CHAPTER I.[64]

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[Illustration: RUSKIN'S MONUMENT

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH]

THE COMPLETE WORKS

OF

JOHN RUSKIN

ON THE OLD ROAD

VOLUMES I-II

NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

NEW YORK CHICAGO

* * * * *

ON THE OLD ROAD.

_A COLLECTION OF MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS AND ARTICLES ON ART AND

LITERATURE._

VOL. I.

PUBLISHED 1834-1885.

* * * * *

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

INTRODUCTORY. PAGE

MY FIRST EDITOR. 1878 3

ART.

I. HISTORY AND CRITICISM.

LORD LINDSAY'S "CHRISTIAN ART." 1847 17

EASTLAKE'S "HISTORY OF OIL PAINTING." 1848 97

SAMUEL PROUT. 1849 148

SIR JOSHUA AND HOLBEIN. 1860 158

II. PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

ITS PRINCIPLES, AND TURNER. 1851 171

ITS THREE COLORS. 1878 218

III. ARCHITECTURE.

THE OPENING OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE. 1854 245

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE IN OUR SCHOOLS. 1865 259

IV. INAUGURAL ADDRESS, CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF ART. 1858 279

V. THE CESTUS OF AGLAIA. 1865-66 305

* * * * *

INTRODUCTORY: MY FIRST EDITOR.

ART.

I. HISTORY AND CRITICISM.

II. PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

III. ARCHITECTURE.

* * * * *

INTRODUCTORY.

MY FIRST EDITOR.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REMINISCENCE.

(_University Magazine, April 1878._)

* * * * *

MY FIRST EDITOR.[1]

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REMINISCENCE.

_1st February, 1878._

1. In seven days more I shall be fifty-nine;--which (practically) is all

the same as sixty; but, being asked by the wife of my dear old friend,

W. H. Harrison, to say a few words of our old relations together, I find

myself, in spite of all these years, a boy again,--partly in the mere

thought of, and renewed sympathy with, the cheerful heart of my old

literary master, and partly in instinctive terror lest, wherever he is

in celestial circles, he should catch me writing bad grammar, or putting

wrong stops, and should set the table turning, or the like. For he was

inexorable in such matters, and many a sentence in "Modern Painters,"

which I had thought quite beautifully turned out after a forenoon's work

on it, had to be turned outside-in, after all, and cut into the smallest

pieces and sewn up again, because he had found out there wasn't a

nominative in it, or a genitive, or a conjunction, or something else

indispensable to a sentence's decent existence and position in life. Not

a book of mine, for good thirty years, but went, every word of it, under

his careful eyes twice over--often also the last revises left to his

tender mercy altogether on condition he wouldn't bother me any more.

2. "For good thirty years": that is to say, from my first verse-writing

in "Friendship's Offering" at fifteen, to my last orthodox and

conservative compositions at forty-five.[2] But when I began to utter

radical sentiments, and say things derogatory to the clergy, my old

friend got quite restive--absolutely refused sometimes to pass even my

most grammatical and punctuated paragraphs, if their contents savored of

heresy or revolution; and at last I was obliged to print all my

philanthropy and political economy on the sly.

3. The heaven of the literary world through which Mr. Harrison moved in

a widely cometary fashion, circling now round one luminary and now

submitting to the attraction of another, not without a serenely

erubescent luster of his own, differed _toto coelo_ from the celestial

state of authorship by whose courses we have now the felicity of being

dazzled and directed. Then, the publications of the months being very

nearly concluded in the modest browns of _Blackwood_ and _Fraser_, and

the majesty of the quarterlies being above the range of the properly

so-called "public" mind, the simple family circle looked forward with

chief complacency to their New Year's gift of the Annual--a delicately

printed, lustrously bound, and elaborately illustrated small octavo

volume, representing, after its manner, the poetical and artistic

inspiration of the age. It is not a little wonderful to me, looking back

to those pleasant years and their bestowings, to measure the difficultly

imaginable distance between the periodical literature of that day and

ours. In a few words, it may be summed by saying that the ancient Annual

was written by meekly-minded persons, who felt that they knew nothing

about anything, and did not want to know more. Faith in the usually

accepted principles of propriety, and confidence in the Funds, the

Queen, the English Church, the British Army and the perennial

continuance of England, of her Annuals, and of the creation in general,

were necessary then for the eligibility, and important elements in the

success, of the winter-blowing author. Whereas I suppose that the

popularity of our present candidates for praise, at the successive

changes of the moon, may be considered as almost proportionate to their

confidence in the abstract principles of dissolution, the immediate

necessity of change, and the inconvenience, no less than the iniquity,

of attributing any authority to the Church, the Queen, the Almighty, or

anything else but the British Press. Such constitutional differences in

the tone of the literary contents imply still greater contrasts in the

lives of the editors of these several periodicals. It was enough for the

editor of the "Friendship's Offering" if he could gather for his

Christmas bouquet a little pastoral story, suppose, by Miss Mitford, a

dramatic sketch by the Rev. George Croly, a few sonnets or impromptu

stanzas to music by the gentlest lovers and maidens of his acquaintance,

and a legend of the Apennines or romance of the Pyrenees by some

adventurous traveler who had penetrated into the recesses of their

mountains, and would modify the traditions of the country to introduce a

plate by Clarkson Stanfield or J. D. Harding. Whereas nowadays the

editor of a leading monthly is responsible to his readers for exhaustive

views of the politics of Europe during the last fortnight; and would

think himself distanced in the race with his lunarian rivals, if his

numbers did not contain three distinct and entirely new theories of the

system of the universe, and at least one hitherto unobserved piece of

evidence of the nonentity of God.

4. In one respect, however, the humilities of that departed time were

loftier than the prides of to-day--that even the most retiring of its

authors expected to be admired, not for what he had discovered, but for

what he was. It did not matter in our dynasties of determined noblesse

how many things an industrious blockhead knew, or how curious things a

lucky booby had discovered. We claimed, and gave no honor but for real

rank of human sense and wit; and although this manner of estimate led to

many various collateral mischiefs--to much toleration of misconduct in

persons who were amusing, and of uselessness in those of proved ability,

there was yet the essential and constant good in it, that no one hoped

to snap up for himself a reputation which his friend was on the point of

achieving, and that even the meanest envy of merit was not embittered by

a gambler's grudge at his neighbor's fortune.

5. Into this incorruptible court of literature I was early brought,

whether by good or evil hap, I know not; certainly by no very deliberate

wisdom in my friends or myself. A certain capacity for rhythmic cadence

(visible enough in all my later writings) and the cheerfulness of a much

protected, but not foolishly indulged childhood, made me early a

rhymester; and a shelf of the little cabinet by which I am now writing

is loaded with poetical effusions which were the delight of my father

and mother, and I have not yet the heart to burn. A worthy Scottish

friend of my father's, Thomas Pringle, preceded Mr. Harrison in the

editorship of "Friendship's Offering," and doubtfully, but with

benignant sympathy, admitted the dazzling hope that one day rhymes of

mine might be seen in real print, on those amiable and shining pages.

6. My introduction by Mr. Pringle to the poet Rogers, on the ground of

my admiration of the recently published "Italy," proved, as far as I

remember, slightly disappointing to the poet, because it appeared on Mr.

Pringle's unadvised cross-examination of me in the presence that I knew

more of the vignettes than the verses; and also slightly discouraging to

me because, this contretemps necessitating an immediate change of

subject, I thenceforward understood none of the conversation, and when

we came away was rebuked by Mr. Pringle for not attending to it. Had his

grave authority been maintained over me, my literary bloom would

probably have been early nipped; but he passed away into the African

deserts; and the Favonian breezes of Mr. Harrison's praise revived my

drooping ambition.

7. I know not whether most in that ambition, or to please my father, I

now began seriously to cultivate my skill in expression. I had always an

instinct of possessing considerable word-power; and the series of essays

written about this time for the _Architectural Magazine_, under the

signature of Kata Phusin, contain sentences nearly as well put together

as any I have done since. But without Mr. Harrison's ready praise, and

severe punctuation, I should have either tired of my labor, or lost it;

as it was, though I shall always think those early years might have been

better spent, they had their reward. As soon as I had anything really to

say, I was able sufficiently to say it; and under Mr. Harrison's

cheerful auspices, and balmy consolations of my father under adverse

criticism, the first volume of "Modern Painters" established itself in

public opinion, and determined the tenor of my future life.

8. Thus began a friendship, and in no unreal sense, even a family

relationship, between Mr. Harrison, my father and mother, and me, in

which there was no alloy whatsoever of distrust or displeasure on either

side, but which remained faithful and loving, more and more conducive to

every sort of happiness among us, to the day of my father's death.

But the joyfulest days of it for _us_, and chiefly for me, cheered with

concurrent sympathy from other friends--of whom only one now is

left--were in the triumphal Olympiad of years which followed the

publication of the second volume of "Modern Painters," when Turner

himself had given to me his thanks, to my father and mother his true

friendship, and came always for _their_ honor, to keep my birthday with

them; the constant dinner party of the day remaining in its perfect

chaplet from 1844 to 1850,--Turner, Mr. Thomas Richmond, Mr. George

Richmond, Samuel Prout, and Mr. Harrison.

9. Mr. Harrison, as my literary godfather, who had held me at the Font

of the Muses, and was answerable to the company for my moral principles

and my syntax, always made "the speech"; my father used most often to

answer for me in few words, but with wet eyes: (there was a general

understanding that any good or sorrow that might come to me in literary

life were infinitely more his) and the two Mr. Richmonds held themselves

responsible to him for my at least moderately decent orthodoxy in art,

taking in that matter a tenderly inquisitorial function, and warning my

father solemnly of two dangerous heresies in the bud, and of things

really passing the possibilities of the indulgence of the Church, said

against Claude or Michael Angelo. The death of Turner and other things,

far more sad than death, clouded those early days, but the memory of

them returned again after I had well won my second victory with the

"Stones of Venice"; and the two Mr. Richmonds, and Mr. Harrison, and my

father, were again happy on my birthday, and so to the end.

10. In a far deeper sense than he himself knew, Mr. Harrison was all

this time influencing my thoughts and opinions, by the entire

consistency, contentment, and practical sense of his modest life. My

father and he were both flawless types of the true London citizen of

olden days: incorruptible, proud with sacred and simple pride, happy in

their function and position; putting daily their total energy into the

detail of their business duties, and finding daily a refined and perfect

pleasure in the hearth-side poetry of domestic life. Both of them, in

their hearts, as romantic as girls; both of them inflexible as soldier

recruits in any matter of probity and honor, in business or out of it;

both of them utterly hating radical newspapers, and devoted to the House

of Lords; my father only, it seemed to me, slightly failing in his

loyalty to the Worshipful the Mayor and Corporation of London. This

disrespect for civic dignity was connected in my father with some little

gnawing of discomfort--deep down in his heart--in his own position as a

merchant, and with timidly indulged hope that his son might one day move

in higher spheres; whereas Mr. Harrison was entirely placid and resigned

to the will of Providence which had appointed him his desk in the Crown

Life Office, never in his most romantic visions projected a marriage for

any of his daughters with a British baronet or a German count, and

pinned his little vanities prettily and openly on his breast, like a

nosegay, when he went out to dinner. Most especially he shone at the

Literary Fund, where he was Registrar and had proper official relations,

therefore, always with the Chairman, Lord Mahon, or Lord Houghton, or

the Bishop of Winchester, or some other magnificent person of that sort,

with whom it was Mr. Harrison's supremest felicity to exchange a not

unfrequent little joke--like a pinch of snuff--and to indicate for them

the shoals to be avoided and the channels to be followed with flowing

sail in the speech of the year; after which, if perchance there were any

malignant in the company who took objection, suppose, to the claims of

the author last relieved, to the charity of the Society, or to any claim

founded on the production of a tale for _Blackwood's Magazine_, and of

two sonnets for "Friendship's Offering"; or if perchance there were any

festering sharp thorn in Mr. Harrison's side in the shape of some

distinguished radical, Sir Charles Dilke, or Mr. Dickens, or anybody who

had ever said anything against taxation, or the Post Office, or the

Court of Chancery, or the Bench of Bishops,--then would Mr. Harrison, if

he had full faith in his Chairman, cunningly arrange with him some

delicate little extinctive operation to be performed on that malignant

or that radical in the course of the evening, and would relate to us

exultingly the next day all the incidents of the power of arms, and

vindictively (for him) dwell on the barbed points and double edge of the

beautiful episcopalian repartee with which it was terminated.

11. Very seriously, in all such public duties, Mr. Harrison was a person

of rarest quality and worth; absolutely disinterested in his zeal,

unwearied in exertion, always ready, never tiresome, never absurd;

bringing practical sense, kindly discretion, and a most wholesome

element of good-humored, but incorruptible honesty, into everything his

hand found to do. Everybody respected, and the best men sincerely

regarded him, and I think those who knew most of the world were always

the first to acknowledge his fine faculty of doing exactly the right

thing to exactly the right point--and so pleasantly. In private life, he

was to me an object of quite special admiration, in the quantity of

pleasure he could take in little things; and he very materially modified

many of my gravest conclusions, as to the advantages or mischiefs of

modern suburban life. To myself scarcely any dwelling-place and duty in

this world would have appeared (until, perhaps, I had tried them) less

eligible for a man of sensitive and fanciful mind than the New Road,

Camberwell Green, and the monotonous office work in Bridge Street. And

to a certain extent, I am still of the same mind as to these matters,

and do altogether, and without doubt or hesitation, repudiate the

existence of New Road and Camberwell Green in general, no less than the

condemnation of intelligent persons to a routine of clerk's work broken

only by a three weeks' holiday in the decline of the year. On less

lively, fanciful, and amiable persons than my old friend, the New Road

and the daily desk do verily exercise a degrading and much to be

regretted influence. But Mr. Harrison brought the freshness of pastoral

simplicity into the most faded corners of the Green, lightened with his

cheerful heart the most leaden hours of the office, and gathered during

his three weeks' holiday in the neighborhood, suppose, of Guildford,

Gravesend, Broadstairs, or Rustington, more vital recreation and

speculative philosophy than another man would have got on the grand

tour.

12. On the other hand, I, who had nothing to do all day but what I

liked, and could wander at will among all the best beauties of the

globe--nor that without sufficient power to see and to feel them, was

habitually a discontented person, and frequently a weary one; and the

reproachful thought which always rose in my mind when in that

unconquerable listlessness of surfeit from excitement I found myself

unable to win even a momentary pleasure from the fairest scene, was

always: "If but Mr. Harrison were here instead of me!"

13. Many and many a time I planned very seriously the beguiling of him

over the water. But there was always something to be done in a

hurry--something to be worked out--something to be seen, as I thought,

only in my own quiet way. I believe if I had but had the sense to take

my old friend with me, he would have shown me ever so much more than I

found out by myself. But it was not to be; and year after year I went to

grumble and mope at Venice, or Lago Maggiore; and Mr. Harrison to enjoy

himself from morning to night at Broadstairs or Box Hill. Let me not

speak with disdain of either. No blue languor of tideless wave is worth

the spray and sparkle of a South-Eastern English beach, and no one will

ever rightly enjoy the pines of the Wengern Alp who despises the boxes

of Box Hill.

Nay, I remember me of a little rapture of George Richmond himself on

those fair slopes of sunny sward, ending in a vision of Tobit and his

dog--no less--led up there by the helpful angel. (I have always

wondered, by the way, whether that blessed dog minded what the angel

said to him.)

14. But Mr. Harrison was independent of these mere ethereal visions, and

surrounded himself only with a halo of sublunary beatitude. Welcome

always he, as on his side frankly coming to be well, with the farmer,

the squire, the rector, the--I had like to have said, dissenting

minister, but I think Mr. Harrison usually evaded villages for summer

domicile which were in any wise open to suspicion of Dissent in the

air,--but with hunting rector, and the High Church curate, and the

rector's daughters, and the curate's mother--and the landlord of the Red

Lion, and the hostler of the Red Lion stables, and the tapster of the

Pig and Whistle, and all the pigs in the backyard, and all the whistlers

in the street--whether for want of thought or for gayety of it, and all

the geese on the common, ducks in the horse-pond, and daws in the

steeple, Mr. Harrison was known and beloved by every bird and body of

them before half his holiday was over, and the rest of it was mere

exuberance of festivity about him, and applauding coronation of his head

and heart. Above all, he delighted in the ways of animals and children.

He wrote a birthday ode--or at least a tumble-out-of-the-nest-day

ode--to our pet rook, Grip, which encouraged that bird in taking such

liberties with the cook, and in addressing so many impertinences to the

other servants, that he became the mere plague, or as the French would

express it, the "Black-beast," of the kitchen at Denmark Hill for the

rest of his life. There was almost always a diary kept, usually, I

think, in rhyme, of those summer hours of indolence; and when at last it

was recognized, in due and reverent way, at the Crown Life Office, that

indeed the time had drawn near when its constant and faithful servant

should be allowed to rest, it was perhaps not the least of my friend's

praiseworthy and gentle gifts to be truly capable of rest; withdrawing

himself into the memories of his useful and benevolent life, and making

it truly a holiday in its honored evening. The idea then occurred to him

(and it was now my turn to press with hearty sympathy the sometimes

intermitted task) of writing these Reminiscences: valuable--valuable to

whom, and for what, I begin to wonder.

15. For indeed these memories are of people who are passed away like the

snow in harvest; and now, with the sharp-sickle reapers of full shocks

of the fattening wheat of metaphysics, and fair novelists Ruth-like in

the fields of barley, or more mischievously coming through the

rye,--what will the public, so vigorously sustained by these, care to

hear of the lovely writers of old days, quaint creatures that they

were?--Merry Miss Mitford, actually living in the country, actually

walking in it, loving it, and finding history enough in the life of the

butcher's boy, and romance enough in the story of the miller's daughter,

to occupy all her mind with, innocent of troubles concerning the Turkish

question; steady-going old Barham, confessing nobody but the Jackdaw of

Rheims, and fearless alike of Ritualism, Darwinism, or disestablishment;

iridescent clearness of Thomas Hood--the wildest, deepest infinity of

marvelously jestful men; manly and rational Sydney, inevitable,

infallible, inoffensively wise of wit;[3]--they are gone their way, and

ours is far diverse; and they and all the less-known, yet pleasantly and

brightly endowed spirits of that time, are suddenly as unintelligible to

us as the Etruscans--not a feeling they had that we can share in; and

these pictures of them will be to us valuable only as the sculpture

under the niches far in the shade there of the old parish church, dimly

vital images of inconceivable creatures whom we shall never see the like

of more.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This paper was written as a preface to a series of "Reminiscences"

from the pen of the late Mr. W. H. Harrison, commenced in the

_University Magazine_ of May 1878. It was separately printed in that

magazine in the preceding month, but owing to Mr. Ruskin's illness at

the time, he was unable to see it through the press. A letter from Mr.

Ruskin to Mr. Harrison, printed in "Arrows of the Chace," may be found

of interest in connection with the opening statements of this

paper.--[ED.]

[2] "Friendship's Offering" of 1835 included two poems, signed "J. R.,"

and entitled "Saltzburg" and "Fragments from a Metrical Journal;

Andernacht and St. Goar."--[ED.]

[3] In the "Life and Times of Sydney Smith," by Stuart J. Reid (London,

1884, p. 374), appears a letter addressed to the author by Mr. Ruskin,

to whom the book is dedicated:--

"OXFORD, _Nov. 15th, 1883_.

"MY DEAR SIR,--I wanted to tell you what deep respect I had for Sydney

Smith; but my time has been cut to pieces ever since your note reached

me. He was the first in the literary circles of London to assert the

value of 'Modern Painters,' and he has always seemed to me equally

keen-sighted and generous in his estimate of literary efforts. His

'Moral Philosophy' is the only book on the subject which I care that my

pupils should read, and there is no man (whom I have not personally

known) whose image is so vivid in my constant affection.--Ever your

faithful servant,

"JOHN RUSKIN."--[ED.]

* * * * *

ART.

I.

HISTORY AND CRITICISM.

LORD LINDSAY'S "CHRISTIAN ART."

(_Quarterly Review, June 1847._)

EASTLAKE'S "HISTORY OF OIL PAINTING."

(_Quarterly Review, March 1848._)

SAMUEL PROUT.

(_Art Journal, March 1849._)

SIR JOSHUA AND HOLBEIN.

(_Cornhill Magazine, March 1860._)

* * * * *

"THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN ART."[4]

BY LORD LINDSAY.

16. There is, perhaps, no phenomenon connected with the history of the

first half of the nineteenth century, which will become a subject of

more curious investigation in after ages, than the coincident

development of the Critical faculty, and extinction of the Arts of

Design. Our mechanical energies, vast though they be, are not singular

nor characteristic; such, and so great, have before been manifested--and

it may perhaps be recorded of us with wonder rather than respect, that

we pierced mountains and excavated valleys, only to emulate the activity

of the gnat and the swiftness of the swallow. Our discoveries in

science, however accelerated or comprehensive, are but the necessary

development of the more wonderful reachings into vacancy of past

centuries; and they who struck the piles of the bridge of Chaos will

arrest the eyes of Futurity rather than we builders of its towers and

gates--theirs the authority of Light, ours but the ordering of courses

to the Sun and Moon.

17. But the Negative character of the age is distinctive.

There has not before appeared a race like that of civilized

Europe at this day, thoughtfully unproductive of all

art--ambitious--industrious--investigative--reflective, and incapable.

Disdained by the savage, or scattered by the soldier, dishonored by the

voluptuary, or forbidden by the fanatic, the arts have not, till now,

been extinguished by analysis and paralyzed by protection. Our

lecturers, learned in history, exhibit the descents of excellence from

school to school, and clear from doubt the pedigrees of powers which

they cannot re-establish, and of virtues no more to be revived: the

scholar is early acquainted with every department of the Impossible, and

expresses in proper terms his sense of the deficiencies of Titian and

the errors of Michael Angelo: the metaphysician weaves from field to

field his analogies of gossamer, which shake and glitter fairly in the

sun, but must be torn asunder by the first plow that passes: geometry

measures out, by line and rule, the light which is to illustrate

heroism, and the shadow which should veil distress; and anatomy counts

muscles, and systematizes motion, in the wrestling of Genius with its

angel. Nor is ingenuity wanting--nor patience; apprehension was never

more ready, nor execution more exact--yet nothing is of us, or in us,

accomplished;--the treasures of our wealth and will are spent in

vain--our cares are as clouds without water--our creations fruitless and

perishable; the succeeding Age will trample "sopra lor vanita che par

persona," and point wonderingly back to the strange colorless tessera in

the mosaic of human mind.

18. No previous example can be shown, in the career of nations not

altogether nomad or barbarous, of so total an absence of invention,--of

any material representation of the mind's inward yearning and desire,

seen, as soon as shaped, to be, though imperfect, in its essence good,

and worthy to be rested in with contentment, and consisting

self-approval--the Sabbath of contemplation which confesses and

confirms the majesty of a style. All but ourselves have had this in

measure; the Imagination has stirred herself in proportion to the

requirements, capacity, and energy of each race: reckless or pensive,

soaring or frivolous, still she has had life and influence; sometimes

aiming at Heaven with brick for stone and slime for mortar--anon bound

down to painting of porcelain, and carving of ivory, but always with an

inward consciousness of power which might indeed be palsied or

imprisoned, but not in operation vain. Altars have been rent,

many--ashes poured out,--hands withered--but we alone have worshiped,

and received no answer--the pieces left in order upon the wood, and our

names writ in the water that runs roundabout the trench.

19. It is easier to conceive than to enumerate the many circumstances

which are herein against us, necessarily, and exclusive of all that

wisdom might avoid, or resolution vanquish. First, the weight of mere

numbers, among whom ease of communication rather renders opposition of

judgment fatal, than agreement probable; looking from England to Attica,

or from Germany to Tuscany, we may remember to what good purpose it was

said that the magnetism of iron was found not in bars, but in needles.

Together with this adversity of number comes the likelihood of many

among the more available intellects being held back and belated in the

crowd, or else prematurely outwearied; for it now needs both curious

fortune and vigorous effort to give to any, even the greatest, such

early positions of eminence and audience as may feed their force with

advantage; so that men spend their strength in opening circles, and

crying for place, and only come to speech of us with broken voices and

shortened time. Then follows the diminution of importance in peculiar

places and public edifices, as they engage national affection or vanity;

no single city can now take such queenly lead as that the pride of the

whole body of the people shall be involved in adorning her; the

buildings of London or Munich are not charged with the fullness of the

national heart as were the domes of Pisa and Florence:--their credit or

shame is metropolitan, not acropolitan; central at the best, not

dominant; and this is one of the chief modes in which the cessation of

superstition, so far as it has taken place, has been of evil consequence

to art, that the observance of local sanctities being abolished,

meanness and mistake are anywhere allowed of, and the thoughts and

wealth which were devoted and expended to good purpose in one place, are

now distracted and scattered to utter unavailableness.

20. In proportion to the increasing spirituality of religion, the

conception of worthiness in material offering ceases, and with it the

sense of beauty in the evidence of votive labor; machine-work is

substituted for handwork, as if the value of ornament consisted in the

mere multiplication of agreeable forms, instead of in the evidence of

human care and thought and love about the separate stones;

and--machine-work once tolerated--the eye itself soon loses its sense of

this very evidence, and no more perceives the difference between the

blind accuracy of the engine, and the bright, strange play of the living

stroke--a difference as great as between the form of a stone pillar and

a springing fountain. And on this blindness follow all errors and

abuses--hollowness and slightness of framework, speciousness of surface

ornament, concealed structure, imitated materials, and types of form

borrowed from things noble for things base; and all these abuses must be

resisted with the more caution, and less success, because in many ways

they are signs or consequences of improvement, and are associated both

with purer forms of religious feeling and with more general diffusion of

refinements and comforts; and especially because we are critically aware

of all our deficiencies, too cognizant of all that is greatest to pass

willingly and humbly through the stages that rise to it, and oppressed

in every honest effort by the bitter sense of inferiority. In every

previous development the power has been in advance of the consciousness,

the resources more abundant than the knowledge--the energy irresistible,

the discipline imperfect. The light that led was narrow and

dim--streakings of dawn--but it fell with kindly gentleness on eyes

newly awakened out of sleep. But we are now aroused suddenly in the

light of an intolerable day--our limbs fail under the sunstroke--we are

walled in by the great buildings of elder times, and their fierce

reverberation falls upon us without pause, in our feverish and

oppressive consciousness of captivity; we are laid bedridden at the

Beautiful Gate, and all our hope must rest in acceptance of the "such as

I have," of the passers by.

21. The frequent and firm, yet modest expression of this hope, gives

peculiar value to Lord Lindsay's book on Christian Art; for it is seldom

that a grasp of antiquity so comprehensive, and a regard for it so

affectionate, have consisted with aught but gloomy foreboding with

respect to our own times. As a contribution to the History of Art, his

work is unquestionably the most valuable which has yet appeared in

England. His research has been unwearied; he has availed himself of the

best results of German investigation--his own acuteness of discernment

in cases of approximating or derivative style is considerable--and he

has set before the English reader an outline of the relations of the

primitive schools of Sacred art which we think so thoroughly verified in

all its more important ramifications, that, with whatever richness of

detail the labor of succeeding writers may illustrate them, the leading

lines of Lord Lindsay's chart will always henceforth be followed. The

feeling which pervades the whole book is chastened, serious, and full of

reverence for the strength ordained out of the lips of infant

Art--accepting on its own terms its simplest teaching, sympathizing with

all kindness in its unreasoning faith; the writer evidently looking back

with most joy and thankfulness to hours passed in gazing upon the faded

and faint touches of feeble hands, and listening through the stillness

of uninvaded cloisters for fall of voices now almost spent; yet he is

never contracted into the bigot, nor inflamed into the enthusiast; he

never loses his memory of the outside world, never quits nor compromises

his severe and reflective Protestantism, never gives ground of offense

by despite or forgetfulness of any order of merit or period of effort.

And the tone of his address to our present schools is therefore neither

scornful nor peremptory; his hope, consisting with full apprehension of

all that we have lost, is based on a strict and stern estimate of our

power, position, and resource, compelling the assent even of the least

sanguine to his expectancy of the revelation of a new world of Spiritual

Beauty, of which whosoever

* * *

"will dedicate his talents, as the bondsman of love, to his Redeemer's

glory and the good of mankind, may become the priest and interpreter, by

adopting in the first instance, and re-issuing with that outward

investiture which the assiduous study of all that is beautiful, either

in Grecian sculpture, or the later but less spiritual schools of

painting, has enabled him to supply, such of its bright ideas as he

finds imprisoned in the early and imperfect efforts of art--and

secondly, by exploring further on his own account in the untrodden

realms of feeling that lie before him, and calling into palpable

existence visions as bright, as pure, and as immortal as those that have

already, in the golden days of Raphael and Perugino, obeyed their

creative mandate, Live!" (Vol. iii., p. 422).[5]

* * *

22. But while we thus defer to the discrimination, respect the feeling,

and join in the hope of the author, we earnestly deprecate the frequent

assertion, as we entirely deny the accuracy or propriety, of the

metaphysical analogies, in accordance with which his work has unhappily

been arranged. Though these had been as carefully, as they are crudely,

considered, it had still been no light error of judgment to thrust them

with dogmatism so abrupt into the forefront of a work whose purpose is

assuredly as much to win to the truth as to demonstrate it. The writer

has apparently forgotten that of the men to whom he must primarily look

for the working out of his anticipations, the most part are of limited

knowledge and inveterate habit, men dexterous in practice, idle in

thought; many of them compelled by ill-ordered patronage into directions

of exertion at variance with their own best impulses, and regarding

their art only as a means of life; all of them conscious of practical

difficulties which the critic is too apt to under-estimate, and probably

remembering disappointments of early effort rude enough to chill the

most earnest heart. The shallow amateurship of the circle of their

patrons early disgusts them with theories; they shrink back to the hard

teaching of their own industry, and would rather read the book which

facilitated their methods than the one that rationalized their aims.

Noble exceptions there are, and more than might be deemed; but the labor

spent in contest with executive difficulties renders even these better

men unapt receivers of a system which looks with little respect on such

achievement, and shrewd discerners of the parts of such system which

have been feebly rooted, or fancifully reared. Their attention should

have been attracted both by clearness and kindness of promise; their

impatience prevented by close reasoning and severe proof of every

statement which might seem transcendental. Altogether void of such

consideration or care, Lord Lindsay never even so much as states the

meaning or purpose of his appeal, but, clasping his hands desperately

over his head, disappears on the instant in an abyss of curious and

unsupported assertions of the philosophy of human nature: reappearing

only, like a breathless diver, in the third page, to deprecate the

surprise of the reader whom he has never addressed, at a conviction

which he has never stated; and again vanishing ere we can well look him

in the face, among the frankincensed clouds of Christian mythology:

filling the greater part of his first volume with a _resume_ of its

symbols and traditions, yet never vouchsafing the slightest hint of the

objects for which they are assembled, or the amount of credence with

which he would have them regarded; and so proceeds to the historical

portion of the book, leaving the whole theory which is its key to be

painfully gathered from scattered passages, and in great part from the

mere form of enumeration adopted in the preliminary chart of the

schools; and giving as yet account only of that period to which the mere

artist looks with least interest--while the work, even when completed,

will be nothing more than a single pinnacle of the historical edifice

whose ground-plan is laid in the preceding essay, "Progression by

Antagonism":--a plan, by the author's confession, "too extensive for his

own, or any single hand to execute," yet without the understanding of

whose main relations it is impossible to receive the intended teaching

of the completed portion.

23. It is generally easier to plan what is beyond the reach of others

than to execute what is within our own; and it had been well if the

range of this introductory essay had been something less extensive, and

its reasoning more careful. Its search after truth is honest and

impetuous, and its results would have appeared as interesting as they

are indeed valuable, had they but been arranged with ordinary

perspicuity, and represented in simple terms. But the writer's evil

genius pursues him; the demand for exertion of thought is remorseless,

and continuous throughout, and the statements of theoretical principle

as short, scattered, and obscure, as they are bold. We question whether

many readers may not be utterly appalled by the aspect of an "Analysis

of Human Nature"--the first task proposed to them by our intellectual

Eurystheus--to be accomplished in the space of six semi-pages, followed

in the seventh by the "Development of the Individual Man," and applied

in the eighth to a "General Classification of Individuals": and we

infinitely marvel that our author should have thought it unnecessary to

support or explain a division of the mental attributes on which the

treatment of his entire subject afterwards depends, and whose terms are

repeated in every following page to the very dazzling of eye and

deadening of ear (a division, we regret to say, as illogical as it is

purposeless), otherwise than by a laconic reference to the assumptions

of Phrenology.

"The Individual Man, or Man considered by himself as an unit in

creation, is compounded of three distinct primary elements.

1. Sense, or the animal frame, with its passions or affections;

2. Mind or Intellect;--of which the distinguishing

faculties--rarely, if ever, equally balanced, and by their

respective predominance determinative of his whole character,

conduct, and views of life--are,

i. Imagination, the discerner of Beauty,--

ii. Reason, the discerner of Truth,--

the former animating and informing the world of Sense or Matter,

the latter finding her proper home in the world of abstract or

immaterial existences --the former receiving the impress of things

Objectively, or _ab externo_, the latter impressing its own ideas

on them Subjectively, or _ab interno_--the former a feminine or

passive, the latter a masculine or active principle; and

iii. Spirit--the Moral or Immortal principle, ruling through the

Will, and breathed into Man by the Breath of God."--"Progression

by Antagonism," pp. 2, 3.

24. On what authority does the writer assume that the moral is alone the

_Immortal_ principle--or the only part of the human nature bestowed by

the breath of God? Are imagination, then, and reason perishable? Is the

Body itself? Are not all alike immortal; and when distinction is to be

made among them, is not the first great division between their active

and passive immortality, between the supported body and supporting

spirit; that spirit itself afterwards rather conveniently to be

considered as either exercising intellectual function, or receiving

moral influence, and, both in power and passiveness, deriving its energy

and sensibility alike from the sustaining breath of God--than actually

divided into intellectual and moral parts? For if the distinction

between us and the brute be the test of the nature of the living soul by

that breath conferred, it is assuredly to be found as much in the

imagination as in the moral principle. There is but one of the moral

sentiments enumerated by Lord Lindsay, the sign of which is absent in

the animal creation:--the enumeration is a bald one, but let it serve

the turn--"Self-esteem and love of Approbation," eminent in horse and

dog; "Firmness," not wanting either to ant or elephant; "Veneration,"

distinct as far as the superiority of man can by brutal intellect be

comprehended; "Hope," developed as far as its objects can be made

visible; and "Benevolence," or Love, the highest of all, the most

assured of all--together with all the modifications of opposite feeling,

rage, jealousy, habitual malice, even love of mischief and comprehension

of jest:--the one only moral sentiment wanting being that of

responsibility to an Invisible being, or conscientiousness. But where,

among brutes, shall we find the slightest trace of the Imaginative

faculty, or of that discernment of beauty which our author most

inaccurately confounds with it, or of the discipline of memory, grasping

this or that circumstance at will, or of the still nobler foresight of,

and respect towards, things future, except only instinctive and

compelled?

25. The fact is, that it is not in intellect added to the bodily sense,

nor in moral sentiment superadded to the intellect, that the essential

difference between brute and man consists: but in the elevation of all

three to that point at which each becomes capable of communion with the

Deity, and worthy therefore of eternal life;--the body more universal as

an instrument--more exquisite in its sense--this last character carried

out in the eye and ear to the perception of Beauty, in form, sound, and

color--and herein distinctively raised above the brutal sense;

intellect, as we have said, peculiarly separating and vast; the moral

sentiments like in essence, but boundlessly expanded, as attached to an

infinite object, and laboring in an infinite field: each part mortal in

its shortcoming, immortal in the accomplishment of its perfection and

purpose; the opposition which we at first broadly expressed as between

body and spirit, being more strictly between the natural and spiritual

condition of the entire creature--body natural, sown in death, body

spiritual, raised in incorruption: Intellect natural, leading to

skepticism; intellect spiritual, expanding into faith: Passion natural,

suffered from things spiritual; passion spiritual, centered on things

unseen: and the strife or antagonism which is throughout the subject of

Lord Lindsay's proof, is not, as he has stated it, between the moral,

intellectual, and sensual elements, but between the upward and downward

tendencies of all three--between the spirit of Man which goeth upward,

and the spirit of the Beast which goeth downward.

26. We should not have been thus strict in our examination of these

preliminary statements, if the question had been one of terms merely, or

if the inaccuracy of thought had been confined to the Essay on

Antagonism. If upon receiving a writer's terms of argument in the

sense--however unusual or mistaken--which he chooses they should bear,

we may without further error follow his course of thought, it is as

unkind as unprofitable to lose the use of his result in quarrel with its

algebraic expression; and if the reader will understand by Lord

Lindsay's general term "Spirit" the susceptibility of right moral

emotion, and the entire subjection of the Will to Reason; and receive

his term "Sense" as not including the perception of Beauty either in

sight or sound, but expressive of animal sensation only, he may follow

without embarrassment to its close, his magnificently comprehensive

statement of the forms of probation which the heart and faculties of man

have undergone from the beginning of time. But it is far otherwise when

the theory is to be applied, in all its pseudo-organization, to the

separate departments of a particular art, and analogies the most subtle

and speculative traced between the mental character and artistical

choice or attainment of different races of men. Such analogies are

always treacherous, for the amount of expression of individual mind

which Art can convey is dependent on so many collateral circumstances,

that it even militates against the truth of any particular system of

interpretation that it should seem at first generally applicable, or its

results consistent. The passages in which such interpretation has been

attempted in the work before us, are too graceful to be regretted, nor

is their brilliant suggestiveness otherwise than pleasing and profitable

too, so long as it is received on its own grounds merely, and affects

not with its uncertainty the very matter of its foundation. But all

oscillation is communicable, and Lord Lindsay is much to be blamed for

leaving it entirely to the reader to distinguish between the

determination of his research and the activity of his fancy--between the

authority of his interpretation and the aptness of his metaphor. He who

would assert the true meaning of a symbolical art, in an age of strict

inquiry and tardy imagination, ought rather to surrender something of

the fullness which his own faith perceives, than expose the fabric of

his vision, too finely woven, to the hard handling of the materialist;

and we sincerely regret that discredit is likely to accrue to portions

of our author's well-grounded statement of real significances, once of

all men understood, because these are rashly blended with his own

accidental perceptions of disputable analogy. He perpetually associates

the present imaginative influence of Art with its ancient hieroglyphical

teaching, and mingles fancies fit only for the framework of a sonnet,

with the deciphered evidence which is to establish a serious point of

history; and this the more frequently and grossly, in the endeavor to

force every branch of his subject into illustration of the false

division of the mental attributes which we have pointed out.

27. His theory is first clearly stated in the following passage:--

* * *

"Man is, in the strictest sense of the word, a progressive being, and

with many periods of inaction and retrogression, has still held, upon

the whole, a steady course towards the great end of his existence, the

re-union and re-harmonizing of the three elements of his being,

dislocated by the Fall, in the service of his God. Each of these three

elements, Sense, Intellect, and Spirit, has had its distinct development

at three distant intervals, and in the personality of the three great

branches of the human family. The race of Ham, giants in prowess if not

in stature, cleared the earth of primeval forests and monsters, built

cities, established vast empires, invented the mechanical arts, and gave

the fullest expansion to the animal energies. After them, the Greeks,

the elder line of Japhet, developed the intellectual faculties,

Imagination and Reason, more especially the former, always the earlier

to bud and blossom; poetry and fiction, history, philosophy, and

science, alike look back to Greece as their birthplace; on the one hand

they put a soul into Sense, peopling the world with their gay

mythology--on the other they bequeathed to us, in Plato and Aristotle,

the mighty patriarchs of human wisdom, the Darius and the Alexander of

the two grand armies of thinking men whose antagonism has ever since

divided the battlefield of the human intellect:--While, lastly, the race

of Shem, the Jews, and the nations of Christendom, their _locum

tenentes_ as the Spiritual Israel, have, by God's blessing, been

elevated in Spirit to as near and intimate communion with Deity as is

possible in this stage of being. Now the peculiar interest and dignity

of Art consists in her exact correspondence in her three departments

with these three periods of development, and in the illustration she

thus affords--more closely and markedly even than literature--to the

all-important truth that men stand or fall according as they look up to

the Ideal or not. For example, the Architecture of Egypt, her pyramids

and temples, cumbrous and inelegant, but imposing from their vastness

and their gloom, express the ideal of Sense or Matter--elevated and

purified indeed, and nearly approaching the Intellectual, but Material

still; we think of them as of natural scenery, in association with caves

or mountains, or vast periods of time; their voice is as the voice of

the sea, or as that of 'many peoples,' shouting in unison:--But the

Sculpture of Greece is the voice of Intellect and Thought, communing

with itself in solitude, feeding on beauty and yearning after

truth:--While the Painting of Christendom--(and we must remember that

the glories of Christianity, in the full extent of the term, are yet to

come)--is that of an immortal Spirit, conversing with its God. And as if

to mark more forcibly the fact of continuous progress towards

perfection, it is observable that although each of the three arts

peculiarly reflects and characterizes one of the three epochs, each art

of later growth has been preceded in its rise, progress, and decline, by

an antecedent correspondent development of its elder sister or

sisters--Sculpture, in Greece, by that of Architecture--Painting, in

Europe, by that of Architecture and Sculpture. If Sculpture and Painting

stand by the side of Architecture in Egypt, if Painting by that of

Architecture and Sculpture in Greece, it is as younger sisters, girlish

and unformed. In Europe alone are the three found linked together, in

equal stature and perfection."--Vol. i, pp. xii.--xiv.

* * *

28. The reader must, we think, at once perceive the bold fallacy of this

forced analogy--the comparison of the architecture of one nation with

the sculpture of another, and the painting of a third, and the

assumption as a proof of difference in moral character, of changes

necessarily wrought, always in the same order, by the advance of mere

mechanical experience. Architecture must precede sculpture, not because

sense precedes intellect, but because men must build houses before they

adorn chambers, and raise shrines before they inaugurate idols; and

sculpture must precede painting, because men must learn forms in the

solid before they can project them on a flat surface, and must learn to

conceive designs in light and shade before they can conceive them in

color, and must learn to treat subjects under positive color and in

narrow groups, before they can treat them under atmospheric effect and

in receding masses, and all these are mere necessities of practice, and

have no more connection with any divisions of the human mind than the

equally paramount necessities that men must gather stones before they

build walls, or grind corn before they bake bread. And that each

following nation should take up either the same art at an advanced

stage, or an art altogether more difficult, is nothing but the necessary

consequence of its subsequent elevation and civilization. Whatever

nation had succeeded Egypt in power and knowledge, after having had

communication with her, must necessarily have taken up art at the point

where Egypt left it--in its turn delivering the gathered globe of

heavenly snow to the youthful energy of the nation next at hand, with an

exhausted "a vous le de!" In order to arrive at any useful or true

estimate of the respective rank of each people in the scale of mind, the

architecture of each must be compared with the architecture of the

other--sculpture with sculpture--line with line; and to have done this

broadly and with a surface glance, would have set our author's theory on

firmer foundation, to outward aspect, than it now rests upon. Had he

compared the accumulation of the pyramid with the proportion of the

peristyle, and then with the aspiration of the spire; had he set the

colossal horror of the Sphinx beside the Phidian Minerva, and this

beside the Pieta of M. Angelo; had he led us from beneath the iridescent

capitals of Denderah, by the contested line of Apelles, to the hues and

the heaven of Perugino or Bellini, we might have been tempted to

assoilzie from all staying of question or stroke of partisan the

invulnerable aspect of his ghostly theory; but, if, with even partial

regard to some of the circumstances which physically limited the

attainments of each race, we follow their individual career, we shall

find the points of superiority less salient and the connection between

heart and hand more embarrassed.

29. Yet let us not be misunderstood:--the great gulf between Christian

and Pagan art we cannot bridge--nor do we wish to weaken one single

sentence wherein its breadth or depth is asserted by our author. The

separation is not gradual, but instant and final--the difference not of

degree, but of condition; it is the difference between the dead vapors

rising from a stagnant pool, and the same vapors touched by a torch. But

we would brace the weakness which Lord Lindsay has admitted in his own

assertion of this great inflaming instant by confusing its fire with the

mere phosphorescence of the marsh, and explaining as a successive

development of the several human faculties, what was indeed the bearing

of them all at once, over a threshold strewed with the fragments of

their idols, into the temple of the One God.

We shall therefore, as fully as our space admits, examine the

application of our author's theory to Architecture, Sculpture, and

Painting, successively, setting before the reader some of the more

interesting passages which respect each art, while we at the same time

mark with what degree of caution their conclusions are, in our judgment,

to be received.

30. Accepting Lord Lindsay's first reference to Egypt, let us glance at

a few of the physical accidents which influenced its types of

architecture. The first of these is evidently the capability of carriage

of large blocks of stone over perfectly level land. It was possible to

roll to their destination along that uninterrupted plain, blocks which

could neither by the Greek have been shipped in seaworthy vessels, nor

carried over mountain-passes, nor raised except by extraordinary effort

to the height of the rock-built fortress or seaward promontory. A small

undulation of surface, or embarrassment of road, makes large difference

in the portability of masses, and of consequence, in the breadth of the

possible intercolumniation, the solidity of the column, and the whole

scale of the building. Again, in a hill-country, architecture can be

important only by position, in a level country only by bulk. Under the

overwhelming mass of mountain-form it is vain to attempt the expression

of majesty by size of edifice--the humblest architecture may become

important by availing itself of the power of nature, but the mightiest

must be crushed in emulating it: the watch-towers of Amalfi are more

majestic than the Superga of Piedmont; St. Peter's would look like a toy

if built beneath the Alpine cliffs, which yet vouchsafe some

communication of their own solemnity to the smallest chalet that

glitters among their glades of pine. On the other hand, a small building

is in a level country lost, and the impressiveness of bulk

proportionably increased; hence the instinct of nations has always led

them to the loftiest efforts where the masses of their labor might be

seen looming at incalculable distance above the open line of the

horizon--hence rose her four square mountains above the flat of Memphis,

while the Greek pierced the recesses of Phigaleia with ranges of

columns, or crowned the sea-cliffs of Sunium with a single pediment,

bright, but not colossal.

31. The derivation of the Greek types of form from the forest-hut is too

direct to escape observation; but sufficient attention has not been paid

to the similar petrifaction, by other nations, of the rude forms and

materials adopted in the haste of early settlement, or consecrated by

the purity of rural life. The whole system of Swiss and German Gothic

has thus been most characteristically affected by the structure of the

intersecting timbers at the angles of the chalet. This was in some cases

directly and without variation imitated in stone, as in the piers of the

old bridge at Aarburg; and the practice obtained--partially in the

German after-Gothic--universally, or nearly so, in Switzerland--of

causing moldings which met at an angle to appear to interpenetrate each

other, both being truncated immediately beyond the point of

intersection. The painfulness of this ill-judged adaptation was

conquered by association--the eye became familiarized to uncouth forms

of tracery--and a stiffness and meagerness, as of cast-iron, resulted in

the moldings of much of the ecclesiastical, and all the domestic Gothic

of central Europe; the moldings of casements intersecting so as to form

a small hollow square at the angles, and the practice being further

carried out into all modes of decoration--pinnacles interpenetrating

crockets, as in a peculiarly bold design of archway at Besancon. The

influence at Venice has been less immediate and more fortunate; it is

with peculiar grace that the majestic form of the ducal palace reminds

us of the years of fear and endurance when the exiles of the Prima

Venetia settled like home-less birds on the sea-sand, and that its

quadrangular range of marble wall and painted chamber, raised upon

multiplied columns of confused arcade,[6] presents but the exalted image

of the first pile-supported hut that rose above the rippling of the

lagoons.

32. In the chapter on the "Influence of Habit and Religion," of Mr.

Hope's Historical Essay,[7] the reader will find further instances of

the same feeling, and, bearing immediately on our present purpose, a

clear account of the derivation of the Egyptian temple from the

excavated cavern; but the point to which in all these cases we would

direct especial attention, is, that the first perception of the great

laws of architectural _proportion_ is dependent for its acuteness less

on the aesthetic instinct of each nation than on the mechanical

conditions of stability and natural limitations of size in the primary

type, whether hut, chalet, or tent.

As by the constant reminiscence of the natural proportions of his first

forest-dwelling, the Greek would be restrained from all inordinate

exaggeration of size--the Egyptian was from the first left without hint

of any system of proportion, whether constructive, or of visible parts.

The cavern--its level roof supported by amorphous piers--might be

extended indefinitely into the interior of the hills, and its outer

facade continued almost without term along their flanks--the solid mass

of cliff above forming one gigantic entablature, poised upon props

instead of columns. Hence the predisposition to attempt in the built

temple the expression of infinite extent, and to heap the ponderous

architrave above the proportionless pier.

33. The less direct influences of external nature in the two countries

were still more opposed. The sense of beauty, which among the Greek

peninsulas was fostered by beating of sea and rush of river, by waving

of forest and passing of cloud, by undulation of hill and poise of

precipice, lay dormant beneath the shadowless sky and on the objectless

plain of the Egyptians; no singing winds nor shaking leaves nor gliding

shadows gave life to the line of their barren mountains--no Goddess of

Beauty rose from the pacing of their silent and foamless Nile. One

continual perception of stability, or changeless revolution, weighed

upon their hearts--their life depended on no casual alternation of cold

and heat--of drought and shower; their gift-Gods were the risen River

and the eternal Sun, and the types of these were forever consecrated in

the lotus decoration of the temple and the wedge of the enduring

Pyramid. Add to these influences, purely physical, those dependent on

the superstitions and political constitution; of the overflowing

multitude of "populous No"; on their condition of prolonged peace--their

simple habits of life--their respect for the dead--their separation by

incommunicable privilege and inherited occupation--and it will be

evident to the reader that Lord Lindsay's broad assertion of the

expression of "the Ideal of Sense or Matter" by their universal style,

must be received with severe modification, and is indeed thus far only

true, that the mass of Life supported upon that fruitful plain could,

when swayed by a despotic ruler in any given direction, accomplish by

mere weight and number what to other nations had been impossible, and

bestow a pre-eminence, owed to mere bulk and evidence of labor, upon

public works which among the Greek republics could be rendered admirable

only by the intelligence of their design.

34. Let us, for the present omitting consideration of the debasement of

the Greek types which took place when their cycle of achievement had

been fulfilled, pass to the germination of Christian architecture, out

of one of the least important elements of those fallen forms--one which,

less than the least of all seeds, has risen into the fair branching

stature under whose shadow we still dwell.

The principal characteristics of the new architecture, as exhibited in

the Lombard cathedral, are well sketched by Lord Lindsay:--

* * *

"The three most prominent features, the eastern aspect of the sanctuary,

the cruciform plan, and the soaring octagonal cupola, are borrowed from

Byzantium--the latter in an improved form--the cross with a

difference--the nave, or arm opposite the sanctuary, being lengthened so

as to resemble the supposed shape of the actual instrument of suffering,

and form what is now distinctively called the Latin Cross. The crypt and

absis, or tribune, are retained from the Romish basilica, but the absis

is generally pierced with windows, and the crypt is much loftier and

more spacious, assuming almost the appearance of a subterranean church.

