, warty +devils, made up of snouts, hoofs, bills, claws, and incoherent parts +of incoherent creatures; of perpetual skeletons climbing in trees, or +appearing behind flower-beds. But there is also--and Holbein's Dance of +Death, terrible, jocular, tender, vulgar and poetic, contains it all, this +German world--a great tenderness. Tenderness not merely in the heads of +women and children, in the fervent embrace of husband and wife and mother +and daughter; but in the feeling for dumb creatures and inanimate things, +the gentle dogs of St. Hubert, the deer that crouch among the rocks with +Genevieve, the very tangled grasses and larches and gentians that hang +to the crags, drawn as no Italian ever drew them; the quiet, sentimental +little landscapes of castles on fir-clad hills, of manor-houses, gabled +and chimneyed, among the reeds and willows of shallow ponds. These +feelings, Teutonic doubtless, but less mediaeval than we might think, for +the Middle Ages of the Minnesingers were terribly conventional, seem to +well up at the voice of Luther; and it is this which make the German +engravers, men not always of the highest talents, invent new and beautiful +Gospel pictures. Of these I would take two as typical--typical of +individual fancy most strangely contrasting with the conventionalism of +the Italians. Let the reader think of any of the scores of Flights into +Egypt, and of Resurrections by fifteenth-century Italians, or even +Giottesques; and then turn to two prints, one of each of these subjects +respectively, by Martin Schongauer and Altdorfer. Schongauer gives a +delightful oasis: palms and prickly pears, the latter conceived as +growing at the top of a tree; below, lizards at play and deer grazing; +in this place the Virgin has drawn up her ass, who browses the thistles +at his feet, while St. Joseph, his pilgrim bottle bobbing on his back, +hangs himself with all his weight to the branches of a date palm, trying +to get the fruit within reach. Meanwhile a bevy of sweet little angels +have come to the rescue; they sit among the branches, dragging them down +towards him, and even bending the whole stem at the top so that he may +get at the dates. Such a thing as this is quite lovely, particularly +after the routine of St. Joseph trudging along after the donkey, the +eternal theme of the Italians. In Altdorfer's print Christ is ascending +in a glory of sunrise clouds, banner in hand, angels and cherubs peering +with shy curiosity round the cloud edge. The sepulchre is open, guards +asleep or stretching themselves, and yawning all round; and childish +young angels look reverently into the empty grave, rearranging the +cerecloths, and trying to roll back the stone lid. One of them leans +forward, and utterly dazzles a negro watchman, stepping forward, lantern +in hand; in the distance shepherds are seen prowling about. "This," says +Altdorfer to himself, "is how it must have happened." + + [Footnote 11: And the circular so-called Botticelli (now given, I + believe, to San Gallo) in the National Gallery.] + +Hence, among these Germans, the dreadful seriousness and pathos of the +Passion, the violence of the mob, the brutality of the executioners, +above all, the awful sadness of Christ. There is here somewhat of the +realisation of what He must have felt in finding the world He had come +to redeem so vile and cruel. In what way, under what circumstances, +such thoughts would come to these men, is revealed to us by that +magnificent head of the suffering Saviour--a design apparently for a +carved crucifix--under which Albrecht Duerer wrote the pathetic words: +"I drew this in my sickness." + +Thus much of the power of that new factor, the individual interest in +the Scriptures. All other innovations on the treatment of religious +themes were due, in the sixteenth century, but still more in the +seventeenth, to the development of some new artistic possibility, or +to the gathering together in the hands of one man of artistic powers +hitherto existing only in a dispersed condition. This is the secret +of the greatness of Raphael as a pictorial poet, that he could do all +manner of new things merely by holding all the old means in his grasp. +This is the secret of those wonderful inventions of his, which do not +take our breath away like Michelangelo's or Rembrandt's, but seem at the +moment the one and only right rendering of the subject: the Liberation +of St. Peter, Heliodorus, Ezechiel, and the whole series of magnificent +Old Testament stories on the ceiling of the Loggie. In Raphael we see +the perfect fulfilment of the Giottesque programme: he can do all that +the first theme inventors required for the carrying out of their ideas; +and therefore he can have new, entirely new, themes. Raphael furnishes, +for the first time since Giotto, an almost complete set of pictorial +interpretations of Scripture. + +We are now, as we proceed in the sixteenth century, in the region where +new artistic powers admit of new imaginative conceptions on the part +of the individual. We gain immensely by the liberation from the old +tradition, but we lose immensely also. We get the benefit of the fancy +and feelings of this individual, but we are at the mercy, also, of his +stupidity and vulgarity. Of this the great examples are Tintoretto, and +after him Velasquez and Rembrandt. Of Tintoret I would speak later, +for he is eminently the artist in whom the gain and the loss are most +typified, and perhaps most equally distributed, and because, therefore, +he contrasts best with the masters anterior to Raphael. + +The new powers in Velasquez and Rembrandt were connected with the +problem of light, or rather, one might say, in the second case, of +darkness. This new faculty of seizing the beauties, momentary and not +inherent in the object, due to the various effects of atmosphere and +lighting up, added probably a good third to the pleasure-bestowing +faculty of art; it was the beginning of a kind of democratic movement +against the stern domination of such things as were privileged in shape +and colour. A thousand things, ugly or unimaginative in themselves, a +plain face, a sallow complexion, an awkward gesture, a dull arrangement +of lines, could be made delightful and suggestive. A wet yard, a pail +and mop, and a servant washing fish under a pump could become, in the +hands of Peter de Hoogh, and thanks to the magic of light and shade, as +beautiful and interesting in their way as a swirl of angels and lilies +by Botticelli. But this redemption of the vulgar was at the expense, +as I have elsewhere pointed out, of a certain growing callousness to +vulgarity. What holds good as to the actual artistic, visible quality, +holds good also as to the imaginative value. Velasquez's Flagellation, +if indeed it be his, in our National Gallery, has a pathos, a something +that catches you by the throat, in that melancholy weary body, broken +with ignominy and pain, sinking down by the side of the column, which +is inseparable from the dreary grey light, the livid colour of the +flesh--there is no joy in the world where such things can be. But the +angel who has just entered has not come from heaven--such a creature is +fit only to roughly shake up the pillows of paupers, dying in the damp +dawn in the hospital wards. + +It is, in a measure, different with Rembrandt, exactly because he is the +master, not of light, but of darkness, or of light that utterly dazzles. +His ugly women and dirty Jews of Rotterdam are either hidden in the gloom +or reduced to mere vague outlines, specks like gnats in the sunshine, in +the effulgence of light. Hence we can enjoy, almost without any disturbing +impressions, the marvellous imagination shown in his etchings of Bible +stories. Rembrandt is to Duerer as an archangel to a saint: where the +German draws, the Dutchman seems to bite his etching plate with elemental +darkness and glory. Of these etchings I would mention a few; the reader +may put these indications alongside of his remembrances of the Arena +Chapel, or of Angelico's cupboard panels in the Academy at Florence: +they show how intimately dramatic imagination depends in art upon mere +technical means, how hopelessly limited to mere indication were the +early artists, how forced along the path of dramatic realisation are the +men of modern times. + +_The Annunciation to the Shepherds_: The heavens open in a circular +whirl among the storm darkness, cherubs whirling distantly like +innumerable motes in a sunbeam; the angel steps forward on a ray of +light, projecting into the ink-black night. The herds have perceived +the vision, and rush headlong in all directions, while the trees groan +beneath the blast of that opening of heaven. A horse, seen in profile, +with the light striking on his eyeball, seems paralysed by terror. The +shepherds have only just awakened. _The Nativity_: Darkness. A vague +crowd of country folk jostling each other noiselessly. A lantern, a +white speck in the centre, sheds a smoky, uncertain light on the corner +where the Child sleeps upon the pillows, the Virgin, wearied, resting +by its side, her face on her hand. Joseph is seated by, only his head +visible above his book. The cows are just visible in the gloom. The +lantern is held by a man coming carefully forward, uncovering his head, +the crowd behind him. _A Halt on the Journey to Egypt_: Night. The +lantern hung on a branch. Joseph seated sleepily, with his fur cap +drawn down; the Virgin and Child resting against the packsaddle on the +ground. _An Interior_: The Virgin hugging and rocking the Child. Joseph, +outside, looks in through the window. _The Raising of Lazarus_: A vault +hung with scimitars, turbans, and quivers. Against the brilliant daylight +just let in, the figure of Christ, seen from behind, stands out in His +long robes, raising His hand to bid the dead arise. Lazarus, pale, +ghost-like in this effulgence, slowly, wearily raises his head in the +sepulchre. The crowd falls back. Astonishment, awe. This coarse Dutchman +has suppressed the incident of the bystanders holding their nose, to +which the Giottesques clung desperately. This is not a moment to think of +stenches or infection. _Entombment_: Night. The platform below the cross. +A bier, empty, spread with a winding-sheet, an old man arranging it at +the head. The dead Saviour being slipped down from the cross on a sheet, +two men on a ladder letting the body down, others below receiving it, +trying to prevent the arm from trailing. Immense solemnity, carefulness, +hushedness. A distant illuminated palace blazes out in the night. One +feels that they are stealing Him away. + +I have reversed the chronological order and chosen to speak of Tintoret +after Rembrandt, because, being an Italian and still in contact with +some of the old tradition, the great Venetian can show more completely, +both what was gained and what was lost in imaginative rendering by the +liberation of the individual artist and the development of artistic +means. First, of the gain. This depends mainly upon Tintoret's handling +of light and shade, and his foreshortenings: it enables him to compose +entirely in huge masses, to divide or concentrate the interest, to throw +into vague insignificance the less important parts of a situation in +order to insist upon the more important; it gives him the power also of +impressing us by the colossal and the ominous. The masterpiece of this +style, and probably Tintoret's masterpiece therefore, is the great +Crucifixion at S. Rocco. To feel its full tragic splendour one must +think of the finest things which the early Renaissance achieved, such as +Luini's beautiful fresco at Lugano; by the side of the painting at S. +Rocco everything is tame, except, perhaps, Rembrandt's etching called +the Three Crosses. After this, and especially to be compared with the +frescoes of Masaccio and Ghirlandaio of the same subject, comes the +Baptism of Christ. The old details of figures dressing and undressing, +which gave so much pleasure to earlier painters, for instance, Piero +della Francesca, in the National Gallery, are entirely omitted, as the +nose-holding in the Raising of Lazarus, is omitted by Rembrandt. Christ +kneels in the Jordan, with John bending over him, and vague multitudes +crowding the banks, distant, dreamlike beneath the yellow storm-light. +Of Tintoret's Christ before Pilate, of that figure of the Saviour, long, +straight, wrapped in white and luminous like his own wraith, I have +spoken already. But I must speak of the S. Rocco Christ in the Garden, +as imaginative as anything by Rembrandt, and infinitely more beautiful. +The moonlight tips the draperies of the three sleeping apostles, gigantic, +solemn. Above, among the bushes, leaning His head on His hand, is seated +Christ, weary to death, numbed by grief and isolation, recruiting for +final resistance. The sense of being abandoned of all men and of God has +never been brought home in this way by any other painter; the little +tear-stained Saviours, praying in broad daylight, of Perugino and his +fellows, are mere distressed mortals. This betrayed and resigned Saviour +has upon Him the _weltschmerz_ of Prometheus. But even here we begin to +feel the loss, as well as the gain, of the painter being forced from the +dramatic routine of earlier days: instead of the sweet, tearful little +angel of the early Renaissance, there comes to this tragic Christ, in +a blood-red nimbus, a brutal winged creature thrusting the cup in His +face. The uncertainty of Tintoret's inspirations, the uncertainty of +result of these astonishing pictorial methods of attaining the dramatic, +the occasional vapidness and vulgarity of the man, unrestrained by any +stately tradition like the vapidness and vulgarity of so many earlier +masters,[12] comes out already at S. Rocco. And principally in the +scene of the Temptation, a theme rarely, if ever, treated before the +sixteenth century, and which Tintoret has made unspeakably mean in its +unclean and dramatically impotent suggestiveness: the Saviour parleying +from a kind of rustic edifice with a good-humoured, fat, half feminine +Satan, fluttering with pink wings like some smug seraph of Bernini's +pupils. After this it is scarce necessary to speak of whatever is +dramatically abortive (because successfully expressing just the wrong +sort of sentiment, the wrong situation) in Tintoret's work: his Woman +taken in Adultery, with the dapper young Rabbi, offended neither by +adultery in general nor by this adulteress in particular; the Washing of +the Feet, in London, where the conversation appears to turn upon the +excessive hotness or coldness of the water in the tub; the Last Supper +at S. Giorgio Maggiore, where, among the mysterious wreaths of smoke +peopled with angels, Christ rises from His seat and holds the cup to His +neighbour's lips with the gesture, as He says, "This is My blood," of +a conjuror to an incredulous and indifferent audience. To Tintoret +the contents of the chalice is the all-important matter: where is the +majesty of the old Giottesque gesture, preserved by Leonardo, of pushing +forward the bread with one hand, the wine with the other, and thus +uncovering the head and breast of the Saviour, the gesture which does +indeed mean--"I am the bread you shall eat, and the wine you shall +drink"? There remains, however, to mention another work of Tintoret's +which, coming in contact with one's recollections of earlier art, may +suggest strange doubts and well nigh shake one's faith in the imaginative +efficacy of all that went before: his enormous canvas of the Last Day, +at S. Maria dell' Orto. The first and overwhelming impression, even +before one has had time to look into this apocalyptic work, is that +no one could have conceived such a thing in earlier days, not even +Michelangelo when he painted his Last Judgment, nor Raphael when he +designed the Vision of Ezechiel. This is, indeed, one thinks, a revelation +of the end of all things. Great storm clouds, whereon throne the Almighty +and His Elect, brood over the world, across which, among the crevassed, +upheaving earth, pours the wide glacier torrent of Styx, with the boat +of Charon struggling across its precipitous waters. The angels, confused +with the storm clouds of which they are the spirit, lash the damned down +to the Hell stream, band upon band, even from the far distance. And in +the foreground the rocks are splitting, the soil is upheaving with the +dead beneath; here protrudes a huge arm, there a skull; in one place the +clay, rising, has assumed the vague outline of the face below. In the +rocks and water, among the clutching, gigantic men, the huge, full-bosomed +woman, tosses a frightful half-fleshed carcass, grass still growing from +his finger tips, his grinning skull, covered half with hair and half +with weeds, greenish and mouldering: a sinner still green in earth and +already arising. + + [Footnote 12: How peccable is the individual imagination, unchastened + by tradition! I find among the illustrations of Mr. Berenson's very + valuable monograph on Lotto, a most curious instance in point. This + psychological, earnest painter has been betrayed, by his morbid + nervousness of temper, into making the starting of a cat into the + second most important incident in his Annunciation.] + +A wonderful picture: a marvellous imaginative mind, with marvellous +imaginative means at his command. Yet, let us ask ourselves, what is the +value of the result? A magnificent display of attitudes and forms, a +sort of bravura ghastliness and impressiveness, which are in a sense +_barrocco_, reminding us of the wax plague models of Florence and of +certain poems of Baudelaire's. But of the feeling, the poetry of this +greatest of all scenes, what is there? And, standing before it, I think +instinctively of that chapel far off on the windswept Umbrian rock, with +Signorelli's Resurrection: a flat wall accepted as a flat wall, no +place, nowhere. A half-dozen groups, not closely combined. Colour +reduced to monochrome; light and shade nowhere, as nowhere also all +these devices of perspective. But in that simply treated fresco, with +its arrangement as simple as that of a vast antique bas-relief, there +is an imaginative suggestion far surpassing this of Tintoret's. The +breathless effort of the youths breaking through the earth's crust, +shaking their long hair and gasping; the stagger of those rising to +their feet; the stolidity, hand on hip, of those who have recovered +their body but not their mind, blinded by the light, deafened by the +trumpets of Judgment; the absolute self-abandonment of those who can +raise themselves no higher; the dull, awe-stricken look of those who +have found their companions, clasping each other in vague, weak wonder; +and further, under the two archangels who stoop downwards with the +pennons of their trumpets streaming in the blast, those figures who +beckon to the re-found beloved ones, or who shade their eyes and point +to a glory on the horizon, or who, having striven forward, sink on +their knees, overcome by a vision which they alone can behold. And +recollecting that fresco of Signorelli's, you feel as if this vast, tall +canvas at S. Maria dell' Orto, where topple and welter the dead and the +quick, were merely so much rhetorical rhodomontade by the side of the +old hymn of the Last Day-- + + "Mors stupebit et natura + Quum resurget creatura + Judicanti responsura." + + +V + +Again, in the chaos of newly-developing artistic means, and of struggling +individual imaginations, we get once more, at the end of the eighteenth +century, to what we found at the beginning of the fourteenth: the art +that does not show, but merely speaks. We find it in what, of all things, +are the apparently most different to the quiet and placid outline +illustration of the Giottesque: in the terrible portfolio of Goya's +etchings, called the Disasters of War. Like Duerer and Rembrandt, the +great Spaniard is at once extremely realistic and extremely imaginative. +But his realism means fidelity, not to the real aspect of things, of +the _thing in itself_, so to speak, but to the way in which things will +appear to the spectator at a given moment. He isolates what you might +call a case, separating it from the multitude of similar cases, giving +you one execution where several must be going on, one firing off of +cannon, one or two figures in a burning or a massacre; and his technique +conduces thereunto, blurring a lot, rendering only the outline and +gesture, and that outline and gesture frequently so momentary as to be +confused. But he is real beyond words in his reproduction of the way in +which such dreadful things must stamp themselves upon the mind. They are +isolated, concentrated, distorted: the multiplicity of horrors making +the perceiving mind more sensitive, morbid as from opium eating, and +thus making the single impression, which excludes all the rest, more vivid +and tremendous than, without that unconsciously perceived rest, it could +possibly be. Nay, more, these scenes are not merely rather such as they +were recollected than as they really were seen; they are such as they +were recollected in the minds and feelings of peasants and soldiers, of +people who could not free their attention to arrange all these matters +logically, to give them their relative logical value. The slaughtering +soldiers--Spaniards, English, or French--of the Napoleonic period become +in his plates Turks, Saracens, huge vague things in half Oriental +costumes, whiskered, almost turbaned in their fur caps, they become +almost ogres, even as they must have done in the popular mind. The +shooting of deserters and prisoners is reduced to the figures at the +stake, the six carbine muzzles facing them: no shooting soldiers, no +stocks to the carbines, any more than in the feeling of the man who +was being shot. The artistic training, the habit of deliberately or +unconsciously looking for visible effects which all educated moderns +possess, prevents even our writers from thus reproducing what has been +the actual mental reality. But Goya does not for a moment let us suspect +the presence of the artist, the quasi-writer. The impression reproduced +is the impression, not of the artistic bystander, but of the sufferer or +the sufferer's comrades. This makes him extraordinarily faithful to the +epigraphs of his plates. We feel that the woman, all alone, without +bystanders, earthworks, fascines, smoke, &c., firing off the cannon, +is the woman as she is remembered by the creature who exclaims, "Que +valor!" We feel that the half-dead soldier being stripped, the condemned +turning his head aside as far as the rope will permit, the man fallen +crushed beneath his horse or vomiting out his blood, is the wretch who +exclaims, "Por eso soy nacido!" They are, these etchings of Goya's, the +representation of the sufferings, real and imaginative, of the real +sufferers. In the most absolute sense they are the art which does not +merely show, but tells; the suggestive and dramatic art of the individual, +unaided and unhampered by tradition, indifferent to form and technicality, +the art which even like the art of the immediate predecessors of Giotto, +those Giuntas and Berlinghieris, who left us the hideous and terrible +Crucifixions, says to the world, "You shall understand and feel." + + + + +TUSCAN SCULPTURE + + +I + +We are all of us familiar with the two adjacent rooms at South Kensington +which contain, respectively, the casts from antique sculpture and those +from the sculpture of the Renaissance; and we are familiar also with the +sense of irritation or of relief which accompanies our passing from +one of them to the other. This feeling is typical of our frame of mind +towards various branches of the same art, and, indeed, towards all +things which might be alike, but happen to be unlike. Times, countries, +nations, temperaments, ideas, and tendencies, all benefit and suffer +alternately by our habit of considering that if two things of one sort +are not identical, one must be in the right and the other in the wrong. +The act of comparison evokes at once our innate tendency to find fault; +and having found fault, we rarely perceive that, on better comparing, +there may be no fault at all to find. + +As the result of such comparison, we shall find that Renaissance +sculpture is unrestful, huddled, lacking selection of form and harmony +of proportions; it reproduces ugliness and perpetuates effort; it is +sometimes grotesque, and frequently vulgar. Or again, that antique +sculpture is conventional, insipid, monotonous, without perception for +the charm of detail or the interest of individuality; afraid of movement +and expression, and at the same time indifferent to outline and grouping; +giving us florid nudities which never were alive, and which are doing +and thinking nothing whatever. Thus, according to which room or which +mood we