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diff --git a/30693.txt b/30693.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3b22e90 --- /dev/null +++ b/30693.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: 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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