The columns of the nave, no longer isolated, are clustered so as to form

compound piers, massive and heavy--their capitals either a rude

imitation of the Corinthian, or, especially in the earlier structures,

sculptured with grotesque imagery. Triforia, or galleries for women,

frequently line the nave and transepts. The roof is of stone, and

vaulted. The narthex, or portico, for excluded penitents, common alike

to the Greek and Roman churches, and in them continued along the whole

facade of entrance, is dispensed with altogether in the oldest Lombard

ones, and when afterwards resumed, in the eleventh century, was

restricted to what we should now call Porches, over each door,

consisting generally of little more than a canopy open at the sides, and

supported by slender pillars, resting on sculptured monsters. Three

doors admit from the western front; these are generally covered with

sculpture, which frequently extends in belts across the facade, and even

along the sides of the building. Above the central door is usually seen,

in the later Lombard churches, a S. Catherine's-wheel window. The roof

slants at the sides, and ends in front sometimes in a single pediment,

sometimes in three gables answering to three doors; while, in Lombardy

at least, hundreds of slender pillars, of every form and device--those

immediately adjacent to each other frequently interlaced in the true

lover's knot, and all supporting round or trefoliate arches--run along,

in continuous galleries, under the eaves, as if for the purpose of

supporting the roof--run up the pediment in front, are continued along

the side-walls and round the eastern absis, and finally engirdle the

cupola. Sometimes the western front is absolutely covered with these

galleries, rising tier above tier. Though introduced merely for

ornament, and therefore on a vicious principle, these fairy-like

colonnades win very much on one's affections. I may add to these general

features the occasional and rare one, seen to peculiar advantage in the

cathedral of Cremona, of numerous slender towers, rising, like minarets,

in every direction, in front and behind, and giving the east end,

specially, a marked resemblance to the mosques of the Mahometans.

"The Baptistery and the Campanile, or bell-tower, are in theory

invariable adjuncts to the Lombard cathedral, although detached from it.

The Lombards seem to have built them with peculiar zest, and to have had

a keen eye for the picturesque in grouping them with the churches they

belong to.

"I need scarcely add that the round arch is exclusively employed in pure

Lombard architecture.

"To translate this new style into its symbolical language is a

pleasurable task. The three doors and three gable ends signify the

Trinity, the Catherine-wheel window (if I mistake not) the Unity, as

concentrated in Christ, the Light of the Church, from whose Greek

monogram its shape was probably adopted. The monsters that support the

pillars of the porch stand there as talismans to frighten away evil

spirits. The crypt (as in older buildings) signifies the moral death of

man, the cross, the atonement, the cupola heaven; and these three,

taken in conjunction with the lengthened nave, express, reconcile, and

give their due and balanced prominence to the leading ideas of the

Militant and Triumphant Church, respectively embodied in the

architecture of Rome and Byzantium. Add to this, the symbolism of the

Baptistery, and the Christian pilgrimage, from the Font to the Door of

Heaven, is complete,"--Vol. ii., p. 8-11.

* * *

35. We have by-and-bye an equally comprehensive sketch of the essential

characters of the Gothic cathedral; but this we need not quote, as it

probably contains little that would be new to the reader. It is

succeeded by the following interpretation of the spirit of the two

styles:--

* * *

"Comparing, apart from enthusiasm, the two styles of Lombard and Pointed

Architecture, they will strike you, I think, as the expression,

respectively, of that alternate repose and activity which characterize

the Christian life, exhibited in perfect harmony in Christ alone, who,

on earth, spent His night in prayer to God, His day in doing good to

man--in heaven, as we know by His own testimony, 'worketh hitherto,'

conjointly with the Father--forever, at the same time, reposing on the

infinity of His wisdom and of His power. Each, then, of these styles has

its peculiar significance, each is perfect in its way. The Lombard

Architecture, with its horizontal lines, its circular arches and

expanding cupola, soothes and calms one; the Gothic, with its pointed

arches, aspiring vaults and intricate tracery, rouses and excites--and

why? Because the one symbolizes an infinity of Rest, the other of

Action, in the adoration and service of God. And this consideration will

enable us to advance a step farther:--The aim of the one style is

definite, of the other indefinite; we look up to the dome of heaven and

calmly acquiesce in the abstract idea of infinity; but we only realize

the impossibility of conceiving it by the flight of imagination from

star to star, from firmament to firmament. Even so Lombard Architecture

attained perfection, expressed its idea, accomplished its purpose--but

Gothic never; the Ideal is unapproachable."--Vol. ii., p. 23.

* * *

36. This idea occurs not only in this passage:--it is carried out

through the following chapters;--at page 38, the pointed arch associated

with the cupola is spoken of as a "fop interrupting the meditations of a

philosopher"; at page 65, the "earlier contemplative style of the

Lombards" is spoken of; at page 114, Giottesque art is "the expression

of that Activity of the Imagination which produced Gothic Architecture";

and, throughout, the analogy is prettily expressed, and ably supported;

yet it is one of those against which we must warn the reader: it is

altogether superficial, and extends not to the minds of those whose

works it accidentally, and we think disputably, characterizes. The

transition from Romanesque (we prefer using the generic term) to Gothic

is natural and straightforward, in many points traceable to mechanical

and local necessities (of which one, the dangerous weight of snow on

flat roofs, has been candidly acknowledged by our author), and directed

by the tendency, common to humanity in all ages, to push every

newly-discovered means of delight to its most fantastic extreme, to

exhibit every newly-felt power in its most admirable achievement, and to

load with intrinsic decoration forms whose essential varieties have been

exhausted. The arch, carelessly struck out by the Etruscan, forced by

mechanical expediencies on the unwilling, uninventive Roman, remained

unfelt by either. The noble form of the apparent Vault of Heaven--the

line which every star follows in its journeying, extricated by the

Christian architect from the fosse, the aqueduct, and the sudarium--grew

into long succession of proportioned colonnade, and swelled into the

white domes that glitter above the plain of Pisa, and fretted channels

of Venice, like foam globes at rest.

37. But the spirit that was in these Aphrodites of the earth was not

then, nor in them, to be restrained. Colonnade rose over colonnade; the

pediment of the western front was lifted into a detached and scenic

wall; story above story sprang the multiplied arches of the Campanile,

and the eastern pyramidal fire-type, lifted from its foundation, was

placed upon the summit. With the superimposed arcades of the principal

front arose the necessity, instantly felt by their subtle architects, of

a new proportion in the column; the lower wall inclosure, necessarily

for the purposes of Christian worship continuous, and needing no

peristyle, rendered the lower columns a mere facial decoration, whose

proportions were evidently no more to be regulated by the laws hitherto

observed in detached colonnades. The column expanded into the shaft, or

into the huge pilaster rising unbanded from tier to tier; shaft and

pilaster were associated in ordered groups, and the ideas of singleness

and limited elevation once attached to them, swept away for ever; the

stilted and variously centered arch existed already: the pure ogive

followed--where first exhibited we stay not to inquire;--finally, and

chief of all, the great mechanical discovery of the resistance of

lateral pressure by the weight of the superimposed flanking pinnacle.

Daring concentrations of pressure upon narrow piers were the immediate

consequence, and the recognition of the buttress as a feature in itself

agreeable and susceptible of decoration. The glorious art of painting on

glass added its temptations; the darkness of northern climes both

rendering the typical character of Light more deeply felt than in Italy,

and necessitating its admission in larger masses; the Italian, even at

the period of his most exquisite art in glass, retaining the small

Lombard window, whose expediency will hardly be doubted by anyone who

has experienced the transition from the scorching reverberation of the

white-hot marble front, to the cool depth of shade within, and whose

beauty will not be soon forgotten by those who have seen the narrow

lights of the Pisan duomo announce by their redder burning, not like

transparent casements, but like characters of fire searing the western

wall, the decline of day upon Capraja.

38. Here, then, arose one great distinction between Northern and

Transalpine Gothic, based, be it still observed, on mere necessities of

climate. While the architect of Santa Maria Novella admitted to the

frescoes of Ghirlandajo scarcely more of purple lancet light than had

been shed by the morning sun through the veined alabasters of San

Miniato; and looked to the rich blue of the quinquipartite vault above,

as to the mosaic of the older concha, for conspicuous aid in the color

decoration of the whole; the northern builder burst through the walls of

his apse, poured over the eastern altar one unbroken blaze, and lifting

his shafts like pines, and his walls like precipices, ministered to

their miraculous stability by an infinite phalanx of sloped buttress and

glittering pinnacle. The spire was the natural consummation. Internally,

the sublimity of space in the cupola had been superseded by another kind

of infinity in the prolongation of the nave; externally, the spherical

surface had been proved, by the futility of Arabian efforts, incapable

of decoration; its majesty depended on its simplicity, and its

simplicity and leading forms were alike discordant with the rich

rigidity of the body of the building. The campanile became, therefore,

principal and central; its pyramidal termination was surrounded at the

base by a group of pinnacles, and the spire itself, banded, or pierced

into aerial tracery, crowned with its last enthusiastic effort the

flamelike ascent of the perfect pile.

39. The process of change was thus consistent throughout, though at

intervals accelerated by the sudden discovery of resource, or invention

of design; nor, had the steps been less traceable, do we think the

suggestiveness of Repose, in the earlier style, or of Imaginative

Activity in the latter, definite or trustworthy. We much question

whether the Duomo of Verona, with its advanced guard of haughty

gryphons--the mailed peers of Charlemagne frowning from its vaulted

gate,--that vault itself ribbed with variegated marbles, and peopled by

a crowd of monsters---the Evangelical types not the least stern or

strange; its stringcourses replaced by flat cut friezes, combats between

gryphons and chain-clad paladins, stooping behind their triangular

shields and fetching sweeping blows with two-handled swords; or that of

Lucca--its fantastic columns clasped by writhing snakes and winged

dragons, their marble scales spotted with inlaid serpentine, every

available space alive with troops of dwarfish riders, with spur on heel

and hawk in hood, sounding huge trumpets of chase, like those of the

Swiss Urus-horn, and cheering herds of gaping dogs upon harts and hares,

boars and wolves, every stone signed with its grisly beast--be one whit

more soothing to the contemplative, or less exciting to the imaginative

faculties, than the successive arch? and visionary shaft, and dreamy

vault, and crisped foliage, and colorless stone, of our own fair abbeys,

checkered with sunshine through the depth of ancient branches, or seen

far off, like clouds in the valley, risen out of the pause of its river.

40. And with respect to the more fitful and fantastic expression of the

"Italian Gothic," our author is again to be blamed for his loose

assumption, from the least reflecting of preceding writers, of this

general term, as if the pointed buildings of Italy could in any wise be

arranged in one class, or criticised in general terms. It is true that

so far as the church interiors are concerned, the system is nearly

universal, and always bad; its characteristic features being arches of

enormous span, and banded foliage capitals divided into three fillets,

rude in design, unsuggestive of any structural connection with the

column, and looking consequently as if they might be slipped up or down,

and had been only fastened in their places for the temporary purposes of

a festa. But the exteriors of Italian pointed buildings display

variations of principle and transitions of type quite as bold as either

the advance from the Romanesque to the earliest of their forms, or the

recoil from their latest to the cinque-cento.

41. The first and grandest style resulted merely from the application of

the pointed arch to the frequent Romanesque window, the large

semicircular arch divided by three small ones. Pointing both the

superior and inferior arches, and adding to the grace of the larger one

by striking another arch above it with a more removed center, and

placing the voussoirs at an acute angle to the curve, we have the truly

noble form of domestic Gothic, which--more or less enriched by moldings

and adorned by penetration, more or less open of the space between the

including and inferior arches--was immediately adopted in almost all the

proudest palaces of North Italy--in the Brolettos of Como, Bergamo,

Modena, and Siena---in the palace of the Scaligers at Verona--of the

Gambacorti at Pisa--of Paolo Guinigi at Lucca--besides inferior

buildings innumerable:--nor is there any form of civil Gothic except the

Venetian, which can be for a moment compared with it in simplicity or

power. The latest is that most vicious and barbarous style of which the

richest types are the lateral porches and upper pinnacles of the

Cathedral of Como, and the whole of the Certosa of Pavia:--characterized

by the imitative sculpture of large buildings on a small scale by way of

pinnacles and niches; the substitution of candelabra for columns; and

the covering of the surfaces with sculpture, often of classical subject,

in high relief and daring perspective, and finished with delicacy which

rather would demand preservation in a cabinet, and exhibition under a

lens, than admit of exposure to the weather and removal from the eye,

and which, therefore, architecturally considered, is worse than

valueless, telling merely as unseemly roughness and rustication. But

between these two extremes are varieties nearly countless--some of them

both strange and bold, owing to the brilliant color and firm texture of

the accessible materials, and the desire of the builders to crowd the

greatest expression of value into the smallest space.

42. Thus it is in the promontories of serpentine which meet with their

polished and gloomy green the sweep of the Gulf of Genoa, that we find

the first cause of the peculiar spirit of the Tuscan and Ligurian

Gothic--carried out in the Florentine duomo to the highest pitch of

colored finish--adorned in the upper story of the Campanile by a

transformation, peculiarly rich and exquisite, of the narrowly-pierced

heading of window already described, into a veil of tracery--and aided

throughout by an accomplished precision of design in its moldings which

we believe to be unique. In St. Petronio of Bologna, another and a

barbarous type occurs; the hollow niche of Northern Gothic wrought out

with diamond-shaped penetrations inclosed in squares; at Bergamo

another, remarkable for the same square penetrations of its rich and

daring foliation;--while at Monza and Carrara the square is adopted as

the leading form of decoration on the west fronts, and a grotesque

expression results--barbarous still;--which, however, in the latter

duomo is associated with the arcade of slender niches--the translation

of the Romanesque arcade into pointed work, which forms the second

perfect order of Italian Gothic, entirely ecclesiastical, and well

developed in the churches of Santa Caterina and Santa Maria della Spina

at Pisa. The Veronese Gothic, distinguished by the extreme purity and

severity of its ruling lines, owing to the distance of the centers of

circles from which its cusps are struck, forms another, and yet a more

noble school--and passes through the richer decoration of Padua and

Vicenza to the full magnificence of the Venetian--distinguished by the

introduction of the ogee curve without pruriency or effeminacy, and by

the breadth and decision of moldings as severely determined in all

examples of the style as those of any one of the Greek orders.

43. All these groups are separated by distinctions clear and bold--and

many of them by that broadest of all distinctions which lies between

disorganization and consistency--accumulation and adaptation, experiment

and design;--yet to all one or two principles are common, which again

divide the whole series from that of the Transalpine Gothic--and whose

importance Lord Lindsay too lightly passes over in the general

description, couched in somewhat ungraceful terms, "the vertical

principle snubbed, as it were, by the horizontal." We have already

alluded to the great school of color which arose in the immediate

neighborhood of the Genoa serpentine. The accessibility of marble

throughout North Italy similarly modified the aim of all design, by the

admission of undecorated surfaces. A blank space of freestone wall is

always uninteresting, and sometimes offensive; there is no suggestion of

preciousness in its dull color, and the stains and rents of time upon it

are dark, coarse, and gloomy. But a marble surface receives in its age

hues of continually increasing glow and grandeur; its stains are never

foul nor dim; its undecomposing surface preserves a soft, fruit-like

polish forever, slowly flushed by the maturing suns of centuries. Hence,

while in the Northern Gothic the effort of the architect was always so

to diffuse his ornament as to prevent the eye from permanently resting

on the blank material, the Italian fearlessly left fallow large fields

of uncarved surface, and concentrated the labor of the chisel on

detached portions, in which the eye, being rather directed to them by

their isolation than attracted by their salience, required perfect

finish and pure design rather than force of shade or breadth of parts;

and further, the intensity of Italian sunshine articulated by perfect

gradations, and defined by sharp shadows at the edge, such inner anatomy

and minuteness of outline as would have been utterly vain and valueless

under the gloom of a northern sky; while again the fineness of material

both admitted of, and allured to, the precision of execution which the

climate was calculated to exhibit.

44. All these influences working together, and with them that of

classical example and tradition, induced a delicacy of expression, a

slightness of salience, a carefulness of touch, and refinement of

invention, in all, even the rudest, Italian decorations, utterly

unrecognized in those of Northern Gothic: which, however picturesquely

adapted to their place and purpose, depend for most of their effect upon

bold undercutting, accomplish little beyond graceful embarrassment of

the eye, and cannot for an instant be separately regarded as works of

accomplished art. Even the later and more imitative examples profess

little more than picturesque vigor or ingenious intricacy. The oak

leaves and acorns of the Beauvais moldings are superbly wreathed, but

rigidly repeated in a constant pattern; the stems are without character,

and the acorns huge, straight, blunt, and unsightly. Round the southern

door of the Florentine duomo runs a border of fig-leaves, each leaf

modulated as if dew had just dried from off it--yet each alike, so as to

secure the ordered symmetry of classical enrichment. But the Gothic

fullness of thought is not therefore left without expression; at the

edge of each leaf is an animal, first a cicala, then a lizard, then a

bird, moth, serpent, snail--all different, and each wrought to the very

life--panting--plumy--writhing--glittering--full of breath and power.

This harmony of classical restraint with exhaustless fancy, and of

architectural propriety with imitative finish, is found throughout all

the fine periods of the Italian Gothic, opposed to the wildness without

invention, and exuberance without completion, of the North.

45. One other distinction we must notice, in the treatment of the Niche

and its accessories. In Northern Gothic the niche frequently consists

only of a bracket and canopy--the latter attached to the wall,

independent of columnar support, pierced into openwork profusely rich,

and often prolonged upwards into a crocketed pinnacle of indefinite

height. But in the niche of pure Italian Gothic the classic principle of

columnar support is never lost sight of. Even when its canopy is

actually supported by the wall behind, it is apparently supported by two

columns in front, perfectly formed with bases and capitals:--(the

support of the Northern niche--if it have any--commonly takes the form

of a buttress):--when it appears as a detached pinnacle, it is supported

on four columns, the canopy trefoliated with very obtuse cusps, richly

charged with foliage in the foliating space, but undecorated at the cusp

points, and terminating above in a smooth pyramid, void of all ornament,

and never very acute. This form, modified only by various grouping, is

that of the noble sepulchral monuments of Verona, Lucca, Pisa, and

Bologna; on a small scale it is at Venice associated with the cupola,

in St. Mark's, as well as in Santa Fosca, and other minor churches. At

Pisa, in the Spina chapel it occurs in its most exquisite form, the

columns there being chased with checker patterns of great elegance. The

windows of the Florence cathedral are all placed under a flat canopy of

the same form, the columns being elongated, twisted, and enriched with

mosaic patterns. The reader must at once perceive how vast is the

importance of the difference in system with respect to this member; the

whole of the rich, cavernous chiaroscuro of Northern Gothic being

dependent on the accumulation of its niches.

46. In passing to the examination of our Author's theory as tested by

the progress of Sculpture, we are still struck by his utter want of

attention to physical advantages or difficulties. He seems to have

forgotten from the first, that the mountains of Syene are not the rocks

of Paros. Neither the social habits nor intellectual powers of the Greek

had so much share in inducing his advance in Sculpture beyond the

Egyptian, as the difference between marble and syenite, porphyry or

alabaster. Marble not only gave the power, it actually introduced the

_thought_ of representation or realization of form, as opposed to the

mere suggestive abstraction: its translucency, tenderness of surface,

and equality of tint tempting by utmost reward to the finish which of

all substances it alone admits:--even ivory receiving not so delicately,

as alabaster endures not so firmly, the lightest, latest touches of the

completing chisel. The finer feeling of the hand cannot be put upon a

hard rock like syenite--the blow must be firm and fearless--the

traceless, tremulous difference between common and immortal sculpture

cannot be set upon it--it cannot receive the enchanted strokes which,

like Aaron's incense, separate the Living and the Dead. Were it

otherwise, were finish possible, the variegated and lustrous surface

would not exhibit it to the eye. The imagination itself is blunted by

the resistance of the material, and by the necessity of absolute

predetermination of all it would achieve. Retraction of all thought into

determined and simple forms, such as might be fearlessly wrought,

necessarily remained the characteristic of the school. The size of the

edifice induced by other causes above stated, further limited the

efforts of the sculptor. No colossal figure can be minutely finished;

nor can it easily be conceived except under an imperfect form. It is a

representation of Impossibility, and every effort at completion adds to

the monstrous sense of Impossibility. Space would altogether fail us

were we even to name one-half of the circumstances which influence the

treatment of light and shade to be seen at vast distances upon surfaces

of variegated or dusky color; or of the necessities by which, in masses

of huge proportion, the mere laws of gravity, and the difficulty of

clearing the substance out of vast hollows neither to be reached nor

entered, bind the realization of absolute form. Yet all these Lord

Lindsay ought rigidly to have examined, before venturing to determine

anything respecting the mental relations of the Greek and Egyptian. But

the fact of his overlooking these inevitablenesses of material is

intimately connected with the worst flaw of his theory--his idea of a

Perfection resultant from a balance of elements; a perfection which all

experience has shown to be neither desirable nor possible.

47. His account of Niccola Pisano, the founder of the first great school

of middle age sculpture, is thus introduced:--

* * *

"Niccola's peculiar praise is this,--that, in practice at least, if not

in theory, he first established the principle that the study of nature,

corrected by the ideal of the antique, and animated by the spirit of

Christianity, personal and social, can alone lead to excellence in

art:--each of the three elements of human nature--Matter, Mind, and

Spirit--being thus brought into union and co-operation in the service of

God, in due relative harmony and subordination. I cannot over-estimate

the importance of this principle; it was on this that, consciously or

unconsciously, Niccola himself worked--it has been by following it that

Donatello and Ghiberti, Leonardo, Raphael, and Michael Angelo have

risen to glory. The Sienese school and the Florentine, minds

contemplative and dramatic, are alike beholden to it for whatever

success has attended their efforts. Like a treble-stranded rope, it

drags after it the triumphal car of Christian Art. But if either of the

strands be broken, if either of the three elements be pursued

disjointedly from the other two, the result is, in each respective case,

grossness, pedantry, or weakness:--the exclusive imitation of Nature

produces a Caravaggio, a Rubens, a Rembrandt--that of the Antique, a

Pellegrino di Tibaldo and a David; and though there be a native chastity

and taste in religion, which restrains those who worship it too

abstractedly from Intellect and Sense, from running into such extremes,

it cannot at least supply that mechanical apparatus which will enable

them to soar:--such devotees must be content to gaze up into heaven,

like angels cropt of their wings."--Vol. ii., p. 102-3.

* * *

48. This is mere Bolognese eclecticism in other terms, and those terms

incorrect. We are amazed to find a writer usually thoughtful, if not

accurate, thus indolently adopting the worn-out falsities of our weakest

writers on Taste. Does he--can he for an instant suppose that the

ruffian Caravaggio, distinguished only by his preference of candlelight

and black shadows for the illustration and re-enforcement of villainy,

painted nature--mere nature--exclusive nature, more painfully or

heartily than John Bellini or Raphael? Does he not see that whatever men

imitate must be nature of some kind, material nature or spiritual,

lovely or foul, brutal or human, but nature still? Does he himself see

in mere, external, copyable nature, no more than Caravaggio saw, or in

the Antique no more than has been comprehended by David? The fact is,

that all artists are primarily divided into the two great groups of

Imitators and Suggesters--their falling into one or other being

dependent partly on disposition, and partly on the matter they have to

subdue--(thus Perugino imitates line by line with penciled gold, the

hair which Nino Pisano can only suggest by a gilded marble mass, both

having the will of representation alike). And each of these classes is

again divided into the faithful and unfaithful imitators and suggesters;

and that is a broad question of blind eye and hard heart, or seeing eye

and serious heart, always co-existent; and then the faithful imitators

and suggesters--artists proper, are appointed, each with his peculiar

gift and affection, over the several orders and classes of things

natural, to be by them illumined and set forth.

49. And that is God's doing and distributing; and none is rashly to be

thought inferior to another, as if by his own fault; nor any of them

stimulated to emulation, and changing places with others, although their

allotted tasks be of different dignities, and their granted instruments

of different keenness; for in none of them can there be a perfection or

balance of all human attributes;--the great colorist becomes gradually

insensible to the refinements of form which he at first intentionally

omitted; the master of line is inevitably dead to many of the delights

of color; the study of the true or ideal human form is inconsistent with

the love of its most spiritual expressions. To one it is intrusted to

record the historical realities of his age; in him the perception of

character is subtle, and that of abstract beauty in measure diminished;

to another, removed to the desert, or inclosed in the cloister, is

given, not the noting of things transient, but the revealing of things

eternal. Ghirlandajo and Titian painted men, but could not angels;

Duccio and Angelico painted Saints, but could not senators. One is

ordered to copy material form lovingly and slowly--his the fine finger

and patient will: to another are sent visions and dreams upon the

bed--his the hand fearful and swift, and impulse of passion irregular

and wild. We may have occasion further to insist upon this great

principle of the incommunicableness and singleness of all the highest

powers; but we assert it here especially, in opposition to the idea,

already so fatal to art, that either the aim of the antique may take

place together with the purposes, or its traditions become elevatory of

the power, of Christian art; or that the glories of Giotto and the

Sienese are in any wise traceable through Niccola Pisano to the

venerable relics of the Campo Santo.

50. Lord Lindsay's statement, as far as it regards Niccola himself, is

true.

* * *

"His improvement in Sculpture is attributable, in the first instance, to

the study of an ancient sarcophagus, brought from Greece by the ships of

Pisa in the eleventh century, and which, after having stood beside the

door of the Duomo for many centuries as the tomb of the Countess

Beatrice, mother of the celebrated Matilda, has been recently removed to

the Campo Santo. The front is sculptured in bas-relief, in two

compartments, the one representing Hippolytus rejecting the suit of

Phaedra, the other his departure for the chase:--such at least is the

most plausible interpretation. The sculpture, if not super-excellent, is

substantially good, and the benefit derived from it by Niccola is

perceptible on the slightest examination of his works. Other remains of

antiquity are preserved at Pisa, which he may have also studied, but

this was the classic well from which he drew those waters which became

wine when poured into the hallowing chalice of Christianity. I need

scarcely add that the mere presence of such models would have availed

little, had not nature endowed him with the quick eye and the intuitive

apprehension of genius, together with a purity of taste which taught him

how to select, how to modify and how to reinspire the germs of

excellence thus presented to him."--Vol. ii., pp. 104, 105.

* * *

51. But whatever characters peculiarly classical were impressed upon

Niccola by this study, died out gradually among his scholars; and in

Orcagna the Byzantine manner finally triumphed, leading the way to the

purely Christian sculpture of the school of Fiesole, in its turn swept

away by the returning wave of classicalism. The sculpture of Orcagna,

Giotto, and Mino da Fiesole, would have been what it was, if Niccola had

been buried in his sarcophagus; and this is sufficiently proved by

Giotto's remaining entirely uninfluenced by the educated excellence of

Andrea Pisano, while he gradually bent the Pisan down to his own

uncompromising simplicity. If, as Lord Lindsay asserts, "Giotto had

learned from the works of Niccola the grand principle of Christian art,"

the sculptures of the Campanile of Florence would not now have stood

forth in contrasted awfulness of simplicity, beside those of the south

door of the Baptistery.

* * *

52. "Andrea's merit was indeed very great; his works, compared with

those of Giovanni and Niccola Pisano, exhibit a progress in design,

grace, composition and mechanical execution, at first sight

unaccountable--a chasm yawns between them, deep and broad, over which

the younger artist seems to have leapt at a bound,--the stream that sank

into the earth at Pisa emerges a river at Florence. The solution of the

mystery lies in the peculiar plasticity of Andrea's genius, and the

ascendency acquired over it by Giotto, although a younger man, from the

first moment they came into contact. Giotto had learnt from the works of

Niccola the grand principle of Christian art, imperfectly apprehended by

Giovanni and his other pupils, and by following up which he had in the

natural course of things improved upon his prototype. He now repaid to

Sculpture, in the person of Andrea, the sum of improvement in which he

stood her debtor in that of Niccola:--so far, that is to say, as the

treasury of Andrea's mind was capable of taking it in, for it would be

an error to suppose that Andrea profited by Giotto in the same

independent manner or degree that Giotto profited by Niccola. Andrea's

was not a mind of strong individuality; he became completely Giottesque

in thought and style, and as Giotto and he continued intimate friends

through life, the impression never wore off:--most fortunate, indeed,

that it was so, for the welfare of Sculpture in general, and for that

of the buildings in decorating which the friends worked in concert.

"Happily, Andrea's most important work, the bronze door of the

Baptistery, still exists, and with every prospect of preservation. It is

adorned with bas-reliefs from the history of S. John, with allegorical

figures of virtues and heads of prophets, all most beautiful,--the

historical compositions distinguished by simplicity and purity of

feeling and design, the allegorical virtues perhaps still more

expressive, and full of poetry in their symbols and attitudes; the whole

series is executed with a delicacy of workmanship till then unknown in

bronze, a precision yet softness of touch resembling that of a skillful

performer on the pianoforte. Andrea was occupied upon it for nine years,

from 1330 to 1339, and when finished, fixed in its place, and exposed to

view, the public enthusiasm exceeded all bounds; the Signoria, with

unexampled condescension, visited it in state, accompanied by the

ambassadors of Naples and Sicily, and bestowed on the fortunate artist

the honor and privilege of citizenship, seldom accorded to foreigners

unless of lofty rank or exalted merit. The door remained in its original

position--facing the Cathedral--till superseded in that post of honor by

the 'Gate of Paradise,' cast by Ghiberti. It was then transferred to the

Southern entrance of the Baptistery, facing the Misericordia."--Vol.

ii., pp. 125-128.

* * *

53. A few pages farther on, the question of _Giotto's_ claim to the

authorship of the designs for this door is discussed at length, and, to

the annihilation of the honor here attributed to _Andrea_, determined

affirmatively, partly on the testimony of Vasari, partly on internal

evidence--these designs being asserted by our author to be "thoroughly

Giottesque." But, not to dwell on Lord Lindsay's inconsistency, in the

ultimate decision his discrimination seems to us utterly at fault.

Giotto has, we conceive, suffered quite enough in the abduction of the

work in the Campo Santo, which was worthy of him, without being made

answerable for these designs of Andrea. That he gave a rough draft of

many of them, is conceivable; but if even he did this, Andrea has added

cadenzas of drapery, and other scholarly commonplace, as a bad singer

puts ornament into an air. It was not of such teaching that came the

"Jabal" of Giotto. Sitting at his tent door, he withdraws its rude

drapery with one hand: three sheep only are feeding before him, the

watchdog sitting beside them; but he looks forth like a Destiny,

beholding the ruined cities of the earth become places, like the valley

of Achor, for herds to lie down in.

54. We have not space to follow our author through his very interesting

investigation of the comparatively unknown schools of Teutonic

sculpture. With one beautiful anecdote, breathing the whole spirit of

the time--the mingling of deep piety with the modest, manly pride of

art--our readers must be indulged:--

* * *

"The Florentine Ghiberti gives a most interesting account of a sculptor

of Cologne in the employment of Charles of Anjou, King of Naples, whose

skill he parallels with that of the statuaries of ancient Greece; his

heads, he says, and his design of the naked, were 'maravigliosamente

bene,' his style full of grace, his sole defect the somewhat curtailed

stature of his figures. He was no less excellent in minuter works as a

goldsmith, and in that capacity had worked for his patron a 'tavola

d'oro,' a tablet or screen (apparently) of gold, with his utmost care

and skill; it was a work of exceeding beauty--but in some political

exigency his patron wanted money, and it was broken up before his eyes.

Seeing his labor vain and the pride of his heart rebuked, he threw

himself on the ground, and uplifting his eyes and hands to heaven,

prayed in contrition, 'Lord God Almighty, Governor and disposer of

heaven and earth! Thou hast opened mine eyes that I follow from

henceforth none other than Thee--Have mercy upon me!'--He forthwith gave

all he had to the poor for the love of God, and went up into a mountain

where there was a great hermitage, and dwelt there the rest of his days

in penitence and sanctity, surviving down to the days of Pope Martin,

who reigned from 1281 to 1284. 'Certain youths,' adds Ghiberti, 'who

sought to be skilled in statuary, told me how he was versed both in

painting and sculpture, and how he had painted in the Romitorio where he

lived; he was an excellent draughtsman and very courteous. When the

youths who wished to improve visited him, he received them with much

humility, giving them learned instructions, showing them various

proportions, and drawing for them many examples, for he was most

accomplished in his art. And thus,' he concludes, 'with great humility,

he ended his days in that hermitage.'"--Vol. iii., pp. 257-259.

* * *

55. We could have wished that Lord Lindsay had further insisted on what

will be found to be a characteristic of all the truly Christian or

spiritual, as opposed to classical, schools of sculpture--the scenic or

painter-like management of effect. The marble is not cut into the actual

form of the thing imaged, but oftener into a perspective suggestion of

it--the bas-reliefs sometimes almost entirely under cut, and sharpedged,

so as to come clear off a dark ground of shadow; even heads the size of

life being in this way rather shadowed out than carved out, as the

Madonna of Benedetto de Majano in Santa Maria Novella, one of the cheeks

being advanced half an inch out of its proper place--and often the most

audacious violations of proportion admitted, as in the limbs of Michael

Angelo's sitting Madonna in the Uffizii; all artifices, also, of deep

and sharp cutting being allowed, to gain the shadowy and spectral

expressions about the brow and lip which the mere actualities of form

could not have conveyed;--the sculptor never following a material model,

but feeling after the most momentary and subtle aspects of the

countenance--striking these out sometimes suddenly, by rude chiseling,

and stopping the instant they are attained--never risking the loss of

thought by the finishing of flesh surface. The heads of the Medici

sacristy we believe to have been thus left unfinished, as having

already the utmost expression which the marble could receive, and

incapable of anything but loss from further touches. So with Mino da

Fiesole and Jacopo della Quercia, the workmanship is often hard,

sketchy, and angular, having its full effect only at a little distance;

but at that distance the statue becomes ineffably alive, even to

startling, bearing an aspect of change and uncertainty, as if it were

about to vanish, and withal having a light, and sweetness, and incense

of passion upon it that silences the looker-on, half in delight, half in

expectation. This daring stroke--this transfiguring tenderness--may be

shown to characterize all truly Christian sculpture, as compared with

the antique, or the pseudo-classical of subsequent periods. We agree

with Lord Lindsay in thinking the Psyche of Naples the nearest approach

to the Christian ideal of all ancient efforts; but even in this the

approximation is more accidental than real--a fair type of feature,

further exalted by the mode in which the imagination supplies the lost

upper folds of the hair. The fountain of life and emotion remains

sealed; nor was the opening of that fountain due to any study of the far

less pure examples accessible by the Pisan sculptors. The sound of its

waters had been heard long before in the aisles of the Lombard; nor was

it by Ghiberti, still less by Donatello, that the bed of that Jordan was

dug deepest, but by Michael Angelo (the last heir of the Byzantine

traditions descending through Orcagna), opening thenceforward through

thickets darker and more dark, and with waves ever more soundless and

slow, into the Dead Sea wherein its waters have been stayed.

56. It is time for us to pass to the subject which occupies the largest

portion of the work---the History

* * *

"of Painting, as developed contemporaneously with her sister, Sculpture,

and (like her) under the shadow of the Gothic Architecture, by Giotto

and his successors throughout Italy, by Mino, Duccio, and their scholars

at Siena, by Orcagna and Fra Angelico da Fiesole at Florence, and by the

obscure but interesting primitive school of Bologna, during the

fourteenth and the early years of the fifteenth century. The period is

one, comparatively speaking, of repose and tranquillity,--the storm

sleeps and the winds are still, the currents set in one direction, and

we may sail from isle to isle over a sunny sea, dallying with the time,

secure of a cloudless sky and of the greetings of innocence and love

wheresoever the breeze may waft us. There is in truth a holy purity, an

innocent naivete, a childlike grace and simplicity, a freshness, a

fearlessness, an utter freedom from affectation, a yearning after all

things truthful, lovely and of good report, in the productions of this

early time, which invest them with a charm peculiar in its kind, and

which few even of the most perfect works of the maturer era can boast

of,--and hence the risk and danger of becoming too passionately attached

to them, of losing the power of discrimination, of admiring and

imitating their defects as well as their beauties, of running into

affectation in seeking after simplicity and into exaggeration in our

efforts to be in earnest,--in a word, of forgetting that in art as in

human nature, it is the balance, harmony, and co-equal development of

Sense, Intellect, and Spirit, which constitute perfection."--Vol. ii.,

pp. 161-163.

* * *

57. To the thousand islands, or how many soever they may be, we shall

allow ourselves to be wafted with all willingness, but not in Lord

Lindsay's three-masted vessel, with its balancing topmasts of Sense,

Intellect, and Spirit. We are utterly tired of the triplicity; and we

are mistaken if its application here be not as inconsistent as it is

arbitrary. Turning back to the introduction, which we have quoted, the

reader will find that while Architecture is there taken for the exponent

of Sense, Painting is chosen as the peculiar expression of Spirit. "The

painting of Christendom is that of an immortal spirit conversing with

its God." But in a note to the first chapter of the second volume, he

will be surprised to find painting become a "twin of intellect," and

architecture suddenly advanced from a type of sense to a type of

spirit:--

* * *

"Sculpture and Painting, twins of Intellect, rejoice and breathe freest

in the pure ether of Architecture, or Spirit, like Castor or Pollux

under the breezy heaven of their father Jupiter."--Vol. ii., p. 14.

* * *

58. Prepared by this passage to consider painting either as spiritual or

intellectual, his patience may pardonably give way on finding in the

sixth letter--(what he might, however, have conjectured from the heading

of the third period in the chart of the schools)--that the peculiar

prerogative of painting--color, is to be considered as a _sensual_

element, and the exponent of sense, in accordance with a new analogy,

here for the first time proposed, between spirit, intellect, and sense,

and expression, form, and color. Lord Lindsay is peculiarly unfortunate

in his adoptions from previous writers. He has taken this division of

art from Fuseli and Reynolds, without perceiving that in those writers

it is one of convenience merely, and, even so considered, is as

injudicious as illogical. In what does expression consist but in form

and color? It is one of the ends which these accomplish, and may be

itself an attribute of both. Color may be expressive or inexpressive,

like music; form expressive or inexpressive, like words; but expression

by itself cannot exist; so that to divide painting into color, form, and

expression, is precisely as rational as to divide music into notes,

words, and expression. Color may be pensive, severe, exciting,

appalling, gay, glowing, or sensual; in all these modes it is

expressive: form may be tender or abrupt, mean or majestic, attractive

or overwhelming, discomfortable or delightsome; in all these modes, and

many more, it is expressive; and if Lord Lindsay's analogy be in anywise

applicable to either form or color, we should have color sensual

(Correggio), color intellectual (Tintoret), color spiritual

(Angelico)--form sensual (French sculpture), form intellectual

(Phidias), form spiritual (Michael Angelo). Above all, our author should

have been careful how he attached the epithet "sensual" to the element

of color--not only on account of the glaring inconsistency with his own

previous assertion of the spirituality of painting--(since it is

certainly not merely by being flat instead of solid, representative

instead of actual, that painting is--if it be--more spiritual than

sculpture); but also, because this idea of sensuality in color has had

much share in rendering abortive the efforts of the modern German

religious painters, inducing their abandonment of its consecrating,

kindling, purifying power.

59. Lord Lindsay says, in a passage which we shall presently quote, that

the most sensual as well as the most religious painters have always

loved the brightest colors. Not so; no painters ever were more sensual

than the modern French, who are alike insensible to, and incapable of

color--depending altogether on morbid gradation, waxy smoothness of

surface, and lusciousness of line, the real elements of sensuality

wherever it eminently exists. So far from good color being sensual, it

saves, glorifies, and guards from all evil: it is with Titian, as with

all great masters of flesh-painting, the redeeming and protecting

element; and with the religious painters, it is a baptism with fire, an

under-song of holy Litanies. Is it in sensuality that the fair flush

opens upon the cheek of Francia's chanting angel,[8] until we think it

comes, and fades, and returns, as his voice and his harping are louder

or lower--or that the silver light rises upon wave after wave of his

lifted hair; or that the burning of the blood is seen on the unclouded

brows of the three angels of the Campo Santo, and of folded fire within

their wings; or that the hollow blue of the highest heaven mantles the

Madonna with its depth, and falls around her like raiment, as she sits

beneath the throne of the Sistine Judgment? Is it in sensuality that the

visible world about us is girded with an eternal iris?--is there

pollution in the rose and the gentian more than in the rocks that are

trusted to their robing?--is the sea-blue a stain upon its water, or

the scarlet spring of day upon the mountains less holy than their snow?

As well call the sun itself, or the firmament, sensual, as the color

which flows from the one, and fills the other.

60. We deprecate this rash assumption, however, with more regard to the

forthcoming portion of the history, in which we fear it may seriously

diminish the value of the author's account of the school of Venice, than

to the part at present executed. This is written in a spirit rather

sympathetic than critical, and rightly illustrates the feeling of early

art, even where it mistakes, or leaves unanalyzed, the technical modes

of its expression. It will be better, perhaps, that we confine our

attention to the accounts of the three men who may be considered as

sufficient representatives not only of the art of their time, but of all

subsequent; Giotto, the first of the great line of dramatists,

terminating in Raffaelle; Orcagna, the head of that branch of the

contemplative school which leans towards sadness or terror, terminating

in Michael Angelo; and Angelico, the head of the contemplatives

concerned with the heavenly ideal, around whom may be grouped first

Duccio, and the Sienese, who preceded him, and afterwards Pinturiccio,

Perugino, and Leonardo da Vinci.

61. The fourth letter opens in the fields of Vespignano. The

circumstances of the finding of Giotto by Cimabue are well known.

Vasari's anecdote of the fly painted upon the nose of one of Cimabue's

figures might, we think, have been spared, or at least not instanced as

proof of study from nature "nobly rewarded." Giotto certainly never

either attempted or accomplished any small imitation of this kind; the

story has all the look of one of the common inventions of the ignorant

for the ignorant; nor, if true, would Cimabue's careless mistake of a

black spot in the shape of a fly for one of the living annoyances of

which there might probably be some dozen or more upon his panel at any

moment, have been a matter of much credit to his young pupil. The first

point of any real interest is Lord Lindsay's confirmation of Foerster's

attribution of the Campo Santo Life of Job, till lately esteemed

Giotto's, to Francesco da Volterra. Foerster's evidence appears

incontrovertible; yet there is curious internal evidence, we think, in

favor of the designs being Giotto's, if not the execution. The landscape

is especially Giottesque, the trees being all boldly massed first with

dark brown, within which the leaves are painted separately in light:

this very archaic treatment had been much softened and modified by the

Giotteschi before the date assigned to these frescoes by Foerster. But,

what is more singular, the figure of Eliphaz, or the foremost of the

three friends, occurs in a tempera picture of Giotto's in the Academy of

Florence, the Ascension, among the apostles on the left; while the face

of another of the three friends is again repeated in the "Christ

disputing with the Doctors" of the small tempera series, also in the

Academy; the figure of Satan shows much analogy to that of the Envy of

the Arena chapel; and many other portions of the design are evidently

either sketches of this very subject by Giotto himself, or dexterous

compilations from his works by a loving pupil. Lord Lindsay has not done

justice to the upper division--the Satan before God: it is one of the

very finest thoughts ever realized by the Giotteschi. The serenity of

power in the principal figure is very noble; no expression of wrath, or

even of scorn, in the look which commands the evil spirit. The position

of the latter, and countenance, are less grotesque and more demoniacal

than is usual in paintings of the time; the triple wings expanded--the

arms crossed over the breast, and holding each other above the elbow,

the claws fixing in the flesh; a serpent buries its head in a cleft in

the bosom, and the right hoof is lifted, as if to stamp.

62. We should have been glad if Lord Lindsay had given us some clearer

idea of the internal evidence on which he founds his determination of

the order or date of the works of Giotto. When no trustworthy records

exist, we conceive this task to be of singular difficulty, owing to the

differences of execution universally existing between the large and

small works of the painter. The portrait of Dante in the chapel of the

Podesta is proved by Dante's exile, in 1302, to have been painted before

Giotto was six and twenty; yet we remember no head in any of his works

which can be compared with it for carefulness of finish and truth of

drawing; the crudeness of the material vanquished by dexterous hatching;

the color not only pure, but deep--a rare virtue with Giotto; the eye

soft and thoughtful, the brow nobly modeled. In the fresco of the Death

of the Baptist, in Santa Croce, which we agree with Lord Lindsay in

attributing to the same early period, the face of the musician is drawn

with great refinement, and considerable power of rounding

surfaces--(though in the drapery may be remarked a very singular piece

of archaic treatment: it is warm white, with yellow stripes; the dress

itself falls in deep folds, but the striped pattern does not follow the

foldings--it is drawn across, as if with a straight ruler).

63. But passing from these frescoes, which are nearly the size of life,

to those of the Arena chapel at Padua, erected in 1303, decorated in

1306, which are much smaller, we find the execution proportionably less

dexterous. Of this famous chapel Lord Lindsay says--

* * *

"nowhere (save in the Duomo of Orvieto) is the legendary history of the

Virgin told with such minuteness.

"The heart must indeed be cold to the charms of youthful art that can

enter this little sanctuary without a glow of delight. From the roof,

with its sky of ultramarine, powdered with stars and interspersed with

medallions containing the heads of our Saviour, the Virgin and the

Apostles, to the mock paneling of the nave, below the windows, the whole

is completely covered with frescoes, in excellent preservation, and all

more or less painted by Giotto's own hand, except six in the tribune,

which however have apparently been executed from his cartoons....

"These frescoes form a most important document in the history of

Giotto's mind, exhibiting all his peculiar merits, although in a state

as yet of immature development. They are full of fancy and invention;

the composition is almost always admirable, although sometimes too

studiously symmetrical; the figures are few and characteristic, each

speaking for itself, the impersonation of a distinct idea, and most

dramatically grouped and contrasted; the attitudes are appropriate,

easy, and natural; the action and gesticulation singularly vivid; the

expression is excellent, except when impassioned grief induces

caricature:--devoted to the study of Nature as he is, Giotto had not yet

learnt that it is suppressed feeling which affects one most. The head of

our Saviour is beautiful throughout--that of the Virgin not so good--she

is modest, but not very graceful or celestial:--it was long before he

succeeded in his Virgins--they are much too matronly: among the

accessory figures, graceful female forms occasionally appear,

foreshadowing those of his later works at Florence and Naples, yet they

are always clumsy about the waist and bust, and most of them are

under-jawed, which certainly detracts from the sweetness of the female

countenance. His delineation of the naked is excellent, as compared with

the works of his predecessors, but far unequal to what he attained in

his later years,--the drapery, on the contrary, is noble, majestic, and

statuesque; the coloring is still pale and weak,--it was long ere he

improved in this point; the landscape displays little or no amendment

upon the Byzantine; the architecture, that of the fourteenth century, is

to the figures that people it in the proportion of dolls' houses to the

children that play with them,--an absurdity long unthinkingly acquiesced

in, from its occurrence in the classic bas-reliefs from which it had

been traditionally derived;--and, finally, the lineal perspective is

very fair, and in three of the compositions an excellent effect is

produced by the introduction of the same background with varied

_dramatis personae_, reminding one of Retszch's illustrations of Faust.

The animals too are always excellent, full of spirit and

character."--Vol. ii., pp. 183-199.

64. This last characteristic is especially to be noticed. It is a

touching proof of the influence of early years. Giotto was only ten

years old when he was taken from following the sheep. For the rest, as

we have above stated, the manipulation of these frescoes is just as far

inferior to that of the Podesta chapel as their dimensions are less; and

we think it will be found generally that the smaller the work the more

rude is Giotto's hand. In this respect he seems to differ from all other

masters.

* * *

"It is not difficult, gazing on these silent but eloquent walls, to

repeople them with the group once, as we know-five hundred years

ago--assembled within them,--Giotto intent upon his work, his wife Ciuta

admiring his progress, and Dante, with abstracted eye, alternately

conversing with his friend and watching the gambols of the children

playing on the grass before the door. It is generally affirmed that

Dante, during this visit, inspired Giotto with his taste for allegory,

and that the Virtues and Vices of the Arena were the first fruits of

their intercourse; it is possible, certainly, but I doubt it,--allegory

was the universal language of the time, as we have seen in the history

of the Pisan school."--Vol. ii., pp. 199, 200.

* * *

It ought to have been further mentioned, that the representation of the

Virtues and Vices under these Giottesque figures continued long

afterwards. We find them copied, for instance, on the capitals of the

Ducal Palace at Venice, with an amusing variation on the "Stultitia,"

who has neither Indian dress nor club, as with Giotto, but is to the

Venetians sufficiently distinguished by riding a horse.

65. The notice of the frescoes at Assisi consists of little more than an

enumeration of the subjects, accompanied by agreeable translations of

the traditions respecting St. Francis, embodied by St. Buonaventura. Nor

have we space to follow the author through his examination of Giotto's

works at Naples and Avignon. The following account of the erection of

the Campanile of Florence is too interesting to be omitted:---

* * *

"Giotto was chosen to erect it, on the ground avowedly of the

universality of his talents, with the appointment of Capomaestro, or

chief architect of the Cathedral and its dependencies, a yearly salary

of one hundred gold florins, and the privilege of citizenship, and under

the special understanding that he was not to quit Florence. His designs

being approved of, the republic passed a decree in the spring of 1334,

that 'the Campanile should be built so as to exceed in magnificence,

height and excellence of workmanship whatever in that kind had been

achieved of old by the Greeks and Romans in the time of their utmost

power and greatness--"della loro piu florida potenza."' The first stone

was laid accordingly, with great pomp, on the 18th of July following,

and the work prosecuted with such vigor and with such costliness and

utter disregard of expense, that a citizen of Verona, looking on,

exclaimed that the republic was taxing her strength too far,--that the

united resources of two great monarchs would be insufficient to complete

it; a _criticism which the Signoria resented by confining him for two

months in prison_, and afterwards conducting him through the public

treasury, to teach him that the Florentines could build their whole city

of marble, and not one poor steeple only, were they so inclined.

"Giotto made a model of his proposed structure, on which every stone was

marked, and the successive courses painted red and white, according to

his design, so as to match with the Cathedral and Baptistery; this model

was of course adhered to strictly during the short remnant of his life,

and the work was completed in strict conformity to it after his death,

with the exception of the spire, which, the taste having changed, was

never added. He had intended it to be one hundred _braccia_, or one

hundred and fifty feet high."--Vol. ii., pp. 247-249.

The deficiency of the spire Lord Lindsay does not regret:--

* * *

"Let the reader stand before the Campanile, and ask himself whether,

with Michael Scott at his elbow, or Aladdin's lamp in his hand, he would

supply the deficiency? I think not."--p. 38.