enter first, we are sure to experience either irritation at +wrong-headedness or relief at right-doing; whether we pass from the +sculpture of ancient Greece to the sculpture of mediaeval Italy, or _vice +versa_. + +But a more patient comparison of these two branches of sculpture, and of +the circumstances which made each what it was, will enable us to enjoy +the very different merits of both, and will teach us also something of +the vital processes of the particular spiritual organism which we call +an art. + +In the early phase of the philosophy of art--a phase lingering on to our +own day in the works of certain critics--the peculiarities of a work of +art were explained by the peculiarities of character of the artist: the +paintings of Raphael and the music of Mozart partook of the gentleness +of their life; while the figures of Michelangelo and the compositions of +Beethoven were the outcome of their misanthropic ruggedness of temper. +The insufficiency, often the falseness, of such explanations became +evident when critics began to perceive that the works of one time and +country usually possessed certain common peculiarities which did not +correspond to any resemblance between the characters of their respective +artists; peculiarities so much more dominant than any others, that a +statue or a picture which was unsigned and of obscure history was +constantly attributed to half-a-dozen contemporary sculptors or painters +by half-a-dozen equally learned critics. The recognition of this fact +led to the substitution of the _environment_ (the _milieu_ of Monsieur +Taine) as an explanation of the characteristics, no longer of a single +work of art, but of a school or group of kindred works. Greek art +henceforth was the serene outcome of a serene civilisation of athletes, +poets, and philosophers, living with untroubled consciences in a good +climate, with slaves and helots to char for them while they ran races, +discussed elevated topics, and took part in Panathenaic processions, +riding half naked on prancing horses, or carrying olive branches and +sacrificial vases in honour of a divine patron, in whom they believed +only as much as they liked. And the art of the Middle Ages was the +fantastic, far-fetched, and often morbid production of nations of +crusaders and theologians, burning heretics, worshipping ladies, seeing +visions, and periodically joining hands in a vertiginous death-reel, +whose figures were danced from country to country. This new explanation, +while undoubtedly less misleading than the other one, had the disadvantage +of straining the characteristics of a civilisation or of an art in order +to tally with its product or producer; it forgot that Antiquity was not +wholly represented by the frieze of the Parthenon, and that the Gothic +cathedrals and the frescoes of Giotto had characteristics more +conspicuous than morbidness and insanity. + +Moreover, in the same way that the old personal criticism was unable to +account for the resemblance between the works of different individuals +of the same school, so the theory of the environment fails to explain +certain qualities possessed in common by various schools of art and various +arts which have arisen under the pressure of different civilisations; +and it is obliged to slur over the fact that the sculpture of the time +of Pericles and Alexander, the painting of the early sixteenth century, +and the music of the age of Handel, Haydn, and Mozart are all very much +more like one another in their serene beauty than they are any of them +like the other productions, artistic or human, of their environment. +Behind this explanation there must therefore be another, not controverting +the portion of truth it contains, but completing it by the recognition +of a relation more intimate than that of the work of art with its +environment: the relation of form and material. The perceptions of the +artist, what he sees and how he sees it, can be transmitted to others +only through processes as various as themselves: hair seen as colour +is best imitated with paint, hair seen as form with twisted metal wire. +It is as impossible to embody certain perceptions in some stages of +handicraft as it would be to construct a complex machine in a rudimentary +condition of mechanics. Certain modes of vision require certain methods +of painting, and these require certain kinds of surface and pigment. Until +these exist, a man may see correctly, but he cannot reproduce what he is +seeing. In short, the work of art represents the meeting of a mode of +seeing and feeling (determined partly by individual characteristics, +partly by those of the age and country) and of a mode of treating +materials, a craft which may itself be, like the mind of the artist, +in a higher or lower stage of development. + +The early Greeks had little occasion to become skilful carvers of +stone. Their buildings, which reproduced a very simple wooden structure, +were ornamented with little more than the imitation of the original +carpentering; for the Ionic order, poor as it is of ornament, came only +later; and the Corinthian, which alone offered scope for variety and +skill of carving, arose only when figure sculpture was mature. But the +Greeks, being only just in the iron period (and iron, by the way, is the +tool for stone), were great moulders of clay and casters of metal. The +things which later ages made of iron, stone, or wood, they made of clay +or bronze. The thousands of exquisite utensils, weapons, and toys in our +museums make this apparent; from the bronze greaves delicately modelled +like the legs they were to cover, to the earthenware dolls, little +Venuses, exquisitely dainty, with articulated legs and go-carts. + +Hence the human figure came to be imitated by a process which was not +sculpture in the literal sense of carving. It is significant that the +Latin word whence we get _effigy_ has also given us _fictile_, the making +of statues being thus connected with the making of pots; and that the +whole vocabulary of ancient authors shows that they thought of statuary +not as akin to cutting and chiselling, but to moulding ([Greek: plasso] += _fingo_), shaping out of clay on the wheel or with the modelling +tool.[13] It seems probable that marble-work was but rarely used for +the round until the sixth century; and the treatment of the hair, +the propping of projecting limbs and drapery, makes it obvious that a +large proportion of the antiques in our possession are marble copies of +long-destroyed bronzes.[14] So that the Greek statue, even if eventually +destined for marble, was conceived by a man having the habit of +modelling in clay. + + [Footnote 13: I am confirmed in these particulars by my friend + Miss Eugenie Sellers, whose studies of the ancient authorities on + art--Lucian, Pausanias, Pliny, and others, will be the more fruitful + that they are associated with knowledge--uncommon in archaeologists--of + more modern artistic processes.] + + [Footnote 14: This becomes overwhelmingly obvious on reading Professor + Furtwaengler's great "Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture." Praxiteles + appears to have been exceptional in his preference for marble.] + +Let us turn from early Greece to mediaeval Italy. Hammered iron had +superseded bronze for weapons and armour, and silver and gold, worked +with the chisel, for ornaments. On the other hand, the introduction from +the East of glazed pottery had banished to the art of the glass-blower +all fancy in shaping utensils. There was no demand in common life for +cast metal-work, and there being no demand for casting, there was no +practice either in its cognate preliminary art of moulding clay. Hence, +such bronze work as originated was very unsatisfactory; the lack of +skill in casting, and the consequent elaboration of bronze-work with the +file, lasting late into the Renaissance. But the men of the Middle Ages +were marvellously skilful carvers of stone. Architecture, ever since the +Roman time, had given more and more importance to sculptured ornament: +already exquisite in the early Byzantine screens and capitals, it +developed through the elaborate mouldings, traceries, and columns of +the Lombard style into the art of elaborate reliefs and groups of the +full-blown Gothic; indeed the Gothic church is, in Italy, the work no +longer of the mason, but of the sculptor. It is no empty coincidence +that the hillside villages which still supply Florence with stone and +with stonemasons should have given their names to three of its greatest +sculptors, Mino da Fiesole, Desiderio da Settignano, and Benedetto da +Maiano; that Michelangelo should have told Vasari that the chisel and +mallet had come to him with the milk of his nurse, a stonecutter's wife +from those same slopes, down which jingle to-day the mules carting +ready-shaped stone from the quarries. The mediaeval Tuscans, the Pisans +of the thirteenth, and the Florentines of the fifteenth century, evidently +made small wax or clay sketches of their statues; but their works are +conceived and executed in the marble, and their art has come out of the +stone without interposition of other material, even as the figures which +Michelangelo chopped, living and colossal, direct out of the block.[15] + + [Footnote 15: Interesting details in Vasari's treatise, and in his + Lives of J. della Quercia, Ferrucci, and other sculptors.] + +The Greek, therefore, was a moulder of clay, a caster of bronze, in the +early time when the art acquires its character and takes its direction; +in that period, on the contrary, the Tuscan was a chaser of silver, a +hammerer of iron, above all a cutter of stone. Now clay (and we must +remember that bronze is originally clay) means the modelled plane and +succession of planes smoothed and rounded by the finger, the imitation +of all nature's gently graduated swellings and depressions, the absolute +form as it exists to the touch; but clay does not give interesting light +and shade, and bronze is positively blurred by high lights; and neither +clay nor bronze has any resemblance to the texture of human limbs or +drapery: it gives the form, but not the stuff. It is the exact reverse +with marble. Granulated like a living fibre, yet susceptible of a delicate +polish, it can imitate the actual substance of human flesh, with its +alternations of opacity and luminousness; it can reproduce, beneath +the varied strokes of the chisel, the grain, running now one way, now +another, which is given to the porous skin by the close-packed bone +and muscle below. Moreover, it is so docile, so soft, yet so resistant, +that the iron can cut it like butter or engrave it lightly like agate; +so that the shadows may pour deep into chasms and pools, or run over the +surface in a network of shallow threads; light and shade becoming the +artist's material as much as the stone itself. + +The Greek, as a result, perceived form not as an appearance, but as a +reality; saw with the eye the complexities of projection and depression +perceivable by the hand. His craft was that of measurements, of minute +proportion, of delicate concave and convex--in one word, of _planes_. +His dull, malleable clay, and ductile, shining bronze had taught him +nothing of the way in which light and shadow corrode, blur, and pattern +a surface. His fancy, his skill, embraced the human form like the gypsum +of the moulder, received the stamp of its absolute being. The beauty he +sought was concrete, actual, the same in all lights and from all points +of view: the comely man himself, not the beautiful marble picture. + +The marble picture, on the other hand--a picture in however high and +complete relief--a picture for a definite point of view, arranged by +receiving light projected at a given angle on a surface cut deep or +shallow especially to receive it--was produced by the sculpture that +spontaneously grew out of the architectural stone-cutting of the Byzantine +and Lombard schools. The mouldings on a church, still more the stone +ornaments of its capitals, pulpit, and choir rails, seen, as they are, +each at various and peculiar heights above the eye, under light which, +however varying, can never get behind or above them if outdoor, below +or in flank if indoor--these mouldings, part of a great architectural +pattern of black and white, inevitably taught the masons all the subtle +play of light and surface, all the deceits of position and perspective. +And the mere manipulation of the marble taught them, as we have seen, +the exquisite finenesses of surface, texture, crease, accent, and line. +What the figure actually was--the real proportions and planes, the +actual form of the model--did not matter; no hand was to touch it, no +eye to measure; it was to be delightful only in the position which the +artist chose, and in no other had it a right to be seen. + + +II + +These were the two arts, originating from a material and a habit of work +which were entirely different, and which produced artistic necessities +diametrically opposed. It might be curious to speculate upon what would +have resulted had their position in history been reversed; what statues +we should possess had the marble-carving art born of architectural +decoration originated in Greece, and the art of clay and bronze flourished +in Christian and mediaeval Italy. Be this as it may, the accident of the +surroundings--of the habits of life and thought which pressed on the +artist, and combined with the necessities of his material method--appears +to have intensified the peculiarities organic in each of the two +sculptures. I say _appears_, because we must bear in mind that the +combination was merely fortuitous, and guard against the habit of +thinking that because a type is familiar it is therefore alone +conceivable. + +We all know all about the antique and the mediaeval _milieu_. It is +useless to recapitulate the influence, on the one hand, of antique +civilisation, with its southern outdoor existence, its high training +of the body, its draped citizens, naked athletes, and half-clothed +work-folk, its sensuous religion of earthly gods and muscular demigods; +or the influence, on the other hand, of the more complex life of the +Middle Ages, essentially northern in type, sedentary and manufacturing, +huddled in unventilated towns, with its constant pre-occupation, even +among the most sordid grossness, of the splendour of the soul, the +beauty of suffering, the ignominy of the body, and the dangers of bodily +prosperity. Of all this we have heard even too much, thanks to the +picturesqueness which has recommended the _milieu_ of Monsieur Taine +to writers more mindful of literary effect than of the philosophy of +art. But there is another historical circumstance whose influence, in +differentiating Greek sculpture from the sculpture of mediaeval Italy, +can scarcely be overrated. It is that, whereas in ancient Greece +sculpture was the important, fully developed art, and painting merely +its shadow; in mediaeval Italy painting was the art which best answered +the requirements of the civilisation, the art struggling with the most +important problems; and that painting therefore reacted strongly upon +sculpture. Greek painting was the shadow of Greek sculpture in an almost +literal sense: the figures on wall and base, carefully modelled, without +texture, symmetrically arranged alongside of each other regardless of +pictorial pattern, seem indeed to be projected on to the flat surface by +the statues; they are, most certainly, the shadow of modelled figures +cast on the painter's mind. + +The sculptor could learn nothing new from paintings where all that is +proper to painting is ignored:--plane always preferred to line, the +constructive details, perceptible only as projection, not as colour or +value (like the insertion of the leg and the thigh), marked by deep +lines that look like tattoo marks; and perspective almost entirely +ignored, at least till a late period. It is necessary thus to examine +Greek painting[16] in order to appreciate, by comparison with this +negative art, the very positive influence of mediaeval painting or +mediaeval sculpture. The painting on a flat surface--fresco or panel--which +became more and more the chief artistic expression of those times, taught +men to consider perspective; and, with perspective and its possibility +of figures on many planes, grouping: the pattern that must arise from +juxtaposed limbs and heads. It taught them to perceive form no longer as +projection or plane; but as line and light and shade, as something whose +charm lay mainly in the boundary curves, the silhouette, so much more +important in one single, unchangeable position than where, the eye +wandering round a statue, the only moderate interest of one point of +view is compensated by the additional interest of another. Moreover, +painting, itself the product of a much greater interest in colour than +Antiquity had known, forced upon men's attention the important influence +of colour upon form. For, although the human being, if we abstract the +element of colour, if we do it over with white paint, has indeed the +broad, somewhat vague form, the indecision of lines which characterises +antique sculpture; yet the human being as he really exists, with his +coloured hair, eyes, and lips, his cheeks, forehead, and chin patterned +with tint, has a much greater sharpness, precision, contrast of form, +due to the additional emphasis of the colour. Hence, as pictorial +perspective and composition undoubtedly inclined sculptors to seek +greater complexities of relief and greater unity of point of view, so +the new importance of drawing and colouring suggested to them a new view +of form. A human being was no longer a mere arrangement of planes and +of masses, homogeneous in texture and colour. He was made of different +substances, of hair, skin over fat, muscle, or bone, skin smooth, +wrinkled, or stubbly, and, besides this, he was painted different +colours. He had, moreover, what the Greeks had calmly whitewashed away, +or replaced by an immovable jewel or enamel: that extraordinary and +extraordinarily various thing called an Eye. + + [Footnote 16: At all events, Greek painting preceding or contemporaneous + with the great period of sculpture. Later painting was, of course, much + more pictorial.] + +All these differences between the monochrome creature--colour +abstracted--of the Greeks and the mottled real human being, the +sculptors of the Renaissance were led to perceive by their brothers the +painters; and having perceived, they were dissatisfied at having to omit +in their representation. But how show that they too had seen them? + +Here return to our notice two other peculiarities which distinguish +mediaeval sculpture from antique: first, that mediaeval sculpture, rarely +called upon for free open-air figures, was for ever producing architectural +ornament, seen at a given height and against a dark background; and +indoor decoration seen under an unvarying and often defective light; +and secondly, that mediaeval sculpture was the handicraft of the subtle +carver in delicate stone. + +The sculpture which was an essential part of Lombard and Gothic +architecture required a treatment that should adapt it to its particular +place and subordinate it to a given effect. According to the height +above the eye and the direction of the light, certain details had to be +exaggerated, certain others suppressed; a sculptured window, like those +of Orsanmichele, would not give the delightful pattern of black and +white unless some surfaces were more raised than others, some portions +of figure or leafage allowed to sink into quiescence, others to start +forward by means of the black rim of undercutting; and a sepulchral +monument, raised thirty feet above the spectator's eye, like those +inside Sta. Maria Novella, would present a mere intricate confusion +unless the recumbent figure, the canopy, and various accessories, were +such as to seem unnatural at the level of the eye. Thus, the heraldic +lions of one of these Gothic tombs have the black cavity of the jaw cut +by marble bars which are absolutely out of proportion to the rest of the +creature's body, and to the detail of the other features, but render the +showing of the teeth even at the other side of the transept. Again, in +the more developed art of the fifteenth century, Rossellino's Cardinal +of Portugal has the offside of his face shelved upwards so as to catch +the light, because he is seen from below, and the near side would +otherwise be too prominent; while the beautiful dead warrior, by an +unknown sculptor, at Ravenna has had a portion of his jaw and chin +deliberately cut away, because the spectator is intended to look down +upon his recumbent figure. If we take a cast of the Cardinal's head and +look down upon it, or hang a cast of the dead warrior on the wall, the +whole appearance alters; the expression is almost reversed and the +features are distorted. On the other hand, a cast from a real head, +placed on high like the Cardinal's, would become insignificant, and laid +at the height of a table, like the dead warrior's, would look lumbering +and tumid. Thus, again, the head of Donatello's Poggio, which is visible +and intelligible placed high up in the darkness of the Cathedral of +Florence, looks as if it had been gashed and hacked with a blunt knife +when seen in the cast at the usual height in an ordinary light. + +Now this subtle circumventing of distance, height, and darkness; this +victory of pattern over place; this reducing of light and shadow into +tools for the sculptor, mean, as we see from the above examples, +sacrificing the reality to the appearance, altering the proportions +and planes so rigorously reproduced by the Greeks, mean sacrificing the +sacred absolute form. And such a habit of taking liberties with what +can be measured by the hand, in order to please the eye, allowed the +sculptors of the Renaissance to think of their model no longer as +the homogeneous _white man_ of the Greeks, but as a creature in whom +structure was accentuated, intensified, or contradicted by colour and +texture. + +Furthermore, these men of the fifteenth century possessed the cunning +carving which could make stone vary in texture, in fibre, and almost in +colour. + +A great many biographical details substantiate the evidence of statues +and busts that the sculptors of the Renaissance carried on their business +in a different manner from the ancient Greeks. The great development in +Antiquity of the art of casting bronze, carried on everywhere for the +production of weapons and household furniture, must have accustomed +Greek sculptors (if we may call them by that name) to limit their personal +work to the figure modelled in clay. And the great number of their +works, many tediously constructed of ivory and gold, shows clearly that +they did not abandon this habit in case of marble statuary, but merely +gave the finishing strokes to a copy of their clay model, produced by +workmen whose skill must have been fostered by the apparently thriving +trade in marble copies of bronzes. + +It was different in the Renaissance. Vasari recommends, as obviating +certain miscalculations which frequently happened, that sculptors should +prepare large models by which to measure the capacities of their block +of marble. But these models, described as made of a mixture of plaster, +size, and cloth shavings over tow and hay, could serve only for the +rough proportions and attitude; nor is there ever any allusion to any +process of minute measurement, such as pointing, by which detail could +be transferred from the model to the stone. Most often we hear of small +wax models which the sculptors enlarged directly in the stone. Vasari, +while exaggerating the skill of Michelangelo in making his David out of +a block mangled by another sculptor, expresses no surprise at his having +chopped the marble himself; indeed, the anecdote itself affords evidence +of the commonness of such a practice, since Agostino di Duccio would not +have spoilt the block if he had not cut into it rashly without previous +comparison with a model.