* * *

We have more faith in Giotto than our author--and we will reply to his

question by two others--whether, looking down upon Florence from the

hill of San Miniato, his eye rested oftener and more affectionately on

the Campanile of Giotto, or on the simple tower and spire of Santa Maria

Novella?--and whether, in the backgrounds of Perugino, he would

willingly substitute for the church spires invariably introduced,

flat-topped campaniles like the unfinished tower of Florence?

66. Giotto sculptured with his own hand two of the bas-reliefs of this

campanile, and probably might have executed them all. But the purposes

of his life had been accomplished; he died at Florence on the 8th of

January, 1337. The concluding notice of his character and achievement is

highly valuable.

* * *

67. "Painting indeed stands indebted to Giotto beyond any of her

children. His history is a most instructive one. Endowed with the

liveliest fancy, and with that facility which so often betrays genius,

and achieving in youth a reputation which the age of Methuselah could

not have added to, he had yet the discernment to perceive how much still

remained to be done, and the resolution to bind himself (as it were) to

Nature's chariot wheel, confident that she would erelong emancipate and

own him as her son. Calm and unimpassioned, he seems to have commenced

his career with a deliberate survey of the difficulties he had to

encounter and of his resources for the conflict, and then to have worked

upon a system steadily and perseveringly, prophetically sure of victory.

His life was indeed one continued triumph,--and no conqueror ever

mounted to the Capitol with a step more equal and sedate. We find him,

at first, slowly and cautiously endeavoring to infuse new life into the

traditional compositions, by substituting the heads, attitudes, and

drapery of the actual world for the spectral forms and conventional

types of the mosaics and the Byzantine painters,--idealizing them when

the personages represented were of higher mark and dignity, but in none

ever outstepping truth. Advancing in his career, we find year by year

the fruits of continuous unwearied study in a consistent and equable

contemporary improvement in all the various minuter though most

important departments of his art, in his design, his drapery, his

coloring, in the dignity and expression of his men and in the grace of

his women--asperities softened down, little graces unexpectedly born and

playing about his path, as if to make amends for the deformity of his

actual offspring--touches, daily more numerous, of that nature which

makes the world akin--and ever and always a keen yet cheerful sympathy

with life, a playful humor mingling with his graver lessons, which

affects us the more as coming from one who, knowing himself an object

personally of disgust and ridicule, could yet satirize with a smile.

"Finally, throughout his works, we are conscious of an earnest, a lofty,

a religious aim and purpose, as of one who felt himself a pioneer of

civilization in a newly-discovered world, the Adam of a new Eden freshly

planted in the earth's wilderness, a mouthpiece of God and a preacher of

righteousness to mankind.--And here we must establish a distinction very

necessary to be recognized before we can duly appreciate the relative

merits of the elder painters in this, the most important point in which

we can view their character. Giotto's genius, however universal, was

still (as I have repeatedly observed) Dramatic rather than

Contemplative,--a tendency in which his scholars and successors almost

to a man resembled him. Now, just as in actual life--where, with a few

rare exceptions, all men rank under two great categories according as

Imagination or Reason predominates in their intellectual character--two

individuals may be equally impressed with the truths of Christianity and

yet differ essentially in its outward manifestation, the one dwelling in

action, the other in contemplation, the one in strife, the other in

peace, the one (so to speak) in hate, the other in love, the one

struggling with devils, the other communing with angels, yet each

serving as a channel of God's mercies to man, each (we may believe)

offering Him service equally acceptable in His sight--even so shall we

find it in art and with artists; few in whom the Dramatic power

predominates will be found to excel in the expression of religious

emotions of the more abstract and enthusiastic cast, even although men

of indisputably pure and holy character themselves; and _vice versa_,

few of the more Contemplative but will feel bewildered and at fault, if

they descend from their starry region of light into the grosser

atmosphere that girdles in this world of action. The works of artists

are their minds' mirror; they cannot express what they do not feel; each

class dwells apart and seeks its ideal in a distinct sphere of

emotion,--their object is different, and their success proportioned to

the exclusiveness with which they pursue that object. A few indeed there

have been in all ages, monarchs of the mind and types of our Saviour,

who have lived a twofold existence of action and contemplation in art,

in song, in politics, and in daily life; of these have been Abraham,

Moses, David, and Cyrus in the elder world--Alfred, Charlemagne, Dante,

and perhaps Shakespeare, in the new,--and in art, Niccola Pisano,

Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo. But Giotto, however great as the

patriarch of his peculiar tribe, was not of these few, and we ought not

therefore to misapprehend him, or be disappointed at finding his

Madonnas (for instance) less exquisitely spiritual than the Sienese, or

those of Fra Angelico and some later painters, who seem to have dipped

their pencils in the rainbow that circles the throne of God,--they are

pure and modest, but that is all; on the other hand, where his

Contemplative rivals lack utterance, he speaks most feelingly to the

heart in his own peculiar language of Dramatic composition--he glances

over creation with the eye of love, all the charities of life follow in

his steps, and his thoughts are as the breath of the morning. A man of

the world, living in it and loving it, yet with a heart that it could

not spoil nor wean from its allegiance to God--'non meno buon Cristiano

che eccellente pittore,' as Vasari emphatically describes him--his

religion breathes of the free air of heaven rather than the cloister,

neither enthusiastic nor superstitious, but practical, manly and

healthy--and this, although the picturesque biographer of S.

Francis!"--Vol. ii., pp. 260-264.

* * *

68. This is all as admirably felt as expressed, and to those acquainted

with and accustomed to love the works of the painter, it leaves nothing

to be asked for; but we must again remind Lord Lindsay, that he has

throughout left the _artistical_ orbit of Giotto undefined, and the

offense of his manner unremoved, as far as regards the uninitiated

spectator. We question whether from all that he has written, the

untraveled reader could form any distinct idea of the painter's peculiar

merits or methods, or that the estimate, if formed, might not afterwards

expose him to severe disappointment. It ought especially to have been

stated, that the Giottesque system of chiaroscuro is one of pure, quiet,

pervading daylight. No _cast_ shadows ever occur, and this remains a

marked characteristic of all the works of the Giotteschi. Of course, all

subtleties of reflected light or raised color are unthought of. Shade is

only given as far as it is necessary to the articulation of simple

forms, nor even then is it rightly adapted to the color of the light;

the folds of the draperies are well drawn, but the entire rounding of

them always missed--the general forms appearing flat, and terminated by

equal and severe outlines, while the masses of ungradated color often

seem to divide the figure into fragments. Thus, the Madonna in the small

tempera series of the Academy of Florence, is usually divided exactly in

half by the dark mass of her blue robe, falling in a vertical line. In

consequence of this defect, the grace of Giotto's composition can hardly

be felt until it is put into outline. The colors themselves are of good

quality, never glaring, always gladdening, the reds inclining to orange

more than purple, yellow frequent, the prevalent tone of the color

groups warm; the sky always blue, the whole effect somewhat resembling

that of the Northern painted glass of the same century--and chastened in

the same manner by noble neutral tints or greens; yet all somewhat

unconsidered and unsystematic, painful discords not unfrequent. The

material and ornaments of dress are never particularized, no imitations

of texture or jewelry, yet shot stuffs of two colors frequent. The

drawing often powerful, though of course uninformed; the mastery of

mental expression by bodily motion, and of bodily motion, past and

future, by a single gesture, altogether unrivaled even by Raffaelle;--it

is obtained chiefly by throwing the emphasis always on the right line,

admitting straight lines of great severity, and never dividing the main

drift of the drapery by inferior folds; neither are accidents allowed to

interfere--the garments fall heavily and in marked angles--nor are they

affected by the wind, except under circumstances of very rapid motion.

The ideal of the face is often solemn--seldom beautiful; occasionally

ludicrous failures occur: in the smallest designs the face is very often

a dead letter, or worse: and in all, Giotto's handling is generally to

be distinguished from that of any of his followers by its bluntness. In

the school work we find sweeter types of feature, greater finish,

stricter care, more delicate outline, fewer errors, but on the whole

less life.

69. Finally, and on this we would especially insist, Giotto's genius is

not to be considered as struggling with difficulty and repressed by

ignorance, but as appointed, for the good of men, to come into the world

exactly at the time when its rapidity of invention was not likely to be

hampered by demands for imitative dexterity or neatness of finish; and

when, owing to the very ignorance which has been unwisely regretted, the

simplicity of his thoughts might be uttered with a childlike and

innocent sweetness, never to be recovered in times of prouder knowledge.

The dramatic power of his works, rightly understood, could receive no

addition from artificial arrangement of shade, or scientific exhibition

of anatomy, and we have reason to be deeply grateful when afterwards

"inland far" with Buonaroti and Titian, that we can look back to the

Giotteschi--to see those children

"Sport upon the shore

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."

We believe Giotto himself felt this--unquestionably he could have

carried many of his works much farther in finish, had he so willed it;

but he chose rather to multiply motives than to complete details. Thus

we recur to our great principle of Separate gift. The man who spends his

life in toning colors must leave the treasures of his invention

untold--let each have his perfect work; and while we thank Bellini and

Leonardo for their deeply wrought dyes, and life-labored utterance of

passionate thought; let us remember also what cause, but for the

remorseless destruction of myriads of his works, we should have had to

thank Giotto, in that, abandoning all proud effort, he chose rather to

make the stones of Italy cry out with one voice of pauseless praise, and

to fill with perpetual remembrance of the Saints he loved, and perpetual

honor of the God he worshiped, palace chamber and convent cloister,

lifted tower and lengthened wall, from the utmost blue of the plain of

Padua to the Southern wildernesses of the hermit-haunted Apennine.

70. From the head of the Dramatic branch of Art, we turn to the first of

the great Contemplative Triad, associated, as it most singularly happens

in name as well as in heart; Orcagna--Arcagnuolo; Fra Giovanni--detto

Angelico; and Michael Angelo:--the first two names being bestowed by

contemporary admiration.

* * *

"Orcagna was born apparently about the middle of the (14th) century, and

was christened Andrea, by which name, with the addition of that of his

father, Cione, he always designated himself; that, however, of Orcagna,

a corruption of Arcagnuolo, or 'The Archangel,' was given him by his

contemporaries, and by this he has become known to posterity.

"The earliest works of Orcagna will be found in that sanctuary of

Semi-Byzantine art, the Campo Santo of Pisa. He there painted three of

the four 'Novissima,' Death, Judgment, Hell, and Paradise--the two

former entirely himself, the third with the assistance of his brother

Bernardo, who is said to have colored it after his designs. The first of

the series, a most singular performance, had for centuries been

popularly known as the 'Trionfo della Morte.' It is divided by an

immense rock into two irregular portions. In that to the right, Death,

personified as a female phantom, batwinged, claw-footed, her robe of

linked mail [?] and her long hair streaming on the wind, swings back her

scythe in order to cut down a company of the rich ones of the earth,

Castruccio Castracani and his gay companions, seated under an

orange-grove, and listening to the music of a troubadour and a female

minstrel; little genii or Cupids, with reversed torches, float in the

air above them; one young gallant caresses his hawk, a lady her

lapdog,--Castruccio alone looks abstractedly away, as if his thoughts

were elsewhere. But all are alike heedless and unconscious, though the

sand is run out, the scythe falling and their doom sealed. Meanwhile the

lame and the halt, the withered and the blind, to whom the heavens are

brass and life a burthen, cry on Death with impassioned gestures, to

release them from their misery,--but in vain; she sweeps past, and will

not hear them. Between these two groups lie a heap of corpses, mown down

already in her flight--kings, queens, bishops, cardinals, young men and

maidens, secular and ecclesiastical--ensigned by their crowns, coronets,

necklaces, miters and helmets--huddled together in hideous confusion;

some are dead, others dying,--angels and devils draw the souls out of

their mouths; that of a nun (in whose hand a purse, firmly clenched,

betokens her besetting sin) shrinks back aghast at the unlooked-for

sight of the demon who receives it--an idea either inherited or adopted

from Andrea Tafi. The whole upper half of the fresco, on this side, is

filled with angels and devils carrying souls to heaven or to hell;

sometimes a struggle takes place, and a soul is rescued from a demon who

has unwarrantably appropriated it; the angels are very graceful, and

their intercourse with their spiritual charge is full of tenderness and

endearment; on the other hand, the wicked are hurried off by the devils

and thrown headlong into the mouths of hell, represented as the crater

of a volcano, belching out flames nearly in the center of the

composition. These devils exhibit every variety of horror in form and

feature."--Vol. iii., pp. 130-134.

* * *

71. We wish our author had been more specific in his account of this

wonderful fresco. The portrait of Castruccio ought to have been

signalized as a severe disappointment to the admirers of the heroic

Lucchese: the face is flat, lifeless, and sensual, though fine in

feature. The group of mendicants occupying the center are especially

interesting, as being among the first existing examples of hard study

from the model: all are evidently portraits--and the effect of deformity

on the lines of the countenance rendered with appalling truth; the

retractile muscles of the mouth wrinkled and fixed--the jaws

projecting--the eyes hungry and glaring--the eyebrows grisly and stiff,

the painter having drawn each hair separately: the two stroppiati with

stumps instead of arms are especially characteristic, as the observer

may at once determine by comparing them with the descendants of the

originals, of whom he will at any time find two, or more, waiting to

accompany his return across the meadow in front of the Duomo: the old

woman also, nearest of the group, with gray disheveled hair and gray

coat, with a brown girdle and gourd flask, is magnificent, and the

archetype of all modern conceptions of witch. But the crowning stroke of

feeling is dependent on a circumstance seldom observed. As Castruccio

and his companions are seated under the shade of an orange grove, so the

mendicants are surrounded by a thicket of _teasels_, and a branch of

ragged thorn is twisted like a crown about their sickly temples and

weedy hair.

72. We do not altogether agree with our author in thinking that the

devils exhibit every variety of horror; we rather fear that the

spectator might at first be reminded by them of what is commonly known

as the Dragon pattern of Wedgwood ware. There is invention in them

however--and energy; the eyes are always terrible, though simply

drawn--a black ball set forward, and two-thirds surrounded by a narrow

crescent of white, under a shaggy brow; the mouths are frequently

magnificent; that of a demon accompanying a thrust of a spear with a

growl, on the right of the picture, is interesting as an example of the

development of the canine teeth noticed by Sir Charles Bell ("Essay on

Expression," p. 138)--its capacity of laceration is unlimited: another,

snarling like a tiger at an angel who has pulled a soul out of his

claws, is equally well conceived; we know nothing like its ferocity

except Rembrandt's sketches of wounded wild beasts. The angels we think

generally disappointing; they are for the most part diminutive in size,

and the crossing of the extremities of the two wings that cover the

feet, gives them a coleopterous, cockchafer look, which is not a little

undignified; the colors of their plumes are somewhat coarse and

dark--one is covered with silky hair, instead of feathers. The souls

they contend for are indeed of sweet expression; but exceedingly earthly

in contour, the painter being unable to deal with the nude form. On the

whole, he seems to have reserved his highest powers for the fresco which

follows next in order, the scene of Resurrection and Judgment.

* * *

"It is, in the main, the traditional Byzantine composition, even more

rigidly symmetrical than usual, singularly contrasting in this respect

with the rush and movement of the preceding compartment. Our Saviour and

the Virgin, seated side by side, each on a rainbow and within a vesica

piscis, appear in the sky--Our Saviour uttering the words of

malediction with uplifted arm, showing the wound in his side, and nearly

in the attitude of Michael Angelo, but in wrath, not in fury--the Virgin

timidly drawing back and gazing down in pity and sorrow. I never saw

this co-equal juxtaposition in any other representation of the Last

Judgment."--Vol. iii., p. 136.

* * *

73. The positions of our Saviour and of the Virgin are not strictly

co-equal; the glory in which the Madonna is seated is both lower and

less; but the equality is more complete in the painting of the same

subject in Santa M. Novella. We believe Lord Lindsay is correct in

thinking Orcagna the only artist who has dared it. We question whether

even wrath be intended in the countenance of the principal figure; on

the contrary, we think it likely to disappoint at first, and appear

lifeless in its exceeding tranquillity; the brow is indeed slightly

knit, but the eyes have no local direction. They comprehend all

things--are set upon all spirits alike, as in that _word-fresco_ of our

own, not unworthy to be set side by side with this, the Vision of the

Trembling Man in the House of the Interpreter. The action is as majestic

as the countenance--the right hand seems raised rather to show its wound

(as the left points at the same instant to the wound in the side), than

in condemnation, though its gesture has been adopted as one of

threatening--first (and very nobly) by Benozzo Gozzoli, in the figure of

the Angel departing, looking towards Sodom--and afterwards, with

unfortunate exaggeration, by Michael Angelo. Orcagna's Madonna we think

a failure, but his strength has been more happily displayed in the

Apostolic circle. The head of St. John is peculiarly beautiful. The

other Apostles look forward or down as in judgment--some in indignation,

some in pity, some serene--but the eyes of St. John are fixed upon the

Judge Himself with the stability of love--intercession and sorrow

struggling for utterance with awe--and through both is seen a tremor of

submissive astonishment, that the lips which had once forbidden his to

call down fire from heaven should now themselves burn with irrevocable

condemnation.

* * *

74. "One feeling for the most part pervades this side of the

composition,--there is far more variety in the other; agony is depicted

with fearful intensity and in every degree and character; some clasp

their hands, some hide their faces, some look up in despair, but none

towards Christ; others seem to have grown idiots with horror:--a few

gaze, as if fascinated, into the gulf of fire towards which the whole

mass of misery are being urged by the ministers of doom--the flames bite

them, the devils fish for and catch them with long grappling-hooks:--in

sad contrast to the group on the opposite side, a queen, condemned

herself but self-forgetful, vainly struggles to rescue her daughter from

a demon who has caught her by the gown and is dragging her backwards

into the abyss--her sister, wringing her hands, looks on in agony--it is

a fearful scene.

"A vast rib or arch in the walls of pandemonium admits one into the

contiguous gulf of Hell, forming the third fresco, or rather a

continuation of the second--in which Satan sits in the midst, in

gigantic terror, cased in armor and crunching sinners--of whom Judas,

especially, is eaten and ejected, re-eaten and re-ejected again and

again forever. The punishments of the wicked are portrayed in circles

numberless around him. But in everything save horror this compartment is

inferior to the preceding, and it has been much injured and

repainted."--Vol. iii., p. 138.

* * *

75. We might have been spared all notice of this last compartment.

Throughout Italy, owing, it may be supposed, to the interested desire of

the clergy to impress upon the populace as forcibly as possible the

verity of purgatorial horrors, nearly every representation of the

Inferno has been repainted, and vulgar butchery substituted for the

expressions of punishment which were too chaste for monkish purposes.

The infernos of Giotto at Padua, and of Orcagna at Florence, have thus

been destroyed; but in neither case have they been replaced by anything

so merely disgusting as these restorations by Solazzino in the Campo

Santo. Not a line of Orcagna's remains, except in one row of figures

halfway up the wall, where his firm black drawing is still

distinguishable: throughout the rest of the fresco, hillocks of pink

flesh have been substituted for his severe forms--and for his agonized

features, puppets' heads with roaring mouths and staring eyes, the whole

as coarse and sickening, and quite as weak, as any scrabble on the

lowest booths of a London Fair.

76. Lord Lindsay's comparison of these frescoes of Orcagna with the

great work in the Sistine, is, as a specimen of his writing, too good

not to be quoted.

* * *

"While Michael Angelo's leading idea seems to be the self-concentration

and utter absorption of all feeling into the one predominant thought,

_Am I, individually, safe?_ resolving itself into two emotions only,

doubt and despair--all diversities of character, all kindred sympathies

annihilated under their pressure--those emotions uttering themselves,

not through the face but the form, by bodily contortion, rendering the

whole composition, with all its overwhelming merits, a mighty

hubbub--Orcagna's on the contrary embraces the whole world of passions

that make up the economy of man, and these not confused or crushed

into each other, but expanded and enhanced in quality and

intensity commensurably with the 'change' attendant upon the

resurrection--variously expressed indeed, and in reference to the

diversities of individual character, which will be nowise compromised by

that change, yet from their very intensity suppressed and subdued,

stilling the body and informing only the soul's index, the countenance.

All therefore is calm; the saved have acquiesced in all things, they can

mourn no more--the damned are to them as if they had never been;--among

the lost, grief is too deep, too settled for caricature, and while every

feeling of the spectator, every key of the soul's organ, is played upon

by turns, tenderness and pity form the under-song throughout and

ultimately prevail; the curse is uttered in sorrow rather than wrath,

and from the pitying Virgin and the weeping archangel above, to the

mother endeavoring to rescue her daughter below, and the young secular

led to paradise under the approving smile of S. Michael, all resolves

itself into sympathy and love.--Michael Angelo's conception may be more

efficacious for teaching by terror--it was his object, I believe, as the

heir of Savonarola and the representative of the Protestant spirit

within the bosom of Catholicism; but Orcagna's is in better taste, truer

to human nature, sublimer in philosophy, and (if I mistake not) more

scriptural."--Vol. iii., pp. 139-141.

* * *

77. We think it somewhat strange that the object of teaching by terror

should be attributed to M. Angelo more than to Orcagna, seeing that the

former, with his usual dignity, has refused all representation of

infernal punishment--except in the figure dragged down with the hand

over the face, the serpent biting the thigh, and in the fiends of the

extreme angle; while Orcagna, whose intention may be conjectured even

from Solazzino's restoration, exhausted himself in detailing Dante's

distribution of torture, and brings into successive prominence every

expedient of pain; the prong, the spit, the rack, the chain, venomous

fang and rending beak, harrowing point and dividing edge, biting fiend

and calcining fire. The objects of the two great painters were indeed

opposed, but not in this respect. Orcagna's, like that of every great

painter of his day, was to write upon the wall, as in a book, the

greatest possible number of those religious facts or doctrines which the

Church desired should be known to the people. This he did in the

simplest and most straightforward way, regardless of artistical

reputation, and desiring only to be read and understood. But Michael

Angelo's object was from the beginning that of an artist. He addresses

not the sympathies of his day, but the understanding of all time, and he

treats the subject in the mode best adapted to bring every one of his

own powers into full play. As might have been expected, while the

self-forgetfulness of Orcagna has given, on the one hand, an awfulness

to his work, and verity, which are wanting in the studied composition of

the Sistine, on the other it has admitted a puerility commensurate with

the narrowness of the religion he had to teach.

78. Greater differences still result from the opposed powers and

idiosyncrasies of the two men. Orcagna was unable to draw the nude--on

this inability followed a coldness to the value of flowing lines, and to

the power of unity in composition--neither could he indicate motion or

buoyancy in flying or floating figures, nor express violence of action

in the limbs--he cannot even show the difference between pulling and

pushing in the muscles of the arm. In M. Angelo these conditions were

directly reversed. Intense sensibility to the majesty of writhing,

flowing, and connected lines, was in him associated with a power,

unequaled except by Angelico, of suggesting aerial motion--motion

deliberate or disturbed, inherent or impressed, impotent or

inspired--gathering into glory, or gravitating to death. Orcagna was

therefore compelled to range his figures symmetrically in ordered lines,

while Michael Angelo bound them into chains, or hurled them into heaps,

or scattered them before him as the wind does leaves. Orcagna trusted

for all his expression to the countenance, or to rudely explained

gesture aided by grand fall of draperies, though in all these points he

was still immeasurably inferior to his colossal rival. As for his

"embracing the whole world of passions which make up the economy of

man," he had no such power of delineation--nor, we believe, of

conception. The expressions on the inferno side are all of them

varieties of grief and fear, differing merely in degree, not in

character or operation: there is something dramatic in the raised hand

of a man wearing a green bonnet with a white plume--but the only really

far-carried effort in the group is the head of a Dominican monk (just

above the queen in green), who, in the midst of the close crowd,

struggling, shuddering, and howling on every side, is fixed in quiet,

total despair, insensible to all things, and seemingly poised in

existence and sensation upon that one point in his past life when his

steps first took hold on hell; this head, which is opposed to a face

distorted by horror beside it, is, we repeat, the only highly wrought

piece of expression in the group.

79. What Michael Angelo could do by expression of countenance alone, let

the Pieta of Genoa tell, or the Lorenzo, or the parallel to this very

head of Orcagna's, the face of the man borne down in the Last Judgment

with the hand clenched over one of the eyes. Neither in that fresco is

he wanting in dramatic episode; the adaptation of the Niobe on the

spectator's left hand is far finer than Orcagna's condemned queen and

princess; the groups rising below, side by side, supporting each other,

are full of tenderness, and reciprocal devotion; the contest in the

center for the body which a demon drags down by the hair is another kind

of quarrel from that of Orcagna between a feathered angel and bristly

fiend for a diminutive soul--reminding us, as it forcibly did at first,

of a vociferous difference in opinion between a cat and a cockatoo. But

Buonaroti knew that it was useless to concentrate interest in the

countenances, in a picture of enormous size, ill lighted; and he

preferred giving full play to the powers of line-grouping, for which he

could have found no nobler field. Let us not by unwise comparison mingle

with our admiration of these two sublime works any sense of weakness in

the naivete of the one, or of coldness in the science of the other. Each

painter has his own sufficient dominion, and he who complains of the

want of knowledge in Orcagna, or of the display of it in Michael Angelo,

has probably brought little to his judgment of either.

80. One passage more we must quote, well worthy of remark in these days

of hollowness and haste, though we question the truth of the particular

fact stated in the second volume respecting the shrine of Or San

Michele. Cement is now visible enough in all the joints, but whether

from recent repairs we cannot say:--

"There is indeed another, a technical merit, due to Orcagna, which I

would have mentioned earlier, did it not partake so strongly of a moral

virtue. Whatever he undertook to do, he did well--by which I mean,

better than anybody else. His Loggia, in its general structure and its

provisions against injury from wet and decay, is a model of strength no

less than symmetry and elegance; the junction of the marbles in the

tabernacle of Or San Michele, and the exquisite manual workmanship of

the bas-reliefs, have been the theme of praise for five centuries; his

colors in the Campo Santo have maintained a freshness unrivaled by those

of any of his successors there;--nay, even had his mosaics been

preserved at Orvieto, I am confident the _commettitura_ would be found

more compact and polished than any previous to the sixteenth century.

The secret of all this was that he made himself thoroughly an adept in

the mechanism of the respective arts, and therefore his works have

stood. Genius is too apt to think herself independent of form and

matter--never was there such a mistake; she cannot slight either without

hamstringing herself. But the rule is of universal application; without

this thorough mastery of their respective tools, this determination

honestly to make the best use of them, the divine, the soldier, the

statesman, the philosopher, the poet--however genuine their enthusiasm,

however lofty their genius--are mere empirics, pretenders to crowns they

will not run for, children not men--sporters with Imagination, triflers

with Reason, with the prospects of humanity, with Time, and with

God."--Vol. iii., pp. 148, 149.

* * *

A noble passage this, and most true, provided we distinguish always

between mastery of tool together with thorough strength of workmanship,

and mere neatness of outside polish or fitting of measurement, of which

ancient masters are daringly scornful.

81. None of Orcagna's pupils, except Francisco Traini, attained

celebrity--

* * *

"nothing in fact is known of them except their names. Had their works,

however inferior, been preserved, we might have had less difficulty in

establishing the links between himself and his successor in the

supremacy of the Semi-Byzantine school at Florence, the Beato Fra

Angelico da Fiesole.... He was born at Vicchio, near Florence, it is

said in 1387, and was baptized by the name of Guido. Of a gentle nature,

averse to the turmoil of the world, and pious to enthusiasm, though as

free from fanaticism as his youth was innocent of vice, he determined,

at the age of twenty, though well provided for in a worldly point of

view, to retire to the cloister; he professed himself accordingly a

brother of the monastery of S. Domenico at Fiesole in 1407, assuming his

monastic name from the Apostle of love, S. John. He acquired from his

residence there the distinguishing surname 'da Fiesole;' and a calmer

retreat for one weary of earth and desirous of commerce with heaven

would in vain be sought for;--the purity of the atmosphere, the

freshness of the morning breeze, the starry clearness and delicious

fragrance of the nights, the loveliness of the valley at one's feet,

lengthening out, like a life of happiness, between the Apennine and the

sea--with the intermingling sounds that ascend perpetually from below,

softened by distance into music, and by an agreeable compromise at once

giving a zest to solitude and cheating it of its loneliness--rendering

Fiesole a spot which angels might alight upon by mistake in quest of

paradise, a spot where it would be at once sweet to live and sweet to

die."--Vol. iii., pp. 151-153.

* * *

82. Our readers must recollect that the convent where Fra Giovanni first

resided is not that whose belfry tower and cypress grove crown the "top

of Fesole." The Dominican convent is situated at the bottom of the slope

of olives, distinguished only by its narrow and low spire; a cypress

avenue recedes from it towards Florence--a stony path, leading to the

ancient Badia of Fiesole, descends in front of the three-arched loggia

which protects the entrance to the church. No extended prospect is open

to it; though over the low wall, and through the sharp, thickset olive

leaves, may be seen one silver gleam of the Arno, and, at evening, the

peaks of the Carrara mountains, purple against the twilight, dark and

calm, while the fire-flies glance beneath, silent and intermittent, like

stars upon the rippling of mute, soft sea.

* * *

"It is by no means an easy task to adjust the chronology of Fra

Angelico's works; he has affixed no dates to them, and consequently,

when external evidence is wanting, we are thrown upon internal, which in

his case is unusually fallacious. It is satisfactory therefore to

possess a fixed date in 1433, the year in which he painted the great

tabernacle for the Company of Flax-merchants, now removed to the gallery

of the Uffizii. It represents the Virgin and child, with attendant

Saints, on a gold ground--very dignified and noble, although the Madonna

has not attained the exquisite spirituality of his later efforts. Round

this tabernacle as a nucleus, may be classed a number of paintings, all

of similar excellence--admirable that is to say, but not of his very

best, and in which, if I mistake not, the type of the Virgin bears

throughout a strong family resemblance."--Vol. iii., pp. 160, 161.

* * *

83. If the painter ever increased in power after this period (he was

then forty-three), we have been unable to systematize the improvement.

We much doubt whether, in his modes of execution, advance were possible.

Men whose merit lies in record of natural facts, increase in knowledge;

and men whose merit is in dexterity of hand increase in facility; but we

much doubt whether the faculty of design, or force of feeling, increase

after the age of twenty-five. By Fra Angelico, who drew always in fear

and trembling, dexterous execution had been from the first repudiated;

he neither needed nor sought technical knowledge of the form, and the

inspiration, to which his power was owing, was not less glowing in youth

than in age. The inferiority traceable (we grant) in this Madonna

results not from its early date, but from Fra Angelico's incapability,

always visible, of drawing the head of life size. He is, in this

respect, the exact reverse of Giotto; he was essentially a miniature

painter, and never attained the mastery of muscular play in the features

necessary in a full-sized drawing. His habit, almost constant, of

surrounding the iris of the eye by a sharp black line, is, in small

figures, perfectly successful, giving a transparency and tenderness not

otherwise expressible. But on a larger scale it gives a stony stare to

the eyeball, which not all the tenderness of the brow and mouth can

conquer or redeem.

84. Further, in this particular instance, the ear has by accident been

set too far back--(Fra Angelico, drawing only from feeling, was liable

to gross errors of this kind,--often, however, more beautiful than other

men's truths)--and the hair removed in consequence too far off the brow;

in other respects the face is very noble--still more so that of the

Christ. The child _stands_ upon the Virgin's knees,[9] one hand raised

in the usual attitude of benediction, the other holding a globe. The

face looks straightforward, quiet, Jupiter-like, and very sublime, owing

to the smallness of the features in proportion to the head, the eyes

being placed at about three-sevenths of the whole height, leaving

four-sevenths for the brow, and themselves only in length about

one-sixth of the breadth of the face, half closed, giving a peculiar

appearance of repose. The hair is short, golden, symmetrically curled,

statuesque in its contour; the mouth tender and full of life: the red

cross of the glory about the head of an intense ruby enamel, almost fire

color; the dress brown, with golden girdle. In all the treatment Fra

Angelico maintains his assertion of the authority of abstract

imagination, which, depriving his subject of all material or actual

being, contemplates it as retaining qualities eternal only--adorned by

incorporeal splendor. The eyes of the beholder are supernaturally

unsealed: and to this miraculous vision whatever is of the earth

vanishes, and all things are seen endowed with an harmonious glory--the

garments falling with strange, visionary grace, glowing with indefinite

gold--the walls of the chamber dazzling as of a heavenly city--the

mortal forms themselves impressed with divine changelessness--no

domesticity--no jest--no anxiety--no expectation--no variety of action

or of thought. Love, all fulfilling, and various modes of power, are

alone expressed; the Virgin never shows the complacency or petty

watchfulness of maternity; she sits serene, supporting the child whom

she ever looks upon, as a stranger among strangers; "Behold the handmaid

of the Lord" forever written upon her brow.

85. An approach to an exception in treatment is found in the

Annunciation of the upper corridor of St. Mark's, most unkindly treated

by our author:--

* * *

"Probably the earliest of the series--full of faults, but imbued with

the sweetest feeling; there is a look of naive curiosity, mingling with

the modest and meek humility of the Virgin, which almost provokes a

smile."--iii., 176.

* * *

Many a Sabbath evening of bright summer have we passed in that lonely

corridor--but not to the finding of faults, nor the provoking of smiles.

The angel is perhaps something less majestic than is usual with the

painter; but the Virgin is only the more to be worshiped, because here,

for once, set before us in the verity of life. No gorgeous robe is upon

her; no lifted throne set for her; the golden border gleams faintly on

the dark blue dress; the seat is drawn into the shadow of a lowly

loggia. The face is of no strange, far-sought loveliness; the features

might even be thought hard, and they are worn with watching, and severe,

though innocent. She stoops forward with her arms folded on her bosom:

no casting down of eye nor shrinking of the frame in fear; she is too

earnest, too self-forgetful for either: wonder and inquiry are there,

but chastened and free from doubt; meekness, yet mingled with a patient

majesty; peace, yet sorrowfully sealed, as if the promise of the Angel

were already underwritten by the prophecy of Simeon. They who pass and

repass in the twilight of that solemn corridor, need not the adjuration

inscribed beneath:--

"Virginis intactae cum veneris ante figuram

Praetereundo cave ne sileatur Ave."[10]

We in general allow the inferiority of Angelico's fresco to his tempera

works; yet even that which of all these latter we think the most

radiant, the Annunciation on the reliquary of Santa Maria Novella,

would, we believe, if repeatedly compared with this of St. Mark's, in

the end have the disadvantage. The eminent value of the tempera

paintings results partly from their delicacy of line, and partly from

the purity of color and force of decoration of which the material is

capable.

86. The passage, to which we have before alluded, respecting Fra

Angelico's color in general, is one of the most curious and fanciful in

the work:--

* * *

"His coloring, on the other hand, is far more beautiful, although of

questionable brilliancy. This will be found invariably the case in minds

constituted like his. Spirit and Sense act on each other with livelier

reciprocity the closer their approximation, the less intervention there

is of Intellect. Hence the most religious and the most sensual painters

have always loved the brightest colors--Spiritual Expression and a

clearly defined (however inaccurate) outline forming the distinction of

the former class; Animal Expression and a confused and uncertain outline

(reflecting that lax morality which confounds the limits of light and

darkness, right and wrong) of the latter. On the other hand, the more

that Intellect, or the spirit of Form, intervenes in its severe

precision, the less pure, the paler grow the colors, the nearer they

tend to the hue of marble, of the bas-relief. We thus find the purest

and brightest colors only in Fra Angelico's pictures, with a general

predominance of blue, which we have observed to prevail more or less in

so many of the Semi-Byzantine painters, and which, fanciful as it may

appear, I cannot but attribute, independently of mere tradition, to an

inherent, instinctive sympathy between their mental constitution and the

color in question; as that of red, or of blood, may be observed to

prevail among painters in whom Sense or Nature predominates over

Spirit--for in this, as in all things else, the moral and the material

world respond to each other as closely as shadow and substance. But, in

Painting as in Morals, perfection implies the due intervention of

Intellect between Spirit and Sense--of Form between Expression and

Coloring--as a power at once controlling and controlled--and therefore,

although acknowledging its fascination, I cannot unreservedly praise the

Coloring of Fra Angelico."--Vol. iii., pp. 193, 194.

* * *

87. There is much ingenuity, and some truth, here, but the reader, as in

other of Lord Lindsay's speculations, must receive his conclusions with

qualification. It is the natural character of strong effects of color,

as of high light, to confuse outlines; and it is a necessity in all fine

harmonies of color that many tints should merge imperceptibly into their

following or succeeding ones:--we believe Lord Lindsay himself would

hardly wish to mark the hues of the rainbow into divided zones, or to

show its edge, as of an iron arch, against the sky, in order that it

might no longer reflect (a reflection of which we profess ourselves up

to this moment altogether unconscious) "that lax morality which

confounds the limits of right and wrong." Again, there is a character of

energy in all warm colors, as of repose in cold, which necessarily

causes the former to be preferred by painters of savage subject--that

is to say, commonly by the coarsest and most degraded;--but when

sensuality is free from ferocity, it leans to blue more than to red (as

especially in the flesh tints of Guido), and when intellect prevails

over this sensuality, its first step is invariably to put more red into

every color, and so "rubor est virtutis color." We hardly think Lord

Lindsay would willingly include Luca Giordano among his spiritual

painters, though that artist's servant was materially enriched by

washing the ultramarine from the brushes with which he painted the

Ricardi palace; nor would he, we believe, degrade Ghirlandajo to

fellowship with the herd of the sensual, though in the fresco of the

vision of Zacharias there are seventeen different reds in large masses,

and not a shade of blue. The fact is, there is no color of the spectrum,

as there is no note of music, whose key and prevalence may not be made

pure in expression, and elevating in influence, by a great and good

painter, or degraded to unhallowed purpose by a base one.

88. We are sorry that our author "cannot unreservedly praise the

coloring of Angelico;" but he is again curbed by his unhappy system of

balanced perfectibility, and must quarrel with the gentle monk because

he finds not in him the flames of Giorgione, nor the tempering of

Titian, nor the melody of Cagliari. This curb of perfection we took

between our teeth from the first, and we will give up our hearts to

Angelico without drawback or reservation. His color is, in its sphere

and to its purpose, as perfect as human work may be: wrought to radiance

beyond that of the ruby and opal, its inartificialness prevents it from

arresting the attention it is intended only to direct; were it composed

with more science it would become vulgar from the loss of its

unconsciousness; if richer, it must have parted with its purity, if

deeper, with its joyfulness, if more subdued, with its sincerity.

Passages are, indeed, sometimes unsuccessful; but it is to be judged in

its rapture, and forgiven in its fall: he who works by law and system

may be blamed when he sinks below the line above which he proposes no

elevation, but to him whose eyes are on a mark far off, and whose

efforts are impulsive, and to the utmost of his strength, we may not

unkindly count the slips of his sometime descent into the valley of

humiliation.

89. The concluding notice of Angelico is true and interesting, though

rendered obscure by useless recurrence to the favorite theory.

* * *

"Such are the surviving works of a painter, who has recently been as

unduly extolled as he had for three centuries past been unduly

depreciated,--depreciated, through the amalgamation during those

centuries of the principle of which he was the representative with

baser, or at least less precious matter--extolled, through the

recurrence to that principle, in its pure, unsophisticated essence, in

the present --in a word, to the simple Imaginative Christianity of the

middle ages, as opposed to the complex Reasoning Christianity of recent

times. Creeds therefore are at issue, and no exclusive partisan, neither

Catholic nor Protestant in the absolute sense of the terms, can fairly

appreciate Fra Angelico. Nevertheless, to those who regard society as

progressive through the gradual development of the component elements of

human nature, and who believe that Providence has accommodated the mind

of man, individually, to the perception of half-truths only, in order to

create that antagonism from which Truth is generated in the abstract,

and by which the progression is effected, his rank and position in art

are clear and definite. All that Spirit could achieve by herself,

anterior to that struggle with Intellect and Sense which she must in all

cases pass through in order to work out her destiny, was accomplished by

him. Last and most gifted of a long and imaginative race--the heir of

their experience, with collateral advantages which they possessed

not--and flourishing at the moment when the transition was actually

taking place from the youth to the early manhood of Europe; he gave

full, unreserved, and enthusiastic expression to that Love and Hope

which had winged the Faith of Christendom in her flight towards heaven

for fourteen centuries,--to those yearnings of the Heart and the

Imagination which ever precede, in Universal as well as Individual

development, the severer and more chastened intelligence of

Reason."--Vol. iii., pp. 188-190.

* * *

90. We must again repeat that if our author wishes to be truly

serviceable to the schools of England, he must express himself in terms

requiring less laborious translation. Clearing the above statement of

its mysticism and metaphor, it amounts only to this,--that Fra Angelico

was a man of (humanly speaking) _perfect_ piety--humility, charity, and

faith--that he never employed his art but as a means of expressing his

love to God and man, and with the view, single, simple, and

straightforward, of glory to the Creator, and good to the Creature.

Every quality or subject of art by which these ends were not to be

attained, or to be attained secondarily only, he rejected; from all

study of art, as such, he withdrew; whatever might merely please the

eye, or interest the intellect, he despised, and refused; he used his

colors and lines, as David his harp, after a kingly fashion, for

purposes of praise and not of science. To this grace and gift of

holiness were added, those of a fervent imagination, vivid invention,

keen sense of loveliness in lines and colors, unwearied energy, and to

all these gifts the crowning one of quietness of life and mind, while

yet his convent-cell was at first within view, and afterwards in the

center, of a city which had lead of all the world in Intellect, and in

whose streets he might see daily and hourly the noblest setting of manly

features. It would perhaps be well to wait until we find another man

thus actuated, thus endowed, and thus circumstanced, before we speak of

"unduly extolling" the works of Fra Angelico.

91. His artistical attainments, as might be conjectured, are nothing

more than the development, through practice, of his natural powers in

accordance with his sacred instincts. His power of expression by bodily

gesture is greater even than Giotto's, wherever he could feel or

comprehend the passion to be expressed; but so inherent in him was his

holy tranquillity of mind, that he could not by any exertion, even for a

moment, conceive either agitation, doubt, or fear--and all the actions

proceeding from such passions, or, _a fortiori_, from any yet more

criminal, are absurdly and powerlessly portrayed by him; while

contrariwise, every gesture, consistent with emotion pure and saintly,

is rendered with an intensity of truth to which there is no existing

parallel; the expression being carried out into every bend of the hand,

every undulation of the arm, shoulder, and neck, every fold of the dress

and every wave of the hair. His drawing of movement is subject to the

same influence; vulgar or vicious motion he cannot represent; his

running, falling, or struggling figures are drawn with childish

incapability; but give him for his scene the pavement of heaven, or

pastures of Paradise, and for his subject the "inoffensive pace" of

glorified souls, or the spiritual speed of Angels, and Michael Angelo

alone can contend with him in majesty,--in grace and musical

continuousness of motion, no one. The inspiration was in some degree

caught by his pupil Benozzo, but thenceforward forever lost. The angels

of Perugino appear to be let down by cords and moved by wires; that of

Titian, in the sacrifice of Isaac, kicks like an awkward swimmer;

Raphael's Moses and Elias of the Transfiguration are cramped at the

knees; and the flight of Domenichino's angels is a sprawl paralyzed. The

authority of Tintoret over movement is, on the other hand, too

unlimited; the descent of his angels is the swoop of a whirlwind or the

fall of a thunderbolt; his mortal impulses are oftener impetuous than

pathetic, and majestic more than melodious.

92. But it is difficult by words to convey to the reader unacquainted

with Angelico's works, any idea of the thoughtful variety of his

rendering of movement--Earnest haste of girded faith in the Flight into

Egypt, the haste of obedience, not of fear; and unweariedness, but

through spiritual support, and not in human strength--Swift obedience of

passive earth to the call of its Creator, in the Resurrection of

Lazarus--March of meditative gladness in the following of the Apostles

down the Mount of Olives--Rush of adoration breaking through the chains

and shadows of death, in the Spirits in Prison. Pacing of mighty angels

above the Firmament, poised on their upright wings, half opened, broad,

bright, quiet, like eastern clouds before the sun is up;--or going

forth, with timbrels and with dances, of souls more than conquerors,

beside the shore of the last great Red Sea, the sea of glass mingled

with fire, hand knit with hand, and voice with voice, the joyful winds

of heaven following the measure of their motion, and the flowers of the

new earth looking on, like stars pausing in their courses.

93. And yet all this is but the lowest part and narrowest reach of

Angelico's conceptions. Joy and gentleness, patience and power, he could

indicate by gesture--but Devotion could be told by the countenance only.

There seems to have been always a stern limit by which the thoughts of

other men were stayed; the religion that was painted even by Perugino,

Francia, and Bellini, was finite in its spirit--the religion of earthly

beings, checked, not indeed by the corruption, but by the veil and the

sorrow of clay. But with Fra Angelico the glory of the countenance

reaches to actual transfiguration; eyes that see no more darkly,

incapable of all tears, foreheads flaming, like Belshazzar's marble

wall, with the writing of the Father's name upon them, lips tremulous

with love, and crimson with the light of the coals of the altar--and all

this loveliness, thus enthusiastic and ineffable, yet sealed with the

stability which the coming and going of ages as countless as sea-sand

cannot dim nor weary, and bathed by an ever flowing river of holy

thought, with God for its source, God for its shore, and God for its

ocean.

94. We speak in no inconsiderate enthusiasm. We feel assured that to any

person of just feeling who devotes sufficient time to the examination of

these works, all terms of description must seem derogatory. Where such

ends as these have been reached, it ill becomes us to speak of minor

deficiencies as either to be blamed or regretted: it cannot be

determined how far even what we deprecate may be accessory to our

delight, nor by what intricate involution what we deplore may be

connected with what we love. Every good that nature herself bestows, or

accomplishes, is given with a counterpoise, or gained at a sacrifice;

nor is it to be expected of Man that he should win the hardest battles

and tread the narrowest paths, without the betrayal of a weakness, or

the acknowledgment of an error.

95. With this final warning against our author's hesitating approbation

of what is greatest and best, we must close our specific examination of

the mode in which his design has been worked out. We have done enough to

set the reader upon his guard against whatever appears slight or

inconsiderate in his theory or statements, and with the more severity,

because this was alone wanting to render the book one of the most

valuable gifts which Art has ever received. Of the translations from the

lives of the saints we have hardly spoken; they are gracefully rendered,

and all of them highly interesting--but we could wish to see these, and

the enumerations of fresco subjects[11] with which the other volumes are

in great part occupied, published separately for the convenience of

travelers in Italy. They are something out of place in a work like that

before us. For the rest, we might have more interested the reader, and

gratified ourselves, by setting before him some of the many passages of

tender feeling and earnest eloquence with which the volumes are

replete--but we felt it necessary rather to anticipate the hesitation

with which they were liable to be received, and set limits to the halo

of fancy by which their light is obscured--though enlarged. One or two

paragraphs, however, of the closing chapter must be given before we

part:--

* * *

96. "What a scene of beauty, what a flower-garden of art--how bright and

how varied--must Italy have presented at the commencement of the

sixteenth century, at the death of Raphael! The sacrileges we lament

took place for the most part after that period; hundreds of frescoes,

not merely of Giotto and those other elders of Christian Art, but of

Gentile da Fabriano, Pietro della Francesca, Perugino and their

compeers, were still existing, charming the eye, elevating the mind, and

warming the heart. Now alas! few comparatively and fading are the relics

of those great and good men. While Dante's voice rings as clear as ever,

communing with us as friend with friend, theirs is dying gradually away,

fainter and fainter, like the farewell of a spirit. Flaking off the

walls, uncared for and neglected save in a few rare instances, scarce

one of their frescoes will survive the century, and the labors of the

next may not improbably be directed to the recovery and restoration of

such as may still slumber beneath the whitewash and the daubs with which

the Bronzinos and Zuccheros 'et id genus omne' have unconsciously sealed

them up for posterity--their best title to our gratitude.--But why not

begin at once? at all events in the instances numberless, where merely

whitewash interposes between us and them.

"It is easy to reply--what need of this? They--the artists--have Moses

and the prophets, the frescoes of Raphael and Michael Angelo--let them

study them. Doubtless,--but we still reply, and with no impiety--they

will not repent, they will not forsake their idols and their evil

ways--they will not abandon Sense for Spirit, oils for fresco--unless

these great ones of the past, these Sleepers of Ephesus, arise from the

dead.... It is not by studying art in its perfection--by worshiping

Raphael and Michael Angelo exclusively of all other excellence--that we

can expect to rival them, but by re-ascending to the fountain-head--by

planting ourselves as acorns in the ground those oaks are rooted in, and

growing up to their level--in a word, by studying Duccio and Giotto that

we may paint like Taddeo di Bartolo and Masaccio, Taddeo di Bartolo and

Masaccio that we may paint like Perugino and Luca Signorelli, Perugino

and Luca Signorelli that we may paint like Raphael and Michael Angelo.

And why despair of this, or even of shaming the Vatican? For with genius

and God's blessing nothing is impossible.

"I would not be a blind partisan, but, with all their faults, the old

masters I plead for knew how to touch the heart. It may be difficult at

first to believe this; like children, they are shy with us--like

strangers, they bear an uncouth mien and aspect--like ghosts from the

other world, they have an awkward habit of shocking our

conventionalities with home truths. But with the dead as with the living

all depends on the frankness with which we greet them, the sincerity

with which we credit their kindly qualities; sympathy is the key to

truth--we must love, in order to appreciate."--iii., p. 418.

* * *

97. These are beautiful sentences; yet this let the young painter of

these days remember always, that whomsoever he may love, or from

whomsoever learn, he can now no more go back to those hours of infancy

and be born again.[12] About the faith, the questioning and the

teaching of childhood there is a joy and grace, which we may often envy,

but can no more assume:--the voice and the gesture must not be imitated

when the innocence is lost. Incapability and ignorance in the act of

being struggled against and cast away are often endowed with a peculiar

charm--but both are only contemptible when they are pretended. Whatever

we have now to do, we may be sure, first, that its strength and life

must be drawn from the real nature with us and about us always, and

secondly, that, if worth doing, it will be something altogether

different from what has ever been done before. The visions of the

cloister must depart with its superstitious peace--the quick,

apprehensive symbolism of early Faith must yield to the abstract

teaching of disciplined Reason. Whatever else we may deem of the

Progress of Nations, one character of that progress is determined and

discernible. As in the encroaching of the land upon the sea, the

strength of the sandy bastions is raised out of the sifted ruin of

ancient inland hills--for every tongue of level land that stretches into

the deep, the fall of Alps has been heard among the clouds, and as the

fields of industry enlarge, the intercourse with Heaven is shortened.