[17] We hear, besides, that Jacopo della +Quercia spent twelve years over one of the gates of S. Petronio, and +that other sculptors carried out similar great works with the assistance +of one man, or with no assistance at all,--a proceeding which would have +seemed the most frightful waste except in a time and country where +half of the sculptors were originally stone-masons and the other half +goldsmiths, that is to say, men accustomed to every stage, coarse or +subtle, of their work. The absence of replicas of Renaissance sculpture, +so striking a contrast to the scores of repetitions of Greek works, +proves, moreover, that the actual execution in marble was considered +an intrinsic part of the sculpture of the fifteenth century, in the +same way as the painting of a Venetian master. Phidias might leave the +carving of his statues to skilful workmen, once he had modelled the +clay, even as the painters of the merely designing and linear schools, +Perugino, Ghirlandaio, or Botticelli, might employ pupils to carry out +their designs on panel or wall. But in the same way as a Titian is not a +Titian without a certain handling of the brush, so a Donatello is not a +Donatello, or a Mino not a Mino, without a certain individual excellence +in the cutting of the marble. + + [Footnote 17: Several Greek vases and coins show the sculptor modelling + his figure; while in Renaissance designs, from that of Nanni di Banco + to a mediocre allegorical engraving in an early edition of Vasari, the + sculptor, or the personified art of Sculpture, is actually working with + chisel and mallet.] + +These men brought, therefore, to the cutting of marble a degree of +skill and knowledge of which the ancients had no notion, as they had no +necessity. In their hands the chisel was not merely a second modelling +tool, moulding delicate planes, uniting insensibly broad masses of +projection and depression. It was a pencil, which, according as it was +held, could emphasise the forms in sharp hatchings or let them die away +unnoticed in subdued, imperceptible washes. It was a brush which could +give the texture and the values of the colour--a brush dipped in various +tints of light and darkness, according as it poured into the marble the +light and the shade, and as it translated into polishings and rough +hewings and granulations and every variety of cutting, the texture of +flesh, of hair, and of drapery; of the blonde hair and flesh of children, +the coarse flesh and bristly hair of old men, the draperies of wool, of +linen, and of brocade. The sculptors of Antiquity took a beautiful human +being--a youth in his perfect flower, with limbs trained by harmonious +exercise and ripened by exposure to the air and sun--and, correcting +whatever was imperfect in his individual forms by their hourly experience +of similar beauty, they copied in clay as much as clay could give of his +perfections: the subtle proportions, the majestic ampleness of masses, +the delicate finish of limbs, the harmonious play of muscles, the serene +simplicity of look and gesture, placing him in an attitude intelligible +and graceful from the greatest possible distance and from the largest +variety of points of view. And they preserved this perfect piece of +loveliness by handing it over to the faithful copyist in marble, to the +bronze, which, more faithful still, fills every minutest cavity left by +the clay. Being beautiful in himself, in all his proportions and details, +this man of bronze or marble was beautiful wherever he was placed and +from wheresoever he was seen; whether he appeared foreshortened on a +temple front, or face to face among the laurel trees, whether shaded by +a portico, or shining in the blaze of the open street. His beauty must +be judged and loved as we should judge and love the beauty of a real +human being, for he is the closest reproduction that art has given of +beautiful reality placed in reality's real surroundings. He is the +embodiment of the strength and purity of youth, untroubled by the +moment, independent of place and of circumstance. + +Of such perfection, born of the rarest meeting of happy circumstances, +Renaissance sculpture knows nothing. A lesser art, for painting was then +what sculpture had been in Antiquity; bound more or less closely to +the service of architecture; surrounded by ill-grown, untrained bodies; +distracted by ascetic feelings and scientific curiosities, the sculpture +of Donatello and Mino, of Jacopo della Quercia and Desiderio da +Settignano, of Michelangelo himself, was one of those second artistic +growths which use up the elements that have been neglected or rejected +by the more fortunate and vigorous efflorescence which has preceded. +It failed in everything in which antique sculpture had succeeded; it +accomplished what Antiquity had left undone. Its sense of bodily beauty +was rudimentary; its knowledge of the nude alternately insufficient and +pedantic; the forms of Donatello's David and of Benedetto's St. John are +clumsy, stunted, and inharmonious; even Michelangelo's Bacchus is but +a comely lout. This sculpture has, moreover, a marvellous preference +for ugly old men--gross, or ascetically imbecile; and for ill-grown +striplings: except the St. George of Donatello, whose body, however, is +entirely encased in inflexible leather and steel, it never gives us the +perfection and pride of youth. These things are obvious, and set us +against the art as a whole. But see it when it does what Antiquity never +attempted; Antiquity which placed statues side by side in a gable, +balancing one another, but not welded into one pattern; which made +relief the mere repetition of one point of view of the round figure, the +shadow of the gable group; which, until its decline, knew nothing of the +pathos of old age, of the grotesque exquisiteness of infancy, of the +endearing awkwardness of adolescence; which knew nothing of the texture +of the skin, the silkiness of the hair, the colour of the eye. + + +III + +Let us see Renaissance sculpture in its real achievement. + +Here are a number of children by various sculptors of the fifteenth +century. This is the tiny baby whose little feet still project from a +sort of gaiter of flesh, whose little boneless legs cannot carry the fat +little paunch, the heavy big head. Note that its little skull is still +soft, like an apple, under the thin floss hair. Its elder brother or +sister is still vaguely contemplative of the world, with eyes that +easily grow sleepy in their blueness. Those a little older have learned +already that the world is full of solemn people on whom to practise +tricks; their features have scarcely accentuated, their hair has merely +curled into loose rings, but their eyes have come forward from below the +forehead, eyes and forehead working together already; and there are +great holes, into which you may dig your thumb, in the cheeks. Those of +fourteen or fifteen have deplorably thin arms, and still such terrible +calves; and a stomach telling of childish gigantic meals; but they have +the pert, humorous frankness of Verrocchio's David, who certainly flung +a jest at Goliath's unwieldy person together with his stone; or the +delicate, sentimental pretty woman's grace of Donatello's St. John of +the Louvre, and Benedetto da Maiano's: they will soon be poring over +the _Vita Nuova_ and Petrarch. Two other St. Johns--I am speaking of +Donatello's--have turned out differently. One, the first beard still +doubtful round his mouth, has already rushed madly away from earthly +loves; his limbs are utterly wasted by fasting; except his legs, which +have become incredibly muscular from continual walking; he has begun +to be troubled by voices in the wilderness--whether of angels or of +demons--and he flies along, his eyes fixed on his scroll, and with them +fixing his mind on unearthly things; he will very likely go mad, this +tempted saint of twenty-one. Here he is again, beard and hair matted, +almost a wild man of the woods, but with the gravity and self-possession +of a preacher; he has come out of the wilderness, overcome all temptations, +his fanaticism is now militant and conquering. This is certainly not +the same man, but perhaps one of his listeners, this old King David of +Donatello--a man at no time intelligent, whose dome-shaped head has +taken back, with the thin white floss hair that recalls infancy, an +infantine lack of solidity; whose mouth is drooping already, perhaps +after a first experience of paralysis, and his eyes getting vague in +look; but who, in this intellectual and physical decay, seems to have +become only the more full of gentleness and sweetness; misnamed David, a +Job become reconciled to his fate by becoming indifferent to himself, an +Ancient Mariner who has seen the water-snakes and blessed them and been +filled with blessing. + +These are all statues or busts intended for a given niche or bracket, a +given portico or window, but in a measure free sculpture. Let us now +look at what is already decoration. Donatello's Annunciation, the big +coarse relief in friable grey stone (incapable of a sharp line), picked +out with delicate gilding; no fluttering or fainting, the angel and the +Virgin grave, decorous, like the neighbouring pilasters. Again, his +organ-loft of flat relief, with granulated groundwork: the flattened +groups of dancing children making, with deep, wide shadows beneath their +upraised, linked arms, a sort of human trellis-work of black and white. +Mino's Madonna at Fiesole: the relief turned and cut so as to look out +of the chapel into the church, so that the Virgin's head, receiving the +light like a glory on the pure, polished forehead, casts a nimbus of +shadow round itself, while the saints are sucked into the background, +their accessories only, staff and gridiron, allowed to assert themselves +by a sharp shadow; a marvellous vision of white heavenly roses, their +pointed buds and sharp spines flourishing on martyrs' blood and incense, +grown into the close lips and long eyes, the virginal body and thin +hands of Mary. From these reliefs we come to the compositions, group +inside group, all shelving into portico and forest vista, of the pulpit +of Sta. Croce, the perspective bevelling it into concavities, like those +of panelling; the heads and projecting shoulders lightly marked as some +carved knob or ornament; to the magnificent compositions in light and +shade, all balancing and harmonising each other, and framed round by +garlands of immortal blossom and fruit, of Ghiberti's gates. + +Nor is this all. The sculpture of the Renaissance, not satisfied with +having portrayed the real human being made of flesh and blood, of bone +and skin, dark-eyed or flaxen-haired, embodied in the marble the +impalpable forms of dreams. Its latest, greatest, works are those +sepulchres of Michelangelo, whose pinnacle enthrones strange ghosts of +warriors, and whose steep sides are the unquiet couch of divinities +hewn, you would say, out of darkness and the light that is as darkness. + + + + +A SEEKER OF PAGAN PERFECTION + +BEING THE LIFE OF DOMENICO NERONI, PICTOR SACRILEGUS + + +Every time, of late years, of my being once more in Rome, I have been +subject to a peculiar mental obsession: retracing my steps, if not +materially, in fancy at least, to such parts of the city as bear witness +to the strange meeting of centuries, where the Middle Ages have altered +to their purposes, or filled with their significance, the ruined remains +of Antiquity. + +Such places are scarcer than one might have expected, and for that +reason perhaps more impressive, more fragmentary and enigmatic. There +are the colossal columns--great trickles and flakes of black etching as +with acid their marble--of the temple of Mars Ultor, with that Tuscan +palace of Torre della Milizia rising from among them. There is, inside +Ara Coeli--itself commemorating the legend of Augustus and the Sibyl--the +tomb of Dominus Pandulphus Sabelli, its borrowed vine-garlands and satyrs +and Cupids surmounted by mosaic crosses and Gothic inscriptions; and +outside the same church, on a ground of green and gold, a Mother of God +looking down from among gurgoyles and escutcheons on to the marble +river-god of the yard of the Capitol below. Then also, where pines and +laurels still root in the unrifled tombs, the skeleton feudal fortress, +gutted as by an earthquake, alongside of the tower of Caecilia Metella. +These were the places to which my thoughts were for ever recurring; to +them, and to nameless other spots, the street-corner, for instance, +where an Ionic pillar, with beaded and full-horned capital, is walled +into the side of an insignificant modern house. I know not whether, in +consequence of this straining to see the meeting-point of Antiquity and +the Middle Ages (like the fancy, sometimes experienced, to reach the +confluence of rivers), or rather as a cause thereof, but a certain story +has long lurked in the corners of my mind. Twenty years have passed since +first I was aware of its presence, and it has undergone many changes. It +is presumably a piece of my inventing, for I have neither read it nor +heard it related. But by this time it has acquired a certain traditional +veracity in my eyes, and I give to the reader rather as historical fact +than as fiction the study which I have always called to myself: _Pictor +Sacrilegus_. + + +I + +Domenico, the son of Luca Neroni, painter, sculptor, goldsmith, and +engraver, about whom, owing either to the scarcity of his works or +the scandal of his end, Vasari has but a few words in another man's +biography, must have been born shortly before or shortly after the year +1450, a contemporary of Perugino, of Ghirlandaio, of Filippino Lippi, +and of Signorelli, by all of whom he was influenced at various moments, +and whom he influenced by turns. + +He was born and bred in the Etruscan town of Volterra, of a family which +for generations had exercised the art of the goldsmith, stimulated, +perhaps, by the sight of ornaments discovered in Etruscan tombs, and +carrying on, peradventure, some of the Etruscan traditions of two +thousand years before. The mountain city, situate on the verge of the +malarious seaboard of Southern Tuscany, is reached from one side through +windings of barren valleys, where the dried-up brooks are fringed, +instead of reed, with the grey, sand-loving tamarisk; and from the other +side, across a high-lying moorland of stunted heather and sere grass, +whence the larks rise up scared by only a flock of sheep or a mare and +her foal, and you journey for miles without meeting a house or a clump +of cypresses. In front, with the white road zigzagging along their +crests, is a wilderness of barren, livid hillocks, separated by huge +fissures and crevassed by huge cracks, with here and there separate +rocks, projecting like Druidic stones from the valley of gaping ravines; +and beyond them all a higher mountain, among whose rocks and ilexes you +doubtfully distinguish the walls and towers of the Etruscan city. A mass +of Cyclopean wall and great black houses, grim with stone brackets and +iron hooks and stanchions, all for defence and barricade, Volterra looks +down into the deep valleys, like the vague heraldic animal, black and +bristly, which peers from the high tower of the municipal palace. One +wonders how this could ever have been a city of the fat, voluptuous +Etruscans, whose images lie propped up and wide-eyed on their stone +coffin-lids. The long wars of old Italic times, in which Etruria fell +before Rome, must have burned and destroyed, as one would think, the +land as well as the inhabitants, leaving but grey cinders and blackened +stone behind. Siena and Florence ruined Volterra once more in the Middle +Ages, isolating it near the pestilential Maremma and checking its growth +outward and inward. The cathedral, the pride of a mediaeval commonwealth, +is still a mean and unfinished building of the twelfth century. There +is no native art, of any importance, of a later period; what the town +possesses has come from other parts, the altar-pieces by Matteo di +Giovanni and Signorelli, for instance, and the marble candelabra, +carried by angels, of the school of Mino da Fiesole. + +In this remote and stagnant town, the artistic training of Domenico +Neroni was necessarily imperfect and limited throughout his boyhood +to the paternal goldsmith's craft. Indeed, it seems likely that some +peculiarities of his subsequent life as an artist, his laboriousness +disproportionate to all results, his persistent harping on unimportant +detail, and his exclusive interest in line and curve, were due not +merely to an unhappy and laborious temperament, but also to the long +habit of an art full of manual skill and cunning tradition, which +presented the eye with ingenious patterns, but rarely attempted, save in +a few church ornaments, more of the domain of sculpture, to tell a story +or express a feeling. + +Besides this influence of his original trade, we find in Domenico +Neroni's work the influence of his early surroundings. His native +country is such as must delight, or help to form, a painter of pale +anatomies. The painters of Southern Tuscany loved as a background the +arid and mountainous country of their birth. Taddeo di Bartolo placed +the Death of the Virgin among the curious undulations of pale clay and +sandy marl that stretch to the southernmost gates of Siena; Signorelli +was amused and fascinated by the odd cliffs and overhanging crags, +unnatural and grotesque like some Druidic monument, of the valleys of +the Paglia and the Chiana; and Pier della Francesca has left, in the +allegorical triumphs of Frederick of Urbino and his duchess, studies +most exquisite and correct, of what meets the traveller's eyes on the +watersheds of the central Apennine, sharp-toothed lines of mountain +peaks pale against the sky, dim distant whiteness of sea, and valleys +and roads and torrents twisting intricately as on a map. The country +about Volterra, revealing itself with rosy lividness at dawn, with +delicate periwinkle blue at sunset, through an open city gate or a gap +between the tall black houses, helped to make Neroni a lover of muscle +and sinew, of the strength and suppleness of movement, of the osseous +structure divined within the limbs; and made him shrink all his life +long, not merely from drapery or costume that blunted the lines of the +body, but from any warmth and depth of colour; till the figures stood +out like ghosts, or people in faded tapestries, from the pale lilacs and +greys and washed out cinnamons of his backgrounds. For the bold peaks +and swelling mountains of the valleys of the Arno and the Tiber, and the +depths of colour among vegetation and rivers, seemed crude and emphatic +to a man who carried in his memory those bosses of hill, pearly where +the waters have washed the sides, pale golden buff where a little sere +grass covers the rounded top; those great cracks and chasms, with the +white road snaking along the narrow table-land and the wide valleys; and +the ripple of far-off mountain chains, strong and restrained in curves, +exquisite in tints, like the dry white and purpled hemlock, and the +dusty lilac scabius, which seem to flower alone in that arid and +melancholy and beautiful country. + +"Colour," wrote Domenico Neroni, among a mass of notes on his art, +measurements, and calculations, "is the enemy of noble art. It is the +enemy of all precise and perfect form, since where colour exists form +can be seen only as juxtaposition of colour. For this reason it has +pleased the Creator to lend colour only to the inanimate world, as +to senseless vegetables and plants, and to the lower kinds of living +creatures, as birds, fishes, and reptiles; whereas nobler creatures, as +lions, tigers, horses, cattle, stags, and unicorns, are robed in white +or dull skins, the noblest breeds, indeed, both of horses, as those of +the Soldans of Egypt and Numidia, and of oxen, as those of the valleys +of the Clitumnus and Chiana, being white; whence, indeed, the poet Virgil +has said that such latter are fittest for sacrifice to the immortal +gods; 'hinc albi, Clitumne, greges,' and what follows. And man, the +masterpiece of creation, is white; and only in the less noble portions +of his body, which have no sensitiveness and no shape (being, indeed, +vegetative and deciduous), as hair and beard, partaking of colour. +Wherefore the ancient Romans and Greeks, portraying their gods, chose +white marble for material, and not gaudy porphyry or jasper, and +portrayed them naked. Whence certain moderns, calling themselves +painters, who muffle our Lord and the Holy Apostles in many-coloured +garments, thinking thereby to do a seemly and honourable thing, but +really proceeding basely like tailors, might take a lesson if they +could." + +The quotation from Virgil, and the allusion to the statues of the +immortal gods, shows that Neroni must have written these lines in +the later part of his career, when already under the influence of +that humanist Filarete, who played so important a part in his life, +and when possessed already by those notions which brought him to so +strange and fearful an end. But from his earliest years he sought +for form, despising other things. He passed with contempt through a six +months' apprenticeship at Perugia, railing at the great factory of +devotional art established there by Perugino, of whom, with his rows of +splay-footed saints and spindle-shanked heroes, he spoke with the same +sweeping contempt as later Michelangelo. At Siena, which he described +(much as its earlier artists painted it) as a town of pink toy-houses +and scarlet toy-towers, he found nothing to admire save the marble +fountain of Jacopo della Quercia, for the antique group of the Three +Graces, later to be drawn by the young Raphael, had not yet been given +to the cathedral by the nephew of Pius II. The sight of these noble +reliefs, particularly of the one representing Adam and Eve driven out of +Paradise, with their strong and well-understood nudities, determined him +to exchange painting for sculpture, and made him hasten to Florence to +see the works of Donatello and of Ghiberti. + +Domenico Neroni must have spent several years of his life--between +1470 and 1480--in Florence, but little of his work has remained in that +city,--little, at least, that we can identify with certainty. For taking +service, as he did, with the Pollaiolos, Verrocchio, Nanni di Banco, and +even with Filippino and Botticelli, wherever his inquisitive mind could +learn, or his restless, fastidious, laborious talent gain him bread, it +is presumable that much of his work might be discovered alongside that +of his masters, in the collective productions of the various workshops. +It is possible thus that he had a hand in much metal and relief work +of the Pollaiolos, and perhaps even in the embroidering and tapestries +of which they were undertakers; also in certain ornaments, friezes of +Cupids and dolphins, and exquisite shell and acanthus carving of the +monuments of Santa Croce; and it may be surmised that he occasionally +assisted Botticelli in his perspective and anatomy, since that master +took him to Rome when commissioned to paint in the chapel of Pope +Sixtus. Indeed, in certain little-known studies for Botticelli's Birth +of Venus and Calumny of Apelles one may discover, in the strong sweep of +the outline, in the solid fashion in which the figures are planted on +their feet--all peculiarities which disappear in the painted pictures, +where grace of motion and exquisitive research take the place of solid +draughtsman-ship--the hand of the artist whom the restless desire to +confront ever new problems alone prevented from attaining a place among +the great men of his time. + +For there was in Domenico Neroni, from the very outset of his career, a +curiosity after the hidden, a passion for the unattainable, which kept +him, with greater power than many of his contemporaries, and vastly +greater science, a mere student throughout his lifetime. He resembled +in some respects his great contemporary Leonardo, but while the eager +inquisitiveness of the latter was tempered by a singular power of +universal enjoyment, a love of luxury and joyousness in every form, the +intellectual activity of Neroni was exasperated into a kind of unhappy +mania by the fact that its satisfaction was the only happiness that he +could conceive. He would never have understood, or understanding would +have detested, the luxurious _dilettante_ spirit which made Leonardo +prefer painting to sculpture, because whereas the sculptor is covered +with a mud of marble dust, and works in a place disorderly with chips +and rubbish, the painter "sits at his easel, well dressed and at ease, +in a clean house adorned with pictures, his work accompanied by music +or the reading of delightful books, which, untroubled by the sound of +hammering and other noises, may be listened to with very great pleasure." +The workshop of Neroni, when he had one of his own, was full of cobwebs +and dust, littered with the remains of frugal and unsavoury meals, +and resolutely closed to the rich and noble persons in whose company +Leonardo delighted. And if Neroni, in his many-sided activity, eventually +put aside sculpture for painting, it was merely because, as he was wont +to say, a figure must needs look real when it is solid and you can +walk round it; but to make men and women rise out of a flat canvas or +plastered wall, and stand and move as if alive, is truly the work of a +god. + +Men and women, said Neroni; and he should have added men and women nude. +For the studies which he made of the anatomy of horses and dogs were +destined merely to shed light on the construction of human creatures; +and his elaborate and exquisite drawings of undulating hills and sinuous +rivers, nay, of growths of myrtle and clumps of daffodils, were intended +as practice towards drawing the more subtle lines and curves of man's +body. And as to clothes, he could not understand that great anatomists +like Signorelli should huddle their figures quite willingly in immense +cloaks and gowns; still less how exquisite draughtsmen like his friend +Botticelli (who had the sense of line like no other man since Frate +Lippo, although his people were oddly out of joint) could take pleasure +in putting half-a-dozen veils atop of each other, and then tying them +all into bunches and bunches with innumerable bits of tape! As to himself, +he invariably worked out every detail of the nude, in the vain hope that +the priests and monks for whom he worked would allow at least half of +those beautiful anatomies to remain visible; and when, with infinite +difficulties and bad language, he gradually gave in to the necessity of +some sort of raiment, it was of such a nature--the hose and jerkins of +the men-at-arms like a second skin, the draperies of the womankind as +clinging as if they had been picked out of the river, that a great many +pious people absolutely declined to pay the agreed on sum for paintings +more suited to Pagan than to Christian countries; and indeed Fra Girolamo +Savonarola included much work of Domenico's in his very finest burnings. + +Such familiarity with nude form was not easily attained in the fifteenth +century. Mediaeval civilisation gave no opportunities for seeing naked +or half-naked people moving freely as in the antique palaestra; and +there had yet been discovered too few antique marbles for the empiric +knowledge of ancient sculptors to be empirically inherited by modern +ones. Observation of the hired model, utterly insufficient in itself, +required to be supplemented by a thorough science of the body's +mechanism. But physiology and surgery were still in their infancy; +and artists could not, as they could after the teachings of Vesalius, +Fallopius, and Cesalpinus, avail themselves of the science accumulated +for medical purposes. Verrocchio and the Pollaiolos most certainly, and +Donatello almost without a doubt, practised dissection as a part of +their business, as Michelangelo, with the advantage of twenty years of +their researches behind him, practised it passionately in his turn. Of +all the men of his day, Domenico Neroni, however, was the most fervent +anatomist. He ran every risk of contagion and of punishment in order +to procure corpses from the hospital and the gibbet. He undermined his +constitution by breathing and handling corruption, and when his friends +implored him to spare his health, he would answer, although unable to +touch food for sickness, by paraphrasing the famous words of Paolo +Uccello, and exclaiming from among his grisly and abominable properties, +"Ah! how sweet a thing is not anatomy!" + +There was nothing, he said--for he spoke willingly to any one who +questioned him on these subjects--more beautiful than the manner in +which human beings are built, or indeed living creatures of any kind; +for, in the scarcity of corpses and skeletons, he would pick up on his +walks the bones of sheep that had died on the hill-sides, or those of +horses and mules furbished up by the scavenger dogs of the river-edge. +It was marvellous to listen to him when he was in the vein. He sat +handling horrible remains and talking about them like a lover about his +mistress or a preacher about God; indeed, bones, muscles, and tendons +were mistress and god all in one to this fanatical lover of human form. +He would insist on the loveliness of line of the scapula, finding in the +sweep of the _acromion_ ridge a fanciful resemblance to the pinion, and +in the angular shape of the _coracoid_ process to the neck and head of a +raven in full flight. Following with his finger the triangular outline +of the bone, he went on to explain how its freedom of movement is due to +its singular independence; laid loosely on the flat muscles behind the +upper ribs, it moves with absolute freedom, backwards and forwards, up +and down, unconnected with any other bone, till, turning the corner of +the shoulder, it is hinged rather than tied to the collar-bone; the +collar-bone itself free to move upwards from its articulation in the +sternum. And then talk of the great works of man! Talk of Brunellesco +and his cupola, of the engineers of the Duke of Calabria! Look at the +human arm: what engineer would have dared to fasten anything to such a +movable base as that? Yet an arm can swing round like a windmill, and +lift weights like the stoutest crane without being wrenched out of +its sockets, because the muscles act as pulleys in four different +directions. And see, under the big _deltoid_, which fits round the +shoulder like an epaulette and pulls the arm up, is the scapular +group, things like tidily sorted skeins, thick on the shoulder-blades, +diminished to a tendon string at their insertion in the arm; their +business is to pull the arm back, in opposition to the big pectoral +muscle which pulls it forwards. Here you have your arm working up, +backwards or forwards; but how about pulling it down? An exquisite +little arrangement settles that. Instead of being inserted with the rest +on the outside of the arm-bone, the lowest muscle takes another road, +and is inserted in the under part of the bone, in company with the great +_latissimus dorsi_, and these tightening while the _deltoid_ slackens, +pull the arm down. No other arrangement could have done it with so little +bulk; and an additional muscle on the under-arm or the ribs would have +spoilt the figure of Apollo himself. + +Among the paintings of contemporary artists, the one which at that time +afforded Domenico the most unmingled satisfaction was Pollaiolo's tiny +panel of Hercules and the Hydra. There! You might cover it with the palm +of your hand; but in that hand you would be holding the concentrated +strength and valour of the world, the true son of Jove, the most beautiful +muscles that ever were seen! At least the most beautiful save in the +statues of Donatello; for, of course, Donato was the greatest craftsman +that had ever lived; and Domenico spoke of him as, in Vasari's day, men +were to speak of Michelangelo. + +For I ask you, who save an angel in human shape could have modelled that +David, so young and triumphant and modest, treading on Goliath's head, +with toes just slightly turned downwards, and those sandals, of truly +divine workmanship? And that St. John in the Wilderness--how beautiful +are not his ribs, showing under the wasted pectoral muscles; and how one +sees that the _radius_ rolls across the _ulna_ in the forearm; surely +one's heart, rather than the statue, must be made of stone if one can +contemplate without rapture the exquisite rendering of the texture where +the shin-bone stands out from the muscles of the leg. Such must have +been the works of those famous Romans and Greeks, Phidias and Praxiteles. + +Such were the notions of Domenico of Volterra in the earlier part of his +career. For a change came gradually upon him after his first visit to +Rome, whither, about 1480, he accompanied Botticelli, Rosselli, and +Ghirlandaio, whom His Beatitude Pope Sixtus had sent for to decorate the +new chapel of the palace. + + +II + +We must not be deluded, like Domenico Neroni during his Florentine days, +into the easy mistake of considering mere realism as the veritable aim +of the art of his days. Deep in the life of that art, and struggling +for ever through whatever passion for scientific accuracy, technical +skill, or pathetic expression, is the sense of line and proportion, the +desire for pattern, growing steadily till its triumph under Michelangelo +and Raphael. + +This reveals itself earliest in architecture. The men of the fifteenth +century had lost all sense of the logic of construction. Columns, +architraves, friezes, and the various categories of actual stone +and brick work, occurred to them merely as so much line and curve, +applicable to the surface of their buildings, with not more reference +to their architecture than a fresco or an arras. The Pazzi Chapel, for +instance, is one agglomeration of architectural members which perform +no architectural function; but, taken as a piece of surface decoration, +say as a stencilling, what could be more harmonious? Or take Alberti's +famous church at Rimini; it is but a great piece of architectural +veneering, nothing that meets the eye doing any real constructive duty, +its exquisite decoration no more closely connected with the building +than the strips of damask and yards of gold braid used in other places +on holidays. As the fifteenth century treats the architectural detail +of Graeco-Roman art, so likewise does it proceed with its sculptured +ornament; all meaning vanishes before the absorbing interest in pattern. +For there is in antique architectural ornament a much larger proportion +of significance than can strike us at first. Thus the garlands of ivy +and fruit had actually hung round the tomb before being carved on its +sides; before ornamenting its corners the rams' heads and skulls of oxen +had lain for centuries on the altar. The medallions of nymphs, centaurs, +tritons, which to us are so meaningless and irrelevant, had a reference +either to the divinity or to the worshippers; and there is probably +almost as much spontaneous symbolism in the little cinerary box in the +Capitol (of a person called Felix), with its variously employed genii, +making music, carrying lanterns and torches, burning or extinguished +under a trellis hung with tragic masks, as in any Gothic tomb with +angels drawing the curtains of the deathbed. There has been, with the +change of religion, an interruption in the symbolic tradition; yet, +though we no longer interpret with readiness this dead language of +paganism, we feel, if we are the least attentive, that it contains +a real meaning. We feel that the sculptors cared not merely for the +representation, but also for the object represented. These things were +dear to them, a part of their life, their worship, their love; and they +put as much observation into their work as any Gothic sculptor, and +often as much fancy and humour (though both more beautiful), as one may +judge, with plenty of comparison at hand, by a certain antique altar in +Siena Cathedral, none of whose Gothic animals come up to the wonderful +half-human rams' heads and bored, cross griffins of this forlorn fragment +of paganism. The significance of classic ornament the men of the +fifteenth century straightway overlooked. They laid hold of it as +merely so much form, joining sirens, griffins, garlands, rams' heads, +victories, without a suspicion that they might mean or suggest anything. +They do, in fact, mean nothing, in most Florentine work, besides +exquisite pattern; in the less subtle atmosphere of Venice they reach +that frank senselessness which has moved the wrath of Ruskin. But what a +charm have not even those foolish monuments of doges and admirals, tier +upon tier of triumphal arch, of delicately flowered column and scalloped +niche, and then rows of dainty warriors and virtues; how full of meaning +to the eye and spirit is not this art so meaningless to the literary +mind! + +Of course the painting of that age never became an art of mere pattern +like the architecture. The whole life and thought of the time was poured +into it; and the art itself developed in its upward movement a number +of scientific interests--perspective, anatomy, expression--which +counteracted that tendency to seek for mere beauty of arrangement and +detail. Yet the perfection of Renaissance art never lies in any realism +in our modern sense, still less in such suggestiveness as belongs to our +literary age; and its triumph is when Raphael can vary and co-ordinate +the greatest number of heads, of hands, feet, and groups, as in the +School of Athens, the Parnassus, the marvellous little Bible histories +of the Loggie; above all, in that "Vision of Ezekiel," which is the very +triumph of compact and harmonious composition; when Michelangelo can +tie human beings into the finest knots, twist them into the most shapely +brackets, frameworks, and key-stones. Even throughout the period of +utmost realism, while art was struggling with absorbing problems, men +never dreamed of such realism as ours. They never painted a corner of +nature at random, merely for the sake of veracity; they never modelled +a modern man or woman in their real everyday dress and at their real +everyday business. In the midst of everything composition ruled supreme, +and each object must needs find its echo, be worked into a scheme of +lines, or, with the Venetians, of symmetrically arranged colours. There +is an anatomical engraving by Antonio Pollaiolo, one of the strongest +realists of his time, which sums up the tendencies of fifteenth-century +art. It is a combat of twelve naked men, extraordinarily hideous and +in hideous attitudes, but they are so arranged that their ungainly and +flayed-looking limbs form with the background of gigantic ivy tendrils +an intricate and beautiful pattern, such as we find in Morris's paper +and stuffs. + +This hankering after pattern, this desire for beauty as such, became +manifest in Domenico Neroni after his first sojourn in Rome. + +The Roman basilicas, with their stately rows of columns, Corinthian and +Ionic, taken from some former temple, and their sunken floor, solemn +with Byzantine patterns of porphyry and serpentine, had impressed with +their simplicity and harmony the mind of this Florentine, surrounded +hitherto by the intricacies of Gothic buildings. They had formed the +link to those fragments of ancient architecture, more intact but also +more hidden than in our days, whose dignity of proportion and grace of +detail--vast rosetted arches and slender rows of fluted pillars--our +modern and Hellenicised taste has treated with too ready contempt. For +this Vitruvian art, unoriginal and bungling in the eyes of our purists, +was yet full of the serenity, the ampleness which the Middle Ages lacked, +and affected the men of the fifteenth century much like a passage of +Virgil after a canto of Dante. It formed the fit setting for those +remains of antique sculpture which were then gradually beginning to be +drawn from the earth. Of such statues and reliefs--which the men of +the Renaissance regarded as the work rather of ancient Rome than of +Greece--a certain amount was beginning to be carried all over Italy, and +notably to the houses of the rich Florentine merchants, who incrusted +their staircase walls with inscriptions and carvings, and set statues +and sarcophagi under the columns of their courtyards. But such sculpture +was chosen rather for its portable character than its excellence; and +although single busts and slabs were diligently studied by Florentine +artists, there could not have existed in Florence a number of antiques +sufficient to impress the ideal of ancient art upon men surrounded on +all sides by the works of medieval painters and sculptors. + +To the various sights of Rome must be due that sudden enlarging of +style, that kind of new classicism, which distinguishes the work of +fifteenth-century masters after their visit to the Eternal City, enabling +Ghirlandaio, Signorelli, Perugino, and Botticelli to make the Sixtine +Chapel, and even the finical Pinturicchio, the Vatican library, into +centres of fresh influence for harmony and beauty. + +The result upon Domenico Neroni was a momentary confusion in all his +artistic conceptions. Too much of a seeker for new things, for secret +and complicated knowledge, to undergo a mere widening of style like his +more gifted or more placid contemporaries, he fell foul of his previous +work and his previous masters, without finding a new line or new ideals. +The frescoes of Castagno, the little panels of the Pollaiolos, nay, even +the works of Donatello, were no longer what they had seemed before his +Roman journey, and even what he had remembered them in Rome; for it is +with more noble things, even as with the rooms which we inhabit, which +strike us as small and dingy only on returning from larger and better +lighted ones. + +It is to this period of incipient but ill-understood classicism that +belongs the only work of Domenico Neroni--at least the only work still +extant nowadays--which possesses, over and above its artistic or +scientific merit, that indefinable quality which we must simply call +_charm_; to this time, with the one exception of the famous woodcuts +done for Filarete. Domenico began about this time, and probably under +the stress of necessity, to make frontispieces for the books with which +Florentine printers were rapidly superseding the manuscripts of twenty +years before: collections of sermons, of sonnets, lives of saints, +editions of Virgil and Terence, quaint versified encyclopaedias, and even +books on medicine and astrology. From these little woodcuts, groups of +saints round the Cross, with Giotto's tower and Brunellesco's dome in +the distance, pictures of Fathers of the Church or ancient poets seated +at desks in neatly panelled closets--always with their globes, books, +and pot of lilies, and a vista of cloisters; or battles between chaste +viragos, in flying Botticellian draperies, and slim, naked Cupids; from +such frontispieces Domenico passed on to larger woodcuts, destined to +illustrate books never printed, or perhaps, like the so-called _playing +cards of Mantegna_ and certain prints of Robetta, to be bought as cheap +ornaments for walls. Some of those that remain to us have a classical +stiffness, reminding one of the Paduan school; others, and these his +best, remind one of the work of Botticelli. There is, for instance, the +figure of a Muse, elaborately modelled under her ample drapery, seated +cross-legged by a playing fountain, on a carpet of exquisitely designed +ground-ivy, a little bare trellis behind her, a tortoise lyre in her +hand; which has in it somewhat of that odd, vague, questioning character, +half of eagerness, half of extreme lassitude, which we find in +Botticelli. Only that in Neroni's work it seems not the outcome of a +certain dreamy spiritual dissatisfaction--the dissatisfaction which +makes us feel that Botticelli's flower-wreathed nymphs may end in the +pool under the willows like Ophelia--but rather of a torturing of line +and attitude in search of grace. Grace! Unclutchable phantom, which +had appeared tantalisingly in Neroni's recollections of the antique, a +something ineffable, which he could not even see clearly when it was +there before him, accustomed as he had been to all the hideousness of +anatomised reality. In these woodcuts he seems hunting it for ever; and +there is one of them which is peculiarly significant, of a nymph in +elaborately wound robes and veils, striding, with an odd, mad, uncertain +swing, through fields of stiff grass and stunted rushes, a baby faun in +her bosom, another tiny goat-legged creature led by the hand, while +she carries uncomfortably, in addition to this load, a silly trophy of +wild-flowers tied to a stick; the personification almost, this lady with +the wide eyes and crazy smile, of the artist's foolishly and charmingly +burdened journey in quest of the unattainable. The imaginative quality, +never intended or felt by the painter himself, here depends on his +embodying longings after the calm and stalwart goddesses on sarcophagus +and vase, in the very thing he most seeks to avoid, a creature borrowed +from a Botticelli allegory, or one of the sibyls of the unspeakable +Perugino himself! The circumstances of this quest, and the accidental +meeting in it of the antique and the mediaeval, the straining, the +Quixote-riding or Three-King pilgrimaging after a phantom, gives to +such work of Domenico's that indefinable quality of _charm_; the man +does not indeed become a poet, but in a measure a subject for poetry. + + +III + +In order to understand what must have passed in the mind of one of those +Florentines of the fifteenth century, we must realise the fact that, +unlike ourselves, they had not been brought up under the influence of +the antique, and, unlike the ancients, they had not lived in intimacy +with Nature. The followers of Giotto had studied little beyond the head +and hands, and as much of the body as could be guessed at under drapery +or understood from movement; and this achievement, with no artistic +traditions save those of the basest Byzantine decay, was far greater +than we easily appreciate. It remained for the men of the fifteenth +century, Donatello, Ghiberti, Masaccio, and their illustrious followers, +to become familiar with the human body. To do so is easy for every one +in our day, when we are born, so to speak, with an unconscious habit +of antique form, diffused not merely by ancient works of art in marble +or plaster, but by more recent schools of art, painting as well as +sculpture, themselves the outcome of classical imitation. The early +Italian Renaissance had little or none of these facilitations. Fragments +of Greek and Roman sculpture were still comparatively uncommon before +the great excavations of the sixteenth century; nor was it possible for +men so unfamiliar, not merely with the antique, but with Nature itself, +to profit very rapidly by the knowledge and taste stored up even in +those fragments. It was necessary to learn from reality to appreciate +the antique, however much the knowledge of the antique might later +supplement, and almost supplant, the study of reality. So these men of +the fifteenth century had to teach themselves, in the first instance, +the very elements of this knowledge. And here their position, while +yet so unlike ours, was even more utterly unlike that of the ancients +themselves. The great art of Greece undoubtedly had its days of +ignorance; but for those ancient painters and sculptors, who for +generations had watched naked lads exercising in the school or +racecourse, and draped, half-naked men and women walking in the +streets and working in the fields, their ignorance was of the means +of representation, not of the object represented. It is the hand, the +tool which is at fault in those constrained, simpering warriors of the +schools of AEgina, in those slim-waisted daemonic dancers of the Apulian +vases; the eye is as familiar with the human body, the mind as accustomed +to select its beauty from its ugliness, as the eye and mind of such of us +as cannot paint are familiar nowadays with the shapes and colours, with +the charm of the trees and meadows that we love. The contemporaries, on +the contrary, of Donatello had received from the sculptors of the very +farthest Middle Ages, those who carved the magnificent patterns of +Byzantine coffins and the exquisite leafage of Longobard churches, a +remarkable mastery over the technical part of their craft. The hand +was cunning, but the eye unfamiliar. Hence it comes that the sculpture +of the earlier Renaissance displays perfection of workmanship, which +occasionally blinds us to its poverty of form, and even to its +deficiency of science. And hence also the rapidity with which every +additional item of knowledge is put into practice that seems to argue +perfect familiarity. But these men were not really familiar with their +work. The dullest modern student, brought up among casts and manuals, +would not be guilty of the actual anatomical mistakes committed every +now and then by these great anatomists, so passionately curious of +internal structure, so exquisitely faithful to minute peculiarity, let +alone the bunglings of men so certain of their pencil, so exquisitely +keen to form, as Botticelli. As a matter of fact, every statue or drawn +figure of this period represents a hard fight with ignorance and with +unfamiliarity worse than ignorance. The grosser the failure hard-by, the +more splendid the real achievement. For every limb modelled truthfully +from the life, every gesture rendered correctly, every bone or muscle +making itself felt under the skin, every crease or lump in the surface, +is so much conquered from the unknown. + +So long as this study, or rather this ignorance, continued, the antique +could be appreciated only very partially, and almost exclusively in the +points in which it differed least from the works of these modern men. +It must have struck them by its unerring science, its great truthfulness +to nature, but its superior beauty could not have appealed to artists +too unfamiliar with form to think of selecting it. + +The study of antique proportion, the reproduction of antique types, so +visible in the sculptures of Michelangelo, of Cellini, and of