Let it not be doubted that as this change is inevitable, so it is

expedient, though the form of teaching adopted and of duty prescribed be

less mythic and contemplative, more active and unassisted: for the light

of Transfiguration on the Mountain is substituted the Fire of Coals upon

the Shore, and on the charge to hear the Shepherd, follows that to feed

the Sheep. Doubtful we may be for a time, and apparently deserted; but

if, as we wait, we still look forward with steadfast will and humble

heart, so that our Hope for the Future may be fed, not dulled or

diverted by our Love for the Past, we shall not long be left without a

Guide:--the way will be opened, the Precursor appointed--the Hour will

come, and the Man.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] This essay is a review of two books by Lord Lindsay, viz.,

"Progression by Antagonism," published in 1846, and the "Sketches of the

History of Christian Art," which appeared in the following year. It is,

with the paper on Sir C. Eastlake's "History of Oil Painting," one of

the very few anonymous writings of its author. "I never felt at ease"

(says Mr. Ruskin, in speaking of anonymous criticism) "in my graduate

incognito, and although I consented, some nine years ago, to review Lord

Lindsay's 'Christian Art,' and Sir Charles Eastlake's 'Essay on Oil

Painting,' in the _Quarterly_, I have ever since steadily refused to

write even for that once respectable periodical" ("Academy Notes," No.

II., 1856). For Mr. Ruskin's estimate of Lord Lindsay's work, see the

"Eagle's Nest," Sec. 46, and "Val d'Arno," Sec. 264, where he speaks of him as

his "first master in Italian art."--[ED.]

[5] With one exception (see p. 25) the quotations from Lord Lindsay

are always from the "Christian Art."--ED.

[6] The reader must remember that this arcade was originally quite open,

the inner wall having been built after the fire, in 1574.

[7] "An Historical Essay on Architecture" by the late Thomas Hope.

(Murray, 1835) chap, iv., pp. 23-31.

[8] At the feet of his Madonna, in the Gallery of Bologna.

[9] In many pictures of Angelico, the Infant Christ appears

self-supported--the Virgin not touching the child.

[10] The upper inscription Lord Lindsay has misquoted--it runs thus:--

"Salve Mater Pietatis Et Totius Trinitatis Nobile Triclinium."

[11] We have been much surprised by the author's frequent reference to

Lasinio's engravings of various frescoes, unaccompanied by any warning

of their inaccuracy. No work of Lasinio's can be trusted for _anything_

except the number and relative position of the figures. All masters are

by him translated into one monotony of commonplace:--he dilutes

eloquence, educates naivete, prompts ignorance, stultifies intelligence,

and paralyzes power; takes the chill off horror, the edge off wit, and

the bloom off beauty. In all artistical points he is utterly valueless,

neither drawing nor expression being ever preserved by him. Giotto,

Benozzo, or Ghirlandajo are all alike to him; and we hardly know whether

he injures most when he robs or when he redresses.

[12] We do not perhaps enough estimate the assistance which was once

given both to purpose and perception, by the feeling of wonder which

with us is destroyed partly by the ceaseless calls upon it, partly by

our habit of either discovering or anticipating a reason for everything.

Of the simplicity and ready surprise of heart which supported the spirit

of the older painters, an interesting example is seen in the diary of

Albert Duerer, lately published in a work every way valuable, but

especially so in the carefulness and richness of its illustrations,

"Divers Works of Early Masters in Christian Decoration," edited by John

Weale, London, 2 vols. folio, 1846.

EASTLAKE'S HISTORY OF OIL-PAINTING.[13]

98. The stranger in Florence who for the first time passes through the

iron gate which opens from the Green Cloister of Santa Maria Novella

into the Spezieria, can hardly fail of being surprised, and that perhaps

painfully, by the suddenness of the transition from the silence and

gloom of the monastic inclosure, its pavement rough with epitaphs, and

its walls retaining, still legible, though crumbling and mildewed, their

imaged records of Scripture History, to the activity of a traffic not

less frivolous than flourishing, concerned almost exclusively with the

appliances of bodily adornment or luxury. Yet perhaps, on a moment's

reflection, the rose-leaves scattered on the floor, and the air filled

with odor of myrtle and myrrh, aloes and cassia, may arouse associations

of a different and more elevated character; the preparation of these

precious perfumes may seem not altogether unfitting the hands of a

religious brotherhood--or if this should not be conceded, at all events

it must be matter of rejoicing to observe the evidence of intelligence

and energy interrupting the apathy and languor of the cloister; nor will

the institution be regarded with other than respect, as well as

gratitude, when it is remembered that, as to the convent library we owe

the preservation of ancient literature, to the convent laboratory we owe

the duration of mediaeval art.

99. It is at first with surprise not altogether dissimilar, that we find

a painter of refined feeling and deep thoughtfulness, after manifesting

in his works the most sincere affection for what is highest in the reach

of his art, devoting himself for years (there is proof of this in the

work before us) to the study of the mechanical preparation of its

appliances, and whatever documentary evidence exists respecting their

ancient use. But it is with a revulsion of feeling more entire, that we

perceive the value of the results obtained--the accuracy of the varied

knowledge by which their sequence has been established--and above all,

their immediate bearing upon the practice and promise of the schools of

our own day.

Opposite errors, we know not which the least pardonable, but both

certainly productive of great harm, have from time to time possessed the

masters of modern art. It has been held by some that the great early

painters owed the larger measure of their power to secrets of material

and method, and that the discovery of a lost vehicle or forgotten

process might at any time accomplish the regeneration of a fallen

school. By others it has been asserted that all questions respecting

materials or manipulation are idle and impertinent; that the methods of

the older masters were either of no peculiar value, or are still in our

power; that a great painter is independent of all but the simplest

mechanical aids, and demonstrates his greatness by scorn of system and

carelessness of means.

100. It is evident that so long as incapability could shield itself

under the first of these creeds, or presumption vindicate itself by the

second; so long as the feeble painter could lay his faults on his

palette and his panel; and the self-conceited painter, from the assumed

identity of materials proceed to infer equality of power--(for we

believe that in most instances those who deny the evil of our present

methods will deny also the weakness of our present works)--little good

could be expected from the teaching of the abstract principles of the

art; and less, if possible, from the example of any mechanical

qualities, however admirable, whose means might be supposed

irrecoverable on the one hand, or indeterminate on the other, or of any

excellence conceived to have been either summoned by an incantation, or

struck out by an accident. And of late, among our leading masters, the

loss has not been merely of the system of the ancients, but of all

system whatsoever: the greater number paint as if the virtue of oil

pigment were its opacity, or as if its power depended on its polish; of

the rest, no two agree in use or choice of materials; not many are

consistent even in their own practice; and the most zealous and earnest,

therefore the most discontented, reaching impatiently and desperately

after better things, purchase the momentary satisfaction of their

feelings by the sacrifice of security of surface and durability of hue.

The walls of our galleries are for the most part divided between

pictures whose dead coating of consistent paint, laid on with a heavy

hand and a cold heart, secures for them the stability of dullness and

the safety of mediocrity; and pictures whose reckless and experimental

brilliancy, unequal in its result as lawless in its means, is as

evanescent as the dust of an insect's wing, and presents in its chief

perfections so many subjects of future regret.

101. But if these evils now continue, it can only be through rashness

which no example can warn, or through apathy which no hope can

stimulate, for Mr. Eastlake has alike withdrawn license from

experimentalism and apology from indolence. He has done away with all

legends of forgotten secrets; he has shown that the masters of the great

Flemish and early Venetian schools possessed no means, followed no

methods, but such as we may still obtain and pursue; but he has shown

also, among all these masters, the most admirable care in the

preparation of materials and the most simple consistency in their use;

he has shown that their excellence was reached, and could only have been

reached, by stern and exact science, condescending to the observance,

care, and conquest of the most minute physical particulars and

hindrances; that the greatest of them never despised an aid nor avoided

a difficulty. The loss of imaginative liberty sometimes involved in a

too scrupulous attention to methods of execution is trivial compared to

the evils resulting from a careless or inefficient practice. The modes

in which, with every great painter, realization falls short of

conception are necessarily so many and so grievous, that he can ill

afford to undergo the additional discouragement caused by uncertain

methods and bad materials. Not only so, but even the choice of subjects,

the amount of completion attempted, nay, even the modes of conception

and measure of truth are in no small degree involved in the great

question of materials. On the habitual use of a light or dark ground may

depend the painter's preference of a broad and faithful, or partial and

scenic chiaroscuro; correspondent with the facility or fatality of

alterations, may be the exercise of indolent fancy, or disciplined

invention; and to the complexities of a system requiring time, patience,

and succession of process, may be owing the conversion of the ready

draughtsman into the resolute painter. Farther than this, who shall say

how unconquerable a barrier to all self-denying effort may exist in the

consciousness that the best that is accomplished can last but a few

years, and that the painter's travail must perish with his life?

102. It cannot have been without strong sense of this, the true dignity

and relation of his subject, that Mr. Eastlake has gone through a toil

far more irksome, far less selfish than any he could have undergone in

the practice of his art. The value which we attach to the volume

depends, however, rather on its preceptive than its antiquarian

character. As objects of historical inquiry merely, we cannot conceive

any questions less interesting than those relating to mechanical

operations generally, nor any honors less worthy of prolonged dispute

than those which are grounded merely on the invention or amelioration of

processes and pigments. The subject can only become historically

interesting when the means ascertained to have been employed at any

period are considered in their operation upon or procession from the

artistical aim of such period, the character of its chosen subjects, and

the effects proposed in their treatment upon the national mind. Mr.

Eastlake has as yet refused himself the indulgence of such speculation;

his book is no more than its modest title expresses. For ourselves,

however, without venturing in the slightest degree to anticipate the

expression of his ulterior views--though we believe that we can trace

their extent and direction in a few suggestive sentences, as pregnant as

they are unobtrusive--we must yet, in giving a rapid sketch of the facts

established, assume the privilege of directing the reader to one or two

of their most obvious consequences, and, like honest 'prentices, not

suffer the abstracted retirement of our master in the back parlor to

diminish the just recommendation of his wares to the passers-by.

103. Eminently deficient in works representative of the earliest and

purest tendencies of art, our National Gallery nevertheless affords a

characteristic and sufficient series of examples of the practice of the

various schools of painting, after oil had been finally substituted for

the less manageable glutinous vehicles which, under the general name of

tempera, were principally employed in the production of easel pictures

up to the middle of the fifteenth century. If the reader were to make

the circuit of this collection for the purpose of determining which

picture represented with least disputable fidelity the first intention

of its painter, and united in its modes of execution the highest reach

of achievement with the strongest assurance of durability, we believe

that--after hesitating long over hypothetical degrees of blackened

shadow and yellowed light, of lost outline and buried detail, of chilled

luster, dimmed transparency, altered color, and weakened force--he would

finally pause before a small picture on panel, representing two quaintly

dressed figures in a dimly lighted room--dependent for its interest

little on expression, and less on treatment--but eminently remarkable

for reality of substance, vacuity of space, and vigor of quiet color;

nor less for an elaborate finish, united with energetic freshness,

which seem to show that time has been much concerned in its production,

and has had no power over its fate.

104. We do not say that the total force of the material is exhibited in

this picture, or even that it in any degree possesses the lusciousness

and fullness which are among the chief charms of oil-painting; but that

upon the whole it would be selected as uniting imperishable firmness

with exquisite delicacy; as approaching more unaffectedly and more

closely than any other work to the simple truths of natural color and

space; and as exhibiting, even in its quaint and minute treatment,

conquest over many of the difficulties which the boldest practice of art

involves.

This picture, bearing the inscription "Johannes Van Eyck (fuit?) hic,

1434," is probably the portrait, certainly the work, of one of those

brothers to whose ingenuity the first invention of the art of

oil-painting has been long ascribed. The volume before us is occupied

chiefly in determining the real extent of the improvements they

introduced, in examining the processes they employed, and in tracing the

modifications of those processes adopted by later Flemings, especially

Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vandyck. Incidental notices of the Italian system

occur, so far as, in its earlier stages, it corresponded with that of

the north; but the consideration of its separate character is reserved

for a following volume, and though we shall expect with interest this

concluding portion of the treatise, we believe that, in the present

condition of the English school, the choice of the methods of Van Eyck,

Bellini, or Rubens, is as much as we could modestly ask or prudently

desire.

105. It would have been strange indeed if a technical perfection like

that of the picture above described (equally characteristic of all the

works of those brothers), had been at once reached by the first

inventors of the art. So far was this from being the case, and so

distinct is the evidence of the practice of oil-painting in antecedent

periods, that of late years the discoveries of the Van Eycks have not

unfrequently been treated as entirely fabulous; and Raspe, in

particular, rests their claims to gratitude on the contingent

introduction of amber-varnish and poppy-oil:--"Such _perhaps_," he says,

"might have been the misrepresented discovery of the Van Eycks." That

tradition, however, for which the great painters of Italy, and their

sufficiently vain historian, had so much respect as never to put forward

any claim in opposition to it, is not to be clouded by incautious

suspicion. Mr. Eastlake has approached it with more reverence, stripped

it of its exaggeration, and shown the foundations for it in the fact

that the Van Eycks, though they did not create the art, yet were the

first to enable it for its function; that having found it in servile

office and with dormant power--laid like the dead Adonis on his

lettuce-bed--they gave it vitality and dominion. And fortunate it is for

those who look for another such reanimation, that the method of the Van

Eycks was not altogether their own discovery. Had it been so, that

method might still have remained a subject of conjecture; but after

being put in possession of the principles commonly acknowledged before

their time, it is comparatively easy to trace the direction of their

inquiry and the nature of their improvements.

106. With respect to remote periods of antiquity, we believe that the

use of a hydrofuge oil-varnish for the protection of works in tempera,

the only fact insisted upon by Mr. Eastlake, is also the only one which

the labor of innumerable ingenious writers has established: nor up to

the beginning of the twelfth century is there proof of any practice of

painting except in tempera, encaustic (wax applied by the aid of heat),

and fresco. Subsequent to that period, notices of works executed in

solid color mixed with oil are frequent, but all that can be proved

respecting earlier times is a gradually increasing acquaintance with the

different kinds of oil and the modes of their adaptation to artistical

uses.

Several drying oils are mentioned by the writers of the first three

centuries of the Christian era--walnut by Pliny and Galen, walnut,

poppy, and castor-oil (afterwards used by the painters of the twelfth

century as a varnish) by Dioscorides--yet these notices occur only with

reference to medicinal or culinary purposes. But at length a drying oil

is mentioned in connection with works of art by Aetius, a medical writer

of the fifth century. His words are:--

* * *

"Walnut oil is prepared like that of almonds, either by pounding or

pressing the nuts, or by throwing them, after they have been bruised,

into boiling water. The (medicinal) uses are the same: but it has a use

besides these, being employed by gilders or encaustic painters; for it

dries, and preserves gildings and encaustic paintings for a long time."

"It is therefore clear," says Mr. Eastlake, "that an oil varnish,

composed either of inspissated nut oil, or of nut oil combined with a

dissolved resin, was employed on gilt surfaces and pictures, with a view

to preserve them, at least as early as the fifth century. It may be

added that a writer who could then state, as if from his own experience,

that such varnishes had the effect of preserving works 'for a long

time,' can hardly be understood to speak of a new invention."--P. 22.

* * *

Linseed-oil is also mentioned by Aetius, though still for medicinal uses

only; but a varnish, composed of linseed-oil mixed with a variety of

resins, is described in a manuscript at Lucca, belonging probably to the

eighth century:--

* * *

"The age of Charlemagne was an era in the arts; and the addition of

linseed-oil to the materials of the varnisher and decorator may on the

above evidence be assigned to it. From this time, and during many ages,

the linseed-oil varnish, though composed of simpler materials (such as

sandarac and mastic resin boiled in the oil), alone appears in the

recipes hitherto brought to light."--_Ib._, p. 24.

* * *

107. The modes of bleaching and thickening oil in the sun, as well as

the siccative power of metallic oxides, were known to the classical

writers, and evidence exists of the careful study of Galen, Dioscorides,

and others by the painters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the

loss (recorded by Vasari) of Antonio Veneziano to the arts, "per che

studio in Dioscoride le cose dell'erbe," is a remarkable instance of its

less fortunate results. Still, the immixture of solid color with the

oil, which had been commonly used as a varnish for tempera paintings and

gilt surfaces, was hitherto unsuggested; and no distinct notice seems to

occur of the first occasion of this important step, though in the

twelfth century, as above stated, the process is described as frequent

both in Italy and England. Mr. Eastlake's instances have been selected,

for the most part, from four treatises, two of which, though in an

imperfect form, have long been known to the public; the third,

translated by Mrs. Merrifield, is in course of publication; the fourth,

"Tractatus de Coloribus illuminatorum," is of less importance.

Respecting the dates of the first two, those of Eraclius and Theophilus,

some difference of opinion exists between Mr. Eastlake and their

respective editors. The former MS. was published by Raspe,[14] who

inclines to the opinion of its having been written soon after the time

of St. Isidore of Seville, probably therefore in the eighth century, but

insists only on its being prior to the thirteenth. That of Theophilus,

published first by M. Charles de l'Escalopier, and lately from a more

perfect MS. by Mr. Hendrie, is ascribed by its English editor (who

places Eraclius in the tenth) to the early half of the eleventh century.

Mr. Hendrie maintains his opinion with much analytical ingenuity, and we

are disposed to think that Mr. Eastlake attaches too much importance to

the absence of reference to oil-painting in the Mappae Clavicula (a MS.

of the twelfth century), in placing Theophilus a century and a half

later on that ground alone. The question is one of some importance in an

antiquarian point of view, but the general reader will perhaps be

satisfied with the conclusion that in MSS. which cannot possibly be

later than the close of the twelfth century, references to oil-painting

are clear and frequent.

108. Nothing is known of the personality of either Eraclius or

Theophilus, but what may be collected from their works; amounting, in

the first case, to the facts of the author's "language being barbarous,

his credulity exceptionable, and his knowledge superficial," together

with his written description as "vir sapientissimus;" while all that is

positively known of Theophilus is that he was a monk, and that

Theophilus was not his real name. The character, however, of which the

assumed name is truly expressive, deserves from us no unrespectful

attention; we shall best possess our readers of it by laying before them

one or two passages from the preface. We shall make some use of Mr.

Hendrie's translation; it is evidently the work of a tasteful man, and

in most cases renders the feeling of the original faithfully; but the

Latin, monkish though it be, deserved a more accurate following, and

many of Mr. Hendrie's deviations bear traces of unsound scholarship. An

awkward instance occurs in the first paragraph:--

* * *

"Theophilus, humilis presbyter, servus servorum Dei, indignus nomine et

professione monachi, omnibus mentis desidiam animique vagationem utili

manuum occupatione, et delectabili novitatum meditatione declinare et

calcare volentibus, retributionem coelestis praemii!"

"I, Theophilus, an humble priest, servant of the servants of God,

unworthy of the name and profession of a monk, to all wishing to

overcome and avoid sloth of the mind or wandering of the soul, by useful

manual occupation and the delightful contemplation of novelties, send a

recompense of heavenly price."--_Theophilus_, p. 1.

* * *

_Proemium_ is not "price," nor is the verb understood before

_retributionem_ "send." Mr. Hendrie seems even less familiar with

Scriptural than with monkish language, or in this and several other

cases he would have recognized the adoption of apostolic formulae. The

whole paragraph is such a greeting and prayer as stands at the head of

the sacred epistles:--"Theophilus, to all who desire to overcome

wandering of the soul, etc., etc. (wishes) recompense of heavenly

reward." Thus also the dedication of the Byzantine manuscript, lately

translated by M. Didron, commences "A tous les peintres, et a tous ceux

qui, aimant l'instruction, etudieront ce livre, salut dans le Seigneur."

So, presently afterwards, in the sentence, "divina dignatio quae dat

omnibus affluenter et non improperat" (translated, "divine _authority_

which affluently and not precipitately gives to all"), though Mr.

Hendrie might have perhaps been excused for not perceiving the

transitive sense of _dignatio_ after _indignus_ in the previous text,

which indeed, even when felt, is sufficiently difficult to render in

English; and might not have been aware that the word _impropero_

frequently bears the sense of _opprobo_; he ought still to have

recognized the Scriptural "who giveth to all men liberally and

_upbraideth_ not." "Qui," in the first page, translated "wherefore,"

mystifies a whole sentence; "ut mereretur," rendered with a schoolboy's

carelessness "as he merited," reverses the meaning of another;

"jactantia," in the following page, is less harmfully but not less

singularly translated "jealousy." We have been obliged to alter several

expressions in the following passages, in order to bring them near

enough to the original for our immediate purpose:

* * *

"Which knowledge, when he has obtained, let no one magnify himself in

his own eyes, as if it had been received from himself, and not from

elsewhere; but let him rejoice humbly in the Lord, from whom and by whom

are all things, and without whom is nothing; nor let him wrap his gifts

in the folds of envy, nor hide them in the closet of an avaricious

heart; but all pride of heart being repelled, let him with a cheerful

mind give with simplicity to all who ask of him, and let him fear the

judgment of the Gospel upon that merchant, who, failing to return to his

lord a talent with accumulated interest, deprived of all reward,

merited the censure from the mouth of his judge of 'wicked servant.'

"Fearing to incur which sentence, I, a man unworthy and almost without

name, offer gratuitously to all desirous with humility to learn, that

which the divine condescension, which giveth to all men liberally and

upbraideth not, gratuitously conceded to me: and I admonish them that in

me they acknowledge the goodness, and admire the generosity of God; and

I would persuade them to believe that if they also add their labor, the

same gifts are within their reach.

"Wherefore, gentle son, whom God has rendered perfectly happy in this

respect, that those things are offered to thee gratis, which many,

plowing the sea waves with the greatest danger to life, consumed by the

hardship of hunger and cold, or subjected to the weary servitude of

teachers, and altogether worn out by the desire of learning, yet acquire

with intolerable labor, covet with greedy looks this 'BOOK OF VARIOUS

ARTS,' read it through with a tenacious memory, embrace it with an

ardent love.

"Should you carefully peruse this, you will there find out whatever

Greece possesses in kinds and mixtures of various colors; whatever

Tuscany knows of in mosaic-work, or in variety of enamel; whatever

Arabia shows forth in work of fusion, ductility, or chasing; whatever

Italy ornaments with gold, in diversity of vases and sculpture of gems

or ivory; whatever France loves in a costly variety of windows; whatever

industrious Germany approves in work of gold, silver, copper, and iron,

of woods and of stones.

"When you shall have re-read this often, and have committed it to your

tenacious memory, you shall thus recompense me for this care of

instruction, that as often as you shall have successfully made use of my

work, you pray for me for the pity of Omnipotent God, who knows that I

have written these things, which are here arranged, neither through love

of human approbation, nor through desire of temporal reward, nor have I

stolen anything precious or rare through envious jealousy, nor have I

kept back anything reserved served for myself alone; but in

augmentation of the honor and glory of His name, I have consulted the

progress and hastened to aid the necessities of many men."--_Ib._ pp.

xlvii.-li.

* * *

109. There is perhaps something in the naive seriousness with which

these matters of empiricism, to us of so small importance, are regarded

by the good monk, which may at first tempt the reader to a smile. It is,

however, to be kept in mind that some such mode of introduction was

customary in all works of this order and period. The Byzantine MS.,

already alluded to, is prefaced still more singularly: "Que celui qui

veut apprendre la science de la peinture commence a s'y preparer

d'avance quelque temps en dessinant sans relache ... puis qu'il adresse

a Jesus Christ la priere et oraison suivante," etc.:--the prayer being

followed by a homily respecting envy, much resembling that of

Theophilus. And we may rest assured that until we have again begun to

teach and to learn in this spirit, art will no more recover its true

power or place than springs which flow from no heavenward hills can rise

to useful level in the wells of the plain. The tenderness, tranquillity,

and resoluteness which we feel in such men's words and thoughts found a

correspondent expression even in the movements of the hand; precious

qualities resulted from them even in the most mechanical of their works,

such as no reward can evoke, no academy teach, nor any other merits

replace. What force can be summoned by authority, or fostered by

patronage, which could for an instant equal in intensity the labor of

this humble love, exerting itself for its own pleasure, looking upon its

own works by the light of thankfulness, and finishing all, offering all,

with the irrespective profusion of flowers opened by the wayside, where

the dust may cover them, and the foot crush them?

110. Not a few passages conceived in the highest spirit of self-denying

piety would, of themselves, have warranted our sincere thanks to Mr.

Hendrie for his publication of the manuscript. The practical value of

its contents is however very variable; most of the processes described

have been either improved or superseded, and many of the recipes are

quite as illustrative of the writer's credulity in reception, as

generosity in communication. The references to the "land of Havilah" for

gold, and to "Mount Calybe" for iron, are characteristic of monkish

geographical science; the recipe for the making of Spanish gold is

interesting, as affording us a clew to the meaning of the mediaeval

traditions respecting the basilisk. Pliny says nothing about the

hatching of this chimera from cocks' eggs, and ascribes the power of

killing at sight to a different animal, the catoblepas, whose head,

fortunately, was so heavy that it could not be held up. Probably the

word "basiliscus" in Theophilus would have been better translated

"cockatrice."

* * *

"There is also a gold called Spanish gold, which is composed from red

copper, powder of basilisk, and human blood, and acid. The Gentiles,

whose skillfulness in this art is commendable, make basilisks in this

manner. They have, underground, a house walled with stones everywhere,

above and below, with two very small windows, so narrow that scarcely

any light can appear through them; in this house they place two old

cocks of twelve or fifteen years, and they give them plenty of food.

When these have become fat, through the heat of their good condition,

they agree together and lay eggs. Which being laid, the cocks are taken

out and toads are placed in, which may hatch the eggs, and to which

bread is given for food. The eggs being hatched, chickens issue out,

like hens' chickens, to which after seven days grow the tails of

serpents, and immediately, if there were not a stone pavement to the

house, they would enter the earth. Guarding against which, their masters

have round brass vessels of large size, perforated all over, the mouths

of which are narrow, in which they place these chickens, and close the

mouths with copper coverings and inter them underground, and they are

nourished with the fine earth entering through the holes for six

months. After this they uncover them and apply a copious fire, until the

animals' insides are completely burnt. Which done, when they have become

cold, they are taken out and carefully ground, adding to them a third

part of the blood of a red man, which blood has been dried and ground.

These two compositions are tempered with sharp acid in a clean vessel;

they then take very thin sheets of the purest red copper, and anoint

this composition over them on both sides, and place them in the fire.

And when they have become glowing, they take them out and quench and

wash them in the same confection; and they do this for a long time,

until this composition eats through the copper, and it takes the color

of gold. This gold is proper for all work."--_Ib._ p. 267.

* * *

Our readers will find in Mr. Hendrie's interesting note the explanation

of the symbolical language of this recipe; though we cannot agree with

him in supposing Theophilus to have so understood it. We have no doubt

the monk wrote what he had heard in good faith, and with no equivocal

meaning; and we are even ourselves much disposed to regret and resist

the transformation of toads into nitrates of potash, and of basilisks

into sulphates of copper.

111. But whatever may be the value of the recipes of Theophilus, couched

in the symbolical language of the alchemist, his evidence is as clear as

it is conclusive, as far as regards the general processes adopted in his

own time. The treatise of Peter de St. Audemar, contained in a volume

transcribed by Jehan le Begue in 1431, bears internal evidence of being

nearly coeval with that of Theophilus. And in addition to these MSS.,

Mr. Eastlake has examined the records of Ely and Westminster, which are

full of references to decorative operations. From these sources it is

not only demonstrated that oil-painting, at least in the broadest sense

(striking colors mixed with oil on surfaces of wood or stone), was

perfectly common both in Italy and England in the 12th, 13th, and 14th

centuries, but every step of the process is determinable. Stone

surfaces were primed with white lead mixed with linseed oil, applied in

successive coats, and carefully smoothed when dry. Wood was planed

smooth (or, for delicate work, covered with leather of horse-skin or

parchment), then coated with a mixture of white lead, wax, and

pulverized tile, on which the oil and lead priming was laid. In the

successive application of the coats of this priming, the painter is

warned by Eraclius of the danger of letting the superimposed coat be

more oily than that beneath, the shriveling of the surface being a

necessary consequence.

* * *

"The observation respecting the cause, or one of the causes, of a

wrinkled and shriveled surface, is not unimportant. Oil, or an oil

varnish, used in abundance with the colors over a perfectly dry

preparation, will produce this appearance: the employment of an oil

varnish is even supposed to be detected by it.... As regards the effect

itself, the best painters have not been careful to avoid it. Parts of

Titian's St. Sebastian (now in the Gallery of the Vatican) are

shriveled; the Giorgione in the Louvre is so; the drapery of the figure

of Christ in the Duke of Wellington's Correggio exhibits the same

appearance; a Madonna and Child by Reynolds, at Petworth, is in a

similar state, as are also parts of some pictures by Greuze. It is the

reverse of a cracked surface, and is unquestionably the less evil of the

two."--"Eastlake," pp. 36-38.

* * *

112. On the white surface thus prepared, the colors, ground finely with

linseed oil, were applied, according to the advice of Theophilus, in not

less than three successive coats, and finally protected with amber or

sandarac varnish: each coat of color being carefully dried by the aid of

heat or in the sun before a second was applied, and the entire work

before varnishing. The practice of carefully drying each coat was

continued in the best periods of art, but the necessity of exposure to

the sun intimated by Theophilus appears to have arisen only from his

careless preparation of the linseed oil, and ignorance of a proper

drying medium. Consequent on this necessity is the restriction in

Theophilus, St. Audemar, and in the British Museum MS., of oil-painting

to wooden surfaces, because movable panels could be dried in the sun;

while, for walls, the colors are to be mixed with water, wine, gum, or

the usual tempera vehicles, egg and fig-tree juice; white lead and

verdigris, themselves dryers, being the only pigments which could be

mixed with oil for walls. But the MS. of Eraclius and the records of our

English cathedrals imply no such absolute restriction. They mention the

employment of oil for the painting or varnishing of columns and interior

walls, and in quantity very remarkable. Among the entries relating to

St. Stephen's chapel, occur--"For 19 flagons of painter's oil, at 3_s._

4_d._ the flagon, 43_s._ 4_d._" (It might be as well, in the next

edition, to correct the copyist's reverse of the position of the X and

L, lest it should be thought that the principles of the science of

arithmetic have been progressive, as well as those of art.) And

presently afterwards, in May of the same year, "to John de Hennay, for

_seventy_ flagons and a half of painter's oil for the painting of the

same chapel, at 20_d._ the flagon, 117_s._ 6_d._" The expression

"painter's oil" seems to imply more careful preparation than that

directed by Theophilus, probably purification from its mucilage in the

sun; but artificial heat was certainly employed to assist the drying,

and after reading of flagons supplied by the score, we can hardly be

surprised at finding charcoal furnished by the cartload--see an entry

relating to the Painted Chamber. In one MS. of Eraclius, however, a

distinct description of a drying oil in the modern sense, occurs, white

lead and lime being added, and the oil thickened by exposure to the sun,

as was the universal practice in Italy.

113. Such was the system of oil-painting known before the time of Van

Eyck; but it remains a question in what kind of works and with what

degree of refinement this system had been applied. The passages in

Eraclius refer only to ornamental work, imitations of marble, etc.; and

although, in the records of Ely cathedral, the words "pro ymaginibus

super columnas depingendis" may perhaps be understood as referring to

paintings of figures, the applications of oil, which are distinctly

determinable from these and other English documents, are merely

decorative; and "the large supplies of it which appear in the

Westminster and Ely records indicate the coarseness of the operations

for which it was required." Theophilus, indeed, mentions tints for

faces--_mixturas vultuum_; but it is to be remarked that Theophilus

painted with a liquid oil, the drying of which in the sun he expressly

says "in _ymaginibus_ et aliis picturis diuturnum et taediosum nimis

est." The oil generally employed was thickened to the consistence of a

varnish. Cennini recommends that it be kept in the sun until reduced one

half; and in the Paris copy of Eraclius we are told that "the longer the

oil remains in the sun the better it will be." Such a vehicle entirely

precluded delicacy of execution.

* * *

"Paintings entirely executed with the thickened vehicle, at a time when

art was in the very lowest state, and when its votaries were ill

qualified to contend with unnecessary difficulties, must have been of

the commonest description. Armorial bearings, patterns, and similar

works of mechanical decoration, were perhaps as much as could be

attempted.

"Notwithstanding the general reference to flesh-painting, 'e cosi fa

dello incarnare,' in Cennini's directions, there are no certain examples

of pictures of the fourteenth century, in which the flesh is executed in

oil colors. This leads us to inquire what were the ordinary applications

of oil-painting in Italy at that time. It appears that the method, when

adopted at all, was considered to belong to the complemental and merely

decorative parts of a picture. It was employed in portions of the work

only, on draperies, and over gilding and foils. Cennini describes such

operations as follows. 'Gild the surface to be occupied by the drapery;

draw on it what ornaments or patterns you please; glaze the unornamented

intervals with verdigris ground in oil, shading some folds twice. Then,

when this is dry, glaze the same color over the whole drapery, both

ornaments and plain portions.'

"These operations, together with the gilt field round the figures, the

stucco decorations, and the carved framework, tabernacle, or _ornamento_

itself of the picture, were completed first; the faces and hands, which

in Italian pictures of the fourteenth century were always in tempera,

were added afterwards, or at all events after the draperies and

background were finished. Cennini teaches the practice of all but the

carving. In later times the work was divided, and the decorator or

gilder was sometimes a more important person than the painter. Thus some

works of an inferior Florentine artist were ornamented with stuccoes,

carving, and gilding, by the celebrated Donatello, who, in his youth,

practiced this art in connection with sculpture. Vasari observed the

following inscription under a picture:--'Simone Cini, a Florentine,

wrought the carved work; Gabriello Saracini executed the gilding; and

Spinello di Luca, of Arezzo, painted the picture, in the year

1385.'"--_Ib._ pp. 71, 72, and 80.

* * *

114. We may pause to consider for a moment what effect upon the mental

habits of these earlier schools might result from this separate and

previous completion of minor details. It is to be remembered that the

painter's object in the backgrounds of works of this period

(universally, or nearly so, of religious subject) was not the deceptive

representation of a natural scene, but the adornment and setting forth

of the central figures with precious work--the conversion of the

picture, as far as might be, into a gem, flushed with color and alive

with light. The processes necessary for this purpose were altogether

mechanical; and those of stamping and burnishing the gold, and of

enameling, were necessarily performed before any delicate tempera-work

could be executed. Absolute decision of design was therefore necessary

throughout; hard linear separations were unavoidable between the

oil-color and the tempera, or between each and the gold or enamel.

General harmony of effect, aerial perspective, or deceptive chiaroscuro,

became totally impossible; and the dignity of the picture depended

exclusively on the lines of its design, the purity of its ornaments, and

the beauty of expression which could be attained in those portions (the

faces and hands) which, set off and framed by this splendor of

decoration, became the cynosure of eyes. The painter's entire energy was

given to these portions; and we can hardly imagine any discipline more

calculated to insure a grand and thoughtful school of art than the

necessity of discriminated character and varied expression imposed by

this peculiarly separate and prominent treatment of the features. The

exquisite drawing of the hand also, at least in outline, remained for

this reason even to late periods one of the crowning excellences of the

religious schools. It might be worthy the consideration of our present

painters whether some disadvantage may not result from the exactly

opposite treatment now frequently adopted, the finishing of the head

before the addition of its accessories. A flimsy and indolent background

is almost a necessary consequence, and probably also a false

flesh-color, irrecoverable by any after-opposition.

115. The reader is in possession of most of the conclusions relating to

the practice of oil-painting up to about the year 1406.

* * *

"Its inconveniences were such that tempera was not unreasonably

preferred to it for works that required careful design, precision, and

completeness. Hence the Van Eycks seem to have made it their first

object to overcome the stigma that attached to oil-painting, as a

process fit only for ordinary purposes and mechanical decorations. With

an ambition partly explained by the previous coarse applications of the

method, they sought to raise wonder by surpassing the finish of tempera

with the very material that had long been considered intractable. Mere

finish was, however, the least of the excellences of these reformers.

The step was short which sufficed to remove the self-imposed

difficulties of the art; but that effort would probably not have been so

successful as it was, in overcoming long-established prejudices, had it

not been accompanied by some of the best qualities which oil-painting,

as a means of imitating nature, can command."--_Ib._ p. 88.

* * *

116. It has been a question to which of the two brothers, Hubert or

John, the honor of the invention is to be attributed. Van Mander gives

the date of the birth of Hubert 1366; and his interesting epitaph in the

cathedral of St. Bavon, at Ghent, determines that of his death:--

* * *

"Take warning from me, ye who walk over me. I was as you are, but am now

buried dead beneath you. Thus it appears that neither art nor medicine

availed me. Art, honor, wisdom, power, affluence, are spared not when

death comes. I was called Hubert Van Eyck; I am now food for worms.

Formerly known and highly honored in painting; this all was shortly

after turned to nothing. It was in the year of the Lord one thousand

four hundred and twenty-six, on the eighteenth day of September, that I

rendered up my soul to God, in sufferings. Pray God for me, ye who love

art, that I may attain to His sight. Flee sin; turn to the best

[objects]: for you must follow me at last."

* * *

John Van Eyck appears by sufficient evidence to have been born between

1390 and 1395; and, as the improved oil-painting was certainly

introduced about 1410, the probability is greater that the system had

been discovered by the elder brother than by the youth of 15. What the

improvement actually was is a far more important question. Vasari's

account, in the Life of Antonello da Messina, is the first piece of

evidence here examined (p. 205); and it is examined at once with more

respect and more advantage than the half-negligent, half-embarrassed

wording of the passage might appear either to deserve or to promise.

Vasari states that "_Giovanni_ of Bruges," having finished a

tempera-picture on panel, and varnished it as usual, placed it in the

sun to dry--that the heat opened the joinings--and that the artist,

provoked at the destruction of his work--

* * *

"began to devise means for preparing a kind of varnish which should dry

in the shade, so as to avoid placing his pictures in the sun. Having

made experiments with many things, both pure and mixed together, he at

last found that linseed-oil and nut-oil, among the many which he had

tested, were more drying than all the rest. These, therefore, boiled

with _other mixtures of his_, made him the varnish which he, nay, which

all the painters of the world, had long desired. Continuing his

experiments with many other things, he saw that the immixture of the

colors with these kinds of oils gave them a very firm consistence,

which, when dry, was proof against wet; and, moreover, that the vehicle

lit up the colors so powerfully, that it gave a gloss of itself without

varnish; and that which appeared to him still more admirable was, that

it allowed of blending [the colors] infinitely better than tempera.

Giovanni, rejoicing in this invention, and being a person of

discernment, began many works."

* * *

117. The reader must observe that this account is based upon and

clumsily accommodated to the idea, prevalent in Vasari's time throughout

Italy, that Van Eyck not merely improved, but first introduced, the art

of oil-painting, and that no mixture of color with linseed or nut oil

had taken place before his time. We are only informed of the new and

important part of the invention, under the pointedly specific and

peculiarly Vasarian expression--"altre sue misture." But the real value

of the passage is dependent on the one fact of which it puts us in

possession, and with respect to which there is every reason to believe

it trustworthy, that it was in search of a _Varnish_ which would dry in

the shade that Van Eyck discovered the new vehicle. The next point to be

determined is the nature of the Varnish ordinarily employed, and spoken

of by Cennini and many other writers under the familiar title of Vernice

liquida. The derivation of the word Vernix bears materially on the

question, and will not be devoid of interest for the general reader, who

may perhaps be surprised at finding himself carried by Mr. Eastlake's

daring philology into regions poetical and planetary:--

* * *

"Eustathius, a writer of the twelfth century, in his commentary on

Homer, states that the Greeks of his day called amber ([Greek:

elektron]) Veronice ([Greek: beronike]). Salmasius, quoting from a

Greek medical MS. of the same period, writes it Verenice ([Greek:

berenike]). In the Lucca MS. (8th century) the word Veronica more than

once occurs among the ingredients of varnishes, and it is remarkable

that in the copies of the same recipes in the _Mappae Clavicula_ (12th

century) the word is spelt, in the genitive, Verenicis and Vernicis.

This is probably the earliest instance of the use of the Latinized word

nearly in its modern form; the original nominative Vernice being

afterwards changed to Vernix.

"Veronice or Verenice, as a designation for amber, must have been common

at an earlier period than the date of the Lucca MS., since it there

occurs as a term in ordinary use. It is scarcely necessary to remark

that the letter [Greek: beta] was sounded v by the mediaeval Greeks,

as it is by their present descendants. Even during the classic ages of

Greece [Greek: beta] represented [Greek: phi] in certain dialects. The

name Berenice or Beronice, borne by more than one daughter of the

Ptolemies, would be more correctly written Pherenice or Pheronice. The

literal coincidence of this name and its modifications with the Vernice

of the middle ages, might almost warrant the supposition that amber,

which by the best ancient authorities was considered a mineral, may, at

an early period, have been distinguished by the name of a constellation,

the constellation of Berenice's (golden) hair."--_Eastlake_, p. 230.

* * *

118. We are grieved to interrupt our reader's voyage among the

constellations; but the next page crystallizes us again like ants in

amber, or worse, in gum-sandarach. It appears, from conclusive and

abundant evidence, that the greater cheapness of sandarach, and its

easier solubility in oil rendered it the usual substitute for amber, and

that the word Vernice, when it occurs alone, is the common synonym for

dry sandarach resin. This, dissolved by heat in linseed oil, three parts

oil to one of resin, was the Vernice liquida of the Italians, sold in

Cennini's time ready prepared, and the customary varnish of tempera

pictures. Concrete turpentine ("oyle of fir-tree," "Pece Greca,"

"Pegola"), previously prepared over a slow fire until it ceased to

swell, was added to assist the liquefaction of the sandarach, first in

Venice, where the material could easily be procured, and afterwards in

Florence. The varnish so prepared, especially when it was long boiled to

render it more drying, was of a dark color, materially affecting the

tints over which it was passed.[15]

* * *

"It is not impossible that the lighter style of coloring introduced by

Giotto may have been intended by him to counteract the effects of this

varnish, the appearance of which in the Greek pictures he could not fail

to observe. Another peculiarity in the works of the painters of the time

referred to, particularly those of the Florentine and Sienese schools,

is the greenish tone of their coloring in the flesh; produced by the

mode in which they often prepared their works, viz. by a green

under-painting. The appearance was neutralized by the red sandarac

varnish, and pictures executed in the manner described must have looked

better before it was removed."--_Ib._ p. 252.

* * *

Farther on, this remark is thus followed out:--

* * *

"The paleness or freshness of the tempera may have been sometimes

calculated for this brown glazing (for such it was in effect), and when

this was the case, the picture was, strictly speaking, unfinished

without its varnish. It is, therefore, quite conceivable that a painter,

averse to mere mechanical operations, would, in his final process, still

have an eye to the harmony of his work, and, seeing that the tint of his

varnish was more or less adapted to display the hues over which it was

spread, would vary that tint, so as to heighten the effect of the

picture. The practice of tingeing varnishes was not even new, as the

example given by Cardanus proves. The next step to this would be to

treat the tempera picture still more as a preparation, and to calculate

still further on the varnish, by modifying and adapting its color to a

greater extent. A work so completed must have nearly approached the

appearance of an oil picture. This was perhaps the moment when the new

method opened itself to the mind of Hubert Van Eyck.... The next change

necessarily consisted in using opaque as well as transparent colors; the

former being applied over the light, the latter over the darker,

portions of the picture; while the work in tempera was now reduced to a

light chiaroscuro preparation.... It was now that the hue of the

original varnish became an objection; for, as a medium, it required to

be itself colorless."--_Ib._ pp. 271-273.

* * *

119. Our author has perhaps somewhat embarrassed this part of the

argument, by giving too much importance to the conjectural adaptation of

the tints of the tempera picture to the brown varnish, and too little to

the bold transition from transparent to opaque color on the lights. Up

to this time, we must remember, the entire drawing of the flesh had been

in tempera; the varnish, however richly tinted, however delicately

adjusted to the tints beneath, was still broadly applied over the whole

surface, the design being seen through the transparent glaze. But the

mixture of opaque color at once implies that portions of the design

itself were executed with the varnish for a vehicle, and therefore that

the varnish had been entirely changed both in color and consistence. If,

as above stated, the improvement in the varnish had been made only after

it had been mixed with opaque color, it does not appear why the idea of

so mixing it should have presented itself to Van Eyck more than to any

other painter of the day, and Vasari's story of the split panel becomes

nugatory. But we apprehend, from a previous passage (p. 258),

that Mr. Eastlake would not have us so interpret him. We rather suppose

that we are expressing his real opinion in stating our own, that Van

Eyck, seeking for a varnish which would dry in the shade, first

perfected the methods of dissolving amber or copal in oil, then sought

for and added a good dryer, and thus obtained a varnish which, having

been subjected to no long process of boiling, was nearly colorless; that

in using this new varnish over tempera works he might cautiously and

gradually mix it with the opaque color, whose purity he now found

unaffected, by the transparent vehicle; and, finally, as the thickness

of the varnish in its less perfect state was an obstacle to precision of

execution, increase the proportion of its oil to the amber, or add a

diluent, as occasion required.

120. Such, at all events, in the sum, whatever might be the order or

occasion of discovery, were Van Eyck's improvements in the vehicle of

color, and to these, applied by singular ingenuity and affection to the

imitation of nature, with a fidelity hitherto unattempted, Mr. Eastlake

attributes the influence which his works obtained over his

contemporaries:--

* * *

"If we ask in what the chief novelty of his practice consisted, we shall

at once recognize it in an amount of general excellence before unknown.

At all times, from Van Eyck's day to the present, whenever nature has

been surprisingly well imitated in pictures, the first and last question

with the ignorant has been--What materials did the artist use? The

superior mechanical secret is always supposed to be in the hands of the

greatest genius; and an early example of sudden perfection in art, like

the fame of the heroes of antiquity, was likely to monopolize and

represent the claims of many."--_Ib._ p. 266.

* * *

This is all true; that Van Eyck saw nature more truly than his

predecessors is certain; but it is disputable whether this rendering of

nature recommended his works to the imitation of the Italians. On the

contrary, Mr. Eastlake himself observes in another place (p. 220), that

the character of delicate imitation common to the Flemish pictures

militated _against_ the acceptance of their method:--

* * *

"The specimens of Van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes, Memling, and others,

which the Florentines had seen, may have appeared, in the eyes of some

severe judges (for example, those who daily studied the frescoes of

Masaccio), to indicate a certain connection between oil painting and

minuteness, if not always of size, yet of style. The method, by its very

finish and the possible completeness of its gradations, must have seemed

well calculated to exhibit numerous objects on a small scale. That this

was really the impression produced, at a later period, on one who

represented the highest style of design, has been lately proved by means

of an interesting document, in which the opinions of Michael Angelo on

the character of Flemish pictures are recorded by a contemporary

artist."[16]

* * *

121. It was not, we apprehend, the resemblance to nature, but the

abstract power of color, which inflamed with admiration and jealousy the

artists of Italy; it was not the delicate touch nor the precise verity

of Van Eyck, but the "vivacita de' colori" (says Vasari) which at the

first glance induced Antonello da Messina to "put aside every other

avocation and thought, and at once set out for Flanders," assiduously to

cultivate the friendship of _Giovanni_, presenting to him many drawings

and other things, until _Giovanni_, finding himself already old, was

content that Antonello should see the method of his coloring in oil, nor

then to quit Flanders until he had "thoroughly learned that _process_."

It was this _process_, separate, mysterious, and admirable, whose

communication the Venetian, Domenico, thought the most acceptable

kindness which could repay his hospitality; and whose solitary

possession Castagno thought cheaply purchased by the guilt of the

betrayer and murderer; it was in this process, the deduction of watchful

intelligence, not by fortuitous discovery, that the first impulse was

given to European art. Many a plank had yawned in the sun before Van

Eyck's; but he alone saw through the rent, as through an opening portal,

the lofty perspective of triumph widening its rapid wedge;--many a spot

of opaque color had clouded the transparent amber of earlier times; but

the little cloud that rose over Van Eyck's horizon was "like unto a

man's hand."

What this process was, and how far it differed from preceding practice,

has hardly, perhaps, been pronounced by Mr. Eastlake with sufficient

distinctness. One or two conclusions which he has not marked are, we

think, deducible from his evidence, In one point, and that not an

unimportant one, we believe that many careful students of coloring will

be disposed to differ with him: our own intermediate opinion we will

therefore venture to state, though with all diffidence.

122. We must not, however, pass entirely without notice the two chapters

on the preparation of oils, and on the oleo-resinous vehicles, though to

the general reader the recipes contained in them are of little interest;

and in the absence of all expression of opinion on the part of Mr.

Eastlake as to their comparative excellence, even to the artist, their

immediate utility appears somewhat doubtful. One circumstance, however,

is remarkable in all, the care taken by the great painters, without

exception, to avoid the yellowing of their oil. Perfect and stable

clearness is the ultimate aim of all the processes described (many of

them troublesome and tedious in the extreme): and the effect of the

altered oil is of course most dreaded on pale and cold colors. Thus

Philippe Nunez tells us how to purify linseed oil "for white and blues;"

and Pacheco, "el de linaza no me quele mal: aunque ai quien diga que no

a de ver el Azul ni el Blanco este Azeite."[17] De Mayerne recommends

poppy oil "for painting white, blue, and similar colors, so that they

shall not yellow;" and in another place, "for air-tints and

blue;"--while the inclination to green is noticed as an imperfection in

hempseed oil: so Vasari--speaking of linseed-oil in contemporary

practice--"benche il noce e meglio, perche ingialla meno." The Italians

generally mixed an essential oil with their delicate tints, including

flesh tints (p. 431). Extraordinary methods were used by the Flemish

painters to protect their blues; they were sometimes painted with size,

and varnished; sometimes strewed in powder on fresh white-lead (p.

456). Leonardo gives a careful recipe for preventing the change of color

in nut oil, supposing it to be owing to neglect in removing the skin of

the nut. His words, given at p. 321, are incorrectly translated: "una

certa bucciolina," is not a husk or rind--but "a thin skin," meaning the

white membranous covering of the nut itself, of which it is almost

impossible to detach all the inner laminae. This, "che tiene della natura

del mallo," Leonardo supposes to give the expressed oil its property of

forming a _skin_ at the surface.

123. We think these passages interesting, because they are entirely

opposed to the modern ideas of the desirableness of yellow lights and

green blues, which have been introduced chiefly by the study of altered

pictures. The anxiety of Rubens, expressed in various letters, quoted at

p. 516, lest any of his whites should have become yellow, and his

request that his pictures might be exposed to the sun to remedy the

defect, if it occurred, are conclusive on this subject, as far as

regards the feeling of the Flemish painters: we shall presently see that

the _coolness_ of their light was an essential part of their scheme of

color.

The testing of the various processes given in these two chapters must be

a matter of time: many of them have been superseded by recent

discoveries. Copal varnish is in modern practice no inefficient

substitute for amber, and we believe that most artists will agree with

us in thinking that the vehicles now in use are sufficient for all

purposes, if used rightly. We shall, therefore, proceed in the first

place to give a rapid sketch of the entire process of the Flemish school

as it is stated by Mr. Eastlake in the 11th chapter, and then examine

the several steps of it one by one, with the view at once of marking

what seems disputable, and of deducing from what is certain some

considerations respecting the consequences of its adoption in subsequent

art.