Sansovino, +and no less in the painting of Raphael, of Andrea, and even of the later +Venetians, was very unimportant in the school of Donatello; and it is +probable that he and his pupils did not even perceive the difference +between their own works and the old marbles, which they studied merely +as so many realistic documents. + +During his Florentine days Domenico Neroni, like his masters, was +unconscious of the real superiority of the antique, and blind to its +difference from what his contemporaries and himself were striving to +produce. He did not perceive that the David of Donatello and that of +Verrocchio were unlike the marble gods and heroes with whom he would +complacently compare them, nor that the bas-reliefs of the divine +Ghiberti were far more closely connected with the Gothic work of +Orcagna, even of the Pisans, than with those sculptured sarcophagi +collected by Cosimo and Piero dei Medici. It was only when his insatiate +curiosity had exhausted those problems of anatomy which had still +troubled his teachers that he was able to see what the antique really +was, or rather to see that the modern was not the same thing. Ghirlandaio, +Filippino, Signorelli, and Botticelli undoubtedly were affected by +a similar intuition of the Antique; but they were diverted from its +thorough investigation by the manifold other problems of painting as +distinguished from sculpture, and by the vagueness, the unconsciousness +of great creative activity: the antique became one of the influences +in their development, helping very quietly to enlarge and refine their +work. + +It was different with Domenico, in whom the man of science was much more +powerful than the artist. His nature required definite decisions and +distinct formulas. It took him some time to understand that the school +of Donatello differed absolutely from the antique, but the difference +once felt, it appeared to him with extraordinary clearness. + +He never put his thoughts into words, and probably never admitted even +to himself that the works he had most admired were lacking in beauty; +he merely asserted that the statues of the old Romans and Greeks were +astonishingly beautiful. In reality, however, he was perpetually +comparing the two, and always to the disadvantage of the moderns. It is +possible in our day to judge justly the comparative merits of antique +sculpture and of that of the early Renaissance; or rather to appreciate +them as two separate sorts of art, delightful in quite different ways, +letting ourselves be charmed not more by the actual beauty of form, +and nobility of movement of the one than by the simplicity, the very +homeliness, the essentially human quality of the other. To us there +is something delightful in the very fact that the Davids of Donatello +and Verrocchio are mere ordinary striplings from the street and the +workshop, that the singers of Luca della Robbia are simple unfledged +choir-boys, and the Virgins of Mino Florentine fine ladies; we have +enough of antique perfection, we have had too much of pseudo-antique +faultlessness, and we feel refreshed by this unconsciousness of beauty +and ugliness. A contemporary could not enter into such feelings, he +could not enjoy his own and his fellows' _naivete_; besides, the antique +was only just becoming manifest, and therefore triumphant. To Domenico, +Donatello's David became more and more unsatisfactory, faulty above the +waist, positively ungainly below, weak and lubberly; how could so divine +an artist have been satisfied with that flat back, those narrow shoulders +and thick thighs? He felt freer to dislike the work of Verrocchio, his +own teacher, and a man without Donatello's overwhelming genius; that +David of his, with his immense head and wizen face, his pitiful child's +arms and projecting clavicles, straddling with hand on hip; was it +possible that a great hero, the slayer of a giant (Domenico's notions +of giants were taken rather from the romances of chivalry recited in +the market than from study of Scripture) should have been made like +that? And so, like his great contemporary Mantegna in far-off Lombardy, +Domenico turned that eager curiosity with which he had previously sought +for the secret of flayed limbs and fleshless skeletons, to studying the +mystery of proportion and beauty which was hidden, more subtly and +hopelessly, in the broken marbles of the Pagans. + +It happened one day, somewhere about the year 1485, that he was called +to examine a group of Bacchus and a Faun, recently brought from Naples +by the banker Neri Altoviti, of the family which once owned a charming +house, recently destroyed, whose triple row of pillared balconies used +to put an odd Florentine note into the Papal Rome, turning the swirl of +the Tiber opposite Saint Angelo's into a reach of the Arno. The houses +of the Altovitis in Florence were in that portion of the town most +favoured by the fifteenth century, already a little way from the market: +the lion on the tower of the Podesta, and the Badia steeple printing the +sky close by; while not far off was the shop where the good bookseller +Vespasiano received orders for manuscripts, and conversed with the +humanists whose lives he was to write. The Albizis and Pandolfinis, +illustrious and numerous families, struck in so many of their members by +the vindictiveness of the Medicis, had their houses in the same quarter, +and at the corner of the narrow street hung the carved escutcheon--two +fishes rampant--of the Pazzis: their house shut up and avoided by the +citizens, who had so recently seen the conspirators dangling in hood and +cape from the windows of the public palace. The house of the Altovitis +was occupied on the ground floor by great warehouses, whose narrow, +grated windows were attainable only by a steep flight of steps. The +court was surrounded on three sides by a cloister or portico, which +repeated itself on the first and second floors, with the difference that +the lowest arches were supported by rude square pillars, ornamented +with only a carved marigold, while the uppermost weighed on stout oaken +shafts, between which ropes were stretched for the drying of linen; and +the middle colonnade consisted of charming Tuscan columns, where Sirens +and Cupids and heraldic devices replaced the acanthus or rams' horns of +the capitals. It was to this middle portion of the house that Domenico +ascended up a noble steep-stepped staircase, protected from the rain +by a vaulted and rosetted roof, for it was external and occupied the +side of the yard left free from cloisters. The great banker had bidden +Domenico to his midday meal, which was served with a frugality now fast +disappearing, but once habitual even among the richest Florentines. But +though the food was simple and almost scanty, nearly forty persons sat +down to meat together, for Neri Altoviti held to the old plan, commended +by Alberti in his dialogue on the governing of a household, that the +clerks and principal servants of a merchant were best chosen among his +own kinsfolk, living under his roof, and learning obedience from the +example of his children. Despite this frugality, the dining-room was, +though bare, magnificent. There were none of those carpets and Eastern +stuffs which surprised strangers from the North in the voluptuous little +palaces of contemporary Venetians, and the benches were hard and narrow. +But the ceiling overhead was magnificently arranged in carved compartments, +great gold sunflowers and cherubs projecting from a dark blue ground +among the brown raftering; in the middle of the stencilled wall was one +of those high sideboards so frequently shown in old paintings, covered +with gold and silver dishes and platters embossed by the most skilful +craftsmen; and at one end a great washing trough and fountain, such as +still exist in sacristies, ornamented with groups of dancing children +by Benedetto da Maiano; while behind the high seat of the father of +the family a great group of saints, emerging from blooming lilies and +surrounded by a glory of angels, was hanging in a frame divided into +carved compartments: the work, panel and frame, of the late Brother +Filippo Lippi. At one end of the board sat all the men, arranged +hierarchically, from the father in his black loose robe to lads in short +plaited tunic and striped hose; the womankind were seated together, and +the daughters, even the mother of the house, modest and almost nunlike +in apparel and head-dress, would rise and help to wait on the men, with +that silent and grave courtesy which, according to Vespasiano, had +disappeared from Florence with Alessandra dei Bardi. There was little +speech, and only in undertones; a Franciscan said a long grace, and +afterwards, and in the middle of the meal, a young student, educated by +the frequent munificence of the Altovitis, read out loud a chapter of +Cicero's "De Senectute;" for Neri, although a busy banker, with but +little time for study, was not behind his generation in the love of +letters and philosophy. + +After meat Messer Neri dismissed the rest of the company to their various +avocations; the ladies silently retired to superintend the ironing and +mending of the house linen, and Domenico was escorted by his host to see +the newly arrived piece of statuary. It had been placed already in the +banker's closet, where he could feast his eyes on its perfection while +attending to his business or improving his mind by study. This closet, +compared to the rest of the house, was small and low-roofed. At its +end, as we see in the pictures of Van Eyck and Memling, opened out the +conjugal chamber, reflecting its vast, red-covered bed, raised several +steps, its crucifix and praying-stool, and its latticed window in a +circular mirror framed in cut facets, which hung opposite on the wall of +the closet. The latter was dark, a single trefoiled window admitting on +either side of its column and through its greenish bottle-glass but +little light from the narrow street. The chief furniture consisted of +shelves carrying books, small antique bronzes, some globes, a sand-glass, +and panel cupboards, ornamented with pictures of similar objects, and +with ingenious perspectives of inlaid wood. An elaborate iron safe, +painted blue and studded with beautiful metal roses, stood in a corner. +There were two or three arm chairs of carved oak for visitors. The +master sat upon a bench behind an oaken counter or desk, very much like +St. Jerome in his study. On the wall behind, and above his head, hung a +precious Flemish painting (Flemish paintings were esteemed for their +superior devoutness) representing the Virgin at the foot of the Cross, +with a Nativity and a Circumcision on either of the opened shutters. It +made a glowing patch of vivid geranium and wine colour, of warm yellow +glazing on the oak of the wall. On the counter or writing-table stood a +majolica pot with three lilies in it, a pile of manuscript and ledgers, +and a human skull alongside of a crucifix, beautifully wrought of bronze +by Desiderio da Settignano. A Latin translation of Plato's "Phaedo" was +spread open on the desk, together with one of the earliest printed +copies of the "Divine Comedy." + +Messer Neri did not take his seat at the counter, but, after a pause, +and with some solemnity, drew a curtain of dark brocade which had been +spread across one end of the closet, and displayed his new purchase. + +"I have it from the king, for the settling of a debt of a thousand +crowns contracted with my father, when he was Duke of Calabria," said +the banker, with due appreciation of the sum. "'Tis said they found it +among the ruins of that famous palace of the Emperor Tiberius of which +Tacitus has told us." + +The two marble figures, to which time and a long sojourn underground +had given a brownish yellow colour, reddish in places with rust stains, +stood out against a background of Flemish tapestry, whose emaciated +heads of kings and thin bodies of warrior saints made a confused pattern +on the general dusky blue and green. The group was in wonderful +preservation: the figure of Bacchus intact, that of the young faun +lacking only the arm, which had evidently been freely extended. + +It exists in many repetitions and variations in most of our museums; a +work originally of the school of Praxiteles, but in none of the copies +handed to us of excellence sufficient to display the hand of the +original sculptor. Besides, we have been spoilt by familiarity with an +older and more powerful school, by knowledge of a few great masterpieces, +for complete appreciation of such a work. But it was different four +hundred years ago; and Domenico Neroni stood long and entranced before +the group. The principal figure embodied all those beauties which he had +been striving so hard to understand: it was, in the most triumphant +manner, the absolute reverse of the figures of Donatello. + +The young god was represented walking with leisurely but vigorous step, +supporting himself upon the shoulder of the little satyr as the vine +supports itself, with tendrils trailed about branches and trunk, on the +propping tree from which the child Ampelos took his name. Like the head +with its elaborately dressed curls, the beautiful body had an ampleness +and tenderness that gave an impression almost womanly till you noticed +the cuirass-like sit of the chest on the loins, and the compressed +strength of the long light thighs. The creature, as you looked at him, +seemed to reveal more and more, beneath the roundness and fairness of +surface, the elasticity and strength of an athlete in training. But when +the eye was not exploring the delicate, hard, and yet supple depressions +and swellings of the muscles, the slender shapeliness of the long legs +and springy feet, the back bulging with strong muscles above, and going +in, tight, with a magnificent dip at the waist; all impressions were +merged in a sense of ease, of suavity, of full-blown harmony. Here was +no pomp of anatomical lore, of cunning handicraft, but the life seemed +to circulate strong and gentle in this exquisite effortless body. And +the creature was not merely alive with a life more harmonious than +that of living men or carved marbles, but beautiful, equally in simple +outline if you chose that, and in subtle detail when that came under +your notice, with a beauty that seemed to multiply itself, existing in +all manners, as it can only in things that have life, in perfect flowers +and fruits, or high-bred Oriental horses. Of such things did the +under-strata of consciousness consist in Neroni--vague impressions +of certain bunches of grapes with their great rounded leaves hanging +against the blue sky, of the flame-like tapered petals of wild tulips in +the fields, of the golden brown flanks of certain horses, and the broad +white foreheads of the Umbrian bullocks; forming as it were a background +for the perception of this god, for no man or woman had ever been like +unto him. + +Domenico remained silent, his arms folded on his breast; it was not a +case for talking. + +But the young man who had read Cicero aloud at table had come up behind +him, and thought it more seemly to praise his patron's new toy, while +at the same time displaying his learning; so he cleared his throat, and +said in a pompous manner:-- + +"It is stated in the fifth chapter of the Geography of Strabo that the +painter Parrhasius, having been summoned by the inhabitants of Lindos to +make them an image of their tutelary hero Hercules, obtained from the +son of Jupiter that he should appear to him in a dream, and thus enable +him worthily to portray the perfections of a demigod. Might we not be +tempted to believe that the divine son of Semele had vouchsafed a +similar boon to the happy sculptor of this marble?" + +But Domenico only bit his thumb and sighed very heavily. + + +IV + +To the men of those days, which have taken their name from the revival +of classical studies, Antiquity, although studied and aped till its +phrases, feelings, and thoughts had entered familiarly into all life, +remained, nevertheless, a period of permanent miracle. It was natural, +therefore, to the contemporaries of Poggius and AEneas Sylvius, of +Ficinus and Politian, that the art of the Romans and Greeks should, like +their poetry, philosophy, and even their virtues, be of transcendent and +unqualified splendour. Why it should be thus they asked as little as why +the sun shines, mediaeval men as they really were, and accepting quite +simply certain phenomena as the result of inscrutable virtues. Even later, +when Machiavelli began to examine why the ancients had been more valorous +and patriotic than his contemporaries, nay, when Montaigne expounded +with sceptical cynicism the superior sanity and wisdom of Pagan days, +people were satisfied to think--when they thought at all--that antique +art was excellent because it belonged to antiquity. And it was not till +the middle of the eighteenth century that the genius of Winkelmann brought +into fruitful contact the study of ancient works of art, and that of the +manners and notions of antiquity, showing the influence of a civilisation +which cultivated bodily beauty as an almost divine quality, and making +us see behind that beautiful nation of marble the generations of living +athletes, among whom the sculptor had found his critics and his models. + +To a man like Domenico Neroni, devoid of classical learning and +accustomed to struggling with anatomy and perspective, the problem of +ancient art was not settled by the fact of its antiquity. He had gone +once more to Rome on purpose to see as many old marbles as possible, +and he brought to their study the feverish curiosity with which in +former years he had flayed and cut up corpses and spent his nights in +calculations of perspective. To such a mind, where modern scientific +methods were arising among mediaeval habits of allegory and mysticism, +the statues and reliefs which he was perpetually analysing became a sort +of subsidiary nature, whose riddles might be read by other means than +mere investigation; for do not the forces of Nature, its elemental +spirits, give obedience to wonderful words and potent combinations of +numbers? + +Certain significant facts had flashed across his mind in his studies +of that almost abstract, nay, almost cabalistic thing, the science of +bodily proportions. It was plain that the mystery of antique beauty--the +ancient symmetry, _symmetria prisca_ as a humanist designs it in his +epitaph for Leonardo da Vinci--was but a matter of numbers. For a man's +length, if he stand with outstretched arms, is the same from finger tip +to finger tip as his length when erect from head to feet, namely, eight +times the length of his head. Now eight heads, if divided into halves, +give four as the measure of throat and thorax; and four heads to the +length of the leg from the acetabulum to the heel, divided themselves +into two heads going to the thigh and two heads to the shank; while in +the cross measurement two heads equal the breadth of the chest, and +three measure the length from the shoulder to the middle finger. These +measures--a mere rough rule of thumb in our eyes--contained to this +mediaeval mind the promise of some great mystery. To him, accustomed to +hear all the occurrences of Nature, and all human concerns referred to +astrological calculations, and conceiving the universe as governed by +spirits--in shape, perhaps, like the Primum Mobile, the Mercurius and +Jupiter of Mantegna's playing cards, crowned with stars and poised upon +globes--it was as if the divining rod were turning pertinaciously to one +spot in the earth, where, had he but the necessary tools, he must strike +upon veins of the purest gold, or cause water to spirt high in the air. +This number _eight_, and the pertinacity of its recurrence, puzzled him +intensely. It seemed to point so clearly, much as in music the sensitive +seventh points to the tonic, to a sort of resolution on the number nine. +And if only nine could be established, it would seem to explain so +much.... For five being man's numeral in creation (and is not the +measurement of his face also _five eyes_?), it makes, when added to +four, the number of the material elements over which he dominates, +_nine_, which would thus represent the supremacy or perfection of man. +Man's power of reproduction being represented by three, its multiple +nine would be still more obviously important. How to turn this eight +into nine became Domenico's study, and he took measurement after +measurement for this purpose. At length he remembered that man's body +is a unity, therefore represented by the number one, and that will, +judgment, and supremacy are also comprised in the unit. Now one and +eight make nine beyond all possibility of doubt, and the formula--"man's +body is a unity--or one"--composed of harmonies of eight, would give +the formula _nine_ meaning _man's supremacy is expressed in his body_. +The importance of working round to this famous nine will be clear when +we reflect that, according to the Kabbala and the lost sacred book of +Hermes Trismegistus--the Pimandra, doubtless, which he is represented, +on the floor of Siena Cathedral, as offering to a Jew and a Gentile--nine +represents the sun and all beautiful bright things that draw their +influence from it, as the gleam of beaten gold, the rustle of silken +stuffs, the smell of the flower heliotrope, and all such men as +delineate human beings with colours, or make their effigy in stone or +metal; moreover, Phoebus Apollo, whom the poets describe as the most +beautiful of the gods, as indeed he is represented in all statues and +reliefs. + +Domenico would often discuss these matters with a learned man who +greatly frequented his company. This was the humanist Niccolo Feo, known +as Filarete. Filarete was a native of Southern Apulia, a bastard of the +house of the Counts of Sulmona, who, in order to prevent any plots +against the legitimate branch, had handsomely provided for him in an +abbey of which they enjoyed the patronage. But his restless spirit +drove him from the cloister, and impelled him to long and adventurous +journeys. He had travelled in India and the East, and in Greece, +returning to Italy only when Constantinople fell before the Turks. +During these years he had acquired immense learning, considerable +wealth, and a vaguely sinister reputation. He had been persecuted by +Paul II. for taking part in the famous banquets, savouring oddly of +Paganism, of Pomponius Laetus; but the late Pontiff Sixtus IV. had taken +him into his favour together with Platina, one of his fellow-sufferers +in the castle of Saint Angelo. He was now old, and, after a life of +study, adventure, and possibly of sin, was living in affluence in a +house given him by the illustrious Cardinal at St. Peter ad Vincula, who +had also obtained him a canonry of St. John Lateran. He was busying his +last year in a great work of fancy and erudition, for which he required +the assistance of a skilful draughtsman and connoisseur of antiquities, +than whom none could suit him so well as Domenico Neroni. + +The book of Filarete, of which the rare copies are among the most +precious relics of the Renaissance, was a strange mixture of romance, +allegory, and encyclopaedic knowledge, such as had been common in the +Middle Ages, and was still fashionable during the revival of letters, +which merely added the element of classical learning. Like the +_Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ of Francesco Colonna, of which it was +doubtless the prototype, the _Alcandros_ of Filarete, though never +carried beyond the first volume, is an amazing and wearisome display of +the author's archaeological learning. It contains exact descriptions of +all the rarities of ancient art, and of things Oriental which he had +seen, and pages of transcripts from obscure Latin and Greek authors, +descriptive of religious ceremonies; varied with Platonic philosophy, +Decameronian obscenities, in laboured pseudo-Florentine style, and +Dantesque visions, all held together by the confused narrative of an +allegorical journey performed by the author. It is profusely ornamented +with woodcuts, representing architectural designs of a fantastic, rather +Oriental description, restorations of ancient buildings, reproductions +of antique inscriptions and designs, and last, but far from least, a +certain number of small compositions, of Mantegnesque quality, but +Botticellian charm, showing the various adventures of the hero in +terrible woods, delicious gardens, and in the company of nymphs, demigods, +and allegorical personages. These latter are undoubtedly from the hand +of Domenico Neroni; and it was while discussing these delightful damsels +seated with lutes and psalteries under vine-trellises, these scholars +in cap and gown, weeping in quaint chambers with canopied beds and +carnations