124. The ground was with all the early masters pure _white_, plaster of

Paris, or washed chalk with size; a preparation which has been employed

without change from remote antiquity--witness the Egyptian mummy-cases.

Such a ground, becoming brittle with age, is evidently unsafe on canvas,

unless exceedingly thin; and even on panel is liable to crack and detach

itself, unless it be carefully guarded against damp. The precautions of

Van Eyck against this danger, as well as against the warping of his

panel, are remarkable instances of his regard to points apparently

trivial:--

* * *

"In large altar-pieces, necessarily composed of many pieces, it may be

often remarked that each separate plank has become slightly convex in

front: this is particularly observable in the picture of the

Transfiguration by Raphael. The heat of candles on altars is supposed to

have been the cause of this not uncommon defect; but heat, if

considerable, would rather produce the contrary appearance. It would

seem that the layer of paint, with its substratum, slightly operates to

prevent the wood from contracting or becoming concave on that side; it

might therefore be concluded that a similar protection at the back, by

equalizing the conditions, would tend to keep the wood flat. The oak

panel on which the picture by Van Eyck in the National Gallery is

painted is protected at the back by a composition of gesso, size, and

tow, over which a coat of black oil-paint was passed. This, whether

added when the picture was executed or subsequently, has tended to

preserve the wood (which is not at all worm-eaten), and perhaps to

prevent its warping."--_Ib._ pp. 373, 374.

* * *

On the white ground, scraped, when it was perfectly dry, till it was "as

white as milk and as smooth as ivory" (Cennini), the outline of the

picture was drawn, and its light and shade expressed, usually with the

pen, with all possible care; and over this outline a coating of size was

applied in order to render the gesso ground _non_-absorbent. The

establishment of this fact is of the greatest importance, for the whole

question of the true function and use of the gesso ground hangs upon it.

That use has been supposed by all previous writers on the technical

processes of painting to be, by absorbing the oil, to remove in some

degree the cause of yellowness in the colors. Had this been so, the

ground itself would have lost its brilliancy, and it would have followed

that a dark ground, equally absorbent, would have answered the purpose

as well. But the evidence adduced by Mr. Eastlake on this subject is

conclusive:--

* * *

"Pictures are sometimes transferred from panel to cloth. The front being

secured by smooth paper or linen, the picture is laid on its face, and

the wood is gradually planed and scraped away. At last the ground

appears; first, the 'gesso grosso,' then, next the painted surface, the

'gesso sottile.' On scraping this it is found that it is whitest

immediately next the colors; for on the inner side it may sometimes

have received slight stains from the wood, if the latter was not first

sized. When a picture which happens to be much cracked has been oiled or

varnished, the fluid will sometimes penetrate through the cracks into

the ground, which in such parts had become accessible. In that case the

white ground is stained in lines only, corresponding in their direction

with the cracks of the picture. This last circumstance also proves that

the ground was not sufficiently hard in itself to prevent the absorption

of oil. Accordingly, it required to be rendered non-absorbent by a

coating of size; and this was passed _over_ the outline, before the

oil-priming was applied."--_Ib._ pp. 383, 384.

* * *

The perfect whiteness of the ground being thus secured, a transparent

warm oil-priming, in early practice flesh-colored, was usually passed

over the entire picture. This custom, says Mr. Eastlake, appears to have

been "a remnant of the old habit of covering tempera pictures with a

warm varnish, and was sometimes omitted." When used it was permitted to

dry thoroughly, and over it the shadows were painted in with a rich

transparent brown, mixed with a somewhat thick oleo-resinous vehicle;

the lighter colors were then added with a thinner vehicle, taking care

not to disturb the transparency of the shadows by the unnecessary

mixture of opaque pigments, and leaving the ground bearing bright

_through the thin lights_. (?) As the art advanced, the lights were more

and more loaded, and afterwards glazed, the shadows being still left in

untouched transparency. This is the method of Rubens. The later Italian

colorists appear to have laid opaque local color without fear even into

the shadows, and to have recovered transparency by ultimate glazing.

125. Such are the principal heads of the method of the early Flemish

masters, as stated by Mr. Eastlake. We have marked as questionable the

influence of the ground in supporting the lights: our reasons for doing

so we will give, after we have stated what we suppose to be the

advantages or disadvantages of the process in its earlier stages,

guiding ourselves as far as possible by the passages in which any

expression occurs of Mr. Eastlake's opinion.

The reader cannot but see that the _eminent_ character of the whole

system is its predeterminateness. From first to last its success

depended on the decision and clearness of each successive step. The

drawing and light and shade were secured without any interference of

color; but when over these the oil-priming was once laid, the design

could neither be altered nor, if lost, recovered; a color laid too

opaquely in the shadow destroyed the inner organization of the picture,

and remained an irremediable blemish; and it was necessary, in laying

color even on the lights, to follow the guidance of the drawing beneath

with a caution and precision which rendered anything like freedom of

handling, in the modern sense, totally impossible. Every quality which

depends on rapidity, accident, or audacity was interdicted; no

affectation of ease was suffered to disturb the humility of patient

exertion. Let our readers consider in what temper such a work must be

undertaken and carried through--a work in which error was irremediable,

change impossible--which demanded the drudgery of a student, while it

involved the deliberation of a master--in which the patience of a

mechanic was to be united with the foresight of a magician--in which no

license could be indulged either to fitfulness of temper or felicity of

invention--in which haste was forbidden, yet languor fatal, and

consistency of conception no less incumbent than continuity of toil. Let

them reflect what kind of men must have been called up and trained by

work such as this, and then compare the tones of mind which are likely

to be produced by our present practice,--a practice in which alteration

is admitted to any extent in any stage--in which neither foundation is

laid nor end foreseen--in which all is dared and nothing resolved,

everything periled, nothing provided for--in which men play the

sycophant in the courts of their humors, and hunt wisps in the marshes

of their wits--a practice which invokes accident, evades law,

discredits application, despises system, and sets forth with chief

exultation, contingent beauty, and extempore invention.

126. But it is not only the fixed nature of the successive steps which

influenced the character of these early painters. A peculiar _direction_

was given to their efforts by the close attention to drawing which, as

Mr. Eastlake has especially noticed, was involved in the preparation of

the design on the white ground. That design was secured with a care and

finish which in many instances might seem altogether supererogatory.[18]

The preparation by John Bellini in the Florentine gallery is completed

with exhaustless diligence into even the portions farthest removed from

the light, where the thick brown of the shadows must necessarily have

afterwards concealed the greater part of the work. It was the discipline

undergone in producing this preparation which fixed the character of the

school. The most important part of the picture was executed not with the

brush, but with the point, and the refinements attainable by this

instrument dictated the treatment of their subject. Hence the transition

to etching and engraving, and the intense love of minute detail,

accompanied by an imaginative communication of dignity and power to the

smallest forms, in Albert Duerer and others. But this attention to

minutiae was not the only result; the disposition of light and shade was

also affected by the method. Shade was not to be had at small cost; its

masses could not be dashed on in impetuous generalization, fields for

the future recovery of light. They were measured out and wrought to

their depths only by expenditure of toil and time; and, as future

grounds for color, they were necessarily restricted to the _natural_

shadow of every object, white being left for high lights of whatever

hue. In consequence, the character of pervading daylight, almost

inevitably produced in the preparation, was afterwards assumed as a

standard in the painting. Effectism, accidental shadows, all obvious

and vulgar artistical treatment, were excluded, or introduced only as

the lights became more loaded, and were consequently imposed with more

facility on the dark ground. Where shade was required in large mass, it

was obtained by introducing an object of locally dark color. The Italian

masters who followed Van Eyck's system were in the constant habit of

relieving their principal figures by the darkness of some object,

foliage, throne, or drapery, introduced behind the head, the open sky

being left visible on each side. A green drapery is thus used with great

quaintness by John Bellini in the noble picture of the Brera Gallery; a

black screen, with marbled veins, behind the portraits of himself and

his brother in the Louvre; a crimson velvet curtain behind the Madonna,

in Francia's best picture at Bologna. Where the subject was sacred, and

the painter great, this system of pervading light produced pictures of a

peculiar and tranquil majesty; where the mind of the painter was

irregularly or frivolously imaginative, its temptations to accumulative

detail were too great to be resisted--the spectator was by the German

masters overwhelmed with the copious inconsistency of a dream, or

compelled to traverse the picture from corner to corner like a museum of

curiosities.

127. The chalk or pen preparation being completed, and the oil-priming

laid, we have seen that the shadows were laid in with a transparent

_brown_ in considerable body. The question next arises--What influence

is this part of the process likely to have had upon the _coloring_ of

the school? It is to be remembered that the practice was continued to

the latest times, and that when the thin light had been long abandoned,

and a loaded body of color had taken its place, the brown transparent

shadow was still retained, and is retained often to this day, when

asphaltum is used as its base, at the risk of the destruction of the

picture. The utter loss of many of Reynolds' noblest works has been

caused by the lavish use of this pigment. What the pigment actually was

in older times is left by Mr. Eastlake undecided:--

* * *

"A rich brown, which, whether an earth or mineral alone, or a substance

of the kind enriched by the addition of a transparent yellow or orange,

is not an unimportant element of the glowing coloring which is

remarkable in examples of the school. Such a color, by artificial

combinations at least, is easily supplied; and it is repeated, that, in

general, the materials now in use are quite as good as those which the

Flemish masters had at their command."--_Ib._ p. 488.

* * *

At p. 446 it is also asserted that the peculiar glow of the brown of

Rubens is hardly to be accounted for by any accidental variety in the

Cassel earths, but was obtained by the mixture of a transparent yellow.

Evidence, however, exists of asphaltum having been used in Flemish

pictures, and with safety, even though prepared in the modern manner:--

* * *

"It is not ground" (says De Mayerne), "but a drying oil is prepared with

litharge, and the pulverized asphaltum mixed with this oil is placed in

a glass vessel, suspended by a thread [in a water bath]. Thus exposed to

the fire it melts like butter; when it begins to boil it is instantly

removed. It is an excellent color for shadows, and may be glazed like

lake; it lasts well."--_Ib._ p. 463.

* * *

128. The great advantage of this primary laying in of the darks in brown

was the obtaining an unity of shadow throughout the picture, which

rendered variety of hue, where it occurred, an instantly accepted

evidence of light. It mattered not how vigorous or how deep in tone the

masses of local color might be, the eye could not confound them with

true shadow; it everywhere distinguished the transparent browns as

indicative of gloom, and became acutely sensible of the presence and

preciousness of light wherever local tints rose out of their depths. But

however superior this method may be to the arbitrary use of polychrome

shadows, utterly unrelated to the lights, which has been admitted in

modern works; and however beautiful or brilliant its results might be

in the hands of colorists as faithful as Van Eyck, or as inventive as

Rubens; the principle on which it is based becomes dangerous whenever,

in assuming that the ultimate hue of every shadow is brown, it

presupposes a peculiar and conventional light. It is true, that so long

as the early practice of finishing the under-drawing with the pen was

continued, the gray of that preparation might perhaps diminish the force

of the upper color, which became in that case little more than a glowing

varnish--even thus sometimes verging on too monotonous warmth, as the

reader may observe in the head of Dandolo, by John Bellini, in the

National Gallery. But when, by later and more impetuous hands, the point

tracing was dispensed with, and the picture boldly thrown in with the

brown pigment, it became matter of great improbability that the force of

such a prevalent tint could afterwards be softened or melted into a pure

harmony; the painter's feeling for truth was blunted; brilliancy and

richness became his object rather than sincerity or solemnity; with the

palled sense of color departed the love of light, and the diffused

sunshine of the early schools died away in the narrowed rays of

Rembrandt. We think it a deficiency in the work before us that the

extreme peril of such a principle, incautiously applied, has not been

pointed out, and that the method of Rubens has been so highly extolled

for its technical perfection, without the slightest notice of the gross

mannerism into which its facile brilliancy too frequently betrayed the

mighty master.

129. Yet it remains a question how far, under certain limitations and

for certain effects, this system of pure brown shadow may be

successfully followed. It is not a little singular that it has already

been revived in water-colors by a painter who, in his realization of

light and splendor of hue, stands without a rival among living

schools--Mr. Hunt; his neutral shadows being, we believe, first thrown

in frankly with sepia, the color introduced upon the lights, and the

central lights afterwards further raised by body color, and glazed. But

in this process the sepia shadows are admitted only on objects whose

local colors are warm or neutral; wherever the tint of the illumined

portion is delicate or peculiar, a relative hue of shade is at once laid

on the white paper; and the correspondence with the Flemish school is in

the use of brown as the ultimate representative of deep gloom, and in

the careful preservation of its transparency, not in the application of

brown universally as the shade of all colors. We apprehend that this

practice represents, in another medium, the very best mode of applying

the Flemish system; and that when the result proposed is an effect of

vivid color under bright cool sunshine, it would be impossible to adopt

any more perfect means. But a system which in any stage prescribes the

use of a certain pigment, implies the adoption of a constant aim, and

becomes, in that degree, conventional. Suppose that the effect desired

be neither of sunlight nor of bright color, but of grave color subdued

by atmosphere, and we believe that the use of brown for an ultimate

shadow would be highly inexpedient. With Van Eyck and with Rubens the

aim was always consistent: clear daylight, diffused in the one case,

concentrated in the other, was yet the hope, the necessity of both; and

any process which admitted the slightest dimness, coldness, or opacity,

would have been considered an error in their system by either. Alike, to

Rubens, came subjects of tumult or tranquillity, of gayety or terror;

the nether, earthly, and upper world were to him animated with the same

feeling, lighted by the same sun; he dyed in the same lake of fire the

warp of the wedding-garment or of the winding-sheet; swept into the same

delirium the recklessness of the sensualist, and rapture of the

anchorite; saw in tears only their glittering, and in torture only its

flush. To such a painter, regarding every subject in the same temper,

and all as mere motives for the display of the power of his art, the

Flemish system, improved as it became in his hands, was alike sufficient

and habitual. But among the greater colorists of Italy the aim was not

always so simple nor the method so determinable. We find Tintoret

passing like a fire-fly from light to darkness in one oscillation,

ranging from the fullest prism of solar color to the coldest grays of

twilight, and from the silver tingeing of a morning cloud to the lava

fire of a volcano: one moment shutting himself into obscure chambers of

imagery, the next plunged into the revolutionless day of heaven, and

piercing space, deeper than the mind can follow or the eye fathom; we

find him by turns appalling, pensive, splendid, profound, profuse; and

throughout sacrificing every minor quality to the power of his prevalent

mood. By such an artist it might, perhaps, be presumed that a different

system of color would be adopted in almost every picture, and that if a

chiaroscuro ground were independently laid, it would be in a neutral

gray, susceptible afterwards of harmony with any tone he might determine

upon, and not in the vivid brown which necessitated brilliancy of

subsequent effect. We believe, accordingly, that while some of the

pieces of this master's richer color, such as the Adam and Eve in the

Gallery of Venice, and we suspect also the miracle of St. Mark, may be

executed on the pure Flemish system, the greater number of his large

compositions will be found based on a gray shadow; and that this gray

shadow was independently laid we have more direct proof in the assertion

of Boschini, who received his information from the younger Palma:

"Quando haveva stabilita questa importante distribuzione, _abboggiava il

quadro tutto di chiaroscuro_;" and we have, therefore, no doubt that

Tintoret's well-known reply to the question, "What were the most

beautiful colors?" "_Il nero, e il bianco_," is to be received in a

perfectly literal sense, beyond and above its evident reference to

abstract principle. Its main and most valuable meaning was, of course,

that the design and light and shade of a picture were of greater

importance than its color; (and this Tintoret felt so thoroughly that

there is not one of his works which would seriously lose in power if it

were translated into chiaroscuro); but it implied also that Tintoret's

idea of a shadowed preparation was in gray, and not in brown.

130. But there is a farther and more essential ground of difference in

system of shadow between the Flemish and Italian colorists. It is a

well-known optical fact that the color of shadow is complemental to that

of light: and that therefore, in general terms, warm light has cool

shadow, and cool light hot shadow. The noblest masters of the northern

and southern schools respectively adopted these contrary keys; and while

the Flemings raised their lights in frosty white and pearly grays out of

a glowing shadow, the Italians opposed the deep and burning rays of

their golden heaven to masses of solemn gray and majestic blue. Either,

therefore, their preparation must have been different, or they were

able, when they chose, to conquer the warmth of the ground by

superimposed color. We believe, accordingly, that Correggio will be

found--as stated in the notes of Reynolds quoted at p. 495--to have

habitually grounded with black, white, and ultramarine, then glazing

with golden transparent colors; while Titian used the most vigorous

browns, and conquered them with cool color in mass above. The remarkable

sketch of Leonardo in the Uffizii of Florence is commenced in

brown--over the brown is laid an olive green, on which the highest

lights are struck with white.

Now it is well known to even the merely decorative painter that no color

can be brilliant which is laid over one of a corresponding key, and that

the best ground for any given opaque color will be a comparatively

subdued tint of the complemental one; of green under red, of violet

under yellow, and of _orange_ or _brown_ therefore under _blue_. We

apprehend accordingly that the real value of the brown ground with

Titian was far greater than even with Rubens; it was to support and give

preciousness to cool color above, while it remained itself untouched as

the representative of warm reflexes and extreme depth of transparent

gloom. We believe this employment of the brown ground to be the only

means of uniting majesty of hue with profundity of shade. But its value

to the Fleming is connected with the management of the lights, which we

have next to consider. As we here venture for the first time to disagree

in some measure with Mr. Eastlake, let us be sure that we state his

opinion fairly. He says:--

* * *

"The light warm tint which Van Mander assumes to have been generally

used in the oil-priming was sometimes omitted, as unfinished pictures

prove. Under such circumstances, the picture may have been executed at

once on the sized outline. In the works of Lucas van Leyden, and

sometimes in those of Albert Duerer, the thin yet brilliant lights

exhibit a still brighter ground underneath (p. 389).... It thus

appears that the method proposed by the inventors of oil-painting, of

preserving light within the colors, involved a certain order of

processes. The principal conditions were: first, that the outline should

be completed on the panel before the painting, properly so called, was

begun. The object, in thus defining the forms, was to avoid alterations

and repaintings, which might ultimately render the ground useless

without supplying its place. Another condition was to avoid loading _the

opaque_ colors. _This limitation was not essential with regard to the

transparent colors, as such could hardly exclude the bright ground_

(p. 398).... The system of coloring adopted by the Van Eycks may have

been influenced by the practice of glass-painting. They appear, in their

first efforts at least, to have considered the white panel as

representing light behind a colored and transparent medium, and aimed at

giving brilliancy to their tints by allowing the white ground to shine

through them. If those painters and their followers erred, it was in

sometimes too literally carrying out this principle. _Their lights are

always transparent_ (mere white excepted) and their shadows sometimes

want depth. This is in accordance with the effect of glass-staining, in

which transparency may cease with darkness, but never with light. The

superior method of Rubens consisted in preserving transparency chiefly

in his darks, and in contrasting their lucid depth with solid lights

(p. 408).... Among the technical improvements on the older process may

be especially mentioned the preservation of transparency in the darker

masses, the lights being loaded as required. The system of exhibiting

the bright ground through the shadows still involved an adherence to the

original method of defining the composition at first; and the solid

painting of the lights opened the door to that freedom of execution

which the works of the early masters wanted." (p. 490.)

* * *

131. We think we cannot have erred in concluding from these scattered

passages that Mr. Eastlake supposes the brilliancy of the high lights of

the earlier schools to be attributable to the under-power of the white

ground. This we admit, so far as that ground gave value to the

transparent flesh-colored or brown preparation above it; but we doubt

the transparency of the highest lights, and the power of any white

ground to add brilliancy to opaque colors. We have ourselves never seen

an instance of a _painted brilliant_ light that was not loaded to the

exclusion of the ground. Secondary lights indeed are often perfectly

transparent, a warm hatching over the under-white; the highest light

itself may be so--but then it is the white ground itself subdued by

transparent _darker_ color, not supporting a light color. In the Van

Eyck in the National Gallery all the brilliant lights are loaded; mere

white, Mr. Eastlake himself admits, was always so; and we believe that

the flesh-color and carnations are painted with color as _opaque_ as the

white head-dress, but fail of brilliancy from not being _loaded enough_;

the white ground beneath being utterly unable to add to the power of

such tints, while its effect on more subdued tones depended in great

measure on its receiving a transparent coat of warm color first. This

_may_ have been sometimes omitted, as stated at p. 389; when it was

so, we believe that an utter loss of brilliancy must have resulted; but

when it was used, the highest lights must have been raised from it by

opaque color as distinctly by Van Eyck as by Rubens. Rubens' Judgment of

Paris is quoted at [p. 388] as an example of the best use of the

bright gesso ground:--and how in that picture, how in all Rubens' best

pictures, is it used? Over the ground is thrown a transparent glowing

brown tint, varied and deepened in the shadow; boldly over that brown

glaze, and into it, are struck and painted the opaque gray middle tints,

already concealing the ground totally; and above these are loaded the

high lights like gems--note the sparkling strokes on the peacock's

plumes. We believe that Van Eyck's high lights were either, in

proportion to the scale of picture and breadth of handling, as loaded as

these, or, in the degree of their thinness, less brilliant. Was then his

system the same as Rubens'? Not so; but it differed more in the

management of middle tints than in the lights: the main difference was,

we believe, between the careful preparation of the gradations of drawing

in the one, and the daring assumption of massy light in the other. There

are theorists who would assert that their system was the same--but they

forget the primal work, with the point underneath, and all that it

implied of transparency above. Van Eyck secured his drawing in dark,

then threw a pale transparent middle tint over the whole, and recovered

his _highest_ lights; all was _transparent_ except these. Rubens threw a

dark middle tint over the whole at first, and then gave the _drawing_

with opaque gray. All was _opaque_ except the shadows. No slight

difference this, when we reflect on the contrarieties of practice

ultimately connected with the opposing principles; above all on the

eminent one that, as all Van Eyck's color, except the high lights, must

have been equivalent to a glaze, while the great body of _color_ in

Rubens was solid (ultimately glazed occasionally, but not necessarily),

it was possible for Van Eyck to mix his tints to the local hues

required, with far less danger of heaviness in effect than would have

been incurred in the solid painting of Rubens. This is especially

noticed by Mr. Eastlake, with whom we are delighted again to concur:--

* * *

"The practice of using compound tints has not been approved by

colorists; the method, as introduced by the early masters, was adapted

to certain conditions, but, like many of their processes, was afterwards

misapplied. Vasari informs us that Lorenzo di Credi, whose exaggerated

nicety in technical details almost equaled that of Gerard Dow, was in

the habit of mixing about thirty tints before he began to work. The

opposite extreme is perhaps no less objectionable. Much may depend on

the skillful use of the ground. The purest color in an opaque state and

superficially light only, is less brilliant than the foulest mixture

through which light shines. Hence, as long as the white ground was

visible within the tints, the habit of matching colors from nature (no

matter by what complication of hues, provided the ingredients were not

chemically injurious to each other) was likely to combine the truth of

negative hues with clearness."--_Ib._ p. 400.

* * *

132. These passages open to us a series of questions far too intricate

to be even cursorily treated within our limits. It is to be held in mind

that one and the same quality of color or kind of brilliancy is not

always the best; the phases and phenomena of color are innumerable in

reality, and even the modes of imitating them become expedient or

otherwise, according to the aim and scale of the picture. It is no

question of mere authority whether the mixture of tints to a compound

one, or their juxtaposition in a state of purity, be the better

practice. There is not the slightest doubt that, the ground being the

same, a stippled tint is more brilliant and rich than a mixed one; nor

is there doubt on the other hand that in some subjects such a tint is

impossible, and in others vulgar. We have above alluded to the power of

Mr. Hunt in water-color. The fruit-pieces of that artist are dependent

for their splendor chiefly on the juxtaposition of pure color for

compound tints, and we may safely affirm that the method is for such

purpose as exemplary as its results are admirable. Yet would you desire

to see the same means adopted in the execution of the fruit in Rubens'

Peace and War? Or again, would the lusciousness of tint obtained by

Rubens himself, adopting the same means on a grander scale in his

painting of flesh, have been conducive to the ends or grateful to the

feelings of the Bellinis or Albert Duerer? Each method is admirable as

applied by its master; and Hemling and Van Eyck are as much to be

followed in the mingling of color, as Rubens and Rembrandt in its

decomposition. If an award is absolutely to be made of superiority to

either system, we apprehend that the palm of mechanical skill must be

rendered to the latter, and higher dignity of moral purpose confessed in

the former; in proportion to the nobleness of the subject and the

thoughtfulness of its treatment, simplicity of color will be found more

desirable. Nor is the far higher perfection of drawing attained by the

earlier method to be forgotten. Gradations which are expressed by

delicate execution of the _darks_, and then aided by a few strokes of

recovered light, must always be more subtle and true than those which

are struck violently forth with opaque color; and it is to be remembered

that the handling of the brush, with the early Italian masters,

approached in its refinement to drawing with the point--the more

definitely, because the work was executed, as we have just seen, with

little change or play of local color. And--whatever discredit the looser

and bolder practice of later masters may have thrown on the hatched and

penciled execution of earlier periods--we maintain that this method,

necessary in fresco, and followed habitually in the first oil pictures,

has produced the noblest renderings of human expression in the whole

range of the examples of art: the best works of Raphael, all the

glorious portraiture of Ghirlandajo and Masaccio, all the mightiest

achievements of religious zeal in Francia, Perugino, Bellini, and such

others. Take as an example in fresco Masaccio's hasty sketch of himself

now in the Uffizii; and in oil, the two heads of monks by Perugino in

the Academy of Florence; and we shall search in vain for any work in

portraiture, executed in opaque colors, which could contend with them in

depth of expression or in fullness of _recorded_ life--not mere

imitative vitality, but chronicled action. And we have no hesitation in

asserting that where the object of the painter is expression, and the

picture is of a size admitting careful execution, the transparent

system, developed as it is found in Bellini or Perugino, will attain the

most profound and serene color, while it will never betray into

looseness or audacity. But if in the mind of the painter invention

prevail over veneration,--if his eye be creative rather than

penetrative, and his hand more powerful than patient--let him not be

confined to a system where light, once lost, is as irrecoverable as

time, and where all success depends on husbandry of resource. Do not

measure out to him his sunshine in inches of gesso; let him have the

power of striking it even out of darkness and the deep.

133. If human life were endless, or human spirit could fit its compass

to its will, it is possible a perfection might be reached which should

unite the majesty of invention with the meekness of love. We might

conceive that the thought, arrested by the readiest means, and at first

represented by the boldest symbols, might afterwards be set forth with

solemn and studied expression, and that the power might know no

weariness in clothing which had known no restraint in creating. But

dilation and contraction are for molluscs, not for men; we are not

ringed into flexibility like worms, nor gifted with opposite sight and

mutable color like chameleons. The mind which molds and summons cannot

at will transmute itself into that which clings and contemplates; nor is

it given to us at once to have the potter's power over the lump, the

fire's upon the clay, and the gilder's upon the porcelain. Even the

temper in which we behold these various displays of mind must be

different; and it admits of more than doubt whether, if the bold work of

rapid thought were afterwards in all its forms completed with

microscopic care, the result would be other than painful. In the shadow

at the foot of Tintoret's picture of the Temptation, lies a broken

rock-bowlder.[19] The dark ground has been first laid in, of color

nearly uniform; and over it a few, not more than fifteen or twenty,

strokes of the brush, loaded with a light gray, have quarried the solid

block of stone out of the vacancy. Probably ten minutes are the utmost

time which those strokes have occupied, though the rock is some four

feet square. It may safely be affirmed that no other method, however

laborious, could have reached the truth of form which results from the

very freedom with which the conception has been expressed; but it is a

truth of the simplest kind--the definition of a stone, rather than the

painting of one--and the lights are in some degree dead and cold--the

natural consequence of striking a mixed opaque pigment over a dark

ground. It would now be possible to treat this skeleton of a stone,

which could only have been knit together by Tintoret's rough temper,

with the care of a Fleming; to leave its fiercely-stricken lights

emanating from a golden ground, to gradate with the pen its ponderous

shadows, and in its completion, to dwell with endless and intricate

precision upon fibers of moss, bells of heath, blades of grass, and

films of lichen. Love like Van Eyck's would separate the fibers as if

they were stems of forest, twine the ribbed grass into fanciful

articulation, shadow forth capes and islands in the variegated film, and

hang the purple bells in counted chiming. A year might pass away, and

the work yet be incomplete; yet would the purpose of the great picture

have been better answered when all had been achieved? or if so, is it to

be wished that a year of the life of Tintoret (could such a thing be

conceived possible) had been so devoted?

134. We have put in as broad and extravagant a view as possible the

difference of object in the two systems of loaded and transparent light;

but it is to be remembered that both are in a certain degree compatible,

and that whatever exclusive arguments may be adduced in favor of the

loaded system apply only to the ultimate stages of the work. The

question is not whether the white ground be expedient in the

commencement--but how far it must of necessity be preserved to the

close? There cannot be the slightest doubt that, whatever the object,

whatever the power of the painter, the white ground, as intensely bright

and perfect as it can be obtained, should be the base of his

operations; that it should be preserved as long as possible, shown

wherever it is possible, and sacrificed only upon good cause. There are

indeed many objects which do not admit of imitation unless the hand have

power of superimposing and modeling the light; but there are others

which are equally unsusceptible of every rendering except that of

transparent color over the pure ground.

It appears from the evidence now produced that there are at least three

distinct systems traceable in the works of good colorists, each having

its own merit and its peculiar application. First, the white ground,

with careful chiaroscuro preparation, transparent color in the middle

tints, and opaque high lights only (Van Eyck). Secondly, white ground,

transparent brown preparation, and solid painting of lights above

(Rubens). Thirdly, white ground, brown preparation, and solid painting

both of lights and shadows above (Titian); on which last method,

indisputably the noblest, we have not insisted, as it has not yet been

examined by Mr. Eastlake. But in all these methods the white ground was

indispensable. It mattered not what transparent color were put over it:

red, frequently, we believe, by Titian, before the brown shadows--yellow

sometimes by Rubens:--whatever warm tone might be chosen for the key of

the composition, and for the support of its grays, depended for its own

value upon the white gesso beneath; nor can any system of color be

ultimately successful which excludes it. Noble arrangement, choice, and

relation of color, will indeed redeem and recommend the falsest system:

our own Reynolds, and recently Turner, furnish magnificent examples of

the power attainable by colorists of high caliber, after the light

ground is lost--(we cannot agree with Mr. Eastlake in thinking the

practice of painting first in white and black, with cool reds only,

"equivalent to its preservation"):--but in the works of both, diminished

splendor and sacrificed durability attest and punish the neglect of the

best resources of their art.

135. We have stated, though briefly, the major part of the data which

recent research has furnished respecting the early colorists; enough,

certainly, to remove all theoretical obstacles to the attainment of a

perfection equal to theirs. A few carefully conducted experiments, with

the efficient aids of modern chemistry, would probably put us in

possession of an amber varnish, if indeed this be necessary, at least

not inferior to that which they employed; the rest of their materials

are already in our hands, soliciting only such care in their preparation

as it ought, we think, to be no irksome duty to bestow. Yet we are not

sanguine of the immediate result. Mr. Eastlake has done his duty

excellently; but it is hardly to be expected that, after being long in

possession of means which we could apply to no profit, the knowledge

that the greatest men possessed no better, should at once urge to

emulation and gift with strength. We believe that some consciousness of

their true position already existed in the minds of many living artists;

example had at least been given by two of our Academicians, Mr. Mulready

and Mr. Etty, of a splendor based on the Flemish system, and consistent,

certainly, in the first case, with a high degree of permanence; while

the main direction of artistic and public sympathy to works of a

character altogether opposed to theirs, showed fatally how far more

perceptible and appreciable to our present instincts is the mechanism of

handling than the melody of hue. Indeed we firmly believe, that of all

powers of enjoyment or of judgment, that which is concerned with

nobility of color is least communicable: it is also perhaps the most

rare. The achievements of the draughtsman are met by the curiosity of

all mankind; the appeals of the dramatist answered by their sympathy;

the creatures of imagination acknowledged by their fear; but the voice

of the colorist has but the adder's listening, charm he never so wisely.

Men vie with each other, untaught, in pursuit of smoothness and

smallness--of Carlo Dolci and Van Huysum; their domestic hearts may

range them in faithful armies round the throne of Raphael; meditation

and labor may raise them to the level of the great mountain pedestal of

Buonarotti--"vestito gia de' raggi del pianeta, che mena dritto altrui

per ogni calle;" but neither time nor teaching will bestow the sense,

when it is not innate, of that wherein consists the power of Titian and

the great Venetians. There is proof of this in the various degrees of

cost and care devoted to the preservation of their works. The glass, the

curtain, and the cabinet guard the preciousness of what is petty, guide

curiosity to what is popular, invoke worship to what is mighty;--Raphael

has his palace--Michael his dome--respect protects and crowds traverse

the sacristy and the saloon; but the frescoes of Titian fade in the

solitudes of Padua, and the gesso falls crumbled from the flapping

canvas, as the sea-winds shake the Scuola di San Rocco.

136. But if, on the one hand, mere abstract excellence of color be thus

coldly regarded, it is equally certain that no work ever attains

enduring celebrity which is eminently deficient in this great respect.

Color cannot be indifferent; it is either beautiful and auxiliary to the

purposes of the picture, or false, froward, and opposite to them. Even

in the painting of Nature herself, this law is palpable; chiefly

glorious when color is a predominant element in her working, she is in

the next degree most impressive when it is withdrawn altogether: and

forms and scenes become sublime in the neutral twilight, which were

indifferent in the colors of noon. Much more is this the case in the

feebleness of imitation; all color is bad which is less than beautiful;

all is gross and intrusive which is not attractive; it repels where it

cannot inthrall, and destroys what it cannot assist. It is besides the

painter's peculiar craft; he who cannot color is no painter. It is not

painting to grind earths with oil and lay them smoothly on a surface. He

only is a painter who can melodize and harmonize _hue_--if he fail in

this, he is no member of the brotherhood. Let him etch, or draw, or

carve: better the unerring graver than the unfaithful pencil--better the

true sling and stone than the brightness of the unproved armor. And let

not even those who deal in the deeper magic, and feel in themselves the

loftier power, presume upon that power--nor believe in the reality of

any success unless that which has been deserved by deliberate, resolute,

successive operation. We would neither deny nor disguise the influences

of sensibility or of imagination, upon this, as upon every other

admirable quality of art;--we know that there is that in the very stroke

and fall of the pencil in a master's hand, which creates color with an

unconscious enchantment--we know that there is a brilliancy which

springs from the joy of the painter's heart--a gloom which sympathizes

with its seriousness--a power correlative with its will; but these are

all vain unless they be ruled by a seemly caution--a manly

moderation--an indivertible foresight. This we think the one great

conclusion to be received from the work we have been examining, that all

power is vain--all invention vain--all enthusiasm vain--all devotion

even, and fidelity vain, unless these are guided by such severe and

exact law as we see take place in the development of every great natural

glory; and, even in the full glow of their bright and burning operation,

sealed by the cold, majestic, deep-graven impress of the signet on the

right hand of Time.

SAMUEL PROUT.[20]

137. The first pages in the histories of artists, worthy the name, are

generally alike; records of boyish resistance to every scheme, parental

or tutorial, at variance with the ruling desire and bent of the opening

mind. It is so rare an accident that the love of drawing should be

noticed and fostered in the child, that we are hardly entitled to form

any conclusions respecting the probable result of an indulgent

foresight; it is enough to admire the strength of will which usually

accompanies every noble intellectual gift, and to believe that, in early

life, direct resistance is better than inefficient guidance. Samuel

Prout--with how many rich and picturesque imaginations is the name now

associated!--was born at Plymouth, September 17th, 1783, and intended by

his father for his own profession; but although the delicate health of

the child might have appeared likely to induce a languid acquiescence in

his parent's wish, the love of drawing occupied every leisure hour, and

at last trespassed upon every other occupation. Reproofs were

affectionately repeated, and every effort made to dissuade the boy from

what was considered an "idle amusement," but it was soon discovered that

opposition was unavailing, and the attachment too strong to be checked.

It might perhaps have been otherwise, but for some rays of encouragement

received from the observant kindness of his first schoolmaster. To watch

the direction of the little hand when it wandered from its task, to draw

the culprit to him with a smile instead of a reproof, to set him on the

high stool beside his desk, and stimulate him, by the loan of his own

pen, to a more patient and elaborate study of the child's usual subject,

his favorite cat, was a modification of preceptorial care as easy as it

was wise; but it perhaps had more influence on the mind and after-life

of the boy than all the rest of his education together.

138. Such happy though rare interludes in school-hours, and occasional

attempts at home, usually from the carts and horses which stopped at a

public-house opposite, began the studentship of the young artist before

he had quitted his pinafore. An unhappy accident which happened about

the same time, and which farther enfeebled his health, rendered it still

less advisable to interfere with his beloved occupation. We have heard

the painter express, with a melancholy smile, the distinct recollection

remaining with him to this day, of a burning autumn morning, on which he

had sallied forth alone, himself some four autumns old, armed with a

hooked stick, to gather nuts. Unrestrainable alike with pencil or crook,

he was found by a farmer, towards the close of the day, lying moaning

under a hedge, prostrated by a sunstroke, and was brought home

insensible. From that day forward he was subject to attacks of violent

pain in the head, recurring at short intervals; and until thirty years

after marriage not a week passed without one or two days of absolute

confinement to his room or to his bed. "Up to this hour," we may perhaps

be permitted to use his own touching words, "I have to endure a great

fight of afflictions; can I therefore be sufficiently thankful for the

merciful gift of a buoyant spirit?"

139. That buoyancy of spirit--one of the brightest and most marked

elements of his character--never failed to sustain him between the

recurrences even of his most acute suffering; and the pursuit of his

most beloved Art became every year more determined and independent. The

first beginnings in landscape study were made in happy truant

excursions, now fondly remembered, with the painter Haydon, then also a

youth. This companionship was probably rather cemented by the energy

than the delicacy of Haydon's sympathies. The two boys were directly

opposed in their habits of application and modes of study. Prout

unremitting in diligence, patient in observation, devoted in copying

what he loved in nature, never working except with his model before

him; Haydon restless, ambitious, and fiery; exceedingly imaginative,

never captivated with simple truth, nor using his pencil on the spot,

but trusting always to his powers of memory. The fates of the two youths

were inevitably fixed by their opposite characters. The humble student

became the originator of a new School of Art, and one of the most

popular painters of his age. The self-trust of the wanderer in the

wilderness of his fancy betrayed him into the extravagances, and

deserted him in the suffering, with which his name must remain sadly,

but not unjustly, associated.

140. There was, however, little in the sketches made by Prout at this

period to indicate the presence of dormant power. Common prints, at a

period when engraving was in the lowest state of decline, were the only

guides which the youth could obtain; and his style, in endeavoring to

copy these, became cramped and mannered; but the unremitting sketching

from nature saved him. Whole days, from dawn till night, were devoted to

the study of the peculiar objects of his early interest, the ivy-mantled

bridges, mossy water-mills, and rock-built cottages, which characterize

the valley scenery of Devon. In spite of every disadvantage, the strong

love of truth, and the instinctive perception of the chief points of

shade and characters of form on which his favorite effects mainly

depended, enabled him not only to obtain an accumulated store of

memoranda, afterwards valuable, but to publish several elementary works

which obtained extensive and deserved circulation, and to which many

artists, now high in reputation, have kindly and frankly confessed their

early obligations.

141. At that period the art of water-color drawing was little understood

at Plymouth, and practiced only by Payne, then an engineer in the

citadel. Though mannered in the extreme, his works obtained reputation;

for the best drawings of the period were feeble both in color and

execution, with commonplace light and shadow, a dark foreground being a

_rule absolute_, as may be seen in several of Turner's first

productions. But Turner was destined to annihilate such rules, breaking

through and scattering them with an expansive force commensurate with

the rigidity of former restraint. It happened "fortunately," as it is

said,--naturally and deservedly, as it _should_ be said,--that Prout was

at this period removed from the narrow sphere of his first efforts to

one in which he could share in, and take advantage of, every progressive

movement.

142. The most respectable of the Plymouth amateurs was the Rev. Dr.

Bidlake, who was ever kind in his encouragement of the young painter,

and with whom many delightful excursions were made. At his house, Mr.

Britton, the antiquarian, happening to see some of the cottages

sketches, and being pleased with them, proposed that Prout should

accompany him into Cornwall, in order to aid him in collecting materials

for his "Beauties of England and Wales." This was the painter's first

recognized artistical employment, as well as the occasion of a

friendship ever gratefully and fondly remembered. On Mr. Britton's

return to London, after sending to him a portfolio of drawings, which

were almost the first to create a sensation with lovers of Art, Mr.

Prout received so many offers of encouragement, if he would consent to

reside in London, as to induce him to take this important step--the

first towards being established as an artist.

143. The immediate effect of this change of position was what might

easily have been foretold, upon a mind naturally sensitive, diffident,

and enthusiastic. It was a heavy discouragement. The youth felt that he

had much to eradicate and more to learn, and hardly knew at first how to

avail himself of the advantages presented by the study of the works of

Turner, Girtin, Cousins, and others. But he had resolution and ambition

as well as modesty; he knew that

"The noblest honors of the mind

On rigid terms descend."

He had every inducement to begin the race, in the clearer guidance and

nobler ends which the very works that had disheartened him afforded and

pointed out; and the first firm and certain step was made. His range of

subject was as yet undetermined, and was likely at one time to have been

very different from that in which he has since obtained pre-eminence so

confessed. Among the picturesque material of his native place, the forms

of its shipping had not been neglected, though there was probably less

in the order of Plymouth dockyard to catch the eye of the boy, always

determined in its preference of purely picturesque arrangements, than

might have been afforded by the meanest fishing hamlet. But a strong and

lasting impression was made upon him by the wreck of the "Dutton" East

Indiaman on the rocks under the citadel; the crew were saved by the

personal courage and devotion of Sir Edward Pellew, afterwards Lord

Exmouth. The wreck held together for many hours under the cliff, rolling

to and fro as the surges struck her. Haydon and Prout sat on the crags

together and watched her vanish fragment by fragment into the gnashing

foam. Both were equally awe-struck at the time; both, on the morrow,

resolved to paint their first pictures; both failed; but Haydon, always

incapable of acknowledging and remaining loyal to the majesty of what he

had seen, lost himself in vulgar thunder and lightning. Prout struggled

to some resemblance of the actual scene, and the effect upon his mind

was never effaced.

144. At the time of his first residence in London, he painted more

marines than anything else. But other work was in store for him. About

the year 1818, his health, which as we have seen had never been

vigorous, showed signs of increasing weakness, and a short trial of

continental air was recommended. The route by Havre to Rouen was chosen,

and Prout found himself, for the first time, in the grotesque labyrinths

of the Norman streets. There are few minds so apathetic as to receive no

impulse of new delight from their first acquaintance with continental

scenery and architecture; and Rouen was, of all the cities of France,

the richest in those objects with which the painter's mind had the

profoundest sympathy. It was other then than it is now; revolutionary

fury had indeed spent itself upon many of its noblest monuments, but the

interference of modern restoration or improvement was unknown. Better

the unloosed rage of the fiend than the scrabble of self-complacent

idiocy. The facade of the cathedral was as yet unencumbered by the

blocks of new stonework, never to be carved, by which it is now defaced;

the Church of St. Nicholas existed, (the last fragments of the niches of

its gateway were seen by the writer dashed upon the pavement in 1840 to

make room for the new "Hotel St. Nicholas"); the Gothic turret had not

vanished from the angle of the Place de la Pucelle, the Palais de

Justice remained in its gray antiquity, and the Norman houses still

lifted their fantastic ridges of gable along the busy quay (now fronted

by as formal a range of hotels and offices as that of the West Cliff of

Brighton). All was at unity with itself, and the city lay under its

guarding hills, one labyrinth of delight, its gray and fretted towers,

misty in their magnificence of height, letting the sky like blue enamel

through the foiled spaces of their crowns of open work; the walls and

gates of its countless churches wardered by saintly groups of solemn

statuary, clasped about by wandering stems of sculptured leafage, and

crowned by fretted niche and fairy pediment--meshed like gossamer with

inextricable tracery: many a quaint monument of past times standing to

tell its far-off tale in the place from which it has since perished--in

the midst of the throng and murmur of those shadowy streets--all grim

with jutting props of ebon woodwork, lightened only here and there by a

sunbeam glancing down from the scaly backs, and points, and pyramids of

the Norman roofs, or carried out of its narrow range by the gay progress

of some snowy cap or scarlet camisole. The painter's vocation was fixed

from that hour. The first effect upon his mind was irrepressible

enthusiasm, with a strong feeling of a new-born attachment to Art, in a

new world of exceeding interest. Previous impressions were presently

obliterated, and the old embankments of fancy gave way to the force of

overwhelming anticipations, forming another and a wider channel for its

future course.

145. From this time excursions were continually made to the continent,

and every corner of France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy

ransacked for its fragments of carved stone. The enthusiasm of the

painter was greater than his ambition, and the strict limitation of his

aim to the rendering of architectural character permitted him to adopt a

simple and consistent method of execution, from which he has rarely

departed. It was adapted in the first instance to the necessities of the

moldering and mystic character of Northern Gothic; and though

impressions received afterwards in Italy, more especially at Venice,

have retained as strong a hold upon the painter's mind as those of his

earlier excursions, his methods of drawing have always been influenced

by the predilections first awakened. How far his love of the

picturesque, already alluded to, was reconcilable with an entire

appreciation of the highest characters of Italian architecture we do not

pause to inquire; but this we may assert, without hesitation, that the

picturesque _elements_ of that architecture were unknown until he

developed them, and that since Gentile Bellini, no one had regarded the

palaces of Venice with so affectionate an understanding of the purpose

and expression of their wealth of detail. In this respect the City of

the Sea has been, and remains, peculiarly his own. There is, probably,

no single piazza nor sea-paved street from St. Georgio in Aliga to the

Arsenal, of which Prout has not in order drawn every fragment of

pictorial material. Probably not a pillar in Venice but occurs in some

one of his innumerable studies; while the peculiarly beautiful and

varied arrangements under which he has treated the angle formed by St.

Mark's Church with the Doge's palace, have not only made every

successful drawing of those buildings by any other hand look like

plagiarism, but have added (and what is this but indeed to paint the

lily!) another charm to the spot itself.

146. This exquisite dexterity of arrangement has always been one of his

leading characteristics as an artist. Notwithstanding the deserved

popularity of his works, his greatness in composition remains altogether

unappreciated. Many modern works exhibit greater pretense at

arrangement, and a more palpable system; masses of well-concentrated

light or points of sudden and dextrous color are expedients in the works

of our second-rate artists as attractive as they are commonplace. But

the moving and natural crowd, the decomposing composition, the frank and

unforced, but marvelously intricate grouping, the breadth of

inartificial and unexaggerated shadow, these are merits of an order only

the more elevated because unobtrusive. Nor is his system of color less

admirable. It is a quality from which the character of his subjects

naturally withdraws much of his attention, and of which sometimes that

character precludes any high attainment; but, nevertheless, the truest

and happiest association of hues in sun and shade to be found in modern

water-color art,[21] (excepting only the studies of Hunt and De Wint)

will be found in portions of Prout's more important works.

147. Of his _peculiar_ powers we need hardly speak; it would be

difficult to conceive the circle of their influence widened. There is

not a landscape of recent times in which the treatment of the

architectural features has not been affected, however unconsciously, by

principles which were first developed by Prout. Of those principles the

most original was his familiarization of the sentiment, while he

elevated the subject, of the picturesque. That character had been

sought, before his time, either in solitude or in rusticity; it was

supposed to belong only to the savageness of the desert or the

simplicity of the hamlet; it lurked beneath the brows of rocks and the

eaves of cottages; to seek it in a city would have been deemed an

extravagance, to raise it to the height of a cathedral, an heresy. Prout

did both, and both simultaneously; he found and proved in the busy

shadows and sculptured gables of the Continental street sources of

picturesque delight as rich and as interesting as those which had been

sought amidst the darkness of thickets and the eminence of rocks; and he

contrasted with the familiar circumstances of urban life, the majesty

and the aerial elevation of the most noble architecture, expressing its

details in more splendid accumulation, and with a more patient love than

ever had been reached or manifested before his time by any artist who

introduced such subjects as members of a general composition. He thus

became the interpreter of a great period of the world's history, of that

in which age and neglect had cast the interest of ruin over the noblest

ecclesiastical structures of Europe, and in which there had been born at

their feet a generation other in its feelings and thoughts than that to

which they owed their existence, a generation which understood not their

meaning, and regarded not their beauty, and which yet had a character of

its own, full of vigor, animation, and originality, which rendered the

grotesque association of the circumstances of its ordinary and active

life with the solemn memorialism of the elder building, one which rather

pleased by the strangeness than pained by the violence of its contrast.

148. That generation is passing away, and another dynasty is putting

forth its character and its laws. Care and observance, more mischievous

in their misdirection than indifference or scorn, have in many places

given the mediaeval relics the aspect and associations of a kind of

cabinet preservation, instead of that air of majestic independence, or

patient and stern endurance, with which they frowned down the insult of

the regardless crowd. Nominal restoration has done tenfold worse, and

has hopelessly destroyed what time, and storm, and anarchy, and impiety

had spared. The picturesque material of a lower kind is fast

departing--and forever. There is not, so far as we know, one city scene

in central Europe which has not suffered from some jarring point of

modernization. The railroad and the iron wheel have done their work, and

the characters of Venice, Florence, and Rouen are yielding day by day

to a lifeless extension of those of Paris and Birmingham. A few lusters

more, and the modernization will be complete: the archaeologist may still

find work among the wrecks of beauty, and here and there a solitary

fragment of the old cities may exist by toleration, or rise strangely

before the workmen who dig the new foundations, left like some isolated

and tottering rock in the midst of sweeping sea. But the life of the

middle ages is dying from their embers, and the warm mingling of the

past and present will soon be forever dissolved. The works of Prout, and

of those who have followed in his footsteps, will become memorials the

most precious of the things that have been; to their technical value,

however great, will be added the far higher interest of faithful and

fond records of a strange and unreturning era of history. May he long be

spared to us, and enabled to continue the noble series, conscious of a

purpose and function worthy of being followed with all the zeal of even

his most ardent and affectionate mind. A time will come when that zeal

will be understood, and his works will be cherished with a melancholy

gratitude when the pillars of Venice shall lie moldering in the salt

shallows of her sea, and the stones of the goodly towers of Rouen have

become ballast for the barges of the Seine.

SIR JOSHUA AND HOLBEIN.[22]

149. Long ago discarded from our National Gallery, with the contempt

logically due to national or English pictures,--lost to sight and memory

for many a year in the Ogygian seclusions of Marlborough House--there

have reappeared at last, in more honorable exile at Kensington, two

great pictures by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Two, with others; but these alone

worth many an entanglement among the cross-roads of the West, to see for

half an hour by spring sunshine:--the _Holy Family_, and the _Graces_,

side by side now in the principal room. Great, as ever was work wrought

by man. In placid strength, and subtlest science, unsurpassed;--in sweet

felicity, incomparable.

150. If you truly want to know what good work of painter's hand is,

study those two pictures from side to side, and miss no inch of them

(you will hardly, eventually, be inclined to miss one): in some respects

there is no execution like it; none so open in the magic. For the work

of other great men is hidden in its wonderfulness--you cannot see how it

was done. But in Sir Joshua's there is no mystery: it is all amazement.

No question but that the touch was so laid; only that it _could_ have

been so laid, is a marvel forever. So also there is no painting so

majestic in sweetness. He is lily-sceptered: his power blossoms, but

burdens not. All other men of equal dignity paint more slowly; all

others of equal force paint less lightly. Tintoret lays his line like a

king marking the boundaries of conquered lands; but Sir Joshua leaves it

as a summer wind its trace on a lake; he could have painted on a silken

veil, where it fell free, and not bent it.

151. Such at least is his touch when it is life that he paints: for

things lifeless he has a severer hand. If you examine that picture of

the _Graces_ you will find it reverses all the ordinary ideas of

expedient treatment. By other men flesh is firmly painted, but

accessories lightly. Sir Joshua paints accessories firmly,[23] flesh

lightly;--nay, flesh not at all, but spirit. The wreath of flowers he

feels to be material; and gleam by gleam strikes fearlessly the silver

and violet leaves out of the darkness. But the three maidens are less

substantial than rose petals. No flushed nor frosted tissue that ever

faded in night wind is so tender as they; no hue may reach, no line

measure, what is in them so gracious and so fair. Let the hand move

softly--itself as a spirit; for this is Life, of which it touches the

imagery.

152. "And yet----" Yes: you do well to pause. There is a "yet" to be

thought of. I did not bring you to these pictures to see wonderful work

merely, or womanly beauty merely. I brought you chiefly to look at that

Madonna, believing that you might remember other Madonnas, unlike her;

and might think it desirable to consider wherein the difference

lay:--other Madonnas not by Sir Joshua, who painted Madonnas but seldom.

Who perhaps, if truth must be told, painted them never: for surely this

dearest pet of an English girl, with the little curl of lovely hair

under her ear, is _not_ one.

153. Why did not Sir Joshua--or could not--or would not Sir

Joshua--paint Madonnas? neither he, nor his great rival-friend

Gainsborough? Both of them painters of women, such as since Giorgione

and Correggio had not been; both painters of men, such as had not been

since Titian. How is it that these English friends can so brightly paint

that particular order of humanity which we call "gentlemen and ladies,"

but neither heroes, nor saints, nor angels? Can it be because they were

both country-bred boys, and for ever after strangely sensitive to

courtliness? Why, Giotto also was a country-bred boy. Allegri's native

Correggio, Titian's Cadore, were but hill villages; yet these men

painted, not the court, nor the drawing-room, but the Earth: and not a

little of Heaven besides: while our good Sir Joshua never trusts himself

outside the park palings. He could not even have drawn the strawberry

girl, unless she had got through a gap in them--or rather, I think, she

must have been let in at the porter's lodge, for her strawberries are in

a pottle, ready for the ladies at the Hall. Giorgione would have set

them, wild and fragrant, among their leaves, in her hand. Between his

fairness, and Sir Joshua's May-fairness, there is a strange, impassable

limit--as of the white reef that in Pacific isles encircles their inner

lakelets, and shuts them from the surf and sound of sea. Clear and calm

they rest, reflecting fringed shadows of the palm-trees, and the passing

of fretted clouds across their own sweet circle of blue sky. But beyond,

and round and round their coral bar, lies the blue of sea and heaven

together--blue of eternal deep.

154. You will find it a pregnant question, if you follow it forth, and

leading to many others, not trivial, Why it is, that in Sir Joshua's

girl, or Gainsborough's, we always think first of the Ladyhood; but in

Giotto's, of the Womanhood? Why, in Sir Joshua's hero, or Vandyck's, it

is always the Prince or the Sir whom we see first; but in Titian's, the

man.

Not that Titian's gentlemen are less finished than Sir Joshua's; but

their gentlemanliness[24] is not the principal thing about them; their

manhood absorbs, conquers, wears it as a despised thing. Nor--and this

is another stern ground of separation--will Titian make a gentleman of

everyone he paints. He will make him so if he is so, not otherwise; and

this not merely in general servitude to truth, but because in his

sympathy with deeper humanity, the courtier is not more interesting to

him than anyone else. "You have learned to dance and fence; you can

speak with clearness, and think with precision; your hands are small,

your senses acute, and your features well-shaped. Yes: I see all this in

you, and will do it justice. You shall stand as none but a well-bred man

could stand; and your fingers shall fall on the sword-hilt as no fingers

could but those that knew the grasp of it. But for the rest, this grisly

fisherman, with rusty cheek and rope-frayed hand, is a man as well as

you, and might possibly make several of you, if souls were divisible.

His bronze color is quite as interesting to me, Titian, as your

paleness, and his hoary spray of stormy hair takes the light as well as

your waving curls. Him also I will paint, with such picturesqueness as

he may have; yet not putting the picturesqueness first in him, as in you

I have not put the gentlemanliness first. In him I see a strong human

creature, contending with all hardship: in you also a human creature,

uncontending, and possibly not strong. Contention or strength, weakness

or picturesqueness, and all other such accidents in either, shall have

due place. But the immortality and miracle of you--this clay that burns,

this color that changes--are in truth the awful things in both: these

shall be first painted--and last."

155. With which question respecting treatment of character we have to

connect also this further one: How is it that the attempts of so great

painters as Reynolds and Gainsborough are, beyond portraiture, limited

almost like children's? No domestic drama--no history--no noble natural

scenes, far less any religious subject:--only market carts; girls with

pigs; woodmen going home to supper; watering-places; gray cart-horses in

fields, and such like. Reynolds, indeed, once or twice touched higher

themes,--"among the chords his fingers laid," and recoiled: wisely; for,

strange to say, his very sensibility deserts him when he leaves his

courtly quiet. The horror of the subjects he chose (Cardinal Beaufort

and Ugolino) showed inherent apathy: had he felt deeply, he would not

have sought for this strongest possible excitement of feeling,--would

not willingly have dwelt on the worst conditions of despair--the despair

of the ignoble. His religious subjects are conceived even with less care

than these. Beautiful as it is, this Holy Family by which we stand has

neither dignity nor sacredness, other than those which attach to every

group of gentle mother and ruddy babe; while his Faiths, Charities, or

other well-ordered and emblem-fitted virtues are even less lovely than

his ordinary portraits of women.

It was a faultful temper, which, having so mighty a power of realization

at command, never became so much interested in any fact of human history

as to spend one touch of heartfelt skill upon it;--which, yielding

momentarily to indolent imagination, ended, at best, in a Puck, or a

Thais; a Mercury as Thief, or a Cupid as Linkboy. How wide the interval

between this gently trivial humor, guided by the wave of a feather, or

arrested by the enchantment of a smile,--and the habitual dwelling of

the thoughts of the great Greeks and Florentines among the beings and

the interests of the eternal world!

156. In some degree it may indeed be true that the modesty and sense of

the English painters are the causes of their simple practice. All that

they did, they did well, and attempted nothing over which conquest was

doubtful. They knew they could paint men and women: it did not follow

that they could paint angels. Their own gifts never appeared to them so

great as to call for serious question as to the use to be made of them.

"They could mix colors and catch likeness--yes; but were they therefore

able to teach religion, or reform the world? To support themselves

honorably, pass the hours of life happily, please their friends, and

leave no enemies, was not this all that duty could require, or prudence

recommend? Their own art was, it seemed, difficult enough to employ all

their genius: was it reasonable to hope also to be poets or theologians?

Such men had, indeed, existed; but the age of miracles and prophets was

long past; nor, because they could seize the trick of an expression, or

the turn of a head, had they any right to think themselves able to

conceive heroes with Homer, or gods with Michael Angelo."

157. Such was, in the main, their feeling: wise, modest, unenvious, and

unambitious. Meaner men, their contemporaries or successors, raved of

high art with incoherent passion; arrogated to themselves an equality

with the masters of elder time, and declaimed against the degenerate

tastes of a public which acknowledged not the return of the Heraclidae.

But the two great--the two only painters of their age--happy in a

reputation founded as deeply in the heart as in the judgment of mankind,

demanded no higher function than that of soothing the domestic

affections; and achieved for themselves at last an immortality not the

less noble, because in their lifetime they had concerned themselves less

to claim it than to bestow.

158. Yet, while we acknowledge the discretion and simple-heartedness of

these men, honoring them for both: and the more when we compare their

tranquil powers with the hot egotism and hollow ambition of their

inferiors: we have to remember, on the other hand, that the measure they

thus set to their aims was, if a just, yet a narrow one; that amiable

discretion is not the highest virtue; nor to please the frivolous, the

best success. There is probably some strange weakness in the painter,

and some fatal error in the age, when in thinking over the examples of

their greatest work, for some type of culminating loveliness or

veracity, we remember no expression either of religion or heroism, and

instead of reverently naming a Madonna di San Sisto, can only whisper,

modestly, "Mrs. Pelham feeding chickens."

159. The nature of the fault, so far as it exists in the painters

themselves, may perhaps best be discerned by comparing them with a man

who went not far beyond them in his general range of effort, but who did

all his work in a wholly different temper--Hans Holbein.

The first great difference between them is of course in completeness of

execution. Sir Joshua's and Gainsborough's work, at its best, is only

magnificent sketching; giving indeed, in places, a perfection of result

unattainable by other methods, and possessing always a charm of grace

and power exclusively its own; yet, in its slightness addressing itself,

purposefully, to the casual glance, and common thought--eager to arrest

the passer-by, but careless to detain him; or detaining him, if at all,

by an unexplained enchantment, not by continuance of teaching, or

development of idea. But the work of Holbein is true and thorough;

accomplished, in the highest as the most literal sense, with a calm

entireness of unaffected resolution, which sacrifices nothing, forgets

nothing, and fears nothing.

160. In the portrait of the Hausmann George Gyzen,[25] every accessory

is perfect with a fine perfection: the carnations in the glass vase by

his side--the ball of gold, chased with blue enamel, suspended on the

wall--the books--the steelyard--the papers on the table, the seal-ring,

with its quartered bearings,--all intensely there, and there in beauty

of which no one could have dreamed that even flowers or gold were

capable, far less parchment or steel. But every change of shade is felt,

every rich and rubied line of petal followed; every subdued gleam in the

soft blue of the enamel and bending of the gold touched with a hand

whose patience of regard creates rather than paints. The jewel itself

was not so precious as the rays of enduring light which form it, and

flash from it, beneath that errorless hand. The man himself, what he

was--not more; but to all conceivable proof of sight--in all aspect of

life or thought--not less. He sits alone in his accustomed room, his

common work laid out before him; he is conscious of no presence, assumes

no dignity, bears no sudden or superficial look of care or interest,

lives only as he lived--but forever.

161. The time occupied in painting this portrait was probably twenty

times greater than Sir Joshua ever spent on a single picture, however

large. The result is, to the general spectator, less attractive. In some

qualities of force and grace it is absolutely inferior. But it is

inexhaustible. Every detail of it wins, retains, rewards the attention

with a continually increasing sense of wonderfulness. It is also wholly

true. So far as it reaches, it contains the absolute facts of color,

form, and character, rendered with an unaccusable faithfulness. There is

no question respecting things which it is best worth while to know, or

things which it is unnecessary to state, or which might be overlooked

with advantage. What of this man and his house were visible to Holbein,

are visible to us: we may despise if we will; deny or doubt, we shall

not; if we care to know anything concerning them, great or small, so

much as may by the eye be known is forever knowable, reliable,

indisputable.

162. Respecting the advantage, or the contrary, of so great earnestness

in drawing a portrait of an uncelebrated person, we raise at present no

debate: I only wish the reader to note this quality of earnestness, as

entirely separating Holbein from Sir Joshua,--raising him into another

sphere of intellect. For here is no question of mere difference in style

or in power, none of minuteness or largeness. It is a question of

Entireness. Holbein is _complete_ in intellect: what he sees, he sees

with his whole soul: what he paints, he paints with his whole might. Sir

Joshua sees partially, slightly, tenderly--catches the flying lights of

things, the momentary glooms: paints also partially, tenderly, never

with half his strength; content with uncertain visions, insecure

delights; the truth not precious nor significant to him, only pleasing;

falsehood also pleasurable, even useful on occasion--must, however, be

discreetly touched, just enough to make all men noble, all women lovely:

"we do not need this flattery often, most of those we know being such;

and it is a pleasant world, and with diligence--for nothing can be done

without diligence--every day till four" (says Sir Joshua)--"a painter's

is a happy life."

Yes: and the Isis; with her swans, and shadows of Windsor Forest, is a

sweet stream, touching her shores softly. The Rhine at Basle is of

another temper, stern and deep, as strong, however bright its face:

winding far through the solemn plain, beneath the slopes of Jura, tufted

and steep: sweeping away into its regardless calm of current the waves

of that little brook of St. Jakob, that bathe the Swiss Thermopylae;[26]

the low village nestling beneath a little bank of sloping fields--its

spire seen white against the deep blue shadows of the Jura pines.

163. Gazing on that scene day by day, Holbein went his own way, with the

earnestness and silent swell of the strong river--not unconscious of the

awe, nor of the sanctities of his life. The snows of the eternal Alps

giving forth their strength to it; the blood of the St. Jakob brook

poured into it as it passes by--not in vain. He also could feel his

strength coming from white snows far off in heaven. He also bore upon

him the purple stain of the earth sorrow. A grave man, knowing what

steps of men keep truest time to the chanting of Death. Having grave

friends also;--the same singing heard far off, it seems to me, or,

perhaps, even low in the room, by that family of Sir Thomas More; or

mingling with the hum of bees in the meadows outside the towered wall of

Basle; or making the words of the book more tunable, which meditative

Erasmus looks upon. Nay, that same soft Death-music is on the lips even

of Holbein's Madonna. Who, among many, is the Virgin you had best

compare with the one before whose image we have stood so long.

Holbein's is at Dresden, companioned by the Madonna di San Sisto; but

both are visible enough to you here, for, by a strange coincidence, they

are (at least so far as I know) the only two great pictures in the world

which have been faultlessly engraved.

164. The received tradition respecting the Holbein Madonna is beautiful;

and I believe the interpretation to be true. A father and mother have

prayed to her for the life of their sick child. She appears to them, her

own Christ in her arms. She puts down her Christ beside them--takes

their child into her arms instead. It lies down upon her bosom, and

stretches its hand to its father and mother, saying farewell.

This interpretation of the picture has been doubted, as nearly all the

most precious truths of pictures have been doubted, and forgotten. But

even supposing it erroneous, the design is not less characteristic of

Holbein. For that there are signs of suffering on the features of the

child in the arms of the Virgin, is beyond question; and if this child

be intended for the Christ, it would not be doubtful to my mind, that,

of the two--Raphael and Holbein--the latter had given the truest aspect

and deepest reading of the early life of the Redeemer. Raphael sought to

express His power only; but Holbein His labor and sorrow.

165. There are two other pictures which you should remember together

with this (attributed, indeed, but with no semblance of probability, to

the elder Holbein, none of whose work, preserved at Basle, or elsewhere,

approaches in the slightest degree to their power), the St. Barbara and

St. Elizabeth.[27] I do not know among the pictures of the great sacred

schools any at once so powerful, so simple, so pathetically expressive

of the need of the heart that conceived them. Not ascetic, nor quaint,

nor feverishly or fondly passionate, nor wrapt in withdrawn solemnities

of thought. Only entirely true--entirely pure. No depth of glowing

heaven beyond them--but the clear sharp sweetness of the northern air:

no splendor of rich color, striving to adorn them with better brightness

than of the day: a gray glory, as of moonlight without mist, dwelling on

face and fold of dress;--all faultless-fair. Creatures they are, humble

by nature, not by self-condemnation; merciful by habit, not by tearful

impulse; lofty without consciousness; gentle without weakness; wholly in

this present world, doing its work calmly; beautiful with all that

holiest life can reach--yet already freed from all that holiest death

can cast away.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] A review of the following-books:--

1. "Materials for a History of Oil-Painting." By Charles Lock Eastlake,

R.A., F.R.S., F.S.A., Secretary to the Royal Commission for promoting

the Fine Arts in Connection with the Rebuilding of the Houses of

Parliament, etc., etc. London, 1847.

2. "Theophili, qui et Rugerus, Presbyteri et Monachi, Libri III. de

Diversis Artibus; seu Diversarum Artium Schedula. (An Essay upon Various

Arts, in Three Books, by Theophilus, called also Rugerus, Priest and

Monk, forming an Encyclopaedia of Christian Art of the Eleventh Century."

Translated, with Notes, by Robert Hendrie.) London, 1847.

[14] "A Critical Essay on Oil-Painting," London, 1781.

[15] "The mediaeval painters were so accustomed to this appearance in

varnishes, and considered it so indispensable, that they even supplied

the tint when it did not exist. Thus Cardanus observes that when white

of eggs was used as a varnish, it was customary to tinge it with red

lead."--_Eastlake_, p. 270.

[16] "Si je dis tant de mal de la peinture flamande, ce n'est pas

qu'elle soit entierement mauvaise, mais elle veut _rendre avec

perfection_ tant de choses, dont une seule suffirait par son importance,

qu'elle n'en fait aucune d'une maniere satisfaisante." This opinion of

M. Angelo's is preserved by Francisco de Ollanda, quoted by Comte

Raczynski, "Les Arts en Portugal," Paris, 1846.

[17] "Arte de Pintura." Sevilla, 1649.

[18] The preparations of Hemling, at Bruges, we imagine to have been in

water-color, and perhaps the picture was carried to some degree of

completion in this material. Van Mander observes that Van Eyck's dead

colorings "were cleaner and sharper than the finished works of other

painters."

[19] [See _Stones of Venice_, vol. iii. Venetian Index, _s._ Rocco,

Scuola di San, Sec. 20, _Temptation_.--ED. 1899.]

[20] _Art Journal_, March 1849.--ED.

[21] We do not mean under this term to include the drawings of professed

oil-painters, as of Stothard or Turner.

[22] _Cornhill Magazine_, March, 1860.--ED.

[23] As showing gigantic power of hand, joined with utmost accuracy and

rapidity, the folds of drapery under the breast of the Virgin are,

perhaps, as marvelous a piece of work as could be found in any picture,

of whatever time or master.

[24] The reader must observe that I use the word here in a limited

sense, as meaning only the effect of careful education, good society,

and refined habits of life, on average temper and character. Of deep and

true gentlemanliness--based as it is on intense sensibility and

sincerity, perfected by courage, and other qualities of race; as well as

of that union of insensibility with cunning, which is the essence of

vulgarity, I shall have to speak at length in another place.

[25] Museum of Berlin.

[26] Of 1,200 Swiss, who fought by that brookside, ten only returned.

The battle checked the attack of the French, led by Louis XI. (then

Dauphin) in 1444; and was the first of the great series of efforts and

victories which were closed at Nancy by the death of Charles of

Burgundy.

[27] Pinacothek of Munich.

* * * * *

ART.

II.

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

ITS PRINCIPLES, AND TURNER.

(_Pamphlet_, 1851.)

ITS THREE COLORS.

(_Nineteenth Century, Nov.-Dec. 1878._)

* * * * *

PREFACE.

_Eight years ago, in the close of the first volume of "Modern Painters,"

I ventured to give the following advice to the young artists of

England:--_

_"They should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her

laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to

penetrate her meaning; rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and

scorning nothing." Advice which, whether bad or good, involved infinite

labor and humiliation in the following it, and was therefore, for the

most part, rejected._

_It has, however, at last been carried out, to the very letter, by a

group of men who, for their reward, have been assailed with the most

scurrilous abuse which I ever recollect seeing issue from the public

press. I have, therefore, thought it due to them to contradict the

directly false statements which have been made respecting their works;

and to point out the kind of merit which, however deficient in some

respects, those works possess beyond the possibility of dispute._

_Denmark Hill, August, 1851._

* * * * *

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.[28]

166. It may be proved, with much certainty, that God intends no man to

live in this world without working: but it seems to me no less evident

that He intends every man to be happy in his work. It is written, "in

the sweat of thy brow," but it was never written, "in the breaking of

thine heart," thou shalt eat bread: and I find that, as on the one hand,

infinite misery is caused by idle people, who both fail in doing what

was appointed for them to do, and set in motion various springs of

mischief in matters in which they should have had no concern, so on the

other hand, no small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people,

in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force

upon others, of work itself. Were it not so, I believe the fact of their

being unhappy is in itself a violation of divine law, and a sign of some

kind of folly or sin in their way of life. Now in order that people may

be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit

for it: They must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of

success in it--not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of

other people for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather

knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done,

whatever the world may say or think about it. So that in order that a

man may be happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of

his work, but a good judge of his work.

167. The first thing then that he has to do, if unhappily his parents or

masters have not done it for him, is to find out what he is fit for. In

which inquiry a man may be safely guided by his likings, if he be not

also guided by his pride. People usually reason in some such fashion as

this: "I don't seem quite fit for a head-manager in the firm of ---- &

Co., therefore, in all probability, I am fit to be Chancellor of the

Exchequer." Whereas, they ought rather to reason thus: "I don't seem

quite fit to be head-manager in the firm of ---- & Co., but I dare say I

might do something in a small green-grocery business; I used to be a

good judge of pease;" that is to say, always trying lower instead of

trying higher, until they find bottom: once well set on the ground, a

man may build up by degrees, safely, instead of disturbing everyone in

his neighborhood by perpetual catastrophes. But this kind of humility is

rendered especially difficult in these days, by the contumely thrown on

men in humble employments. The very removal of the massy bars which once

separated one class of society from another, has rendered it tenfold

more shameful in foolish people's, _i.e._, in most people's eyes, to

remain in the lower grades of it, than ever it was before. When a man

born of an artisan was looked upon as an entirely different species of

animal from a man born of a noble, it made him no more uncomfortable or

ashamed to remain that different species of animal, than it makes a

horse ashamed to remain a horse, and not to become a giraffe. But now

that a man may make money, and rise in the world, and associate himself,

unreproached, with people once far above him, not only is the natural

discontentedness of humanity developed to an unheard-of extent, whatever

a man's position, but it becomes a veritable shame to him to remain in

the state he was born in, and everybody thinks it his _duty_ to try to

be a "gentleman." Persons who have any influence in the management of

public institutions for charitable education know how common this

feeling has become. Hardly a day passes but they receive letters from

mothers who want all their six or eight sons to go to college, and make

the grand tour in the long vacation, and who think there is something

wrong in the foundations of society because this is not possible. Out of

every ten letters of this kind, nine will allege, as the reason of the

writers' importunity, their desire to keep their families in such and

such a "station of life."[29] There is no real desire for the safety,

the discipline, or the moral good of the children, only a panic horror

of the inexpressibly pitiable calamity of their living a ledge or two

lower on the molehill of the world--a calamity to be averted at any cost

whatever, of struggle, anxiety, and shortening of life itself. I do not

believe that any greater good could be achieved for the country, than

the change in public feeling on this head, which might be brought about

by a few benevolent men, undeniably in the class of "gentlemen," who

would, on principle, enter into some of our commonest trades, and make

them honorable; showing that it was possible for a man to retain his

dignity, and remain, in the best sense, a gentleman, though part of his

time was every day occupied in manual labor, or even in serving

customers over a counter. I do not in the least see why courtesy, and

gravity, and sympathy with the feelings of others, and courage, and

truth, and piety, and what else goes to make up a gentleman's character,

should not be found behind a counter as well as elsewhere, if they were

demanded, or even hoped for, there.

168. Let us suppose, then, that the man's way of life, and manner of

work have been discreetly chosen; then the next thing to be required is,

that he do not overwork himself therein. I am not going to say anything

here about the various errors in our systems of society and commerce,

which appear (I am not sure if they ever do more than appear) to force

us to overwork ourselves merely that we may live; nor about the still

more fruitful cause of unhealthy toil--the incapability, in many men, of

being content with the little that is indeed necessary to their

happiness. I have only a word or two to say about one special cause of

overwork--the ambitious desire of doing great or clever things, and the

hope of accomplishing them by immense efforts: hope as vain as it is

pernicious; not only making men overwork themselves, but rendering all

the work they do unwholesome to them. I say it is a vain hope, and let

the reader be assured of this (it is a truth all-important to the best

interests of humanity). _No great intellectual thing was ever done by

great effort_; a great thing can only be done by a great man, and he

does it _without_ effort. Nothing is, at present, less understood by us

than this--nothing is more necessary to be understood. Let me try to say

it as clearly, and explain it as fully as I may.

169. I have said no great _intellectual_ thing: for I do not mean the

assertion to extend to things moral. On the contrary, it seems to me

that just because we are intended, as long as we live, to be in a state

of intense moral effort, we are _not_ intended to be in intense physical

or intellectual effort. Our full energies are to be given to the soul's

work--to the great fight with the Dragon--the taking the kingdom of

heaven by force. But the body's work and head's work are to be done

quietly, and comparatively without effort. Neither limbs nor brain are

ever to be strained to their utmost; that is not the way in which the

greatest quantity of work is to be got out of them: they are never to be

worked furiously, but with tranquillity and constancy. We are to follow

the plow from sunrise to sunset, but not to pull in race-boats at the

twilight: we shall get no fruit of that kind of work, only disease of

the heart.

170. How many pangs would be spared to thousands, if this great truth

and law were but once sincerely, humbly understood--that if a great

thing can be done at all, it can be done easily; that, when it is needed

to be done, there is perhaps only one man in the world who can do it;

but _he_ can do it without any trouble--without more trouble, that is,

than it costs small people to do small things; nay, perhaps, with less.

And yet what truth lies more openly on the surface of all human

phenomena? Is not the evidence of Ease on the very front of all the

greatest works in existence? Do they not say plainly to us, not, "there

has been a great _effort_ here," but, "there has been a great _power_

here"? It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of

divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that is

just what we now _never_ recognize, but think that we are to do great

things, by help of iron bars and perspiration:--alas! we shall do

nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight.

171. Yet let me not be misunderstood, nor this great truth be supposed

anywise resolvable into the favorite dogma of young men, that they need

not work if they have genius. The fact is that a man of genius is always

far more ready to work than other people, and gets so much more good

from the work that he does, and is often so little conscious of the

inherent divinity in himself, that he is very apt to ascribe all his

capacity to his work, and to tell those who ask how he came to be what

he is: "If I _am_ anything, which I much doubt, I made myself so merely

by labor." This was Newton's way of talking, and I suppose it would be

the general tone of men whose genius had been devoted to the physical

sciences. Genius in the Arts must commonly be more self-conscious, but

in whatever field, it will always be distinguished by its perpetual,

steady, well-directed, happy, and faithful labor in accumulating and

disciplining its powers, as well as by its gigantic, incommunicable

facility in exercising them. Therefore, literally, it is no man's

business whether he has genius or not: work he must, whatever he is, but

quietly and steadily; and the natural and unforced results of such work

will be always the things that God meant him to do, and will be his

best. No agonies nor heart-rendings will enable him to do any better. If

he be a great man, they will be great things; if a small man, small

things; but always, if thus peacefully done, good and right; always, if

restlessly and ambitiously done, false, hollow, and despicable.

172. Then the third thing needed was, I said, that a man should be a

good judge of his work; and this chiefly that he may not be dependent

upon popular opinion for the manner of doing it, but also that he may

have the just encouragement of the sense of progress, and an honest

consciousness of victory; how else can he become

"That awful independent on to-morrow,

Whose yesterdays look backwards with a smile "?

I am persuaded that the real nourishment and help of such a feeling as

this is nearly unknown to half the workmen of the present day. For

whatever appearance of self-complacency there may be in their outward

bearing, it is visible enough, by their feverish jealousy of each other,

how little confidence they have in the sterling value of their several

doings. Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up; and there is

too visible distress and hopelessness in men's aspects to admit of the

supposition that they have any stable support of faith in themselves.

173. I have stated these principles generally, because there is no

branch of labor to which they do not apply: but there is one in which

our ignorance or forgetfulness of them has caused an incalculable amount

of suffering; and I would endeavor now to reconsider them with special

reference to it--the branch of the Arts.

In general, the men who are employed in the Arts have freely chosen

their profession, and suppose themselves to have special faculty for it;

yet, as a body, they are not happy men. For which this seems to me the

reason--that they are expected, and themselves expect, to make their

bread _by being clever_--not by steady or quiet work; and are therefore,

for the most part, trying to be clever, and so living in an utterly

false state of mind and action.

174. This is the case, to the same extent, in no other profession or

employment. A lawyer may indeed suspect that, unless he has more wit

than those around him, he is not likely to advance in his profession;

but he will not be always thinking how he is to display his wit. He

will generally understand, early in his career, that wit must be left to

take care of itself, and that it is hard knowledge of law and vigorous

examination and collation of the facts of every case intrusted to him,

which his clients will mainly demand: this it is which he is to be paid

for; and this is healthy and measurable labor, payable by the hour. If

he happen to have keen natural perception and quick wit, these will come

into play in their due time and place, but he will not think of them as

his chief power; and if he have them not, he may still hope that

industry and conscientiousness may enable him to rise in his profession

without them. Again in the case of clergymen: that they are sorely

tempted to display their eloquence or wit, none who know their own

hearts will deny, but then they _know_ this to _be_ a temptation: they

never would suppose that cleverness was all that was to be expected from

them, or would sit down deliberately to write a clever sermon: even the

dullest or vainest of them would throw some veil over their vanity, and

pretend to some profitableness of purpose in what they did. They would

not openly ask of their hearers--Did you think my sermon ingenious, or

my language poetical? They would early understand that they were not

paid for being ingenious, nor called to be so, but to preach truth; that

if they happened to possess wit, eloquence, or originality, these would

appear and be of service in due time, but were not to be continually

sought after or exhibited; and if it should happen that they had them

not, they might still be serviceable pastors without them.

175. Not so with the unhappy artist. No one expects any honest or useful

work of him; but everyone expects him to be ingenious. Originality,

dexterity, invention, imagination, everything is asked of him except

what alone is to be had for asking--honesty and sound work, and the due

discharge of his function as a painter. What function? asks the reader

in some surprise. He may well ask; for I suppose few painters have any

idea what their function is, or even that they have any at all.

176. And yet surely it is not so difficult to discover. The faculties,

which when a man finds in himself, he resolves to be a painter, are, I

suppose, intenseness of observation and facility of imitation. The man

is created an observer and an imitator; and his function is to convey

knowledge to his fellow-men, of such things as cannot be taught

otherwise than ocularly. For a long time this function remained a

religious one: it was to impress upon the popular mind the reality of

the objects of faith, and the truth of the histories of Scripture, by

giving visible form to both. That function has now passed away, and none

has as yet taken its place. The painter has no profession, no purpose.

He is an idler on the earth, chasing the shadows of his own fancies.

177. But he was never meant to be this. The sudden and universal

Naturalism, or inclination to copy ordinary natural objects, which

manifested itself among the painters of Europe, at the moment when the

invention of printing superseded their legendary labors, was no false

instinct. It was misunderstood and misapplied, but it came at the right

time, and has maintained itself through all kinds of abuse; presenting,

in the recent schools of landscape, perhaps only the first fruits of its

power. That instinct was urging every painter in Europe at the same

moment to his true duty--_the faithful representation of all objects of

historical interest, or of natural beauty existent at the period_;

representation such as might at once aid the advance of the sciences,

and keep faithful record of every monument of past ages which was likely

to be swept away in the approaching eras of revolutionary change.

178. The instinct came, as I said, exactly at the right moment; and let

the reader consider what amount and kind of general knowledge might by

this time have been possessed by the nations of Europe, had their

painters understood and obeyed it. Suppose that, after disciplining

themselves so as to be able to draw, with unerring precision, each the

particular kind of subject in which he most delighted, they had

separated into two great armies of historians and naturalists;--that

the first had painted with absolute faithfulness every edifice, every

city, every battlefield, every scene of the slightest historical

interest, precisely and completely rendering their aspect at the time;

and that their companions, according to their several powers, had

painted with like fidelity the plants and animals, the natural scenery,

and the atmospheric phenomena of every country on the earth--suppose

that a faithful and complete record were now in our museums of every

building destroyed by war, or time, or innovation, during these last 200

years--suppose that each recess of every mountain chain of Europe had

been penetrated, and its rocks drawn with such accuracy that the

geologist's diagram was no longer necessary--suppose that every tree of

the forest had been drawn in its noblest aspect, every beast of the

field in its savage life--that all these gatherings were already in our

national galleries, and that the painters of the present day were

laboring, happily and earnestly, to multiply them, and put such means of

knowledge more and more within reach of the common people--would not

that be a more honorable life for them, than gaining precarious bread by

"bright effects"? They think not, perhaps. They think it easy, and

therefore contemptible, to be truthful; they have been taught so all

their lives. But it is not so, whoever taught it them. It is most

difficult, and worthy of the greatest men's greatest effort, to render,

as it should be rendered, the simplest of the natural features of the

earth; but also be it remembered, no man is confined to the simplest;

each may look out work for himself where he chooses, and it will be

strange if he cannot find something hard enough for him. The excuse is,

however, one of the lips only; for every painter knows, that when he

draws back from the attempt to render nature as she is, it is oftener in

cowardice than in disdain.

179. I must leave the reader to pursue this subject for himself; I have

not space to suggest to him the tenth part of the advantages which would

follow, both to the painter from such an understanding of his mission,

and to the whole people, in the results of his labor. Consider how the

man himself would be elevated; how content he would become, how earnest,

how full of all accurate and noble knowledge, how free from

envy--knowing creation to be infinite, feeling at once the value of what

he did, and yet the nothingness. Consider the advantage to the people:

the immeasurably larger interest given to art itself; the easy,

pleasurable, and perfect knowledge conveyed by it, in every subject; the

far greater number of men who might be healthily and profitably occupied

with it as a means of livelihood; the useful direction of myriads of

inferior talents now left fading away in misery. Conceive all this, and

then look around at our exhibitions, and behold the "cattle pieces," and

"sea pieces," and "fruit pieces," and "family pieces"; the eternal brown

cows in ditches, and white sails in squalls, and sliced lemons in

saucers, and foolish faces in simpers;--and try to feel what we are, and

what we might have been.

180. Take a single instance in one branch of archaeology. Let those who

are interested in the history of Religion consider what a treasure we

should now have possessed, if, instead of painting pots, and vegetables,

and drunken peasantry, the most accurate painters of the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries had been set to copy, line for line, the religious

and domestic sculpture on the German, Flemish, and French cathedrals and

castles; and if every building destroyed in the French or in any other

subsequent revolution, had thus been drawn in all its parts with the

same precision with which Gerard Dow or Mieris paint bas-reliefs of

Cupids. Consider, even now, what incalculable treasure is still left in

ancient bas-reliefs, full of every kind of legendary interest, of subtle

expression, of priceless evidence as to the character, feelings, habits,

histories, of past generations, in neglected and shattered churches and

domestic buildings, rapidly disappearing over the whole of

Europe--treasure which, once lost, the labor of all men living cannot

bring back again; and then look at the myriads of men, with skill

enough, if they had but the commonest schooling, to record all this

faithfully, who are making their bread by drawing dances of naked women

from academy models, or idealities of chivalry fitted out with Wardour

Street armor, or eternal scenes from Gil Blas, Don Quixote, and the

Vicar of Wakefield, or mountain sceneries with young idiots of Londoners

wearing Highland bonnets and brandishing rifles in the foregrounds. Do

but think of these things in the breadth of their inexpressible

imbecility, and then go and stand before that broken bas-relief in the

southern gate of Lincoln Cathedral, and see if there is no fiber of the

heart in you that will break too.

181. But is there to be no place left, it will be indignantly asked, for

imagination and invention, for poetical power, or love of ideal beauty?

Yes, the highest, the noblest place--that which these only can attain

when they are all used in the cause, and with the aid of truth. Wherever

imagination and sentiment are, they will either show themselves without

forcing, or, if capable of artificial development, the kind of training

which such a school of art would give them would be the best they could

receive. The infinite absurdity and failure of our present training

consists mainly in this, that we do not rank imagination and invention

high enough, and suppose that they _can_ be taught. Throughout every

sentence that I ever have written, the reader will find the same rank

attributed to these powers--the rank of a purely divine gift, not to be

attained, increased, or in anywise modified by teaching, only in various

ways capable of being concealed or quenched. Understand this thoroughly;

know once for all, that a poet on canvas is exactly the same species of

creature as a poet in song, and nearly every error in our methods of

teaching will be done away with. For who among us now thinks of bringing

men up to be poets?--of producing poets by any kind of general recipe or

method of cultivation? Suppose even that we see in a youth that which we

hope may, in its development, become a power of this kind, should we

instantly, supposing that we wanted to make a poet of him, and nothing

else, forbid him all quiet, steady, rational labor? Should we force him

to perpetual spinning of new crudities out of his boyish brain, and set

before him, as the only objects of his study, the laws of versification

which criticism has supposed itself to discover in the works of previous

writers? Whatever gifts the boy had, would much be likely to come of

them so treated? unless, indeed, they were so great as to break through

all such snares of falsehood and vanity, and build their own foundation

in spite of us; whereas if, as in cases numbering millions against

units, the natural gifts were too weak to do this, could anything come

of such training but utter inanity and spuriousness of the whole man?

But if we had sense, should we not rather restrain and bridle the first

flame of invention in early youth, heaping material on it as one would

on the first sparks and tongues of a fire which we desired to feed into

greatness? Should we not educate the whole intellect into general

strength, and all the affections into warmth and honesty, and look to

heaven for the rest? This, I say, we should have sense enough to do, in

order to produce a poet in words: but, it being required to produce a

poet on canvas, what is our way of setting to work? We begin, in all

probability, by telling the youth of fifteen or sixteen, that Nature is

full of faults, and that he is to improve her; but that Raphael is

perfection, and that the more he copies Raphael the better; that after

much copying of Raphael, he is to try what he can do himself in a

Raphaelesque, but yet original manner: that is to say, he is to try to

do something very clever, all out of his own head, but yet this clever

something is to be properly subjected to Raphaelesque rules, is to have

a principal light occupying one-seventh of its space, and a principal

shadow occupying one-third of the same; that no two people's heads in

the picture are to be turned the same way, and that all the personages

represented are to possess ideal beauty of the highest order, which

ideal beauty consists partly in a Greek outline of nose, partly in

proportions expressible in decimal fractions between the lips and chin;

but mostly in that degree of improvement which the youth of sixteen is

to bestow upon God's work in general. This I say is the kind of teaching

which through various channels, Royal Academy lecturings, press

criticisms, public enthusiasm, and not least by solid weight of gold, we

give to our young men. And we wonder we have no painters!

182. But we do worse than this. Within the last few years some sense of

the real tendency of such teaching has appeared in some of our younger

painters. It only _could_ appear in the younger ones, our older men

having become familiarized with the false system, or else having

passed through it and forgotten it, not well knowing the degree

of harm they had sustained. This sense appeared, among our

youths,--increased,--matured into resolute action. Necessarily, to exist

at all, it needed the support both of strong instincts and of

considerable self-confidence, otherwise it must at once have been borne

down by the weight of general authority and received canon law. Strong

instincts are apt to make men strange and rude; self-confidence, however

well founded, to give much of what they do or say the appearance of

impertinence. Look at the self-confidence of Wordsworth, stiffening

every other sentence of his prefaces into defiance; there is no more of

it than was needed to enable him to do his work, yet it is not a little

ungraceful here and there. Suppose this stubbornness and self-trust in a

youth, laboring in an art of which the executive part is confessedly to

be best learnt from masters, and we shall hardly wonder that much of his

work has a certain awkwardness and stiffness in it, or that he should be

regarded with disfavor by many, even the most temperate, of the judges

trained in the system he was breaking through, and with utter contempt

and reprobation by the envious and the dull. Consider, further, that the

particular system to be overthrown was, in the present case, one of

which the main characteristic was the pursuit of beauty at the expense

of manliness and truth; and it will seem likely _a priori_, that the men

intended successfully to resist the influence of such a system should be

endowed with little natural sense of beauty, and thus rendered dead to

the temptation it presented. Summing up these conditions, there is

surely little cause for surprise that pictures painted, in a temper of

resistance, by exceedingly young men, of stubborn instincts and positive

self-trust, and with little natural perception of beauty, should not be

calculated, at the first glance, to win us from works enriched by

plagiarism, polished by convention, invested with all the attractiveness

of artificial grace, and recommended to our respect by established

authority.

183. We should, however, on the other hand, have anticipated, that in

proportion to the strength of character required for the effort, and to

the absence of distracting sentiments, whether respect for precedent, or

affection for ideal beauty, would be the energy exhibited in the pursuit

of the special objects which the youths proposed to themselves, and

their success in attaining them.

All this has actually been the case, but in a degree which it would have

been impossible to anticipate. That two youths, of the respective ages

of eighteen and twenty, should have conceived for themselves a totally

independent and sincere method of study, and enthusiastically persevered

in it against every kind of dissuasion and opposition, is strange

enough; that in the third or fourth year of their efforts they should

have produced works in many parts not inferior to the best of Albert

Duerer, this is perhaps not less strange. But the loudness and

universality of the howl which the common critics of the press have

raised against them, the utter absence of all generous help or

encouragement from those who can both measure their toil and appreciate

their success, and the shrill, shallow laughter of those who can do

neither the one nor the other--these are strangest of all--unimaginable

unless they had been experienced.

184. And as if these were not enough, private malice is at work against

them, in its own small, slimy way. The very day after I had written my

second letter to the "Times" in the defense of the Pre-Raphaelites,[30]

I received an anonymous letter respecting one of them, from some person

apparently hardly capable of spelling, and about as vile a specimen of

petty malignity as ever blotted paper. I think it well that the public

should know this, and so get some insight into the sources of the spirit

which is at work against these men: how first roused it is difficult to

say, for one would hardly have thought that mere eccentricity in young

artists could have excited an hostility so determined and so cruel;

hostility which hesitated at no assertion, however impudent. That of the

"absence of perspective" was one of the most curious pieces of the hue

and cry which began with the "Times," and died away in feeble maundering

in the Art Union; I contradicted it in the "Times"--I here contradict it

directly for the second time. There was not a single error in

perspective in three out of the four pictures in question. But if

otherwise, would it have been anything remarkable in them? I doubt if,

with the exception of the pictures of David Roberts, there were one

architectural drawing in perspective on the walls of the Academy; I

never met but with two men in my life who knew enough of perspective to

draw a Gothic arch in a retiring plane, so that its lateral dimensions

and curvatures might be calculated to scale from the drawing. Our

architects certainly do not, and it was but the other day that, talking

to one of the most distinguished among them, the author of several most

valuable works, I found he actually did not know how to draw a circle in

perspective. And in this state of general science our writers for the

press take it upon them to tell us, that the forest-trees in Mr. Hunt's

_Sylvia_, and the bunches of lilies in Mr. Collins's _Convent Thoughts_,

are out of perspective.[31]

185. It might not, I think, in such circumstances, have been ungraceful

or unwise in the Academicians themselves to have defended their young

pupils, at least by the contradiction of statements directly false

respecting them,[32] and the direction of the mind and sight of the

public to such real merit as they possess. If Sir Charles Eastlake,

Mulready, Edwin and Charles Landseer, Cope, and Dyce would each of them

simply state their own private opinion respecting their paintings, sign

it, and publish it, I believe the act would be of more service to

English art than anything the Academy has done since it was founded. But

as I cannot hope for this, I can only ask the public to give their

pictures careful examination, and to look at them at once with the

indulgence and the respect which I have endeavored to show they deserve.

Yet let me not be misunderstood. I have adduced them only as examples of

the kind of study which I would desire to see substituted for that of

our modern schools, and of singular success in certain characters,

finish of detail, and brilliancy of color. What faculties, higher than

imitative, may be in these men, I do not yet venture to say; but I do

say, that if they exist, such faculties will manifest themselves in due

time all the more forcibly because they have received training so

severe.

186. For it is always to be remembered that no one mind is like another,

either in its powers or perceptions; and while the main principles of

training must be the same for all, the result in each will be as various

as the kinds of truth which each will apprehend; therefore, also, the

modes of effort, even in men whose inner principles and final aims are

exactly the same. Suppose, for instance, two men, equally honest,

equally industrious, equally impressed with a humble desire to render

some part of what they saw in nature faithfully; and, otherwise, trained

in convictions such as I have above endeavored to induce. But one of

them is quiet in temperament, has a feeble memory, no invention, and

excessively keen sight. The other is impatient in temperament, has a

memory which nothing escapes, an invention which never rests, and is

comparatively near-sighted.

187. Set them both free in the same field in a mountain valley. One sees

everything, small and large, with almost the same clearness; mountains

and grasshoppers alike; the leaves on the branches, the veins in the

pebbles, the bubbles in the stream; but he can remember nothing, and

invent nothing. Patiently he sets himself to his mighty task; abandoning

at once all thoughts of seizing transient effects, or giving general

impressions of that which his eyes present to him in microscopical

dissection, he chooses some small portion out of the infinite scene, and

calculates with courage the number of weeks which must elapse before he

can do justice to the intensity of his perceptions, or the fullness of

matter in his subject.

188. Meantime, the other has been watching the change of the clouds, and

the march of the light along the mountain sides; he beholds the entire

scene in broad, soft masses of true gradation, and the very feebleness

of his sight is in some sort an advantage to him, in making him more

sensible of the aerial mystery of distance, and hiding from him the

multitudes of circumstances which it would have been impossible for him

to represent. But there is not one change in the casting of the jagged

shadows along the hollows of the hills, but it is fixed on his mind

forever; not a flake of spray has broken from the sea of cloud about

their bases, but he has watched it as it melts away, and could recall it

to its lost place in heaven by the slightest effort of his thoughts. Not

only so, but thousands and thousands of such images, of older scenes,

remain congregated in his mind, each mingling in new associations with

those now visibly passing before him, and these again confused with

other images of his own ceaseless, sleepless imagination, flashing by in

sudden troops. Fancy how his paper will be covered with stray symbols

and blots, and undecipherable shorthand:--as for his sitting down to

"draw from Nature," there was not one of the things which he wished to

represent, that stayed for so much as five seconds together: but none of

them escaped for all that: they are sealed up in that strange storehouse

of his; he may take one of them out perhaps, this day twenty years, and

paint it in his dark room, far away. Now, observe, you may tell both of

these men, when they are young, that they are to be honest, that they

have an important function, and that they are not to care what Raphael

did. This you may wholesomely impress on them both. But fancy the

exquisite absurdity of expecting either of them to possess any of the

qualities of the other.

189. I have supposed the feebleness of sight in the last, and of

invention in the first painter, that the contrast between them might be

more striking; but, with very slight modification, both the characters

are real. Grant to the first considerable inventive power, with

exquisite sense of color; and give to the second, in addition to all his

other faculties, the eye of an eagle; and the first is John Everett

Millais, the second Joseph Mallard William Turner.

They are among the few men who have defied all false teaching, and have

therefore, in great measure, done justice to the gifts with which they

were intrusted. They stand at opposite poles, marking culminating points

of art in both directions; between them, or in various relations to

them, we may class five or six more living artists who, in like manner,

have done justice to their powers. I trust that I may be pardoned for

naming them, in order that the reader may know how the strong innate

genius in each has been invariably accompanied with the same humility,

earnestness, and industry in study.

190. It is hardly necessary to point out the earnestness or humility in

the works of William Hunt; but it may be so to suggest the high value

they possess as records of English rural life, and _still_ life. Who is

there who for a moment could contend with him in the unaffected, yet

humorous truth with which he has painted our peasant children? Who is

there who does not sympathize with him in the simple love with which he

dwells on the brightness and bloom of our summer fruit and flowers? And

yet there is something to be regretted concerning him: why should he be

allowed continually to paint the same bunches of hot-house grapes, and

supply to the Water Color Society a succession of pine-apples with the

regularity of a Covent Garden fruiterer? He has of late discovered that

primrose banks are lovely, but there are other things grow wild besides

primroses: what undreamt-of loveliness might he not bring back to us, if

he would lose himself for a summer in Highland foregrounds; if he would

paint the heather as it grows, and the foxglove and the harebell as they

nestle in the clefts of the rocks, and the mosses and bright lichens of

the rocks themselves. And then, cross to the Jura, and bring back a

piece of Jura pasture in spring; with the gentians in their earliest

blue, and a soldanelle beside the fading snow! And return again, and

paint a gray wall of alpine crag, with budding roses crowning it like a

wreath of rubies. That is what he was meant to do in this world; not to

paint bouquets in china vases.

191. I have in various other places expressed my sincere respect for the

works of Samuel Prout: his shortness of sight has necessarily prevented

their possessing delicacy of finish or fullness of minor detail; but I

think that those of no other living artist furnish an example so

striking of innate and special instinct, sent to do a particular work at

the exact and only period when it was possible. At the instant when

peace had been established all over Europe, but when neither national

character nor national architecture had as yet been seriously changed by

promiscuous intercourse or modern "improvement"; when, however, nearly

every ancient and beautiful building had been long left in a state of

comparative neglect, so that its aspect of partial ruinousness, and of

separation from recent active life, gave to every edifice a peculiar

interest--half sorrowful, half sublime;--at that moment Prout was

trained among the rough rocks and simple cottages of Cornwall, until his

eye was accustomed to follow with delight the rents and breaks, and

irregularities which, to another man, would have been offensive; and

then, gifted with infinite readiness in composition, but also with

infinite affection for the kind of subjects he had to portray, he was

sent to preserve, in an almost innumerable series of drawings, _every

one made on the spot_, the aspect borne, at the beginning of the

nineteenth century, by cities which, in a few years more, re-kindled

wars, or unexpected prosperities, were to ravage, or renovate, into

nothingness.[33]

192. It seems strange to pass from Prout to John Lewis; but there is

this fellowship between them, that both seem to have been intended to

appreciate the characters of foreign countries more than of their own,

nay, to have been born in England chiefly that the excitement of

strangeness might enhance to them the interest of the scenes they had to

represent. I believe John Lewis to have done more entire justice to all

his powers (and they are magnificent ones), than any other man amongst

us. His mission was evidently to portray the comparatively animal life

of the southern and eastern families of mankind. For this he was

prepared in a somewhat singular way--by being led to study, and endowed

with altogether peculiar apprehension of, the most sublime characters of

animals themselves. Rubens, Rembrandt, Snyders, Tintoret, and Titian,

have all, in various ways, drawn wild beasts magnificently; but they

have in some sort humanized or demonized them, making them either

ravenous fiends, or educated beasts, that would draw cars, and had

respect for hermits. The sullen isolation of the brutal nature; the

dignity and quietness of the mighty limbs; the shaggy mountainous power,

mingled with grace as of a flowing stream; the stealthy restraint of

strength and wrath in every soundless motion of the gigantic frame; all

this seems never to have been seen, much less drawn, until Lewis drew

and himself engraved a series of animal subjects, now many years ago.