growing on the window, these processions--suggesting +Mantegna's Triumph of Julius Caesar--of priests and priestesses with +victories and trophies, that the painter from Volterra and the Apulian +humanist would discuss the secret of antique beauty--discuss it for +hours, surrounded by the precious manuscripts and inscriptions, the +fragments of sculpture, the Eastern rarities, of Filarete's little house +on the Quirinal hill, or among the box-hedges, clipped cypresses, and +fountains of his garden; while the riots and massacres, the fanatical +processions and feudal wars, of mediaeval Rome raged unnoticed below. For +Pope Sixtus and his Riarios, and Pope Innocent and his Cybos, thirsting +for power and gold, drunken with lust and bloodshed, were benign and +courteous patrons of all art and all learning. + + +V + +But that number nine, attained with so much difficulty, although it put +the human proportion into visible connection with the sun, with beaten +gold, the smell of the heliotrope, and the god Apollo, and opened a vista +of complicated astral influences, did not in reality bring Domenico one +step nearer the object of his desires. It had enabled those ancient men +to make statues that were perfectly beautiful, that was obvious; but it +did not make his own figures one tittle less hideous, for he felt them +now to be absolutely hideous. One wintry day, as he was roaming amongst +the fallen pillars and arches, thickly covered with myrtle and ilex, of +the desolate region beyond what had once been the Forum and was now the +cattle-market, there came across Domenico's mind, while he watched a +snake twisting in the grass, the remembrance of a certain anecdote about +a Greek painter, to whom Hercules had shown himself in a vision. He had +heard it, without taking any notice, two years before, from the young +scholar who read Cicero at table for Messer Neri Altoviti; and although +he had thought of it several times, it had never struck him except as +one of the usual impudent displays of learning of the parasitic tribe +of humanists. + +But at this moment the remembrance of this fact came as a great light +into Domenico's soul. For what were these statues save the idols of the +heathens; and what wonder they should be divinely beautiful, when those +who made them might see the gods in visions? + +This explanation, which to us must sound far-fetched and fantastic, +knowing, as we do, the real reason that made a people of athletes into a +people of sculptors, savoured of no strangeness to a man of the Middle +Ages. Visions of superhuman creatures were among the most undisputed +articles of his belief, and among the commonest subjects of his art. Had +not the Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Bernard, the Saviour among His +cherubim to St. Francis--the very stones shown at La Vernia where it +had happened--the Divine Bridegroom to Catherine of Siena? Had not St. +Anthony of Padua held the Divine Child in his arms? And all not so long +ago? Besides, every year there was some nun or monk claiming to have +conversed with Christ and His court; and the heavens were opening quite +frequently in the walls of cells and the clefts of hermitages. And did +not Dante relate a journey into Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise? It was +perfectly natural that what was constantly happening to holy men and +women nowadays should have happened in Pagan times also; and what men +could so well have deserved a visit from gods as those who spent their +lives faithfully portraying them? The story of Parrhasius and his vision +was familiar ground to a man accustomed to see, in all corners of Italy, +portraits of the Saviour painted by St. Luke, or finished, like the +famous Holy Face of Lucca, by angels. For an absolute contempt for the +artistic value of such miraculous images did not, in the mind of Neroni, +throw any doubt on their authenticity; in the same way that the passion +for antiquity, the hankering after Pagan beliefs, did not probably +interfere with the orthodoxy of so many of the humanists. Domenico, +besides, remembered that Virgil and Ovid, whom he had not read, but +whose fables he had sometimes been asked to illustrate, were constantly +talking of visions of gods and goddesses, nay, of their descending upon +earth to unite themselves with mortals in love or friendship, for he had +had to furnish designs for woodcuts representing Diana and Endymion, +Jupiter and Ganymede, the gods coming to Philemon and Baucis, and Apollo +tending the herds of Admetus. Neither did it occur to Domenico's mind +that the existence of the old gods might be a mere invention, or a mere +delusion of the heathen. For all their classic culture, the men of +the fifteenth century, as the men of the thirteenth for all their +scholasticism, were in an intellectual condition such as we rarely +meet with nowadays among educated persons; and Domenico, a mere +handicraftsman, had not learned from the study of Cicero and Plato to +examine and understand the difference between reality and fiction. +To him a scene which was frequently painted, an adventure which was +written down and could be read, was necessarily a reality. Dante had +spoken of the gods, and what Dante said was evidently true, the +allegorical meaning, the metaphor, entirely escaping this simple mind; +and Virgil, Homer, Ovid told the most minute details about gods and +goddesses, and they themselves were grave and learned men. Domenico did +not even think that the ancient gods were dead. Of course heaven was now +occupied by Christ and His saints, those heavenly hosts of whom he would +think, when he thought of them at all, as seated stepwise on a great +stand, blue and pink and green in dress, golden discs about their heads, +and an atmosphere of fretted gold, of swirling stencilled golden angels' +wings all round them, and God the Father, a great triangle blazing with +Alpha and Omega, above Jesus enthroned, and His mother; and it was they +who ruled things here, and to them he said his prayers night and +morning, and knelt in church. But _here_, somehow did not cover the +whole universe, nor did that pink and blue and gold miniature painter's +heaven extend everywhere, although, of course, somehow or other it did. +Anyhow, it was certain that not so very far off there were Saracens +and Turks--why he had seen some of the Duke of Calabria's Turkish +garrison--who believed in Macomet, Trevigant, and Apollinis; these to be +sure were false gods (the word _false_ carried no clear meaning to his +mind, or if any, one rather equivalent to _wrong, objectionable_ rather +than to non-existent), but they certainly worked wonderful miracles for +their people. And indeed--here Domenico's placid contemplation of the +kingdom of Macomet, Trevigant, and Apollinis was exchanged for a vague +horror, shot with gleams of curiosity--the devil also had his place in +the world, a place much nearer and universal, and did marvellous things, +pointing out treasures, teaching the future, lending invulnerable +strength to the men and women who worshipped him, of whom some might +be pointed out to you in every town--yes, grave and respectable men, +priests and monks among them, and even Cardinals of Holy Church, as +every one knew quite well.... So that, in a confused manner, rather +negative than positive, Domenico considered that the Pagan gods must +be somewhere or other, the past and present not very clearly separated +in his mind, or rather the past existing in a peculiar simultaneous +manner with the present, as a sort of St. Brandan's isle, in distant, +unattainable seas; or as Dante's mountain of Purgatory, a very solid +mountain indeed, yet which, for some mysterious and unquestioned reason, +people never stumbled upon except after death. All this was scarcely an +actual series of arguments; it was rather the arguments which, with much +effort, Domenico might have fished out of his obscure consciousness +had you summoned him to explain how the ancient gods could possibly +be immortal. As to him, he had always heard of them as immortal, and +although he had not been taught any respect or love for them as for +Christ, the Madonna, and the saints, they must be existing somewhere +since _immortal_ means that which cannot die. + +But now he began to feel a certain shyness about immortal gods, for they +had begun to occupy his thoughts, and it was with much cunning that he +put questions to his friend Filarete, desirous to gain information on +certain points without actually seeming to ask it. The humanist, summoned +to explain what the Fathers of the Church--those worthies crowned with +mitres and offering rolls of manuscript, whom Domenico had occasionally +to portray for his customers--said about the ancient gods, answered with +much glibness but considerable contempt, for the Greek and Latin of +these saintly philosophers inspired the learned man with a feeling of +nausea. He got out of a chest several volumes covered with dust, and +began to quote the "Apology" of Justin Martyr, the "Legation" of +Athenagoras, the "Apology" of Tertullian and Lactantius, whose very name +caused him to writhe with philological loathing. And he told Domenico +that it was the opinion of these holy but ill-educated persons that +daemons assumed the name and attributes of Jupiter, of Venus, of Apollo +and Bacchus, lurking in temples, instituting festivals and sacrifices, +and were often allowed by Heaven to distract the faithful by a display +of miracles. + +"Then they are devils?" asked Domenico, trying to follow. + +A smile passed over the beautifully cut mouth, the noble, wrinkled +face--like that of the marble Seneca--of the old humanist. + +"Talk of devils to the barefoot friar who preaches in the midst of the +market-place," he said, "not to Filarete. The whole world, air, fire, +earth, water, the entire universe is governed by daemons, and they +inspire our noblest thoughts. Hast never heard of the familiar daemon +of Socrates, whispering to him superhuman wisdom? Yes, indeed, Venus, +Apollo, AEsculapius, Jove, the stars and planets, the winds and tides are +daemons. But thou canst not understand such matters, my poor Domenico. +So get thee to Brother Baldassare of Palermo, and ask him questions." + +But Filarete's expression was very different when, one day, Domenico +shyly inquired concerning the truth of that story of Parrhasius and +the Hercules of Lindos. Strange rumours were current in Rome of unholy +festivities in which Filarete and other learned men--some of those +whom Paul II. had thrown into prison--had once taken part. They had +not merely laid their tables and spread their couches according to +descriptions contained in ancient authors; but, crowned with roses, +laurel, myrtle, or parsley, had sung hymns to the heathen gods, and, it +was whispered, poured out libations and burned incense in their honour. +Their friends, indeed, had answered scornfully that these were but +amusements of learned men; not to be taken more seriously than the +invocations to the gods and muses in their poems, than the mythological +subjects which the Popes themselves selected to adorn their dwellings. +And doubtless this explanation was correct. Yet the pleasure of these +little pedantic and artistic mummeries, which took place in suburban +gardens, while the townsfolk streamed in the hot June nights, decked +with bunches of cloves and of lavender, to make bonfires in the empty +places near the Lateran, little guessing that their ancestors had +once done the same in honour of the neighbouring Venus--the innocent +childishness of these learned men was perhaps spiced, for some +individuals at least, by a momentary belief in the gods of the old +poets, by a sudden forbidden fervour for the exiled divinities of Virgil +and Ovid, under whose reign the world had been young, men had been free +to love and think, and Rome, now the object of the world's horror and +contempt, had been the world's triumphant mistress. But these had been +mere mummeries, mere child's play, and the soul of Filarete had thirsted +for a reality. He could not have answered had you asked whether he +believed in the absolute existence and power of the old gods, any more +than whether he disbelieved in the power of Christ and His avenging +angels; his cultivated and sceptical mind was, after all, in a state of +disorder similar to that of Domenico's ignorance. All that he knew with +certainty was that Christ and His worship represented to him all that +was unnatural, cruel, foolish, and hypocritical; while the gods were +associated with every thought of liberty, of beauty, and of glory. And +so, one evening, after working up still further the enthusiasm, the +passionate desire of his friend, he told Domenico that, if he chose, he +too perhaps might see a god. + +In his antiquarian rambles Filarete had discovered, a mile or two +outside the southern gates of Rome, a subterranean chamber, richly +adorned with stuccoes--known nowadays as the tomb of certain members of +the Flavian family, but which, thanks to the defective knowledge of his +day and the habit of seeing people buried in churches, the humanist had +mistaken for a temple--intact, and scarcely desecrated, of the Eleusinian +Bacchus. Above its vaults, barely indicated by a higher mound in the +waving ground of the pasture land, had once stood a Christian church, as +ancient almost as the supposed temple below, whose Byzantine columns lay +half hidden by the high grass, and the walls of whose apse had become +overgrown by ivy and weeds, the nest of lazy snakes. The Gothic soldiers, +Arians or heathens, who had burned down, in some drunken bout, the +little church above-ground, had penetrated at the same time into the +tomb beneath in search of treasure, and finding none, dispersed the +bones in the sarcophagi they had opened. They had left open the aperture +leading downward, which had been matted over by a thick growth of ivy +and wild clematis. One day, while surveying the remains of the Christian +church, always in hopes of discovering in it a former temple of the +Pagans, Filarete had walked into that tuft of solid green, and found +himself, buried and half stunned, in the mouth of the tomb below. It +was through this that he bade Domenico follow him, bearing a certain +mysterious package in his cloak, one January day of the year fourteen +hundred and eighty-eight. + +Above-ground it had frozen in the night; here below, when they had +descended the rugged sepulchral stairs, the air had a damp warmth, an +odd feel of inhabitation. Above-ground, also, everything lay in ruins, +while here all was intact. As the light of the torches moved slowly +along the vaulted and stuccoed ceilings, it showed the delicate lines +of a profusion of little reliefs and ornaments, fresh as if cast and +coloured yesterday. Slender garlands of leaves, and long knotted ribbons +and veils in lowest relief partitioned the space; and framed by them, now +round, now oval, now oblong, were medallions of naked gods banqueting +and playing games, of satyrs and nymphs dancing, nereids swinging on +the backs of hippocamps, tritons curling their tails and blowing their +horns, Cupids fluttering among griffins and chimaeras; a life of laughter +and love, which mocked the eye, starting into vividness in one place, +dying away in a mere film where the torchlight pressed on too closely +in others. All along the walls, below the line of the stuccoes, were +excavated shelves, on which stood numbers of small cinerary boxes, each +bearing a name. In the middle of the vaulted chamber was a huge stone +coffin, carved with revelling Bacchantes, and grim tragic masks at its +corners; and all round the coffin, broken in one of its flanks by the +tools of the treasure-seeker, lay bones and skulls, dispersed on the +damp ground even as the Goths had left them. + +It was this sarcophagus which, with its Dionysiac revels, and the name +of one Dionysius carved on it, a freedman of the Flavians, had led +Filarete to consider the tomb as a kind of temple consecrated to +Bacchus. + +Filarete bade Domenico stick the pointed end of his torch into the mouth +of an amphora standing erect in a corner, and began to unpack the load +they had brought on a mule. It looked like the preparation for a feast: +there were loaves of bread, fruit, a flask of choice wine; and Domenico, +for a moment, thought the old man mad. But his feelings changed when +Filarete produced a set of silver lamps, and bade him trim and light +them, placing them on the ledges alongside of the cinerary urns; and +when he lit some strange incense and filled the place with its smoke. +Despite the many descriptions of ancient sacrifices with which the +humanist had entertained him, Domenico had brought a vague notion of a +raising of devils, and felt relieved at the absence of brimstone fumes, +and of the magic books that accompanied them. + +Although more passionately longing--he knew not, he dared not tell +himself for what--Domenico did not come with the curious exaltation of +spirits of his companion, all whose antiquarian lore had gone to his +head, and who really imagined himself to be a genuine Pagan engaged in +Pagan rites. For Filarete the ceremony was everything; for Domenico it +was merely a means, a sort of sacrilegious juggling, into which he had +not inquired more particularly, which was to give him the object of his +wishes at the price of great peril to his soul. But when the subterranean +chamber was filled with a cloud of incense, through which, in the dim +yellow light of the lamp, the naked gods and goddesses on the vault, the +satyrs and nymphs, the Tritons and Bacchantes seemed to float in and out +of sight, a feeling of awe, of an unknown kind of reverence and rapture, +began to fill his soul, and his eyes became fixed on the lid of the +carved sarcophagus--vague images of Christian resurrections mingling +with his hopes--Would the god appear? + +Filarete, meanwhile, had enveloped his head in a long linen veil, +and, after washing his hands thrice in a golden basin brought for the +purpose, he placed some faggots on the sarcophagus, lit them, and +throwing grains of incense and of salt alternately into the flames, +began to chant in an unknown tongue, which Domenico guessed to be Greek. +Then beckoning to the painter, who was kneeling, as at church, in a +corner, he bade him unpack a basket matted over with leaves, whose +movements and sounds had puzzled Domenico as he carried it down. In +great surprise, and with a vague sense of he knew not what, he handed +its contents to Filarete. It was a miserable little lamb, newly born, +its long, soft legs tied together, its almost sightless, pale eyes +half-started from its sockets. As the humanist took it, it bleated with +sudden shrill strength, and Domenico could not help thinking of certain +images he had seen on monastery walls of the Good Shepherd carrying the +lame lamb on his shoulders. This was very different. For, with an odd +ferocity, Filarete placed the miserable young creature on the stone +before the fire, and slit its throat and chest with a long knife. + +The god did not appear. They extinguished the lamps, left the carcase +of the lamb half charred in a pool of blood on the stone, and slowly +reascended into the daylight, leaving behind them, in the vaulted +chamber, a stifling fume of incense, of burnt flesh, and mingled damp. + +Up above, among the ruins of the Christian church, where they had left +their mules, it was cold and sunny, and the light seemed curiously blue, +almost grey and dusty, after the yellow illumination below. Before them, +interrupted here and there by a mass of ruined masonry, or a few arches +of aqueduct, waved the grey-green, billowy plain, where the wind, which +rolled the great winter cloud-balls overhead, danced and sang with the +tall, dry hemlocks and sere white thistles, shining and rattling like +skeletons. And on to it seemed to descend cloud-mountains, vague +blueness and darkness--cloud or hill, you could not tell which--out of +whose flank, ever and anon, a sunbeam conjured up a visionary white +resplendent city. + +The short winter day was beginning to draw in when they approached +silently the city walls, solemn with their towers and gates, endless +as it seemed, and enclosing, one felt vaguely, an endless, distant, +invisible city. + +The sound of its bells came as from afar to meet the sacrilegious men. + + +VI + +The culminating sacrilege was yet to come. The place that witnessed it +remains unchanged--a half-deserted church among the silent grass-grown +lanes, the crumbling convent walls, and ill-tended vineyards of the +Aventine; a hill that has retained in Christian times a look of its +sinister fame in Pagan ones. Among the cypresses, which seem to wander +up the hillside, rises the square belfry, among whose brickwork, flushed +in the sunset, are inlaid discs of porphyry torn from some temple +pavement, and plates of green majolica brought from the East, it is +said, by pilgrims or Crusaders. The arum-fringed lane widens before the +outer wall of the church, overtopped by its triangular gable. Behind +this wall is a yard or atrium, the pavement grass-grown, the walls +stained with great patches of mildew, and showing here and there in +their dilapidation the shaft and capital of a bricked-up Ionic pillar. +The place tells of centuries of neglect, of the gradual invasion of +resistless fever; and it was fitly chosen, some fifty years ago, for the +abode of a community of Trappists. In the reign of Innocent VIII. it +was still nominally in the hands of certain Cistercians; but the fever +had long driven these monks to the more wholesome end of the hill, where +they had erected a smaller church; and the convent had served for years +as a fortress of the turbulent family of the Capranicas, one of whose +members was always the nominal abbot, with the Cardinal's hat, and title +Jervase and Protasius. And now, at the end of the fifteenth century, a +Cardinal Ascanio Capranica, famous for his struggle in magnificence and +sinfulness with the magnificent and sinful young nephews of Pope Sixtus, +had determined to restore the fortified monastery, to combat the fever +by abundant plantations, and to make the church a monument of his +splendour. And, in order to secure some benefit by his own munificence, +he had begun by commissioning Domenico Neroni to design and execute +a sepulchre three storeys high, full of carvings, and covered with +statues, so that his soul, if sent untimely to heaven, might not be +dishonoured by the unworthy resting-place of its trusty companion, the +Cardinal's handsome and well-tended body. + +This church of SS. Jervase and Protasius, which imitated, like most +churches of the early Christian period, the form of a basilica or court +of law, was constructed out of fragments of Pagan edifices, and occupied +the site of a Pagan edifice, whose columns had been employed to carry +the roof of the church, or, when of porphyry or serpentine, had been +sawed into discs for the pavement. On the slant of the hill, supporting +the apse, encircled by pillarets, is a round mass of masonry, overgrown +with ivy and ilex scrub, the remains of some antique bath or grotto; +and under the battlemented walls, the cloistered courts of the convent, +there stretches, it is said, a network of subterranean passages running +down to the Tiber. Four hundred years ago they were not to be discovered +if looked for, being completely hidden by the fallen masonry and the +cypress roots and growths of poisonous plants--nightshade, and hemlock, +and green-flowered hellebore; but wicked monks had sometimes been sucked +into them while digging the ground, or decoyed into their labyrinths by +devils. Was it possible that there had lingered on through the ages a +vague and horrified remembrance of those rites, the discovery of whose +mysterious and wide-spread abominations had frozen Rome with horror in +her most high and palmy days; and was there a connection between those +neophytes, wandering with blood-stained limbs and dishevelled locks +among the groves of the Aventine, then rushing to quench their burning +torches in the Tiber, two centuries before Christ, and the devils who +troubled the Benedictines of SS. Jervase and Protasius? These evil +spirits would appear, it had been said, in the cloisters of the convent, +processions carrying lights and garlands; and on certain nights, when +the monks were in prayer in their cells, strange sounds would issue +from the church itself, of flutes and timbrels, and demon laughter, and +demon voices chanting some unknown litany, and clearly aping the mass; +and Cardinal Capranica was blamed by many pious persons for his rash +intention of filling once more the deserted convent, and exposing holy +men to the wrath of such very pertinacious devils. Meanwhile mass upon +mass was said to clear the place of this demoniac