Since then, he has devoted himself to the portraiture of those European

and Asiatic races, among whom the refinements of civilization exist

without its laws or its energies, and in whom the fierceness, indolence,

and subtlety of animal nature are associated with brilliant imagination

and strong affections. To this task he has brought not only intense

perception of the kind of character, but powers of artistical

composition like those of the great Venetians, displaying, at the same

time, a refinement of drawing almost miraculous, and appreciable only,

as the minutiae of nature itself are appreciable, by the help of the

microscope. The value, therefore, of his works, as records of the aspect

of the scenery and inhabitants of the south of Spain and of the East, in

the earlier part of the nineteenth century, is quite above all estimate.

193. I hardly know how to speak of Mulready: in delicacy and completion

of drawing, and splendor of color, he takes place beside John Lewis and

the Pre-Raphaelites; but he has, throughout his career, displayed no

definiteness in choice of subject. He must be named among the painters

who have studied with industry, and have made themselves great by doing

so; but, having obtained a consummate method of execution, he has thrown

it away on subjects either altogether uninteresting, or above his

powers, or unfit for pictorial representation. "The Cherry Woman,"

exhibited in 1850, may be named as an example of the first kind; the

"Burchell and Sophia" of the second (the character of Sir William

Thornhill being utterly missed); the "Seven Ages" of the third; for this

subject cannot be painted. In the written passage, the thoughts are

progressive and connected; in the picture they must be co-existent, and

yet separate; nor can all the characters of the ages be rendered in

painting at all. One may represent the soldier at the cannon's mouth,

but one cannot paint the "bubble reputation" which he seeks. Mulready,

therefore, while he has always produced exquisite pieces of painting,

has failed in doing anything which can be of true or extensive use. He

has, indeed, understood how to discipline his genius, but never how to

direct it.

194. Edwin Landseer is the last painter but one whom I shall name: I

need not point out to anyone acquainted with his earlier works, the

labor, or watchfulness of nature which they involve, nor need I do more

than allude to the peculiar faculties of his mind. It will at once be

granted that the highest merits of his pictures are throughout found in

those parts of them which are least like what had before been

accomplished; and that it was not by the study of Raphael that he

attained his eminent success, but by a healthy love of Scotch terriers.

None of these painters, however, it will be answered, afford examples of

the rise of the highest imaginative power out of close study of matters

of fact. Be it remembered, however, that the imaginative power, in its

magnificence, is not to be found every day. Lewis has it in no mean

degree, but we cannot hope to find it at its highest more than once in

an age. We _have_ had it once, and must be content.

195. Towards the close of the last century, among the various drawings

executed, according to the quiet manner of the time, in grayish blue,

with brown foregrounds, some began to be noticed as exhibiting rather

more than ordinary diligence and delicacy, signed W. Turner.[34] There

was nothing, however, in them at all indicative of genius, or even of

more than ordinary talent, unless in some of the subjects a large

perception of space, and excessive clearness and decision in the

arrangement of masses. Gradually and cautiously the blues became mingled

with delicate green, and then with gold; the browns in the foreground

became first more positive, and then were slightly mingled with other

local colors; while the touch, which had at first been heavy and broken,

like that of the ordinary drawing masters of the time, grew more and

more refined and expressive, until it lost itself in a method of

execution often too delicate for the eye to follow, rendering, with a

precision before unexampled, both the texture and the form of every

object. The style may be considered as perfectly formed about the year

1800, and it remained unchanged for twenty years.

During that period the painter had attempted, and with more or less

success had rendered, every order of landscape subject, but always on

the same principle, subduing the colors of nature into a harmony of

which the keynotes are grayish green and brown; pure blues, and

delicate golden yellows being admitted in small quantity as the lowest

and highest limits of shade and light: and bright local colors in

extremely small quantity in figures or other minor accessories.

196. Pictures executed on such a system are not, properly speaking,

works in _color_ at all; they are studies of light and shade, in which

both the shade and the distance are rendered in the general hue which

best expresses their attributes of coolness and transparency; and the

lights and the foreground are executed in that which best expresses

their warmth and solidity. This advantage may just as well be taken as

not, in studies of light and shadow to be executed with the hand; but

the use of two, three, or four colors, always in the same relations and

places, does not in the least constitute the work a study of color, any

more than the brown engravings of the Liber Studiorum; nor would the

idea of color be in general more present to the artist's mind when he

was at work on one of these drawings, than when he was using pure brown

in the mezzotint engraving. But the idea of space, warmth, and freshness

being not successfully expressible in a single tint, and perfectly

expressible by the admission of three or four, he allows himself this

advantage when it is possible, without in the least embarrassing himself

with the actual color of the objects to be represented. A stone in the

foreground might in nature have been cold gray, but it will be drawn

nevertheless of a rich brown, because it is in the foreground; a hill in

the distance might in nature be purple with heath, or golden with furze;

but it will be drawn, nevertheless, of a cool gray, because it is in the

distance.

197. This at least was the general theory,--carried out with great

severity in many, both of the drawings and pictures executed by him

during the period: in others more or less modified by the cautious

introduction of color, as the painter felt his liberty increasing; for

the system was evidently never considered as final, or as anything more

than a means of progress: the conventional, easily manageable color,

was visibly adopted, only that his mind might be at perfect liberty to

address itself to the acquirement of the first and most necessary

knowledge in all art--that of form. But as form, in landscape, implies

vast bulk and space, the use of the tints which enabled him best to

express them, was actually auxiliary to the mere drawing; and,

therefore, not only permissible, but even necessary, while more

brilliant or varied tints were never indulged in, except when they might

be introduced without the slightest danger of diverting his mind for an

instant from his principal object. And, therefore, it will be generally

found in the works of this period, that exactly in proportion to the

importance and general toil of the composition, is the severity of the

tint; and that the play of color begins to show itself first in slight

and small drawings, where he felt that he could easily secure all that

he wanted in form.

198. Thus the "Crossing the Brook," and such other elaborate and large

compositions, are actually painted in nothing but gray, brown, and blue,

with a point or two of severe local color in the figures; but in the

minor drawings, tender passages of complicated color occur not

unfrequently in easy places; and even before the year 1800 he begins to

introduce it with evident joyfulness and longing in his rude and simple

studies, just as a child, if it could be supposed to govern itself by a

fully developed intellect, would cautiously, but with infinite pleasure,

add now and then a tiny dish of fruit or other dangerous luxury to the

simple order of its daily fare. Thus, in the foregrounds of his most

severe drawings, we not unfrequently find him indulging in the luxury of

a peacock; and it is impossible to express the joyfulness with which he

seems to design its graceful form, and deepen with soft penciling the

bloom of its blue, after he has worked through the stern detail of his

almost colorless drawing. A rainbow is another of his most frequently

permitted indulgences; and we find him very early allowing the edges of

his evening clouds to be touched with soft rose-color or gold; while,

whenever the hues of nature in anywise fall into his system, and can be

caught without a dangerous departure from it, he instantly throws his

whole soul into the faithful rendering of them. Thus the usual brown

tones of his foreground become warmed into sudden vigor, and are varied

and enhanced with indescribable delight, when he finds himself by the

shore of a moorland stream, where they truly express the stain of its

golden rocks, and the darkness of its clear, Cairngorm-like pools, and

the usual serenity of his aerial blue is enriched into the softness and

depth of the sapphire, when it can deepen the distant slumber of some

Highland lake, or temper the gloomy shadows of the evening upon its

hills.

199. The system of his color being thus simplified, he could address all

the strength of his mind to the accumulation of facts of form; his

choice of subject, and his methods of treatment, are therefore as

various as his color is simple; and it is not a little difficult to give

the reader who is unacquainted with his works, an idea either of their

infinitude of aims, on the one hand, or of the kind of feeling which

pervades them all, on the other. No subject was too low or too high for

him; we find him one day hard at work on a cock and hen, with their

family of chickens in a farm-yard; and bringing all the refinement of

his execution into play to express the texture of the plumage; next day

he is drawing the Dragon of Colchis. One hour he is much interested in a

gust of wind blowing away an old woman's cap; the next, he is painting

the fifth plague of Egypt. Every landscape painter before him had

acquired distinction by confining his efforts to one class of subject.

Hobbima painted oaks; Ruysdael, waterfalls and copses; Cuyp, river or

meadow scenes in quiet afternoons; Salvator and Poussin, such kind of

mountain scenery as people could conceive, who lived in towns in the

seventeenth century. But I am well persuaded that if all the works of

Turner, up to the year 1820, were divided into classes (as he has

himself divided them in the Liber Studiorum), no preponderance could be

assigned to one class over another. There is architecture, including a

large number of formal "gentlemen's seats," I suppose drawings

commissioned by the owners; then lowland pastoral scenery of every kind,

including nearly all farming operations---plowing, harrowing, hedging

and ditching, felling trees, sheep-washing, and I know not what else;

then all kinds of town life--courtyards of inns, starting of mail

coaches, interiors of shops, house-buildings, fairs, elections, etc.;

then all kinds of inner domestic life--interiors of rooms, studies of

costumes, of still life, and heraldry, including multitudes of

symbolical vignettes; then marine scenery of every kind, full of local

incident; every kind of boat and method of fishing for particular fish,

being specifically drawn, round the whole coast of England--pilchard

fishing at St. Ives, whiting fishing at Margate, herring at Loch Fyne;

and all kinds of shipping, including studies of every separate part of

the vessels, and many marine battle pieces, two in particular of

Trafalgar, both of high importance--one of the Victory after the battle,

now in Greenwich Hospital; another of the death of Nelson, in his own

gallery; then all kinds of mountain scenery, some idealized into

compositions, others of definite localities; together with classical

compositions, Romes, and Carthages, and such others, by the myriad, with

mythological, historical, or allegorical figures--nymphs, monsters, and

specters; heroes and divinities.[35]

200. What general feeling, it may be asked incredulously, can possibly

pervade all this? This, the greatest of all feelings--an utter

forgetfulness of self. Throughout the whole period with which we are at

present concerned, Turner appears as a man of sympathy absolutely

infinite--a sympathy so all-embracing, that I know nothing but that of

Shakspeare comparable with it. A soldier's wife resting by the roadside

is not beneath it;[36] Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, watching the dead

bodies of her sons, not above it. Nothing can possibly be so mean as

that it will not interest his whole mind, and carry away his whole

heart; nothing so great or solemn but that he can raise himself into

harmony with it; and it is impossible to prophesy of him at any moment,

whether, the next, he will be in laughter or in tears.

201. This is the root of the man's greatness; and it follows as a matter

of course that this sympathy must give him a subtle power of expression,

even of the characters of mere material things, such as no other painter

ever possessed. The man who can best feel the difference between

rudeness and tenderness in humanity, perceives also more difference

between the branches of an oak and a willow than anyone else would; and,

therefore, necessarily the most striking character of the drawings

themselves is the speciality of whatever they represent--the thorough

stiffness of what is stiff, and grace of what is graceful, and vastness

of what is vast; but through and beyond all this, the condition of the

mind of the painter himself is easily enough discoverable by comparison

of a large number of the drawings. It is singularly serene and peaceful:

in itself quite passionless, though entering with ease into the external

passion which it contemplates. By the effort of its will it sympathizes

with tumult or distress, even in their extremes, but there is no tumult,

no sorrow in itself, only a chastened and exquisitely peaceful

cheerfulness, deeply meditative; touched, without loss of its own

perfect balance, by sadness on the one side, and stooping to playfulness

upon the other. I shall never cease to regret the destruction, by fire,

now several years ago, of a drawing which always seemed to me to be the

perfect image of the painter's mind at this period,--the drawing of

Brignal Church near Rokeby, of which a feeble idea may still be gathered

from the engraving (in the Yorkshire series). The spectator stands on

the "Brignal banks," looking down into the glen at twilight; the sky is

still full of soft rays, though the sun is gone, and the Greta glances

brightly in the valley, singing its even-song; two white clouds,

following each other, move without wind through the hollows of the

ravine, and others lie couched on the far away moorlands; every leaf of

the woods is still in the delicate air; a boy's kite, incapable of

rising, has become entangled in their branches, he is climbing to

recover it; and just behind it in the picture, almost indicated by it,

the lowly church is seen in its secluded field between the rocks and the

stream; and around, it the low churchyard wall, and a few white stones

which mark the resting places of those who can climb the rocks no more,

nor hear the river sing as it passes.

There are many other existing drawings which indicate the same character

of mind, though I think none so touching or so beautiful: yet they are

not, as I said above, more numerous than those which express his

sympathy with sublimer or more active scenes; but they are almost always

marked by a tenderness of execution, and have a look of being beloved in

every part of them, which shows them to be the truest expression of his

own feelings.

202. One other characteristic of his mind at this period remains to be

noticed--its reverence for talent in others. Not the reverence which

acts upon the practices of men as if they were the laws of nature, but

that which is ready to appreciate the power, and receive the assistance,

of every mind which has been previously employed in the same direction,

so far as its teaching seems to be consistent with the great text-book

of nature itself. Turner thus studied almost every preceding landscape

painter, chiefly Claude, Poussin, Vandevelde, Loutherbourg, and Wilson.

It was probably by the Sir George Beaumonts and other feeble

conventionalists of the period, that he was persuaded to devote his

attention to the works of these men; and his having done so will be

thought, a few scores of years hence, evidence of perhaps the greatest

modesty ever shown by a man of original power. Modesty at once admirable

and unfortunate, for the study of the works of Vandevelde and Claude was

productive of unmixed mischief to him: he spoiled many of his marine

pictures, as for instance Lord Ellesmere's, by imitation of the former;

and from the latter learned a false ideal, which, confirmed by the

notions of Greek art prevalent in London in the beginning of this

century, has manifested itself in many vulgarities in his composition

pictures, vulgarities which may perhaps be best expressed by the general

term "Twickenham Classicism," as consisting principally in conceptions

of ancient or of rural life such as have influenced the erection of most

of our suburban villas. From Nicole Poussin and Loutherbourg he seems to

have derived advantage; perhaps also from Wilson; and much in his

subsequent travels from far higher men, especially Tintoret and Paul

Veronese. I have myself heard him speaking with singular delight of the

putting in of the beech leaves in the upper right-hand corner of

Titian's Peter Martyr. I cannot in any of his works trace the slightest

influence of Salvator; and I am not surprised at it, for though Salvator

was a man of far higher powers than either Vandevelde or Claude, he was

a willful and gross caricaturist. Turner would condescend to be helped

by feeble men, but could not be corrupted by false men. Besides, he had

never himself seen classical life, and Claude was represented to him as

competent authority for it. But he _had_ seen mountains and torrents,

and knew therefore that Salvator could not paint them.

203. One of the most characteristic drawings of this period fortunately

bears a date, 1818, and brings us within two years of another dated

drawing, no less characteristic of what I shall henceforward call

Turner's Second period. It is in the possession of Mr. Hawkesworth

Fawkes of Farnley, one of Turner's earliest and truest friends; and

bears the inscription, unusually conspicuous, heaving itself up and down

over the eminences of the foreground--"PASSAGE OF MONT CENIS. J. M. W.

TURNER, January 15th, 1820."

The scene is on the summit of the pass close to the hospice, or what

seems to have been a hospice at that time,--I do not remember any such

at present,--a small square built house, built as if partly for a

fortress, with a detached flight of stone steps in front of it, and a

kind of drawbridge to the door. This building, about 400 or 500 yards

off, is seen in a dim, ashy gray against the light, which by help of a

violent blast of mountain wind has broken through the depth of clouds

which hang upon the crags. There is no sky, properly so called, nothing

but this roof of drifting cloud; but neither is there any weight of

darkness--the high air is too thin for it,--all savage, howling, and

luminous with cold, the massy bases of the granite hills jutting out

here and there grimly through the snow wreaths. There is a

desolate-looking refuge on the left, with its number 16, marked on it in

long ghastly figures, and the wind is drifting the snow off the roof and

through its window in a frantic whirl; the near ground is all wan with

half-thawed, half-trampled snow; a diligence in front, whose horses,

unable to face the wind, have turned right round with fright, its

passengers struggling to escape, jammed in the window; a little farther

on is another carriage off the road, some figures pushing at its wheels,

and its driver at the horses' heads, pulling and lashing with all his

strength, his lifted arm stretched out against the light of the

distance, though too far off for the whip to be seen.

204. Now I am perfectly certain that anyone thoroughly accustomed to the

earlier works of the painter, and shown this picture for the first time,

would be struck by two altogether new characters in it.

The first, a seeming enjoyment of the excitement of the scene, totally

different from the contemplative philosophy with which it would formerly

have been regarded. Every incident of motion and of energy is seized

upon with indescribable delight, and every line of the composition

animated with a force and fury which are now no longer the mere

expression of a contemplated external truth, but have origin in some

inherent feeling in the painter's mind.

The second, that although the subject is one in itself almost incapable

of color, and although, in order to increase the wildness of the

impression, all brilliant local color has been refused even where it

might easily have been introduced, as in the figures; yet in the low

minor key which has been chosen, the melodies of _color_ have been

elaborated to the utmost possible pitch, so as to become a leading,

instead of a subordinate, element in the composition; the subdued warm

hues of the granite promontories, the dull stone color of the walls of

the buildings, clearly opposed, even in shade, to the gray of the snow

wreaths heaped against them, and the faint greens and ghastly blues of

the glacier ice, being all expressed with delicacies of transition

utterly unexampled in any previous drawings.

205. These, accordingly, are the chief characteristics of the works of

Turner's second period, as distinguished from the first,--a new energy

inherent in the mind of the painter, diminishing the repose and exalting

the force and fire of his conceptions, and the presence of Color, as at

least an essential, and often a principal, element of design.

Not that it is impossible, or even unusual, to find drawings of serene

subject, and perfectly quiet feeling, among the compositions of this

period; but the repose is in them, just as the energy and tumult were in

the earlier period, an external quality, which the painter images by an

effort of the will: it is no longer a character inherent in himself. The

"Ulleswater," in the England series, is one of those which are in most

perfect peace; in the "Cowes," the silence is only broken by the dash of

the boat's oars, and in the "Alnwick" by a stag drinking; but in at

least nine drawings out of ten, either sky, water, or figures are in

rapid motion, and the grandest drawings are almost always those which

have even violent action in one or other, or in all; _e.g._ high force

of Tees, Coventry, Llanthony, Salisbury, Llanberis, and such others.

206. The color is, however, a more absolute distinction; and we must

return to Mr. Fawkes's collection in order to see how the change in it

was effected. That such a change would take place at one time or other

was of course to be securely anticipated, the conventional system of the

first period being, as above stated, merely a means of study. But the

immediate cause was the journey of the year 1820. As might be guessed

from the legend on the drawing above described, "Passage of Mont Cenis,

January 15th, 1820," that drawing represents what happened on the day in

question to the painter himself. He passed the Alps then in the winter

of 1820; and either in the previous or subsequent summer, but on the

same journey, he made a series of sketches on the Rhine, in body color,

now in Mr. Fawkes's collection. Every one of those sketches is the

almost instantaneous record of an _effect_ of color or atmosphere, taken

strictly from nature, the drawing and the details of every subject being

comparatively subordinate, and the color nearly as principal as the

light and shade had been before,--certainly the leading feature, though

the light and shade are always exquisitely harmonized with it. And

naturally, as the color becomes the leading object, those times of day

are chosen in which it is most lovely; and whereas before, at least five

out of six of Turner's drawings represented ordinary daylight, we now

find his attention directed constantly to the evening: and, for the

first time, we have those rosy lights upon the hills, those gorgeous

falls of sun through flaming heavens, those solemn twilights, with the

blue moon rising as the western sky grows dim, which have ever since

been the themes of his mightiest thoughts.

207. I have no doubt, that the _immediate_ reason of this change was the

impression made upon him by the colors of the continental skies. When he

first traveled on the Continent (1800), he was comparatively a young

student; not yet able to draw form as he wanted, he was forced to give

all his thoughts and strength to this primary object. But now he was

free to receive other impressions; the time was come for perfecting his

art, and the first sunset which he saw on the Rhine taught him that all

previous landscape art was vain and valueless, that in comparison with

natural color, the things that had been called paintings were mere ink

and charcoal, and that all precedent and all authority must be cast away

at once, and trodden underfoot. He cast them away: the memories of

Vandevelde and Claude were at once weeded out of the great mind they had

encumbered; they and all the rubbish of the schools together with them;

the waves of the Rhine swept them away forever: and a new dawn rose over

the rocks of the Siebengebirge.

208. There was another motive at work, which rendered the change still

more complete. His fellow artists were already conscious enough of his

superior power in drawing, and their best hope was that he might not be

able to color. They had begun to express this hope loudly enough for it

to reach his ears. The engraver of one of his most important marine

pictures told me, not long ago, that one day about the period in

question, Turner came into his room to examine the progress of the

plate, not having seen his own picture for several months. It was one of

his dark early pictures, but in the foreground was a little piece of

luxury, a pearly fish wrought into hues like those of an opal. He stood

before the picture for some moments; then laughed, and pointed joyously

to the fish:--"They say that Turner can't color!" and turned away.

209. Under the force of these various impulses the change was total.

_Every subject thenceforward was primarily conceived in color_; and no

engraving ever gave the slightest idea of any drawing of this period.

The artists who had any perception of the truth were in despair; the

Beaumontites, classicalists, and "owl species" in general, in as much

indignation as their dullness was capable of. They had deliberately

closed their eyes to all nature, and had gone on inquiring, "Where do

you put your brown 'tree'?" A vast revelation was made to them at once,

enough to have dazzled anyone; but to _them_, light unendurable as

incomprehensible. They "did to the moon complain," in one vociferous,

unanimous, continuous "Tu whoo." Shrieking rose from all dark places at

the same instant, just the same kind of shrieking that is now raised

against the Pre-Raphaelites. Those glorious old Arabian Nights, how true

they are! Mocking and whispering, and abuse loud and low by turns, from

all the black stones beside the road, when one living soul is toiling up

the hill to get the golden water. Mocking and whispering, that he may

look back, and become a black stone like themselves.

210. Turner looked not back, but he went on in such a temper as a strong

man must be in, when he is forced to walk with his fingers in his ears.

He retired into himself; he could look no longer for help, or counsel,

or sympathy from anyone; and the spirit of defiance in which he was

forced to labor led him sometimes into violences, from which the

slightest expression of sympathy would have saved him. The new energy

that was upon him, and the utter isolation into which he was driven,

were both alike dangerous, and many drawings of the time show the evil

effects of both; some of them being hasty, wild, or experimental, and

others little more than magnificent expressions of defiance of public

opinion.

But all have this noble virtue--they are in everything his own: there

are no more reminiscences of dead masters, no more trials of skill in

the manner of Claude or Poussin; every faculty of his soul is fixed upon

nature only, as he saw her, or as he remembered her.

211. I have spoken above of his gigantic memory: it is especially

necessary to notice this, in order that we may understand the kind of

grasp which a man of real imagination takes of all things that are once

brought within his reach--grasp thenceforth not to be relaxed forever.

On looking over any catalogues of his works, or of particular series of

them, we shall notice the recurrence of the same subject two, three, or

even many times. In any other artist this would be nothing remarkable.

Probably, most modern landscape painters multiply a favorite subject

twenty, thirty, or sixty fold, putting the shadows and the clouds in

different places, and "inventing," as they are pleased to call it, a new

"effect" every time. But if we examine the successions of Turner's

subjects, we shall find them either the records of a succession of

impressions actually received by him at some favorite locality, or else

repetitions of one impression received in early youth, and again and

again realized as his increasing powers enabled him to do better

justice to it. In either case we shall find them records of _seen

facts_; _never_ compositions in his room to fill up a favorite outline.

212. For instance, every traveler--at least, every traveler of thirty

years' standing--must love Calais, the place where he first felt himself

in a strange world. Turner evidently loved it excessively. I have never

catalogued his studies of Calais, but I remember, at this moment, five:

there is first the "Pas de Calais," a very large oil painting, which is

what he saw in broad daylight as he crossed over, when he got near the

French side. It is a careful study of French fishing-boats running for

the shore before the wind, with the picturesque old city in the

distance. Then there is the "Calais Harbor" in the Liber Studiorum: that

is what he saw just as he was going into the harbor--a heavy brig

warping out, and very likely to get in his way or run against the pier,

and bad weather coming on. Then there is the "Calais Pier," a large

painting, engraved some years ago by Mr. Lupton:[37] that is what he saw

when he had landed, and ran back directly to the pier to see what had

become of the brig. The weather had got still worse, the fishwomen were

being blown about in a distressful manner on the pier head, and some

more fishing-boats were running in with all speed. Then there is the

"Fortrouge," Calais: that is what he saw after he had been home to

Dessein's, and dined, and went out again in the evening to walk on the

sands, the tide being down. He had never seen such a waste of sands

before, and it made an impression on him. The shrimp girls were all

scattered over them too, and moved about in white spots on the wild

shore; and the storm had lulled a little, and there was a sunset--such a

sunset!--and the bars of Fortrouge seen against it, skeleton-wise. He

did not paint that directly; thought over it--painted it a long while

afterwards.

213. Then there is the vignette in the illustrations to Scott. That is

what he saw as he was going home, meditatively; and the revolving

lighthouse came blazing out upon him suddenly, and disturbed him. He

did not like that so much; made a vignette of it, however, when he was

asked to do a bit of Calais, twenty or thirty years afterwards, having

already done all the rest.

Turner never told me all this, but anyone may see it if he will compare

the pictures. They might, possibly, not be impressions of a single day,

but of two days or three; though, in all human probability, they were

seen just as I have stated them;[38] but they _are_ records of

successive impressions, as plainly written as ever traveler's diary. All

of them pure veracities. Therefore immortal.

214. I could multiply these series almost indefinitely from the rest of

his works. What is curious, some of them have a kind of private mark

running through all the subjects. Thus, I know three drawings of

Scarborough, and all of them have a starfish in the foreground: I do not

remember any others of his marine subjects which have a starfish.

The other kind of repetition--the recurrence to one early

impression--is, however, still more remarkable. In the collection of F.

H. Bale, Esq., there is a small drawing of Llanthony Abbey. It is in his

boyish manner, its date probably about 1795; evidently a sketch from

nature, finished at home. It had been a showery day; the hills were

partially concealed by the rain, and gleams of sunshine breaking out at

intervals. A man was fishing in the mountain stream. The young Turner

sought a place of some shelter under the bushes; made his sketch; took

great pains when he got home to imitate the rain, as he best could;

added his child's luxury of a rainbow; put in the very bush under which

he had taken shelter, and the fisherman, a somewhat ill-jointed and

long-legged fisherman, in the courtly short breeches which were the

fashion of the time.

215. Some thirty years afterwards, with all his powers in their

strongest training, and after the total change in his feelings and

principles, which I have endeavored to describe, he undertook the series

of "England and Wales," and in that series introduced the subject of

Llanthony Abbey. And behold, he went back to his boy's sketch and boy's

thought. He kept the very bushes in their places, but brought the

fisherman to the other side of the river, and put him, in somewhat less

courtly dress, under their shelter, instead of himself. And then he set

all his gained strength and new knowledge at work on the well-remembered

shower of rain, that had fallen thirty years before, to do it better.

The resultant drawing[39] is one of the very noblest of his second

period.

216. Another of the drawings of the England series, Ulleswater, is the

repetition of one in Mr. Fawkes's collection, which, by the method of

its execution, I should conjecture to have been executed about the year

1808 or 1810: at all events, it is a very quiet drawing of the first

period. The lake is quite calm; the western hills in gray shadow, the

eastern massed in light. Helvellyn rising like a mist between them, all

being mirrored in the calm water. Some thin and slightly evanescent cows

are standing in the shallow water in front; a boat floats motionless

about a hundred yards from the shore; the foreground is of broken rocks,

with some lovely pieces of copse on the right and left.

This was evidently Turner's record of a quiet evening by the shore of

Ulleswater, but it was a feeble one. He could not at that time render

the sunset colors: he went back to it, therefore, in the England series,

and painted it again with his new power. The same hills are there, the

same shadows, the same cows,--they had stood in his mind, on the same

spot, for twenty years,--the same boat, the same rocks, only the copse

is cut away--it interfered with the masses of his color. Some figures

are introduced bathing; and what was gray, and feeble gold in the first

drawing, becomes purple and burning rose-color in the last.

217. But perhaps one of the most curious examples is in the series of

subjects from Winchelsea. That in the Liber Studiorum, "Winchelsea,

Sussex," bears date 1812, and its figures consist of a soldier speaking

to a woman, who is resting on the bank beside the road. There is another

small subject, with Winchelsea in the distance, of which the engraving

bears date 1817. It has _two_ women with bundles, and _two_ soldiers

toiling along the embankment in the plain, and a baggage wagon in the

distance. Neither of these seems to have satisfied him, and at last he

did another for the England series, of which the engraving bears date

1830. There is now a regiment on the march; the baggage wagon is there,

having got no farther on in the thirteen years, but one of the women is

tired, and has fainted on the bank; another is supporting her against

her bundle, and giving her drink; a third sympathetic woman is added,

and the two soldiers have stopped, and one is drinking from his

canteen.[40]

218. Nor is it merely of entire scenes, or of particular incidents that

Turner's memory is thus tenacious. The slightest passages of color or

arrangement that have pleased him--the fork of a bough, the casting of a

shadow, the fracture of a stone--will be taken up again and again, and

strangely worked into new relations with other thoughts. There is a

single sketch from nature in one of the portfolios at Farnley, of a

common wood-walk on the estate, which has furnished passages to no fewer

than three of the most elaborate compositions in the Liber Studiorum.

219. I am thus tedious in dwelling on Turner's powers of memory, because

I wish it to be thoroughly seen how all his greatness, all his infinite

luxuriance of invention, depends on his taking possession of everything

that he sees,--on his grasping all, and losing hold of nothing,--on his

forgetting himself, and forgetting nothing else. I wish it to be

understood how every great man paints what he sees or did see, his

greatness being indeed little else than his intense sense of fact. And

thus Pre-Raphaelitism and Raphaelitism, and Turnerism, are all one and

the same, so far as education can influence them. They are different in

their choice, different in their faculties, but all the same in this,

that Raphael himself, so far as he was great, and all who preceded or

followed him who ever were great, became so by painting the truths

around them as they appeared to each man's own mind, not as he had been

taught to see them, except by the God who made both him and them.

220. There is, however, one more characteristic of Turner's second

period, on which I have still to dwell, especially with reference to

what has been above advanced respecting the fallacy of overtoil; namely,

the magnificent ease with which all is done when it is _successfully_

done. For there are one or two drawings of this time which are _not_

done easily. Turner had in these set himself to do a fine thing to

exhibit his powers; in the common phrase, to excel himself; so sure as

he does this, the work is a failure. The worst drawings that have ever

come from his hands are some of this second period, on which he has

spent much time and laborious thought; drawings filled with incident

from one side to the other, with skies stippled into morbid blue, and

warm lights set against them in violent contrast; one of Bamborough

Castle, a large water-color, may be named as an example. But the truly

noble works are those in which, without effort, he has expressed his

thoughts as they came, and forgotten himself; and in these the

outpouring of invention is not less miraculous than the swiftness and

obedience of the mighty hand that expresses it. Anyone who examines the

drawings may see the evidence of this facility, in the strange freshness

and sharpness of every touch of color; but when the multitude of

delicate touches, with which all the aerial tones are worked, is taken

into consideration, it would still appear impossible that the drawing

could have been completed with _ease_, unless we had direct evidence on

the matter: fortunately, it is not wanting. There is a drawing in Mr.

Fawkes's collection of a man-of-war taking in stores: it is of the usual

size of those of the England series, about sixteen inches by eleven: it

does not appear one of the most highly finished, but it is still farther

removed from slightness. The hull of a first-rate occupies nearly

one-half of the picture on the right, her bows towards the spectator,

seen in sharp perspective from stem to stern, with all her port-holes,

guns, anchors, and lower rigging elaborately detailed; there are two

other ships of the line in the middle distance, drawn with equal

precision; a noble breezy sea dancing against their broad bows, full of

delicate drawing in its waves; a store-ship beneath the hull of the

larger vessel, and several other boats, and a complicated cloudy sky. It

might appear no small exertion of mind to draw the detail of all this

shipping down to the smallest ropes, from memory, in the drawing-room of

a mansion in the middle of Yorkshire, even if considerable time had been

given for the effort. But Mr. Fawkes sat beside the painter from the

first stroke to the last. Turner took a piece of blank paper one morning

after breakfast, outlined his ships, finished the drawing in three

hours, and went out to shoot.

221. Let this single fact be quietly meditated upon by our ordinary

painters, and they will see the truth of what was above asserted,--that

if a great thing can be done at all, it can be done easily; and let them

not torment themselves with twisting of compositions this way and that,

and repeating, and experimenting, and scene-shifting. If a man can

compose at all, he can compose at once, or rather he must compose in

spite of himself. And this is the reason of that silence which I have

kept in most of my works, on the subject of Composition. Many critics,

especially the architects, have found fault with me for not "teaching

people how to arrange masses;" for not "attributing sufficient

importance to composition." Alas! I attribute far more importance to it

than they do;--so much importance, that I should just as soon think of

sitting down to teach a man how to write a Divina Commedia, or King

Lear, as how to "compose," in the true sense, a single building or

picture. The marvelous stupidity of this age of lecturers is, that they

do not see that what they call, "principles of composition," are mere

principles of common sense in everything, as well as in pictures and

buildings;--A picture is to have a principal light? Yes; and so a dinner

is to have a principal dish, and an oration a principal point, and an

air of music a principal note, and every man a principal object. A

picture is to have harmony of relation among its parts? Yes; and so is a

speech well uttered, and an action well ordered, and a company well

chosen, and a ragout well mixed. Composition! As if a man were not

composing every moment of his life, well or ill, and would not do it

instinctively in his picture as well as elsewhere, if he could.

Composition of this lower or common kind is of exactly the same

importance in a picture that it is in anything else,--no more. It is

well that a man should say what he has to say in good order and

sequence, but the main thing is to say it truly. And yet we go on

preaching to our pupils as if to have a principal light was everything,

and so cover our academy walls with Shacabac feasts, wherein the courses

are indeed well ordered, but the dishes empty.

222. It is not, however, only in invention that men overwork themselves,

but in execution also; and here I have a word to say to the

Pre-Raphaelites specially. They are working too hard. There is evidence

in failing portions of their pictures, showing that they have wrought so

long upon them that their very sight has failed for weariness, and that

the hand refused any more to obey the heart. And, besides this, there

are certain qualities of drawing which they miss from over-carefulness.

For, let them be assured, there is a great truth lurking in that common

desire of men to see things done in what they call a "masterly," or

"bold," or "broad," manner: a truth oppressed and abused, like almost

every other in this world, but an eternal one nevertheless; and whatever

mischief may have followed from men's looking for nothing else but this

facility of execution, and supposing that a picture was assuredly all

right if only it were done with broad dashes of the brush, still the

truth remains the same:--that because it is not intended that men shall

torment or weary themselves with any earthly labor, it is appointed that

the noblest results should only be attainable by a certain ease and

decision of manipulation. I only wish people understood this much of

sculpture, as well as of painting, and could see that the finely

finished statue is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a far more

vulgar work than that which shows rough signs of the right hand laid to

the workman's hammer: but at all events, in painting it is felt by all

men, and justly felt. The freedom of the lines of nature can only be

represented by a similar freedom in the hand that follows them; there

are curves in the flow of the hair, and in the form of the features, and

in the muscular outline of the body, which can in no wise be caught but

by a sympathetic freedom in the stroke of the pencil. I do not care what

example is taken; be it the most subtle and careful work of Leonardo

himself, there will be found a play and power and ease in the outlines,

which no _slow_ effort could ever imitate. And if the Pre-Raphaelites do

not understand how this kind of power, in its highest perfection, may be

united with the most severe rendering of all other orders of truth, and

especially of those with which they themselves have most sympathy, let

them look at the drawings of John Lewis.

223. These then are the principal lessons which we have to learn from

Turner, in his second or central period of labor. There is one more,

however, to be received; and that is a warning; for towards the close of

it, what with doing small conventional vignettes for publishers, making

showy drawings from sketches taken by other people of places he had

never seen, and touching up the bad engravings from his works submitted

to him almost every day,--engravings utterly destitute of animation, and

which had to be raised into a specious brilliancy by scratching them

over with white, spotty lights, he gradually got inured to many

conventionalities, and even falsities; and, having trusted for ten or

twelve years almost entirely to his memory and invention, living, I

believe, mostly in London, and receiving a new sensation only from the

burning of the Houses of Parliament, he painted many pictures between

1830 and 1840 altogether unworthy of him. But he was not thus to close

his career.

224. In the summer either of 1840 or 1841, he undertook another journey

into Switzerland. It was then at least forty years since he had first

seen the Alps; (the source of the Arveron, in Mr. Fawkes's collection,

which could not have been painted till he had seen the thing itself,

bears date 1800,) and the direction of his journey in 1840 marks his

fond memory of that earliest one; for, if we look over the Swiss studies

and drawings executed in his first period, we shall be struck by his

fondness for the pass of the St. Gothard; the most elaborate drawing in

the Farnley collection is one of the Lake of Lucerne from Fluelen; and,

counting the Liber Studiorum subjects, there are, to my knowledge, six

compositions taken at the same period from the pass of St. Gothard, and,

probably, several others are in existence. The valleys of Sallenche and

Chamouni, and Lake of Geneva, are the only other Swiss scenes which seem

to have made very profound impressions on him.

He returned in 1841 to Lucerne; walked up Mont Pilate on foot, crossed

the St. Gothard, and returned by Lausanne and Geneva. He made a large

number of colored sketches on this journey, and realized several of them

on his return. The drawings thus produced are different from all that

had preceded them, and are the first which belong definitely to what I

shall henceforward call his Third period.

The perfect repose of his youth had returned to his mind, while the

faculties of imagination and execution appeared in renewed strength; all

conventionality being done away by the force of the impression which he

had received from the Alps, after his long separation from them. The

drawings are marked by a peculiar largeness and simplicity of thought:

most of them by deep serenity, passing into melancholy; all by a

richness of color, such as he had never before conceived. They, and the

works done in following years, bear the same relation to those of the

rest of his life that the colors of sunset do to those of the day; and

will be recognized, in a few years more, as the noblest landscapes ever

yet conceived by human intellect.

225. Such has been the career of the greatest painter of this century.

Many a century may pass away before there rises such another; but what

greatness any among us may be capable of, will, at least, be best

attained by following in his path;--by beginning in all quietness and

hopefulness to use whatever powers we may possess to represent the

things around us as we see and feel them; trusting to the close of life

to give the perfect crown to the course of its labors, and knowing

assuredly that the determination of the degree in which watchfulness is

to be exalted into invention, rests with a higher will than our own.

And, if not greatness, at least a certain good, is thus to be achieved;

for though I have above spoken of the mission of the more humble artist,

as if it were merely to be subservient to that of the antiquarian or the

man of science, there is an ulterior aspect, in which it is not

subservient, but superior. Every archaeologist, every natural

philosopher, knows that there is a peculiar rigidity of mind brought on

by long devotion to logical and analytical inquiries. Weak men, giving

themselves to such studies, are utterly hardened by them, and become

incapable of understanding anything nobler, or even of feeling the value

of the results to which they lead. But even the best men are in a sort

injured by them, and pay a definite price, as in most other matters, for

definite advantages. They gain a peculiar strength, but lose in

tenderness, elasticity, and impressibility. The man who has gone, hammer

in hand, over the surface of a romantic country, feels no longer, in the

mountain ranges he has so laboriously explored, the sublimity or mystery

with which they were veiled when he first beheld them, and with which

they are adorned in the mind of the passing traveler. In his more

informed conception, they arrange themselves like a dissected model:

where another man would be awe-struck by the magnificence of the

precipice, he sees nothing but the emergence of a fossiliferous rock,

familiarized already to his imagination as extending in a shallow

stratum, over a perhaps uninteresting district; where the unlearned

spectator would be touched with strong emotion by the aspect of the

snowy summits which rise in the distance, he sees only the culminating

points of a metamorphic formation, with an uncomfortable web of fanlike

fissures radiating, in his imagination, though their centers.[41] That

in the grasp he has obtained of the inner relations of all these things

to the universe, and to man, that in the views which have been opened to

him of natural energies such as no human mind would have ventured to

conceive, and of past states of being, each in some new way bearing

witness to the unity of purpose and everlastingly consistent providence

of the Maker of all things, he has received reward well worthy the

sacrifice, I would not for an instant deny; but the sense of the loss is

not less painful to him if his mind be rightly constituted; and it would

be with infinite gratitude that he would regard the man, who, retaining

in his delineation of natural scenery a fidelity to the facts of science

so rigid as to make his work at once acceptable and credible to the most

sternly critical intellect, should yet invest its features again with

the sweet veil of their daily aspect; should make them dazzling with the

splendor of wandering light, and involve them in the unsearchableness of

stormy obscurity; should restore to the divided anatomy its visible

vitality of operation, clothe the naked crags with soft forests, enrich

the mountain ruins with bright pastures, and lead the thoughts from the

monotonous recurrence of the phenomena of the physical world, to the

sweet interests and sorrows of human life and death.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] This essay was first published in 1851 as a separate pamphlet

entitled "Pre-Raphaelitism," by the author of "Modern Painters." (8vo,

pp. 68. London: Smith, Elder, & Co.) It was afterwards reprinted in

1862, without alteration, except that the later issue bore the author's

name, and omitted a dedication which in the first edition ran as

follows:--"To Francis Hawkesworth Fawkes, Esq., of Farnley, These pages,

Which owe their present form to advantages granted By his kindness, Are

affectionately inscribed, By his obliged friend, John Ruskin."--ED.

[29] Compare "Sesame and Lilies," Sec. 2.--ED.

[30] See "Arrows of the Chace," vol. i., which gives several letters

there collected under the head of Pre-Raphaelitism.--ED.

[31] It was not a little curious, that in the very number of the Art

Union which repeated this direct falsehood about the Pre-Raphaelite

rejection of "linear perspective" (by-the-bye, the next time J. B. takes

upon him to speak of anyone connected with the Universities, he may as

well first ascertain the difference between a Graduate and an

Under-Graduate), the second plate given should have been of a picture of

Bonington's--a professional landscape painter, observe--for the want of

_aerial_ perspective in which the Art Union itself was obliged to

apologize, and in which, the artist has committed nearly as many

blunders in _linear_ perspective as there are lines in the picture.

[32] These false statements may be reduced to three principal heads, and

directly contradicted in succession.

The first, the current fallacy of society as well as of the press, was,

that the Pre-Raphaelites imitated the _errors_ of early painters.

A falsehood of this kind could not have obtained credence anywhere but

in England, few English people, comparatively, having ever seen a

picture of early Italian Masters. If they had they would have known that

the Pre-Raphaelite pictures are just as superior to the early Italian in

skill of manipulation, power of drawing, and knowledge of effect, as

inferior to them in grace of design; and that in a word, there is not a

shadow of resemblance between the two styles. The Pre-Raphaelites

imitate no pictures: they paint from nature only. But they have opposed

themselves as a body, to that kind of teaching above described, which

only began after Raphael's time: and they have opposed themselves as

sternly to the entire feeling of the Renaissance schools; a feeling

compounded of indolence, infidelity, sensuality, and shallow pride.

Therefore they have called themselves Pre-Raphaelite. If they adhere to

their principles, and paint nature as it is around them, with the help

of modern science, with the earnestness of the men of the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, they will, as I said, found a new and noble school

in England. If their sympathies with the early artists lead them into

mediaevalism or Romanism, they will of course come to nothing. But I

believe there is no danger of this, at least for the strongest among

them. There may be some weak ones, whom the Tractarian heresies may

touch; but if so, they will drop off like decayed branches from a strong

stem. I hope all things from the school.

The second falsehood was, that the Pre-Raphaelites did not draw well.

This was asserted, and could have been asserted only by persons who had

never looked at the pictures.

The third falsehood was, that they had no system of light and shade. To

which it may be simply replied that their system of light and shade is

exactly the same as the Sun's; which is, I believe, likely to outlast

that of the Renaissance, however brilliant.

[33] See ante, pp. 148-157.--ED.

[34] He did not use his full signature, "J. M. W.," until about the year

1800.

[35] I shall give a _catalogue raisonnee_ of all this in the third

volume of _Modern Painters_.

[36] See _post_, Sec. 217.

[37] The plate was, however, never published.

[38] And the more probably because Turner was never fond of staying long

at any place, and was least of all likely to make a pause of two or

three days at the beginning of his journey.

[39] _Vide Modern Painters_, Part II. Sect. III. Chap. IV. Sec. 13.

[40] See _ante_, Sec. 200.

[41] This state of mind appears to have been the only one which

Wordsworth had been able to discern in men of science; and in disdain of

which, he wrote that short-sighted passage in the Excursion, Book III,

P. 165-190, which is, I think, the only one in the whole range of his

works which his true friends would have desired to see blotted out. What

else has been found fault with as feeble or superfluous, is not so in

the intense distinctive relief which it gives to his character. But

these lines are written in mere ignorance of the matter they treat; in

mere want of sympathy with the men they describe: for, observe, though

the passage is put into the mouth of the Solitary, it is fully

confirmed, and even rendered more scornful, by the speech which follows.

THE THREE COLORS OF PRE-RAPHAELITISM.[42]

I.

226. I was lately staying in a country house, in which, opposite each

other at the sides of the drawing-room window, were two pictures,

belonging to what in the nineteenth century must be called old times,

namely Rossetti's "Annunciation," and Millais' "Blind Girl"; while, at

the corner of the chimney-piece in the same room, there was a little

drawing of a Marriage-dance, by Edward Burne Jones. And in my bedroom,

at one side of my bed, there was a photograph of the tomb of Ilaria di

Caretto at Lucca, and on the other, an engraving, in long since

superannuated manner, from Raphael's "Transfiguration." Also over the

looking-glass in my bedroom, there was this large illuminated text,

fairly well written, but with more vermilion in it than was needful;

"Lord, teach us to pray."

And for many reasons I would fain endeavor to tell my Oxford pupils some

facts which seem to me worth memory about these six works of art; which,

if they will reflect upon, being, in the present state of my health, the

best I can do for them in the way of autumn lecturing, it will be kind

to me. And as I cannot speak what I would say, and believe my pupils are

more likely to read it if printed in the _Nineteenth Century_ than in a

separate pamphlet, I have asked, and obtained of the editor, space in

columns which ought, nevertheless, I think, usually to be occupied with

sterner subjects, as the Fates are now driving the nineteenth century on

its missionary path.

227. The first picture I named, Rossetti's "Annunciation," was, I

believe, among the earliest that drew some public attention to the

so-called "Pre-Raphaelite" school. The one opposite to it,--Millais'

"Blind Girl," is among those chiefly characteristic of that school in

its determined manner. And the third, though small and unimportant, is

no less characteristic, in its essential qualities, of the mind of the

greatest master whom that school has yet produced.

I believe most readers will start at the application of the term

"master," to any English painter. For the hope of the nineteenth century

is more and more distinctly every day, to teach all men how to live

without mastership either in art or morals (primarily, of course,

substituting for the words of Christ, "Ye say well, for so I am,"--the

probable emendation, "Ye say ill, for so I am not"); and to limit the

idea of magistracy altogether, no less than the functions of the

magistrate, to the suppression of disturbance in the manufacturing

districts.

Nor would I myself use the word "Master" in any but the most qualified

sense, of any "modern painter"; scarcely even of Turner, and not at all,

except for convenience and as a matter of courtesy, of any workman of

the Pre-Raphaelite school, as yet. In such courtesy, only, let the

masterless reader permit it me.

228. I must endeavor first to give, as well as I can by description,

some general notion of the subjects and treatment of the three pictures.

Rossetti's "Annunciation" differs from every previous conception of the

scene known to me, in representing the angel as waking the Virgin from

sleep to give her his message. The Messenger himself also differs from

angels as they are commonly represented, in not depending, for

recognition of his supernatural character, on the insertion of bird's

wings at his shoulders. If we are to know him for an angel at all, it

must be by his face, which is that simply of youthful, but grave,

manhood. He is neither transparent in body, luminous in presence, nor

auriferous in apparel;--wears a plain, long, white robe,--casts a

natural and undiminished shadow,--and, although there are flames beneath

his feet, which upbear him, so that he does not touch the earth, these

are unseen by the Virgin.

She herself is an English, not a Jewish girl, of about sixteen or

seventeen, of such pale and thoughtful beauty as Rossetti could best

imagine for her; concerning which effort, and its degree of success, we

will inquire farther presently.

She has risen half up, not _started_ up, in being awakened; and is not

looking at the angel, but only thinking, it seems, with eyes cast down,

as if supposing herself in a strange dream. The morning light fills the

room, and shows at the foot of her little pallet-bed, her embroidery

work, left off the evening before,--an upright lily.

Upright, and very accurately upright, as also the edges of the piece of

cloth in its frame,--as also the gliding form of the angel,--as also, in

severe foreshortening, that of the Virgin herself. It has been studied,

so far as it has been studied at all, from a very thin model; and the

disturbed coverlid is thrown into confused angular folds, which admit no

suggestion whatever of ordinary girlish grace. So that, to any spectator

little inclined towards the praise of barren "uprightnesse," and

accustomed on the contrary to expect radiance in archangels, and grace

in Madonnas, the first effect of the design must be extremely

displeasing, and the first is perhaps, with most art-amateurs of modern

days, likely to be the last.

229. The background of the second picture (Millais' "Blind Girl"), is an

open English common, skirted by the tidy houses of a well-to-do village

in the cockney rural districts. I have no doubt the scene is a real one

within some twenty miles from London, and painted mostly on the spot.

The houses are entirely uninteresting, but decent, trim, as human

dwellings should be, and on the whole inoffensive--not "cottages," mind

you, in any sense, but respectable brick-walled and slated

constructions, old-fashioned in the sense of "old" at, suppose, Bromley

or Sevenoaks, and with a pretty little church belonging to them, its

window traceries freshly whitewashed by order of the careful warden.

The common is a fairly spacious bit of ragged pasture, with a couple of

donkeys feeding on it, and a cow or two, and at the side of the public

road passing over it, the blind girl has sat down to rest awhile. She is

a simple beggar, not a poetical or vicious one;--being peripatetic with

musical instrument, she will, I suppose, come under the general term of

tramp; a girl of eighteen or twenty, extremely plain-featured, but

healthy, and just now resting, as any one of us would rest, not because

she is much tired, but because the sun has but this moment come out

after a shower, and the smell of the grass is pleasant.

The shower has been heavy, and is so still in the distance, where an

intensely bright double rainbow is relieved against the departing

thunder-cloud. The freshly wet grass is all radiant through and through

with the new sunshine; full noon at its purest, the very donkeys bathed

in the rain-dew, and prismatic with it under their rough breasts as they

graze; the weeds at the girl's side as bright as a Byzantine enamel, and

inlaid with blue veronica; her upturned face all aglow with the light

that seeks its way through her wet eyelashes (wet only with the rain).