infection. It was in +this church that the sacrilege of Domenico and Filarete rose to its +highest, and that an event took place which the men of the fifteenth +century could scarce find words to designate. + +Domenico had grown tired of his friend's archaeological impieties. +It gave him no satisfaction to pour out wine, burn incense, arrange +garlands, and even cut the throats of animals according to a correct +Pagan ritual. It was nothing to him that Horace and Ovid and Tibullus +should have done alike. He was a good Christian, never doubting for +a moment the power of the Blessed Virgin, the saints, and even the +smallest and meanest priest, nor the heat of hell-fire. But he wanted to +have the secret of antique proportions, and he was convinced that this +secret could be communicated only by a Pagan divinity, just as certain +theological mysteries, such as the use of the rosary, had been revealed +to the saints by Christ or the Virgin. The Pagan gods were devils, and +to hold communication with devils was mortal sin and sure damnation. But +lots of people communicated with devils for much more paltry motives, for +greed of gold or love of woman, and were yet saved by the intercession +of some heavenly patron, or found it worth while not to be saved at all. +Domenico, like them, put the question of salvation behind him. He might +think of that afterwards, when he had possessed himself of the proportion +of the ancients. At all events, at present he was willing to risk +everything in order to attain that. He was determined to see that god of +the heathens, not as he had seen him once in the house of Messer Neri +Altoviti, cut out of marble, but alive, moving, speaking; for _that_ was +the god. + +The god was a devil. Now it is well known that there is a way of +compelling every devil to show himself, providing you use sufficiently +strong spells. They had sacrificed goats and lambs enough, also doves, +and had burned perfumes, and spilt wine sufficient for one of Cardinal +Riario's suppers. It was evidently not that sort of sacrifice which +would rejoice the god or compel him to show himself. For weeks and weeks +Domenico ruminated over the subject. And little by little the logical, +inevitable answer dawned upon his horrified but determined mind. For +what was the sacrifice which witches and warlocks notoriously offered +their Master? + +The place could not be better chosen. This church was full, every one +knew, of demons, who were certainly none other than the gods of the +heathen, as Tertullian, Lactantius, Athenagoras, Justin Martyr, and all +those other holy doctors had written. It was deserted, its keys in the +hands of Cardinal Capranica's confidential architect and decorator; and +there were masses being said every holiday to scare the evil spirits. +The sacrament was frequently left on the altar. + +All this Domenico expounded frequently to Filarete. But Filarete's +classic taste did not approve of Domenico's methods, which savoured of +vulgar witchcraft; perhaps also the learned man, who did not want the +secret of antique proportion, recoiled from a degree of profanity and of +danger, both to body and soul, which his companion willingly incurred in +such a quest as his. So Filarete demurred for a time, until at length +his feebler nature took fire at Domenico's determination, and the guilty +pair fixed upon the day and place for this unspeakable sacrilege. + +The Church of SS. Jervase and Protasius has undergone no change since +the feast of Corpus Christi of the year 1488. The damp that lies in the +atrium outside, making the grass and poppies sprout round the Byzantine +pillar which carries a cross over a pine-cone, has invaded the flat-roofed +nave and the wide aisles, separated from it by a single colonnade. A +greenish mildew marks the fissures in the walls, rent here and there +by landslips and earthquakes. The cipolline columns carrying the round +arches on their square capitals are lustreless, and their green-veined +marble looks like long-buried wood. The mosaic pavement stretches its +discs and volutes of porphyry and serpentine or yellowed Parian marble, +a tarnished and uneven carpet, to the greenish-white marble steps of +the chancel. The mosaics have long fallen out of the circle of the apse; +and the frescoes, painted by some obscure follower of Giotto, have left +only a green vague stain over the arches of the aisle. Pictures or +statues there are none, and no conspicuous sepulchre. Only, over the low +entrance, a colossal wooden crucifix of the thirteenth century hangs at +an angle from the wall, a painted Christ, stretching his writhing livid +limbs in agony opposite the high altar. It was in this stately and +desolate church, under the misty light that pours in through the wide +windows of grey coarse glass, and on the marble altar, facing that +effigy of the dying Saviour, that, in derision as it were of the miracle +which the church commemorates on that feast-day, Domenico and Filarete +were about to offer up to the demons Apollo, Bacchus, and Jove the +freshly consecrated wafer, the very body and blood of Christ. + +But an accomplice of theirs, a certain monk well versed in magic, whom +they employed in sundry details of devil-raising, on the score that they +were seeking treasure hidden in the church, had suddenly been seized +with qualms of conscience. Instead of appearing at the appointed time +alone, and bearing certain necessaries of his art, he kept them waiting +a full hour, until they began their proceedings without his assistance. +And even as Domenico was reaching his companion the ostensorium, which +had remained on the altar after the morning's mass, the church was +surrounded by the officers of the Podesta, on horseback, and by a crowd +of monks and priests, and rabble who had followed them. Of these persons, +not a few affirmed in after years, that, as they arrived at the church +door, they had heard sounds of flutes and timbrels, and mocking songs +filling the place; and that the devil, dressed in skins and garlands +like a wild man of the woods, had cleft the roof with his head, and +disappeared with many blasphemous yells as they entered. + + +VII + +In those last years of the fifteenth century, Rome was a city of the +Middle Ages. The cupola of the Pantheon, the circular hulk of the +Colosseum, and the twin columns of Trajan and Antoninus projected, like +the fantastic antiquities of some fresco of Benozzo Gozzoli, above +domeless church roofs, battlemented palace walls, and innumerable +Gothic belfries and feudal towers. In the theatre of Marcellus rose the +fortress of the Orsinis; against the tower whence Nero, as the legend +ran, had watched the city burning, were clustered the fortifications of +the Colonnas; and in every quarter the stern palaces of their respective +partisans frowned with their rough-hewn fronts, their holes for barricade +beams, and hooks for chains. The bridge of St. Angelo was covered with +the shops of armourers, as the old bridge of more peaceful Florence with +those of silversmiths. Walls and towers encircled the Leonine City where +the Pope sat unquietly in the big battlemented donjon by the Sixtine +Chapel; and in its midst was still old St. Peter's, half Lombard, half +Byzantine. In Rome there was no industry, no order, no safety. Through +its gates rushed raids of Colonnas and Orsinis, sold to or betrayed by +the Popes, from their castles of Umbria or the Campagna to their castles +in town; and their feuds meant battles also between the citizens who +obeyed or thwarted them. Houses were sacked and burnt, and occasionally +razed to the ground, for the ploughshare and the salt-sower to go over +their site. A few years later, when Pope Borgia dredged the Tiber for +the body of his son, the boatmen of Ripetta reported that so many +bodies were thrown over every night that they no longer heeded such +occurrences. And when, two centuries later, the Corsinis dug the +foundations of their house on the Longara, there were discovered +quantities of human bones in what had been the palace of Pope della +Rovere's nephew. Meanwhile Ghirlandaio and Perugino were painting the +walls of the Sixtine; Pinturicchio was designing the blue and gold +allegorical ceilings of the library; Bramante building the Chancellor's +palace, and the Pollaiolas and Mino da Fiesole carving the tombs in St. +Peter's, while learned men translated Plato and imitated Horace. + +Of this Rome there remains nowadays nothing, or next to nothing. +Sometimes, indeed, looking up the green lichened sides of some mediaeval +tower, with its hooks for chains, and its holes for beams, a vague vision +thereof rises in our mind. And in the presence of certain groups by +Signorelli, representing murderous scuffles or supernatural destruction, +we feel as if we had come in contact with the other reality of those +times, the thing which serene art and literature and the love of antiquity +have driven into the background. But the complete vision of the time and +place, the certain knowledge of that Rome of Sixtus IV. and Innocent +VIII., we can now no longer grasp, a dreadful phantom passing too +rapidly across the centuries. + +It is with this feeling of impotence in my attempt to follow the +thoughts of an illiterate artist of the Renaissance, that I prefer +to conclude this strange story of the quest after antique beauty and +antique gods by quoting a page from one of the barbarous chroniclers +of mediaeval Rome. The entry in the continuation of Infessura's diary +is headed "Pictor Sacrilegus":-- + +"On the 20th July of the year of salvation fourteen hundred and +eighty-eight, there were placed for three days in a cage on high in +the Campo dei Fiori, Messer Niccolo Filarete, Canon of Sancto Joanne; +also Domenico, the Volterran, painter and architect to the magnificent +Cardinal Ascanio, and Frate Garofalo of Valmontone, they having been +discovered in the act of desecrating the Church of SS. Jervase and +Protasius, and stealing for magic purposes the ostensorium and many gold +chalices and reliquaries with precious stones; and it was Frate Garofalo +who, being versed in witchcraft and treasure finding, was the accomplice +of the above, and denounced them on the feast of Corpus Domini. And the +twenty-third of the said month of July they were justiced, and in this +manner. _Videlicet_, Filarete and Domenico, having been removed from the +cage, were dragged on hurdles as far as the square of San Joanni, and +Frate Garofalo went on an ass, all of them crowned with paper mitres. +Frate Garofalo was hanged to the elm-tree of the square. Of Filarete and +Domenico, the right hand was chopped off, after which they were burned +in the said square. And their chopped off right hands were taken to the +Capitol and nailed up above the gate, alongside of the She-wolf of +metal. Laus Deo." + + + + +VALEDICTORY + + +I + +While gathering together the foregoing pages, written at different +periods and in different phases of thought, the knowledge has grown on +me that I was saying farewell to some of the ambitions and to most of +the plans of my youth. + +All writers start with the hope of solving a problem or establishing a +formula, however fragmentary or humble; and many, the most fortunate, +and probably the most useful, continue to work out their program, or at +least to think that they do so. Life to them is but the framework for +work; and that is why they manage to leave a fair amount of work behind +them,--work for other workers to employ or to undo. But with some +persons, life somehow gets the better of work, becomes, whether in the +form of circumstance or of new problems, infinitely the stronger; and +scatters work, tossing about such fragments as itself, in its irregular, +irresistible fashion, has torn into insignificance, or (once in a blue +moon!) shaped into more complete meaning. + +As regards my own case, I began by believing I should be an historian +and a philosopher, as most young people have done before me; then, +coming in contact with the concrete miseries of others, called social +and similar problems, I sought to apply some of my historical or +philosophic lore (such as it was) to their removal; and finally, life +having manifested itself as offering problems (unexpected occurrence!) +not merely concerning the Past, nor even the abstract Present, but +respecting my own comfort and discomfort, I have found myself at last +wondering in what manner thoughts and impressions could make the world, +the Past and Present, the near and the remote, more satisfying and +useful to myself. Circumstances of various kinds, and particularly +ill-health, have thus put me, although a writer, into the position of a +reader; and have made me ask myself, as I collected these fragments of +my former studies, what can the study of history, particularly of the +history of art and of other manifestations of past conditions of soul, +do for us in the present? + +All knowledge is bound to be useful. Apart from this truism, I believe +that all study of past conditions and activities will eventually result, +if not in the better management of present conditions and activities (as +all partisan historians have hoped, from Machiavelli to Macaulay), at +all events in a greater familiarity with the various kinds of character +expressed in historical events and in the way of looking at them; for +even if we cannot learn to guide and employ such multifold forces as +make, for instance, a French revolution, we may learn to use for the +best the individual minds and temperaments of those who describe them: +a Carlyle, a Michelet, a Taine, are natural forces also, which may serve +or may damage us. + +Moreover, I hold by the belief, expressed years ago, in my previous +volume of Renaissance studies, to wit, that historical reading (and in +historical I include the history of thoughts and feelings as much as of +events and persons) is a useful exercise for our sympathies, bringing us +wider and more wholesome notions of justice and charity. And I feel sure +that other uses for historical studies could be pointed out by other +persons, apart from the satisfaction they afford to those who pursue +them, which, considered merely as so much spiritual gymnastics, or +cricket, or football, or alpineering, is surely not to be despised. + +But now, having dropped long since out of the ranks of those who study +in order to benefit others, or even to benefit only themselves, I would +say a few words about the advantage which mere readers, as distinguished +from writers, may get from familiarity with the Past. + +This advantage is that they may find in the Past not merely a fine field +for solitary and useless delusions (though that also seems necessary), +but an additional world for real companionship and congenial activity. +Our individual activities and needs of this kind are innumerable, and of +infinite delicate variety; and there is reason to suppose that the place +in which our lot is cast does not necessarily fit them to perfection. For +things in this world are very roughly averaged; and although averaging +is a useful, rapid way of despatching business, it does undoubtedly +waste a great deal which is too good for wasting. Hence, it seems to me, +the need which many of us feel, which most of us would feel, if secured +of food and shelter, of spending a portion of their life of the spirit +in places and climates beyond that River Oceanus which bounds the land +of the living. + +As I write these words, I am conscious that this will strike many +readers as the expression of a superfine and selfish dilettantism, +arising no doubt from morbid lack of sympathy with the world into which +Heaven has put us. What! become absentees from the poor, much troubled +Present; turn your backs to Realities, become idle strollers in the +Past? And why not, dear friends? why not recognise the need for a holiday? +why not admit, just because work has to be done and loads to be borne, +that we cannot grind and pant on without interruption? Nay, that the +bearing of the load, the grinding of the work, is useless save to diminish +the total grinding and panting on this earth. Moreover, I maintain +that we have but a narrow conception of life if we confine it to the +functions which are obviously practical, and a narrow conception of +reality if we exclude from it the Past. And not because the Past has +been, has actually existed outside some one, but because it may, and +often does, actually exist within ourselves. The things in our mind, +due to the mind's constitution and its relation with the universe, are, +after all, realities; and realities to count with, as much as the tables +and chairs, and hats and coats, and other things subject to gravitation +outside it. It would seem, indeed, as if the chief outcome of the +spiritualising philosophy which maintains the immaterial and independent +quality of mind had been to make mind, the contents of our consciousness, +ideas, images, and feelings, into something quite separate from this +real material universe, and hence unworthy of practical consideration. +But granted that mind is not a sort of independent and foreign entity, +we must admit that what exists in it has a place in reality, and +requires, like the rest of reality, to be dealt with. But to return to +my thesis: that we require occasionally to live in the Past (and I shall +go on to state that it may be a Past of our own making); Do we not +require to travel in foreign parts which know us not, to sojourn for +our welfare in cities where we can neither elect members nor exercise +professions, but whence we bring back, not merely wider views, but +sounder nerves, tempers more serene and elastic? Nor is this all. We +think poorly of a man or woman who, besides practical cases for self +or others, does not require to come in contact also with the tangible, +breathable, visible, audible universe for its own sake; require to +wander in fields and on moors, to steep in sunshine or be battered by +winds, for the sake of a certain specific emotion of participation +in, of closer union with, the universal. Now the Past--the joys and +sufferings of the men long dead, their efforts, ideals, emotions, +nay, their very sensations and temperaments as registered in words +or expressed in art, are but another side of the universe, of that +universal life, to participate ever deeper in which is the condition of +our strength and serenity, the imperious necessity of our ever giving, +ever taking soul. + +And so, for our greater nobility and happiness, we require, all of us, +to live to some extent in the Past, as to live to some extent in what +we significantly call _nature_. We require, as we require mountain air +or sea scents, hayfields or wintry fallows, sun, storm, or rain, each +individual according to individual subtle affinities, certain emotions, +ideals, persons, or works of art from out of the Past. For one it will +be Socrates; for another St. Francis; for every one something somewhat +different, or at all events something differently conceived and +differently felt: some portion of the universe in time, as of the +universe in space, which answers in closest and most intimate way to +the complexion and habits of that individual soul. + + +II + +The satisfaction which it can bring to every individual soul: this is, +therefore, one of the uses of the Past to the Present, and surely not +one of the smallest. It is, I venture to insist, the special, the +essential use of all art and all poetry; any additional knowledge +of Nature's proceedings, any additional discipline of thought and +observation which may accrue in the study of art as an historic or +psychological phenomenon being, after all, valuable eventually for +the amount of such mere satisfaction of the spirit as that additional +knowledge or additional discipline can conduce towards. Scientific +results are important for the maintenance of life, doubtless; but the +sense of satisfaction, whether simple or complex, high or low, is +the sign that the processes we call life are being fulfilled and not +thwarted; so, since satisfaction is no such contemptible thing, why not +allow art to furnish it unmixed? + +I am sure to be misunderstood. I do not in the least mean to imply that +art can best be appreciated with the least trouble. The mere fact that +the pleasure of a faculty is proportioned to its activity negatives that; +and the fact that the richness, fulness, and hence also the durability, +of all artistic pleasure answers to the amount of our attention: the +mine, the ore, will yield, other things equal, according as we dig, and +wash, and smelt, and separate to the last possibility of separation what +we want from what we do not want. + +The historic or psychological study of art does thus undoubtedly increase +our familiarity, and hence our enjoyment. The mere scientific inquiry +into the difference between originals and copies, into the connection +between master and pupil, makes us alive to the special qualities which +can delight us. As long as we looked in a manner so slovenly that a +spurious Botticelli could pass for a genuine one, we could evidently +never benefit by the special quality, the additional excellence of +Botticelli's own work. And similarly in the case of archaeology. Indeed, +in the few cases where I have myself hazarded an hypothesis on some +point of artistic history, as, for instance, regarding the respective +origin of antique and mediaeval sculpture, I am inclined to think that +the chief use (if any at all) of my work, will be to make my readers +more sensitive to the specific pleasure they may get from Praxiteles or +from Mino da Fiesole, than they could have been when the works of both +were so little understood as to be judged by one another's standards. + +But to return. It seems as if at present the development, the contagion, +so to speak, of scientific methods applied to art were making people +forget a little that art, besides being, like everything else, the +passive object of scientific treatment, is (what most other things +are not) an active, positive, special factor of pleasure; and that, +therefore, save to special students, the greater, more efficacious form +of art should occupy an immensely larger share of attention than the +lesser and more inefficient. We are made, nowadays, to look at too much +mediocre art on the score of its historical value; we are kept too long +in contemplation of pictures and statues which cannot give much pleasure, +on the score that they led to or proceeded from other pictures or statues +which can. + +As regards Greek sculpture, the insistance on archaic forms is becoming, +if I may express my own feelings, a perfect bore. Why should we be kept +in the kitchen tasting half-cooked stuff out of ladles, when most of +us have barely time to eat our fully cooked dinner, which we like +and thrive on, in peace? Similarly with such painters as are mainly +precursors. They are taking up too much of our attention; and one might +sometimes be tempted to think that the only use of great artists, like +the only functions of those patriarchs who kept begetting one another, +was to produce other great artists: Giotto to produce eventually Masaccio, +Masaccio through various generations Michelangelo and Raphael, and +Michelangelo and Raphael, through even more, Manet and Degas, who in +their turn doubtless dutifully.... Meanwhile why should art have gone +on evolving, artists gone on making _filiations of schools_, if art, if +artists, if schools of artists had not answered an imperious, undying +wish for the special pleasures which painting can give? + +Therefore it seems to me that, desirable for all reasons as may be the +study of art, the knowledge of _filiations and influences_, it is still +more desirable that each of us should find out some painter whom he +can care for individually; and that all of us should find out certain +painters who can, almost infallibly, give immense pleasure to all of +us; painters who, had they been produced out of nothingness and been +followed by nobody, would yet stand in the most important relation in +which an artist can be: the relation of being beloved by the whole +world, or even by a few solitary individuals. + +For this reason let not the mere reader, who comes to art not for work, +but for refreshment, let not the mere reader (I call him reader, to +note his passive, leisurely character) be vexed with too much study of +Florentine and Paduan _precursors_, but go straight to the masters, whom +those useful and dreary persons rendered possible by their grinding. +Our ancestors, or rather those cardinals and superb lords with whom we +have neither spiritual nor temporal relationship, who made the great +collections of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, placing statues +under delicate colonnades and green ilex hedges, and hanging pictures in +oak-panelled corridors and tapestried guard-rooms, were occasionally +mistaken in thinking that a Roman emperor much restored, or a chalky, +sprawling Guido Reni, could afford lasting aesthetic pleasure; but, +bating such errors, were they not nearer good sense than we moderns, who +arrange pictures and statues as we might minerals or herbs in a museum, +and who, for instance, insist that poor tired people, longing for a +little beauty, should carefully examine the works of Castagno, of +Rosselli, and of that artist, so interesting as a specimen of the +minimum of talent, Neri di Bicci? They were unscientific, those lords +and cardinals, and desperately pleasure-seeking; but surely, surely +they were more sensible than we. + +Connected with this fact, and to be borne in mind by those not called +upon to elucidate art scientifically, is the further fact, which I have +analogically pointed out, when I said that every individual has in the +Past affinities, possibilities of spiritual satisfaction differing +somewhat from those of every other. It is well that we should try to +enlarge those possibilities; and we must never make up our mind that a +picture, statue, piece of music or poetry, says little to us until we +have listened to its say. But although we strive to make new friends, +let us waste no further time on such persons as we have vainly tried to +make friends of; and let each of us, in heaven's name, cherish to the +utmost his natural affinities. There are persons to whom, for instance, +Botticelli can never be what he truly is to some of their neighbours: +the very quality which gives such marvellous poignancy of pleasure to +certain temperaments causing almost discomfort to others; and similarly +about many other artists, representing very special conditions of being, +and appealing to special conditions in consequence. High Alpine air, +sea-water, Roman melting westerly winds, so vitalising, so soothing to +some folk, are mere worry, or fever, or lassitude to others, without its +being correct to say that one set of persons is healthy and the other +morbid: each being, in truth, healthy or morbid just in proportion as it +realises its necessities of existence, fitting equally into the universe +providing it be fitted each into the proper piece thereof. + +On the other hand (and this, rather than _filiations of schools_ and +_influences_ of artistic _milieus_, it were well we should know), it +becomes daily more empirically certain, and will some day doubtless +become scientifically obvious, that there are works of art which +awaken such emotion that they can be delectable only to creatures with +instincts out of gear and perception upside down; while there are others, +infinitely more plentiful, which, in greater or lesser degree, must +delight all persons who are sane, as all such are delighted by fine +weather, normal exercise, and kindly sympathy; and, _vice versa_, that +as these wholesome works of art merely bore or actually distress the +poor morbid exceptions, so the unwholesome ones sicken or harrow the +sound generality; the world of art, moreover, like every other world, +being best employed in keeping alive its sound, not its unsound, +clients. + +Such works of art, such artists of widest wholesome appealingness, there +are in all periods of artistic development; more in certain fortunate +moments, say the Periklean age and the early sixteenth century, than +in others; and most perhaps in certain specially favoured regions--in +Attica during Antiquity, and during painting times, in the happy Venetian +country. These we all know of; but by the grace of Nature, which creates +men occasionally so fortunately balanced that their work, learned or +unlearned, must needs be fortunately balanced also, they arise sometimes +in the midst of mere artistic worry and vexation of spirit, or of artist +bleakness, perfect like the almond and peach trees, which blossom, white +and pink, on the frost-bitten green among the sapless vines of wintry +Tuscan hills; and to some natures, doubtless, these are more pleasant +and health-giving than more mature or mellow summer or autumnal +loveliness. But, as I have said, each must find his own closest +affinities in art and history as in friendship. + + +III + +There are some more things, and more important, still to be said, from +the reader's standpoint rather than the writer's, about the influence on +our lives of the Past and of its art, and more particularly of the vague +period called the Renaissance. + +When the Renaissance began to attract attention, some twenty or +twenty-five years ago, there happened among English historians and +writers on art, and among their readers, something very similar to what +had happened, apparently, when the Englishmen of the sixteenth century +first came in contact with the Italian Renaissance itself, or whatever +remained of it. Their conscience was sickened, their imagination +hag-ridden, by the discovery of so much beauty united to so much +corruption; and, among our latter-day students of the Renaissance, there +became manifest the same morbid pre-occupation, the same exaggerated +repulsion, which is but inverted attraction, which were rife among +the playwrights who wrote of _Avengers_ and _Atheists_, Giovannis and +Annabellas, Brachianos and Corombonas, and other _White Devils_, as old +Webster picturesquely put it, _of Italy_. Indeed, the second discovery +of the Renaissance by Englishmen had spiritual consequences so similar +to those of the first, that in an essay written fifteen years ago I +analysed the feelings of the Elizabethan playwrights towards Italian +things in order to vent the intense discomfort of spirit which I shared +assuredly with students older and more competent than myself. + +This kind of feeling has passed away among writers, together with much +of the fascination of the Renaissance itself. But it has left, I see, +vague traces in the mind of readers, rendering the Renaissance a little +distasteful (and no wonder) to the majority; or worse, a little too +congenial to an unsound minority; worst of all, tarnishing a little the +fair fame of Art; and as a writer now turned reader, I am anxious to +deliver, to the best of my powers, other readers from this perhaps +inevitable but false and unprofitable view of such matters. + +The conscience of writers on history and art has long become quite +comfortable about the Renaissance; and the Websterian or (in some cases +John Fordian) phenomenon of twenty years ago been forgotten as a piece +of childish morbidness. Does this mean that the conscience has become +hardened, that evil has ceased to repel us, or that beauty has been +accepted calmly as a pleasant and necessary, but somewhat immoral thing? +Very far from it. Our conscience has become quieter, not because it has +grown more callous, but because it has become more healthily sensitive, +more perceptive of many sides, instead of only one side of life. For +with experience and maturity there surely comes, to every one of us +in his own walk of life, a growing, at length an intuitive sense that +evil is a thing incidentally to fight, but not to think very much +about, because if it is evil, it is in so far sporadic, deciduous, and +eminently barren; while good, that is to say, soundness, harmony of +feeling, thought, and action with themselves, with others' feeling, +thought, and action, and with the great eternities, is organic, fruitful +and useful, as well as delightful to contemplate. Hence that the evil +of past ages should not concern us, save in so far as the understanding +thereof may teach us to diminish the evil of the Present. In any case, +that evil must be handled not with terror, which enervates and subjects +to contagion, but with the busy serenity of the physician, who studies +disease for the sake of health, and eats his wholesome food after +washing his hands, confident in the ultimate wholesomeness of nature. + +And in such frame of mind the corruption of the Renaissance leaves us +calm, and we know we had better turn our backs on it, and get from the +Renaissance only what was good. Only, if we are physicians, or more +correctly (since in a private capacity we all are) only _when_ we are +physicians, must we handle the unwholesome. Meanwhile, if we wish to be +sound, let us fill our soul with images and emotions of good; we shall +tackle evil, when need be, only the better. And here, by the way, let +me open a parenthesis to say that, of the good we moderns may get from +occasional journeys into the Past, there is a fine example in our +imaginary and emotional commerce with St. Francis and his joyous +theology. For while other times, our own among them, have given us +loftier morality and severer good sense, no period save that of St. +Francis could have given us a blitheness of soul so vivifying and so +cleansing. For the essence of his teaching, or rather the essence of +his personality, was the trust that serenity and joyfulness must be +incompatible with evil; that simple, spontaneous happiness is, even like +the air and the sunshine in which his beloved brethren the birds flew +about and sang, the most infallible antidote to evil, and the most +sovereign disinfectant. And because we require such doctrine, such +personal conviction, for the better living of our lives, we must, even +as to better climates, journey forth occasionally into that distant Past +of mediaeval Italy; and as to the Ezzelinos, Borgias, and Riarios, and +the foul-mouthed humanists, good heavens! why should we sicken ourselves +with the thought of this long dead and done for abomination? + +So much for the history of the Renaissance and the good it can be to +us. Now as to the art. That more organic mode of feeling and thinking +which results in active maturity, from the ever-increasing connections +between our individual soul and the surrounding world; that same +intuition which told us that historic evil was no subject for +contemplation, does also admonish us never to be suspicious of true +beauty, of thoroughly delightful art. Nay, beauty and art in any case; +for though beauty may be adulterated, and art enslaved to something not +itself, be sure that the element of beauty, the activity of art, so far +as they are themselves specific, are far above suspicion even in the +most suspicious company. For even if beauty is united to perverse +fashions, and art (as with Baudelaire and the decadents) employed to +adorn the sentiments of maniacs and gaol-birds, the beauty and the art +remain sound; and if we must needs put them behind us, on account of too +inextricable a fusion, we should remember it is as we sometimes throw +away noble ore, for lack of skill to separate it from a base alloy. As +regards the nightmare anomaly of perfect art arisen in times of moral +corruption, those unconscious analogies I have spoken of, and which +perhaps are our most cogent reasons, have taught us that such anomalies +are but nightmares and horrid delusions. For, taking the phenomenon +historically, we shall see that although art has arisen in periods of +stress and change, and therefore of moral anarchy, it has never arisen +among the immoral classes nor to serve any immoral use: the apparent +anomaly in the Renaissance, for instance, was not an anomaly, but a +coincidence of contrary movements: a materially prosperous, intellectually +innovating epoch, producing on the one hand moral anarchy, on the +other artistic perfection, connected not as cause and effect, but as +coincidence, the one being the drawback, the other the advantage, of +that particular phase of being. The Malatestas and Borgias, of whom we +have heard too much, did not employ Alberti and Pier della Francesca, +Pinturicchio and Bramante, to satisfy their convict wickedness, but to +satisfy their artistic taste, which, in so far, was perfectly sound, as +various others among their faculties, their eye and ear, and sense of +cause and effect, were apparently sound also. And the architecture of +Alberti, the decorations of Pinturicchio, remain as spotless of all +contact with their evil instincts as the hills they may have looked at, +the sea they may have listened to, the eternal verity that two and two +make four, which had doubtless passed through their otherwise badly +inhabited minds. And, moreover, the sea is still sonorous, the mountains +are still hyacinth blue, and the buildings and frescoes still noble, +while the rest of those disagreeable mortals' cravings and strivings are +gone, and on the whole were best forgotten. + +But there is another side of this same question, and of it we are +admonished, as it seems to me, still louder by our growing intellectual +instincts--those instincts, let us remember, which do but represent +whatever has been congruous and uniform in repeated experience. Art is +a much greater and more cosmic thing than the mere expression of man's +thoughts or opinions on any one subject, of man's attitude towards his +neighbour or towards his country, much as all this concerns us. Art is +the expression of man's life, of his mode of being, of his relations +with the universe, since it is, in fact, man's inarticulate answer to +the universe's unspoken message. Hence it represents not the details of +his existence, which, more's the pity, are rarely what they should be, +whether in thought or action, but the bulk of his existence, _when that +bulk is unusually sound_. This clause contains the whole philosophy of +art. For art is the outcome of a surplus of human energy, the expression +of a state of vital harmony, striving for and partly realising a yet +greater energy, a more complete harmony in one sphere or another of man's +relations with the universe. Now if evil is a non-vital, deciduous, and +sterile phenomenon _par excellence_, art must be necessarily opposed to +it, and opposed in proportion to art's vigour. While, on the other hand, +the seeking, the realisation of greater harmony, whether harmony visible, +audible, thinkable, and livable, is as necessarily opposed to anomaly +and perversity as the great healthinesses of air and sunshine are +opposed to bodily disease. Hence, in whatever company we find art, +even as in whatever company we find bodily health and vigour, let us +understand that _in so far as truly art_, it is good and a source of +good. Let us never waver in our faith in art, for in so doing we should +be losing (what, alas! Puritan contemners of art, and decadent defilers +thereof, are equally doing) much of our faith in nature and much of our +faith in man. For art is the expression of the harmonies of nature, +conceived and incubated by the harmonious instincts of man. + +I have given the influence of St. Francis as an example of what added +strength our modern soul may get by a sojourn in the Past. What our soul +may get of similar but more sober joy may be shown by another example +from that wonderful Umbrian district, one of the earth's oases of +spiritual rest and refreshment. Among all the sane and satisfying art +of the Renaissance, Umbria, on the whole, has surely grown for us the +highest and the holiest. I am not speaking of the fact that Perugino +painted saints in devout contemplation, nor of their type of face and +expression. Whatever his people might be doing, or if they were not +people at all, but variations only of his little slender trees or distant +domes and steeples, his art would have been equally high and holy. And +this because of its effect, direct, unreasoning, on our spirit, making +us, while we look, live with a deeper, more devoutly joyful life. What +the man Perugino was, in his finite dealings with his clients and +neighbours, has mattered nothing in the painting of these pictures and +frescoes; still less what samples of conduct he was shown by the +ephemeral magnificos who bought his works. + +The tenderness and strength of the mediaeval Italian temper (as shown in +Dante when he is human, but above all in Francis of Assisi) has been +working through generations toward these paintings, interpreting in its +spirit, selecting and emphasising for its meaning the country in all the +world most naturally fit to express it; and thus in these paintings we +have the incomparable visible manifestation of a perfect mood: that wide +pale shimmering valley, circular like a temple, and domed by the circular +vault of sky, really turned, for our feelings, into a spiritual church, +wherein not merely saints meditate and Madonnas kneel, but ourselves in +deepest devout happiness. + + +IV + +Thoughts such as these bring with them the memory of the master we have +recently lost, of the master who, in the midst of aesthetical anarchy, +taught us once more, and with subtle and solemn efficacy, the old +Platonic and Goethian doctrine of the affinity between artistic beauty +and human worthiness. + +The spiritual evolution of the late Walter Pater--with whose name I +am proud to conclude my second, as with it I began my first book on +Renaissance matters--had been significantly similar to that of his own +Marius. He began as an aesthete, and ended as a moralist. By faithful and +self-restraining cultivation of the sense of harmony, he appears to have +risen from the perception of visible beauty to the knowledge of beauty +of the spiritual kind, both being expressions of the same perfect +fittingness to an ever more intense and various and congruous life. + +Such an evolution, which is, in the highest meaning, an aesthetic +phenomenon in itself, required a wonderful spiritual endowment and an +unflinchingly discriminating habit. For Walter Pater started by being +above all a writer, and an aesthete in the very narrow sense of twenty +years ago: an aesthete of the school of Mr. Swinburne's _Essays_, and of +the type still common on the Continent. The cultivation of sensations, +vivid sensations, no matter whether healthful or unhealthful, which that +school commended, was, after all, but a theoretic and probably unconscious +disguise for the cultivation of something to be said in a new way, which +is the danger of all persons who regard literature as an end, and not +as a means, feeling in order that they may write, instead of writing +because they feel. And of this Mr. Pater's first and famous book was a +very clear proof. Exquisite in technical quality, in rare perception and +subtle suggestion, it left, like all similar books, a sense of caducity +and barrenness, due to the intuition of all sane persons that only an +active synthesis of preferences and repulsions, what we imply in the +terms _character_ and _moral_, can have real importance in life, affinity +with life--be, in short, vital; and that the yielding to, nay, the +seeking for, variety and poignancy of experience, must result in a +crumbling away of all such possible unity and efficiency of living. +But even as we find in the earliest works of a painter, despite the +predominance of his master's style, indications already of what will +expand into a totally different personality, so even in this earliest +book, examined retrospectively, it is easy to find the characteristic +germs of what will develop, extrude all foreign admixture, knit together +congruous qualities, and give us presently the highly personal synthesis +of _Marius_ and the _Studies on Plato_. + +These characteristic germs may be defined, I think, as the recurrence of +impressions and images connected with physical sanity and daintiness; +of aspiration after orderliness, congruity, and one might almost say +_hierarchy_; moreover, a certain exclusiveness, which is not the contempt +of the craftsman for the _bourgeois_, but the aversion of the priest for +the profane uninitiated. Some day, perhaps, a more scientific study of +aesthetic phenomena will explain the connection which we all feel between +physical sanity and purity and the moral qualities called by the same +names; but even nowadays it might have been prophesied that the man who +harped upon the clearness and livingness of water, upon the delicate +bracingness of air, who experienced so passionate a preference for the +whole gamut, the whole palette, of spring, of temperate climates and of +youth and childhood; a person who felt existence in the terms of its +delicate vigour and its restorative austerity, was bound to become, +like Plato, a teacher of self-discipline and self-harmony. Indeed, who +can tell whether the teachings of Mr. Pater's maturity--the insistance +on scrupulously disciplined activity, on cleanness and clearness of +thought and feeling, on the harmony attainable only through moderation, +the intensity attainable only through effort--who can tell whether this +abstract part of his doctrine would affect, as it does, all kindred +spirits if the mood had not been prepared by some of those descriptions +of visible scenes--the spring morning above the Catacombs, the Valley of +Sparta, the paternal house of Marius, and that temple of AEsculapius with +its shining rhythmical waters--which attune our whole being, like the +music of the Lady in _Comus_, to modes of _sober certainty of waking +bliss_? + +This inborn affinity for refined wholesomeness made Mr. Pater the natural +exponent of the highest aesthetic doctrine--the search for harmony +throughout all orders of existence. It gave the nucleus of what was +his soul's synthesis, his system (as Emerson puts it) of rejection and +acceptance. Supreme craftsman as he was, it protected him from the +craftsman's delusion--rife under the inappropriate name of "art for +art's sake" in these uninstinctive, over-dextrous days--that subtle +treatment can dignify all subjects equally, and that expression, +irrespective of the foregoing _impression_ in the artist and the +subsequent _impression_ in the audience, is the aim of art. Standing as +he did, as all the greatest artists and thinkers (and he was both) do, +in a definite, inevitable relation to the universe--the equation between +himself and it--he was utterly unable to turn his powers of perception +and expression to idle and irresponsible exercises; and his conception +of art, being the outcome of his whole personal mode of existence, was +inevitably one of art, not for art's sake, but of art for the sake of +life--art as one of the harmonious functions of existence. + +Harmonious, and in a sense harmonising. For, as I have said, he rose +from the conception of physical health and congruity to the conception +of health and congruity in matters of the spirit; the very thirst for +healthiness, which means congruity, and congruity which implies health, +forming the vital and ever-expanding connection between the two orders +of phenomena. Two orders, did I say? Surely to the intuition of this +artist and thinker, the fundamental unity--the unity between man's +relations with external nature, with his own thoughts and with others' +feelings--stood revealed as the secret of the highest aesthetics. + +This which we guess at as the completion of Walter Pater's message, +alas! must remain for ever a matter of surmise. The completion, +the rounding of his doctrine, can take place only in the grateful +appreciation of his readers. We have been left with unfinished systems, +fragmentary, sometimes enigmatic, utterances. Let us meditate their +wisdom and vibrate with their beauty; and, in the words of the prayer of +Socrates to the Nymphs and to Pan, ask for beauty in the inward soul, +and congruity between the inner and the outer man; and reflect in such +manner the gifts of great art and of great thought in our soul's depths. +For art and thought arise from life; and to life, as principle of +harmony, they must return. + + +Many years ago, in the fulness of youth and ambition, I was allowed, by +him whom I already reverenced as a master, to write the name of Walter +Pater on the flyleaf of a book which embodied my beliefs and hopes as a +writer. And now, seeing books from the point of view of the reader, I +can find no fitter ending to this present volume than to express what +all we readers have gained, and lost, alas! in this great master. + +THE END + +_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. +_Edinburgh and London_ + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE + +The following changes have been made to the text: + + and will bare (...) new and will _bear_ (...) new + spiritual wonders spiritual wonders + + per speculum et aenigmata per speculum _in aenigmate_ + + In was in this church that _It_ was in this church that + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Renaissance Fancies and Studies, by +Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee) + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RENAISSANCE FANCIES AND STUDIES *** + +***** This file should be named 30693.txt or 30693.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/6/9/30693/ + +Produced by Delphine Lettau and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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