Very quiet she is,--so quiet that a radiant butterfly has settled on her

shoulder, and basks there in the warm sun. Against her knee, on which

her poor instrument of musical beggary rests (harmonium), leans another

child, half her age--her guide;--indifferent, this one, either to sun or

rain, only a little tired of waiting. No more than a half profile of her

face is seen; and that is quite expressionless, and not the least

pretty.

230. Both of these pictures are oil-paintings. The third, Mr. Burne

Jones's "Bridal," is a small water-color drawing, scarcely more than a

sketch; but full and deep in such color as it admits. Any careful

readers of my recent lectures at Oxford know that I entirely ignore the

difference of material between oil and water as diluents of color, when

I am examining any grave art question: nor shall I hereafter, throughout

this paper, take notice of it. Nor do I think it needful to ask the

pardon of any of the three artists for confining the reader's attention

at present to comparatively minor and elementary examples of their

works. If I can succeed in explaining the principles involved in them,

their application by the reader will be easily extended to the enjoyment

of better examples.

This drawing of Mr. Jones's, however, is far less representative of his

scale of power than either of the two pieces already described, which

have both cost their artists much care and time; while this little

water-color has been perhaps done in the course of a summer afternoon.

It is only about seven inches by nine: the figures of the average size

of Angelico's on any altar predella; and the heads, of those on an

average Corinthian or Syracusan coin. The bride and bridegroom sit on a

slightly raised throne at the side of the picture, the bride nearest us;

her head seen in profile, a little bowed. Before them, the three

bridesmaids and their groomsmen dance in circle, holding each other's

hands, bare-footed, and dressed in long dark blue robes. Their figures

are scarcely detached from the dark background, which is a willful

mingling of shadow and light, as the artist chose to put them,

representing, as far as I remember, nothing in particular. The deep tone

of the picture leaves several of the faces in obscurity, and none are

drawn with much care, not even the bride's; but with enough to show that

her features are at least as beautiful as those of an ordinary Greek

goddess, while the depth of the distant background throws out her pale

head in an almost lunar, yet unexaggerated, light; and the white and

blue flowers of her narrow coronal, though _merely_ white and blue,

shine, one knows not how, like gems. Her bridegroom stoops forward a

little to look at her, so that we see his front face, and can see also

that he loves her.

231. Such being the respective effort and design of the three pictures,

although I put by, for the moment, any question of their mechanical

skill or manner, it must yet, I believe, be felt by the reader that, as

works of young men, they contained, and even nailed to the Academy

gates, a kind of Lutheran challenge to the then accepted teachers in

all European schools of Art: perhaps a little too shrill and petulant in

the tone of it, but yet curiously resolute and steady in its triple

Fraternity, as of William of Burglen with his Melchthal and Stauffacher,

in the Grutli meadow, not wholly to be scorned by even the knightliest

powers of the Past.

We have indeed, since these pictures were first exhibited, become

accustomed to many forms both of pleasing and revolting innovation: but

consider, in those early times, how the pious persons who had always

been accustomed to see their Madonnas dressed in scrupulously folded and

exquisitely falling robes of blue, with edges embroidered in gold,--to

find them also, sitting under arcades of exquisitest architecture by

Bernini,--and reverently to observe them receive the angel's message

with their hands folded on their breasts in the most graceful positions,

and the missals they had been previously studying laid open on their

knees, (see my own outline from Angelico of the "Ancilla Domini," the

first plate of the fifth volume of _Modern Painters_);--consider, I

repeat, the shock to the feelings of all these delicately minded

persons, on being asked to conceive a Virgin waking from her sleep on a

pallet bed, in a plain room, startled by sudden words and ghostly

presence which she does not comprehend, and casting in her mind what

manner of Salutation this should be.

232. Again, consider, with respect to the second picture, how the

learned possessors of works of established reputation by the ancient

masters, classically catalogued as "landscapes with figures"; and who

held it for eternal, artistic law that such pictures should either

consist of a rock, with a Spanish chestnut growing out of the side of

it, and three banditti in helmets and big feathers on the top, or else

of a Corinthian temple, built beside an arm of the sea, with the Queen

of Sheba beneath, preparing for embarkation to visit Solomon,--the whole

properly toned down with amber varnish;--imagine the first

consternation, and final wrath, of these _cognoscenti_, at being asked

to contemplate, deliberately, and to the last rent of her ragged gown,

and for principal object in a finished picture, a vagrant who ought at

once to have been sent to the workhouse; and some really green grass and

blue flowers, as they actually may any day be seen on an English

common-side.

And finally, let us imagine, if imagination fail us not, the far more

wide and weighty indignation of the public, accustomed always to see its

paintings of marriages elaborated in Christian propriety and splendor;

with a bishop officiating, assisted by a dean and an archdeacon; the

modesty of the bride expressed by a veil of the most expensive

Valenciennes, and the robes of the bridesmaids designed by the

perfectest of Parisian artists, and looped up with stuffed robins or

other such tender rarities;--think with what sense of hitherto

unheard-of impropriety, the British public must have received a picture

of a marriage, in which the bride was only crowned with flowers,--at

which the bridesmaids danced barefoot,--and in which nothing was known,

or even conjecturable, respecting the bridegroom, but his love!

233. Such being the manifestly opponent and agonistic temper of these

three pictures (and admitting, which I will crave the reader to do for

the nonce, their real worth and power to be considerable), it surely

becomes a matter of no little interest to see what spirit it is that

they have in common, which, recognized as revolutionary in the minds of

the young artists themselves, caused them, with more or less of

firmness, to constitute themselves into a society, partly monastic,

partly predicatory, called "Pre-Raphaelite": and also recognized as

such, with indignation, by the public, caused the youthfully didactic

society to be regarded with various degrees of contempt, passing into

anger (as of offended personal dignity), and embittered farther, among

certain classes of persons, even into a kind of instinctive abhorrence.

234. I believe the reader will discover, on reflection, that there is

really only one quite common and sympathetic impulse shown in these

three works, otherwise so distinct in aim and execution. And this

fraternal link he will, if careful in reflection, discover to be an

effort to represent, so far as in these youths lay either the choice or

the power, things as they are, or were, or may be, instead of, according

to the practice of their instructors and the wishes of their public,

things as they are _not_, never were, and never can be: this effort

being founded deeply on a conviction that it is at first better, and

finally more pleasing, for human minds to contemplate things as they

are, than as they are not.

Thus, Mr. Rossetti, in this and subsequent works of the kind, thought it

better for himself and his public to make some effort towards a real

notion of what actually did happen in the carpenter's cottage at

Nazareth, giving rise to the subsequent traditions delivered in the

Gospels, than merely to produce a variety in the pattern of Virgin,

pattern of Virgin's gown, and pattern of Virgin's house, which had been

set by the jewelers of the fifteenth century.

Similarly, Mr. Millais, in this and other works of the kind, thought it

desirable rather to paint such grass and foliage as he saw in Kent,

Surrey, and other solidly accessible English counties, than to imitate

even the most Elysian fields enameled by Claude, or the gloomiest

branches of Hades forest rent by Salvator: and yet more, to manifest his

own strong personal feeling that the humanity, no less than the herbage,

near us and around, was that which it was the painter's duty first to

portray; and that, if Wordsworth were indeed right in feeling that the

meanest flower that blows can give,--much more, for any kindly heart it

should be true that the meanest tramp that walks can give--"thoughts

that do often lie too deep for tears."

235. And if at first--or even always to careless sight--the third of

these pictures seem opposite to the two others in the very point of

choice, between what is and what is not; insomuch that while _they_ with

all their strength avouch realities, _this_ with simplest confession

dwells upon a dream,--yet in this very separation from them it sums

their power and seals their brotherhood; reaching beyond them to the

more perfect truth of things, not only that once were,--not only that

now are,--but which are the same yesterday, to-day, and forever;--the

love by whose ordaining the world itself, and all that dwell therein,

live, and move, and have their being; by which the Morning stars rejoice

in their courses--in which the virgins of deathless Israel rejoice in

the dance--and in whose constancy the Giver of light to stars, and love

to men, Himself is glad in the creatures of His hand,--day by new day

proclaiming to His Church of all the ages, "As the bridegroom rejoiceth

over the bride, so shall thy Lord rejoice over thee."

Such, the reader will find, if he cares to learn it, is indeed the

purport and effort of these three designs--so far as, by youthful hands

and in a time of trouble and rebuke, such effort could be brought to

good end. Of their visible weaknesses, with the best justice I may,--of

their veritable merits with the best insight I may, and of the farther

history of the school which these masters founded, I hope to be

permitted to speak more under the branches that do not "remember their

green felicity"; adding a corollary or two respecting the other pieces

of art above named[43] as having taken part in the tenor of my country

hours of idleness.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] _Nineteenth Century_, NOV.-DEC. 1878.--ED.

[43] May I in the meantime recommend any reader interested in these

matters to obtain for himself such photographic representation as may be

easily acquirable of the tomb of Ilaria? It is in the north transept of

the Cathedral of Lucca; and is certainly the most beautiful work

existing by the master who wrought it,--Jacopo della Quercia.

THE THREE COLORS OF PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

II.

236. The feeling which, in the foregoing notes on the pictures that

entertained my vacation, I endeavored to illustrate as dominant over

early Pre-Raphaelite work, is very far from being new in the world.

Demonstrations in support of fact against fancy have been periodical

motives of earthquake and heartquake, under the two rigidly incumbent

burdens of drifted tradition, which, throughout the history of humanity,

during phases of languid thought, cover the vaults of searching fire

that must at last try every man's work, what it is.

But the movement under present question derived unusual force, and in

some directions a morbid and mischievous force, from the vulgarly

called[44] "scientific" modes of investigation which had destroyed in

the minds of the public it appealed to, all possibility, or even

conception, of reverence for anything, past, present, or future,

invisible to the eyes of a mob, and inexpressible by popular

vociferation. It was indeed, and had long been, too true, as the wisest

of us felt, that the mystery of the domain between things that are

universally visible, and are only occasionally so to some persons,--no

less than the myths or words in which those who had entered that kingdom

related what they had seen, had become, the one uninviting, and the

other useless, to men dealing with the immediate business of our day; so

that the historian of the last of European kings might most reasonably

mourn that "the Berlin Galleries, which are made up, like other

galleries, of goat-footed Pan, Europa's Bull, Romulus's She-wolf, and

the Correggiosity of Correggio, contain, for instance, no portrait of

Friedrich the Great; no likeness at all, or next to none at all, of the

noble series of human realities, or of any part of them, who have sprung

not from the idle brains of dreaming dilettanti, but from the Head of

God Almighty, to make this poor authentic earth a little memorable for

us, and to do a little work that may be eternal there."

* * *

237. But we must surely, in fairness to modernism, remember that

although no portraits of great Frederick, of a trustworthy character,

may be found at Berlin, portraits of the English squire, be he great or

small, may usually be seen at his country house. And Edinburgh, as I

lately saw,--if she boasts of no Venetian perfectness of art in the

portraiture of her Bruce or James, her Douglas or Knox, at Holyrood, has

at least a charming portrait of a Scottish beauty in the Attic

Institution, whose majesty, together with that of the more extensive

glass roofs of the railway station, and the tall chimney of the

gasworks, inflates the Caledonian mind, contemplative around the spot

where the last of its minstrels appears to be awaiting eternal

extinction under his special extinguisher;--and pronouncing of all its

works and ways that they are very good.

And are there not also sufficiently resembling portraits of all the

mouthpieces of constituents in British Parliament--as their vocal powers

advance them into that worshipful society--presented to the people, with

due felicitation on the new pipe it has got to its organ, in the

_Illustrated_ or other graphic _News_? Surely, therefore, it cannot be

portraiture of merely human greatness of mind that we are anyway short

of; but another manner of greatness altogether? And may we not regret

that as great Frederick is dead, so also great Pan is dead, and only the

goat-footed Pan, or rather the goat's feet of him without the Pan, left

for portraiture?

* * *

238. I chanced to walk, to-day, 9th of November, through the gallery of

the Liverpool Museum, in which the good zeal and sense of Mr. Gatty have

already, in beautiful order, arranged the Egyptian antiquities, but have

not yet prevailed far enough to group, in like manner, the scattered

Byzantine and Italian ivories above. Out of which collection, every way

valuable, two primarily important pieces, it seems to me, may be

recommended for accurate juxtaposition, bringing then for us into

briefest compass an extensive story of the Arts of Mankind.

The first is an image of St. John the Baptist, carved in the eleventh

century; being then conceived by the image-maker as decently covered by

his raiment of camel's hair; bearing a gentle aspect, because the herald

of a gentle Lord; and pointing to his quite legibly written message

concerning the Lamb which is that gentle Lord's heraldic symbol.

The other carving is also of St. John the Baptist, Italian work of the

sixteenth century. He is represented thereby as bearing no aspect, for

he is without his head;--wearing no camel's hair, for he is without his

raiment;--and indicative of no message, for he has none to bring.

239. Now if these two carvings are ever put in due relative position,

they will constitute a precise and permanent art-lecture to the

museum-visitants of Liverpool-burg; exhibiting to them instantly, and in

sum, the conditions of the change in the aims of art which, beginning in

the thirteenth century under Niccolo Pisano, consummated itself three

hundred years afterwards in Raphael and his scholars. Niccolo, first

among Italians, thought mainly in carving the Crucifixion, not how heavy

Christ's head was when He bowed it;--but how heavy His body was when

people came to take it down. And the apotheosis of flesh, or, in modern

scientific terms, the molecular development of flesh, went steadily on,

until at last, as we see in the instance before us, it became really of

small consequence to the artists of the Renaissance Incarnadine, whether

a man had his head on or not, so only that his legs were handsome: and

the decapitation, whether of St. John or St. Cecilia; the massacre of

any quantity of Innocents; the flaying, whether of Marsyas or St.

Bartholomew, and the deaths, it might be of Laocoon by his vipers, it

might be of Adonis by his pig, or it might be of Christ by His people,

became, one and all, simply subjects for analysis of muscular

mortification; and the vast body of artists accurately, therefore,

little more than a chirurgically useless sect of medical students.

Of course there were many reactionary tendencies among the men who had

been trained in the pure Tuscan schools, which partly concealed, or

adorned, the materialism of their advance; and Raphael himself, after

profoundly studying the arabesques of Pompeii and of the palace of the

Caesars, beguiled the tedium, and illustrated the spirituality of the

converse of Moses and Elias with Christ concerning His decease which He

should accomplish at Jerusalem, by placing them, above the Mount of

Transfiguration, in the attitudes of two humming-birds on the top of a

honeysuckle.

240. But the best of these ornamental arrangements were insufficient to

sustain the vivacity, while they conclusively undermined the sincerity,

of the Christian faith, and "the real consequences of the acceptance of

this kind (Roman Bath and Sarcophagus kind)" of religious idealism were

instant and manifold.[45]

* * *

So far as it was received and trusted in by thoughtful persons, it only

served to chill all the conceptions of sacred history which they might

otherwise have obtained. Whatever they could have fancied for themselves

about the wild, strange, infinitely stern, infinitely tender, infinitely

varied veracities of the life of Christ, was blotted out by the vapid

fineries of Raphael: the rough Galilean pilot, the orderly custom

receiver, and all the questioning wonder and fire of uneducated

apostleship, were obscured under an antique mask of philosophical faces

and long robes. The feeble, subtle, suffering, ceaseless energy and

humiliation of St. Paul were confused with an idea of a meditative

Hercules leaning on a sweeping sword; and the mighty presences of Moses

and Elias were softened by introductions of delicate grace, adopted from

dancing nymphs and rising Auroras.

Now no vigorously minded religious person could possibly receive

pleasure or help from such art as this; and the necessary result was the

instant rejection of it by the healthy religion of the world. Raphael

ministered, with applause, to the impious luxury of the Vatican, but was

trampled underfoot at once by every believing and advancing Christian of

his own and subsequent times; and thenceforward pure Christianity and

"high art" took separate roads, and fared on, as best they might,

independently of each other.

But although Calvin, and Knox, and Luther, and their flocks, with all

the hardest-headed and truest-hearted faithful left in Christendom, thus

spurned away the spurious art, and all art with it (not without harm to

themselves, such as a man must needs sustain in cutting off a decayed

limb), certain conditions of weaker Christianity suffered the false

system to retain influence over them; and to this day the clear and

tasteless poison of the art of Raphael infects with sleep of infidelity

the hearts of millions of Christians. It is the first cause of all that

pre-eminent _dullness_ which characterizes what Protestants call sacred

art; a dullness not merely baneful in making religion distasteful to the

young, but in sickening, as we have seen, all vital belief of religion

in the old. A dim sense of impossibility attaches itself always to the

graceful emptiness of the representation; we feel instinctively that the

painted Christ and painted apostle are not beings that ever did or could

exist; and this fatal sense of fair fabulousness, and well-composed

impossibility, steals gradually from the picture into the history, until

we find ourselves reading St. Mark or St. Luke with the same admiring,

but uninterested, incredulity, with which we contemplate Raphael.

241. Without claiming,--nay, so far as my knowledge can reach, utterly

disclaiming--any personal influence over, or any originality of

suggestion to, the men who founded our presently realistic schools, I

may yet be permitted to point out the sympathy which I had as an

outstanding spectator with their effort; and the more or less active

fellowship with it, which, unrecognized, I had held from the beginning.

The passage I have just quoted (with many others enforcing similar

truths) is in the third volume of _Modern Painters_; but if the reader

can refer to the close of the preface to the second edition[46] of the

first, he will find this very principle of realism asserted for the

groundwork of all I had to teach in that volume. The lesson so far

pleased the public of that day, that ever since, they have refused to

listen to any corollaries or conclusions from it, assuring me, year by

year, continually, that the older I grew, the less I knew, and the worse

I wrote. Nevertheless, that first volume of _Modern Painters_ did by no

means contain all that even then I knew; and in the third, nominally

treating of "Many Things," will be found the full expression of what I

knew best; namely, that all "things," many or few, which we ought to

paint, must be first distinguished boldly from the nothings which we

ought not; and that a faithful realist, before he could question whether

his art was representing anything truly, had first to ask whether it

meant seriously to represent anything at all!

242. And such definition has in these days become more needful than ever

before, in this solid, or spectral--which-ever the reader pleases to

consider it--world of ours. For some of us, who have no perception but

of solidity, are agreed to consider all that is not solid, or weighably

liquid, nothing. And others of us, who have also perception of the

spectral, are sometimes too much inclined to call what is no more than

solid, or weighably liquid, nothing. But the general reader may be at

least assured that it is not at all possible for the student to enter

into useful discussion concerning the qualities of art which takes on

itself to represent things as they are, unless he include in its

subjects the spectral, no less than the substantial, reality; and

understand what difference must be between the powers of veritable

representation, for the men whose models are of ponderable flesh, as for

instance, the "Sculptor's model," lately under debate in Liverpool,--and

the men whose models pause perhaps only for an instant--painted on the

immeasurable air,--forms which they themselves can but discern darkly,

and remember uncertainly, saying: "A vision passed before me, but I

could not discern the form thereof."

243. And the most curious, yet the most common, deficiency in the modern

contemplative mind, is its inability to comprehend that these phenomena

of true imagination are yet no less real, and often more vivid than

phenomena of matter. We continually hear artists blamed or praised for

having painted this or that (either of material or spectral kind),

without the slightest implied inquiry whether they _saw_ this, or that.

Whereas the quite primal difference between the first and second order

of artists, is that the first is indeed painting what he has seen; and

the second only what he would like to see! But as the one that can paint

what he would like, has therefore the power, if he chooses, of painting

more or less what also his public likes, he has a chance of being

received with sympathetic applause, on all hands, while the first, it

may be, meets only reproach for not having painted something more

agreeable. Thus Mr. Millais, going out at Tunbridge or Sevenoaks, sees a

blind vagrant led by an ugly child; and paints that highly objectionable

group, as they appeared to him. But your pliably minded painter gives

you a beautiful young lady guiding a sightless Belisarius (see the gift

by one of our most tasteful modistes to our National Gallery), and the

gratified public never troubles itself to ask whether these ethereal

mendicants were ever indeed apparent in this world, or any other. Much

more, if, in deeper vistas of his imagination, some presently graphic

Zechariah paint--(let us say) four carpenters, the public will most

likely declare that he ought to have painted persons in a higher class

of life, without ever inquiring whether the Lord had shown him four

carpenters or not. And the worst of the business is that the public

impatience, in such sort, is not wholly unreasonable. For truly, a

painter who has eyes can, for the most part, see what he "likes" with

them; and is, by divine law, answerable for his liking. And, even at

this late hour of the day, it is still conceivable that such of them as

would _verily_ prefer to see, suppose, instead of a tramp with a

harmonium, Orpheus with his lute, or Arion on his dolphin, pleased

Proteus rising beside him from the sea,--might, standing on the

"pleasant lea" of Margate or Brighton, have sight of those personages.

Orpheus with his lute,--Jubal with his harp and horn,--Harmonia, bride

of the warrior seed-sower,--Musica herself, lady of all timely thought

and sweetly ordered things,--Cantatrice and Incantatrice to all but the

museless adder; these the Amphion of Fesole saw, as he shaped the marble

of his tower; these, Memmi of Siena, fair-figured on the shadows of his

vault;--but for us, here is the only manifestation granted to our best

practical painter--a vagrant with harmonium--and yonder blackbirds and

iridescent jackasses, to be harmonized thereby.

244. Our best _painter_ (among the living) I say;--no question has ever

been of that. Since Van Eyck and Duerer there has nothing been seen so

well done in laying of clear oil-color within definite line. And what he

might have painted for us, if _we_ had only known what we would have of

him! Heaven only knows. But we none of us knew,--nor he neither; and on

the whole the perfectest of his works, and the representative picture of

that generation--was no Annunciate Maria bowing herself; but only a

Newsless Mariana stretching herself: which is indeed the best symbol of

the mud-moated Nineteenth century; in _its_ Grange, Stable--Sty, or

whatever name of dwelling may best befit the things it calls Houses and

Cities: imprisoned therein by the unassailablest of walls, and blackest

of ditches--by the pride of Babel, and the filthiness of Aholah and

Aholibamah; and their worse younger sister;--craving for any manner of

News from any world--and getting none trustworthy even of its own.

245. I said that in this second paper I would try to give some brief

history of the rise, and the issue, of that Pre-Raphaelite school: but,

as I look over two of the essays[47] that were printed with mine in that

last number of the _Nineteenth Century_--the first--in laud of the

Science which accepts for practical spirits, inside of men, only Avarice

and Indolence; and the other,--in laud of the Science which "rejects the

Worker" outside of Men, I am less and less confident in offering to the

readers of the _Nineteenth Century_ any History relating to such

despised things as unavaricious industry,--or incorporeal vision. I will

be as brief as I can.

246. The central branch of the school, represented by the central

picture above described:--"The Blind Girl"--was essentially and vitally

an uneducated one. It was headed, in literary power, by Wordsworth; but

the first pure example of its mind and manner of Art, as opposed to the

erudite and _artificial_ schools, will be found, so far as I know, in

Moliere's song: _j'aime mieux ma mie_.

Its mental power consisted in discerning what was lovely in present

nature, and in pure moral emotion concerning it.

Its physical power, in an intense veracity of direct realization to the

eye.

So far as Mr. Millais saw what was beautiful in vagrants, or commons, or

crows, or donkeys, or the straw under children's feet in the Ark (Noah's

or anybody else's does not matter),--in the Huguenot and his mistress,

or the ivy behind them,--in the face of Ophelia, or in the flowers

floating over it as it sank;--much more, so far as he saw what

instantly comprehensible nobleness of passion might be in the binding

of a handkerchief,--in the utterance of two words, "Trust me" or the

like: he prevailed, and rightly prevailed, over all prejudice and

opposition; to that extent he will in what he has done, or may yet do,

take, as a standard-bearer, an honorable place among the reformers of

our day.

So far as he could not see what was beautiful, but what was essentially

and forever common (in that God had not cleansed it), and so far as he

did not see truly what he thought he saw; (as for instance, in this

picture, under immediate consideration, when he paints the spark of

light in a crow's eye a hundred yards off, as if he were only painting a

miniature of a crow close by,)--he failed of his purpose and hope; but

how far I have neither the power nor the disposition to consider.

247. The school represented by Mr. Rossetti's picture and adopted for

his own by Mr. Holman Hunt, professed, necessarily, to be a learned one;

and to represent things which had happened long ago, in a manner

credible to any moderns who were interested in them. The value to us of

such a school necessarily depends on the things it chooses to represent,

out of the infinite history of mankind. For instance, David, of the

first Republican Academe, was a true master of this school; and,

painting the Horatii receiving their swords, foretold the triumph of

that Republican Power. Gerome, of the latest Republican Academe, paints

the dying Polichinelle, and the _morituri_ gladiators: foretelling, in

like manner, the shame and virtual ruin of modern Republicanism. What

our own painters have done for us in this kind has been too unworthy of

their real powers, for Mr. Rossetti threw more than half his strength

into literature, and, in that precise measure, left himself unequal to

his appointed task in painting; while Mr. Hunt, not knowing the

necessity of masters any more than the rest of our painters, and

attaching too great importance to the externals of the life of Christ,

separated himself for long years from all discipline by the recognized

laws of his art; and fell into errors which wofully shortened his hand

and discredited his cause--into which again I hold it no part of my duty

to enter. But such works as either of these painters have done, without

antagonism or ostentation, and in their own true instincts; as all

Rossetti's drawing from the life of Christ, more especially that of the

Madonna gathering the bitter herbs for the Passover when He was twelve

years old; and that of the Magdalen leaving her companions to come to

Him; these, together with all the mythic scenes which he painted from

the _Vita Nuova_ and _Paradiso_ of Dante, are of quite imperishable

power and value: as also many of the poems to which he gave up part of

his painter's strength. Of Holman Hunt's "Light of the World," and

"Awakening Conscience," I have publicly spoken and written, now for many

years, as standard in their kind: the study of sunset on the Egean,

lately placed by me in the schools of Oxford, is not less authoritative

in landscape, so far as its aim extends.

248. But the School represented by the third painting, "The Bridal," is

that into which the greatest masters of _all_ ages are gathered, and in

which they are walled round as in Elysian fields, unapproachable but by

the reverent and loving souls, in some sort already among the Dead.

They interpret to those of us who can read them, so far as they already

see and know, the things that are forever. "Charity never faileth; but

whether there be prophecies, they shall fail--tongues, they shall

cease--knowledge, it shall vanish."

And the one message they bear to us is the commandment of the Eternal

Charity. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with _all_ thine heart, and

thy neighbor as thyself." As thyself--no more, even the dearest of

neighbors.

"Therefore let every man see that he love his wife even as himself."

No more--else she has become an idol, not a fellow-servant; a creature

between us and our Master.

And they teach us that what higher creatures exist between Him and us,

we are also bound to know, and to love in their place and state, as

they ascend and descend on the stairs of their watch and ward.

The principal masters of this faithful religious school in painting,

known to me, are Giotto, Angelico, Sandro Botticelli, Filippo Lippi,

Luini, and Carpaccio; but for a central illustration of their mind, I

take that piece of work by the sculptor of Quercia,[48] of which some

shadow of representation, true to an available degree, is within reach

of my reader.

249. This sculpture is central in every respect; being the last

Florentine work in which the proper form of the Etruscan tomb is

preserved, and the first in which all right Christian sentiment

respecting death is embodied. It is perfectly severe in classical

tradition, and perfectly frank in concession to the passions of existing

life. It submits to all the laws of the past, and expresses all the

hopes of the future.

Now every work of the great Christian schools expresses primarily,

conquest over death; conquest not grievous, but absolute and serene;

rising with the greatest of them, into rapture.

But this, as a _central_ work, has all the peace of the Christian

Eternity, but only in part its gladness. Young children wreathe round

the tomb a garland of abundant flowers, but she herself, Ilaria, yet

sleeps; the time is not yet come for her to be awakened out of sleep.

Her image is a simple portrait of her--how much less beautiful than she

was in life, we cannot know--but as beautiful as marble can be.

And through and in the marble we may see that the damsel is not dead,

but sleepeth: yet as visibly a sleep that shall know no ending until

the last day break, and the last shadow flee away; until then, she

"shall not return." Her hands are laid on her breast--not praying--she

has no need to pray now. She wears her dress of every day, clasped at

her throat, girdled at her waist, the hem of it drooping over her feet.

No disturbance of its folds by pain of sickness, no binding, no

shrouding of her sweet form, in death more than in life. As a soft, low

wave of summer sea, her breast rises; no more: the rippled gathering of

its close mantle droops to the belt, then sweeps to her feet, straight

as drifting snow. And at her feet her dog lies watching her; the mystery

of his mortal life joined, by love, to her immortal one.

Few know, and fewer love, the tomb and its place,--not shrine, for it

stands bare by the cathedral wall: only, by chance, a cross is cut deep

into one of the foundation stones behind her head. But no goddess statue

of the Greek cities, no nun's image among the cloisters of Apennine, no

fancied light of angel in the homes of heaven, has more divine rank

among the thoughts of men.

250. In so much as the reader can see of it, and learn, either by print

or cast, or beside it; (and he would do well to stay longer in that

transept than in the Tribune at Florence,) he may receive from it,

unerring canon of what is evermore Lovely and Right in the dealing of

the Art of Man with his fate, and his passions. Evermore _lovely_, and

_right_. These two virtues of visible things go always hand in hand: but

the workman is bound to assure himself of his Rightness first; then the

loveliness will come.

And primarily, from this sculpture, you are to learn what a "Master" is.

Here was one man at least, who knew his business, once upon a time!

Unaccusably;--none of your fool's heads or clown's hearts can find a

fault here! "Dog-fancier,[49] cobbler, tailor, or churl, look

here"--says Master Jacopo--"look! I know what a brute is, better than

you, I know what a silken tassel is--what a leathern belt is--Also,

what a woman is; and also--what a Law of God is, if you care to know."

This it is, to be a Master.

Then secondly--you are to note that with all the certain rightness of

its material fact, this sculpture still is the Sculpture of a Dream.

Ilaria is dressed as she was in life. But she never lay so on her

pillow! nor so, in her grave. Those straight folds, straightly laid as a

snowdrift, are impossible; known by the Master to be so--chiseled with a

hand as steady as an iron beam, and as true as a ray of light--in

defiance of your law of Gravity to the Earth. _That_ law prevailed on

her shroud, and prevails on her dust: but not on herself, nor on the

Vision of her.

Then thirdly, and lastly. You are to learn that the doing of a piece of

Art such as this is _possible_ to the hand of Man just in the measure of

his obedience to the laws which are indeed over his heart, and not over

his dust: primarily, as I have said, to that great one, "Thou shalt

_Love_ the Lord thy God." Which command is straight and clear; and all

men may obey it if they will,--so only that they be early taught to know

Him.

And that is precisely the piece of exact Science which is not taught at

present in our Board Schools--so that although my friend, with whom I

was staying, was not himself, in the modern sense, ill-educated; neither

did he conceive me to be so,--he yet thought it good for himself and me

to have that Inscription, "Lord, teach us to Pray," illuminated on the

house wall--if perchance either he or I could yet learn what John (when

he still had his head) taught _his_ Disciples.

251. But alas, for us only at last, among the people of all ages and in

all climes, the lesson has become too difficult; and the Father of all,

in every age, in every clime adored, is Rejected of science, as an

Outside Worker, in Cockneydom of the nineteenth century.

Rejected of Science: well; but not yet, not yet--by the men who can do,

as well as know. And though I have neither strength nor time, nor at

present the mind to go into any review of the work done by the Third and

chief School of our younger painters, headed by Burne Jones;[50] and

though I know its faults, palpable enough, like those of Turner, to the

poorest sight; and though I am discouraged in all its discouragements, I

still hold in fullness to the hope of it in which I wrote the close of

the third lecture I ever gave in Oxford--of which I will ask the reader

here in conclusion to weigh the words, set down in the days of my best

strength, so far as I know; and with the uttermost care given to that

inaugural Oxford work, to "speak only that which I did know."

252. "Think of it, and you will find that so far from art being immoral,

little else _except_ art is moral;--that life without industry is guilt,

and industry without art is brutality: and for the words 'good,' and

'wicked,' used of men, you may almost substitute the words 'Makers' or

'Destroyers.'

"Far the greater part of the seeming prosperity of the world is, so far

as our present knowledge extends, vain: wholly useless for any kind of

good, but having assigned to it a certain inevitable sequence of

destruction and of sorrow.

"Its stress is only the stress of wandering storm; its beauty the hectic

of plague: and what is called the history of mankind is too often the

record of the whirlwind, and the map of the spreading of the leprosy.

But underneath all that, or in narrow spaces of dominion in the midst of

it, the work of every man, 'qui non accepit in vanitatem animam suam,'

endures and prospers; a small remnant or green bud of it prevailing at

last over evil. And though faint with sickness, and encumbered in ruin,

the true workers redeem inch by inch the wilderness into garden ground;

by the help of their joined hands the order of all things is surely

sustained and vitally expanded, and although with strange vacillation,

in the eyes of the watcher, the morning cometh, and also the night,

there is no hour of human existence that does not draw on towards the

perfect day.

"And perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men understood that the

beauty of Holiness must be in labor as well as in rest. Nay! more, if it

may be, in labor; in our strength, rather than in our weakness; and in

the choice of what we shall work for through the six days, and may know

to be good at their evening time, than in the choice of what we pray for

on the seventh, of reward or repose. With the multitude that keep

holiday, we may perhaps sometimes vainly have gone up to the house of

the Lord, and vainly there asked for what we fancied would be mercy; but

for the few who labor as their Lord would have them, the mercy needs no

seeking, and their wide home no hallowing. Surely goodness and mercy

shall follow them, all the days of their life, and they shall dwell in

the house of the Lord--For Ever."[51]

FOOTNOTES:

[44] "Vulgarly"; the use of the word "scientia," as if it differed from

"knowledge," being a modern barbarism; enhanced usually by the

assumption that the knowledge of the difference between acids and

alkalies is a more respectable one than that of the difference between

vice and virtue.

[45] _Modern Painters_, volume iii. I proceed in my old words, of which

I cannot better the substance, though--with all deference to the taste

of those who call that book my best--I could, the expression.

[46] The _third_ edition was published in 1846, while the Pre-Raphaelite

School was still in swaddling clothes.

[47] These essays were, "Recent Attacks on Political Economy," by Robert

Lowe, and "Virchow and Evolution," by Prof. Tyndall,--ED.

[48] James of Quercia: see the rank assigned to this master in _Ariadne

Florentina_. The best photographs of the monument are, I believe, those

published by the Arundel Society; of whom I would very earnestly request

that if ever they quote _Modern Painters_, they would not interpolate

its text with unmarked parentheses of modern information such as "emblem

of conjugal fidelity." I must not be made to answer for either the

rhythm or the contents of sentences thus manipulated.

[49] I foolishly, in _Modern Painters_, used the generic word "hound" to

make my sentence prettier. He is a flat-nosed bulldog.

[50] It would be utterly vain to attempt any general account of the

works of this painter, unless I were able also to give abstract of the

subtlest mythologies of Greek worship and Christian romance. Besides,

many of his best designs are pale pencil drawings like Florentine

engravings, of which the delicacy is literally invisible, and the manner

irksome, to a public trained among the black scrabblings of modern

wood-cutter's and etcher's prints. I will only say that the single

series of these pencil-drawings, from the story of Psyche, which I have

been able to place in the schools of Oxford, together with the two

colored beginnings from the stories of Jason and Alcestis, are, in my

estimate, quite the most precious gift, not excepting even the Loire

series of Turners, in the ratified acceptance of which my University has

honored with some fixed memorial the aims of her first Art-Teacher.

[51] _Lectures on Art_, Sec.Sec. 95-6.--ED.

* * * * *

ART.

III.

ARCHITECTURE.

THE OPENING OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE.

(_Pamphlet, 1854._)

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE IN OUR SCHOOLS.

(_R.I.B.A. Transactions, 1865._)

* * * * *

THE OPENING OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE.[52]

253. I read the account in the _Times_ newspaper of the opening of the

Crystal Palace at Sydenham as I ascended the hill between Vevay and

Chatel St. Denis, and the thoughts which it called up haunted me all day

long as my road wound among the grassy slopes of the Simmenthal. There

was a strange contrast between the image of that mighty palace, raised

so high above the hills on which it is built as to make them seem little

else than a basement for its glittering stateliness, and those lowland

huts, half hidden beneath their coverts of forest, and scattered like

gray stones along the masses of far-away mountain. Here man contending

with the power of Nature for his existence; there commanding them for

his recreation; here a feeble folk nested among the rocks with the wild

goat and the coney, and retaining the same quiet thoughts from

generation to generation; there a great multitude triumphing in the

splendor of immeasurable habitation, and haughty with hope of endless

progress and irresistible power.

254. It is indeed impossible to limit, in imagination, the beneficent

results which may follow from the undertaking thus happily begun.[53]

For the first time in the history of the world, a national museum is

formed in which a whole nation is interested; formed on a scale which

permits the exhibition of monuments of art in unbroken symmetry, and of

the productions of nature in unthwarted growth,--formed under the

auspices of science which can hardly err, and of wealth which can

hardly be exhausted; and placed in the close neighborhood of a

metropolis overflowing with a population weary of labor, yet thirsting

for knowledge, where contemplation may be consistent with rest, and

instruction with enjoyment. It is impossible, I repeat, to estimate the

influence of such an institution on the minds of the working-classes.

How many hours once wasted may now be profitably dedicated to pursuits

in which interest was first awakened by some accidental display in the

Norwood palace; how many constitutions, almost broken, may be restored

by the healthy temptation into the country air; how many intellects,

once dormant, may be roused into activity within the crystal walls, and

how these noble results may go on multiplying and increasing and bearing

fruit seventy times seven-fold, as the nation pursues its career,--are

questions as full of hope as incapable of calculation. But with all

these grounds for hope there are others for despondency, giving rise to

a group of melancholy thoughts, of which I can neither repress the

importunity nor forbear the expression.

255. For three hundred years, the art of architecture has been the

subject of the most curious investigation; its principles have been

discussed with all earnestness and acuteness; its models in all

countries and of all ages have been examined with scrupulous care, and

imitated with unsparing expenditure. And of all this refinement of

inquiry,--this lofty search after the ideal,--this subtlety of

investigation and sumptuousness of practice,--the great result, the

admirable and long-expected conclusion is, that in the center of the

19th century, we suppose ourselves to have invented a new style of

architecture, when we have magnified a conservatory!

256. In Mr. Laing's speech, at the opening of the palace, he declares

that "_an entirely novel order of architecture_, producing, by means of

unrivaled mechanical ingenuity, the most marvelous and beautiful

effects, sprang into existence to provide a building."[54] In these

words, the speaker is not merely giving utterance to his own feelings.

He is expressing the popular view of the facts, nor that a view merely

popular, but one which has been encouraged by nearly all the professors

of art of our time.

It is to this, then, that our Doric and Palladian pride is at last

reduced! We have vaunted the divinity of the Greek ideal--we have plumed

ourselves on the purity of our Italian taste--we have cast our whole

souls into the proportions of pillars and the relations of orders--and

behold the end! Our taste, thus exalted and disciplined, is dazzled by

the luster of a few rows of panes of glass; and the first principles of

architectural sublimity, so far sought, are found all the while to have

consisted merely in sparkling and in space.

Let it not be thought that I would depreciate (were it possible to

depreciate) the mechanical ingenuity which has been displayed in the

erection of the Crystal Palace, or that I underrate the effect which its

vastness may continue to produce on the popular imagination. But

mechanical ingenuity is _not_ the essence either of painting or

architecture, and largeness of dimension does not necessarily involve

nobleness of design. There is assuredly as much ingenuity required to

build a screw frigate, or a tubular bridge, as a hall of glass;--all

these are works characteristic of the age; and all, in their several

ways, deserve our highest admiration, but not admiration of the kind

that is rendered to poetry or to art. We may cover the German Ocean with

frigates, and bridge the Bristol Channel with iron, and roof the county

of Middlesex with crystal, and yet not possess one Milton, or Michael

Angelo.

257. Well, it may be replied, we need our bridges, and have pleasure in

our palaces; but we do not want Miltons, nor Michael Angelos.

Truly, it seems so; for, in the year in which the first Crystal Palace

was built, there died among us a man whose name, in after-ages, will

stand with those of the great of all time. Dying, he bequeathed to the

nation the whole mass of his most cherished works; and for these three

years, while we have been building this colossal receptacle for casts

and copies of the art of other nations, these works of our own greatest

painter have been left to decay in a dark room near Cavendish Square,

under the custody of an aged servant.

This is quite natural. But it is also memorable.

258. There is another interesting fact connected with the history of the

Crystal Palace as it bears on that of the art of Europe, namely, that in

the year 1851, when all that glittering roof was built, in order to

exhibit the paltry arts of our fashionable luxury--the carved bedsteads

of Vienna, and glued toys of Switzerland, and gay jewelry of France--in

that very year, I say, the greatest pictures of the Venetian masters

were rotting at Venice in the rain, for want of roof to cover them, with

holes made by cannon shot through their canvas.

There is another fact, however, more curious than either of these, which

will hereafter be connected with the history of the palace now in

building; namely, that at the very period when Europe is congratulated

on the invention of a new style of architecture, because fourteen acres

of ground have been covered with glass, the greatest examples in

existence of true and noble Christian architecture are being resolutely

destroyed, and destroyed by the effects of the very interest which was

beginning to be excited by them.

259. Under the firm and wise government of the third Napoleon, France

has entered on a new epoch of prosperity, one of the signs of which is a

zealous care for the preservation of her noble public buildings. Under

the influence of this healthy impulse, repairs of the most extensive

kind are at this moment proceeding, on the cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens,

Rouen, Chartres, and Paris; (probably also in many other instances

unknown to me). These repairs were, in many cases, necessary up to a

certain point; and they have been executed by architects as skillful and

learned as at present exist,--executed with noble disregard of expense,

and sincere desire on the part of their superintendents that they

should be completed in a manner honorable to the country.

260. They are, nevertheless, more fatal to the monuments they are

intended to preserve, than fire, war, or revolution. For they are

undertaken, in the plurality of instances, under an impression, which

the efforts of all true antiquaries have as yet been unable to remove,

that it is impossible to reproduce the mutilated sculpture of past ages

in its original beauty.

"Reproduire avec une exactitude mathematique," are the words used, by

one of the most intelligent writers on this subject,[55] of the proposed

regeneration of the statue of Ste. Modeste, on the north porch of the

Cathedral of Chartres.

Now it is not the question at present whether thirteenth century

sculpture be of value, or not. Its value is assumed by the authorities

who have devoted sums so large to its so-called restoration, and may

therefore be assumed in my argument. The worst state of the sculptures

whose restoration is demanded may be fairly represented by that of the

celebrated group of the Fates, among the Elgin Marbles in the British

Museum. With what favor would the guardians of those marbles, or any

other persons interested in Greek art, receive a proposal from a living

sculptor to "reproduce with mathematical exactitude" the group of the

Fates, in a perfect form, and to destroy the original? For with exactly

such favor, those who are interested in Gothic art should receive

proposals to reproduce the sculpture of Chartres or Rouen.

261. In like manner, the state of the architecture which it is proposed

to restore may, at its worst, be fairly represented to the British

public by that of the best preserved portions of Melrose Abbey. With

what encouragement would those among us who are sincerely interested in

history, or in art, receive a proposal to pull down Melrose Abbey, and

"reproduce it mathematically"? There can be no doubt of the answer

which, in the instances supposed, it would be proper to return. "By all

means, if you can, reproduce mathematically, elsewhere, the group of the

Fates, and the Abbey of Melrose. But leave unharmed the original

fragment, and the existing ruin."[56] And an answer of the same tenor

ought to be given to every proposal to restore a Gothic sculpture or

building. Carve or raise a model of it in some other part of the city;

but touch not the actual edifice, except only so far as may be necessary

to sustain, to protect it. I said above that repairs were in many

instances necessary. These necessary operations consist in substituting

new stones for decayed ones, where they are absolutely essential to the

stability of the fabric; in propping, with wood or metal, the portions

likely to give way; in binding or cementing into their places the

sculptures which are ready to detach themselves; and in general care to

remove luxuriant weeds and obstructions of the channels for the

discharge of the rain. But no modern or imitative sculpture ought

_ever_, under any circumstances, to be mingled with the ancient work.

262. Unfortunately, repairs thus conscientiously executed are always

unsightly, and meet with little approbation from the general public; so

that a strong temptation is necessarily felt by the superintendents of

public works to execute the required repairs in a manner which, though

indeed fatal to the monument, may be, in appearance, seemly. But a far

more cruel temptation is held out to the architect. He who should

propose to a municipal body to build in the form of a new church, to be

erected in some other part of their city, models of such portions of

their cathedral as were falling into decay, would be looked upon as

merely asking for employment, and his offer would be rejected with

disdain. But let an architect declare that the existing fabric stands in

need of repairs, and offer to restore it to its original beauty, and he

is instantly regarded as a lover of his country, and has a chance of

obtaining a commission which will furnish him with a large and ready

income, and enormous patronage, for twenty or thirty years to come.

263. I have great respect for human nature. But I would rather leave it

to others than myself to pronounce how far such a temptation is always

likely to be resisted, and how far, when repairs are once permitted to

be undertaken, a fabric is likely to be spared from mere interest in its

beauty, when its destruction, under the name of restoration, has become

permanently remunerative to a large body of workmen.

Let us assume, however, that the architect is always

conscientious--always willing, the moment he has done what is strictly

necessary for the safety and decorous aspect of the building, to abandon

his income, and declare his farther services unnecessary. Let us

presume, also, that every one of the two or three hundred workmen who

must be employed under him is equally conscientious, and, during the

course of years of labor, will never destroy in carelessness what it may

be inconvenient to save, or in cunning what it is difficult to imitate.

Will all this probity of purpose preserve the hand from error, and the

heart from weariness? Will it give dexterity to the awkward--sagacity to

the dull--and at once invest two or three hundred imperfectly educated

men with the feeling, intention, and information of the freemasons of

the thirteenth century? Grant that it can do all this, and that the new

building is both equal to the old in beauty, and precisely correspondent

to it in detail. Is it, therefore, altogether _worth_ the old building?

Is the stone carved to-day in their masons' yards altogether the same in

value to the hearts of the French people as that which the eyes of St.

Louis saw lifted to its place? Would a loving daughter, in mere desire

for gaudy dress, ask a jeweler for a bright fac-simile of the worn cross

which her mother bequeathed to her on her deathbed?--would a thoughtful

nation, in mere fondness for splendor of streets, ask its architects to

provide for it fac-similes of the temples which for centuries had given

joy to its saints, comfort to its mourners, and strength to its

chivalry?

264. But it may be replied, that all this is already admitted by the

antiquaries of France and England; and that it is impossible that works

so important should now be undertaken with due consideration and

faithful superintendence.

I answer, that the men who justly feel these truths are rarely those who

have much influence in public affairs. It is the poor abbe, whose little

garden is sheltered by the mighty buttresses from the north wind, who

knows the worth of the cathedral. It is the bustling mayor and the

prosperous architect who determine its fate.

I answer farther, by the statement of a simple fact. I have given many

years, in many cities, to the study of Gothic architecture; and of all

that I know, or knew, the entrance to the north transept of Rouen

Cathedral was, on the whole, the most beautiful--beautiful, not only as

an elaborate and faultless work of the finest time of Gothic art, but

yet more beautiful in the partial, though not dangerous, decay which had

touched its pinnacles with pensive coloring, and softened its severer

lines with unexpected change and delicate fracture, like sweet breaks in

a distant music. The upper part of it has been already restored to the

white accuracies of novelty; the lower pinnacles, which flanked its

approach, far more exquisite in their partial ruin than the loveliest

remains of our English abbeys, have been entirely destroyed, and rebuilt

in rough blocks, now in process of sculpture. This restoration, so far

as it has gone, has been executed by peculiarly skillful workmen; it is

an unusually favorable example of restoration, especially in the care

which has been taken to preserve intact the exquisite, and hitherto

almost uninjured sculptures which fill the quatrefoils of the tracery

above the arch. But I happened myself to have made, five years ago,

detailed drawings of the buttress decorations on the right and left of

this tracery, which are part of the work that has been completely

restored. And I found the restorations as inaccurate as they were

unnecessary.

265. If this is the case in a most favorable instance, in that of a

well-known monument, highly esteemed by every antiquary in France, what,

during the progress of the now almost universal repair, is likely to

become of architecture which is unwatched and despised?

Despised! and more than despised--even hated! It is a sad truth, that

there is something in the solemn aspect of ancient architecture which,

in rebuking frivolity and chastening gayety, has become at this time

literally _repulsive_ to a large majority of the population of Europe.

Examine the direction which is taken by all the influences of fortune

and of fancy, wherever they concern themselves with art, and it will be

found that the real, earnest effort of the upper classes of European

society is to make every place in the world as much like the Champs

Elysees of Paris as possible. Wherever the influence of that educated

society is felt, the old buildings are relentlessly destroyed; vast

hotels, like barracks, and rows of high, square-windowed

dwelling-houses, thrust themselves forward to conceal the hated

antiquities of the great cities of France and Italy. Gay promenades,

with fountains and statues, prolong themselves along the quays once

dedicated to commerce; ball-rooms and theaters rise upon the dust of

desecrated chapels, and thrust into darkness the humility of domestic

life. And when the formal street, in all its pride of perfumery and

confectionery, has successfully consumed its way through wrecks of

historical monuments, and consummated its symmetry in the ruin of all

that once prompted a reflection, or pleaded for regard, the whitened

city is praised for its splendor, and the exulting inhabitants for their

patriotism--patriotism which consists in insulting their fathers with

forgetfulness, and surrounding their children with temptation.

266. I am far from intending my words to involve any disrespectful

allusion to the very noble improvements in the city of Paris itself,

lately carried out under the encouragement of the Emperor. Paris, in its

own peculiar character of bright magnificence, had nothing to fear, and

everything to gain, from the gorgeous prolongation of the Rue Rivoli.

But I speak of the general influence of the rich travelers and

proprietors of Europe on the cities which they pretend to admire, or

endeavor to improve. I speak of the changes wrought during my own

lifetime on the cities of Venice, Florence, Geneva, Lucerne, and chief

of all on Rouen, a city altogether inestimable for its retention of

mediaeval character in the infinitely varied streets in which one half of

the existing and inhabited houses date from the 15th or early 16th

century, and the only town left in France in which the effect of old

French domestic architecture can yet be seen in its collective groups.

But when I was there, this last spring, I heard that these noble old

Norman houses are all, as speedily as may be, to be stripped of the dark

slates which protected their timbers, and deliberately whitewashed over

all their sculptures and ornaments, in order to bring the interior of

the town into some conformity with the "handsome fronts" of the hotels

and offices on the quay.

Hotels and offices, and "handsome fronts" in general--they can be built

in America or Australia--built at any moment, and in any height of

splendor. But who shall give us back, when once destroyed, the

habitations of the French chivalry and bourgeoisie in the days of the

Field of the Cloth of Gold?

267. It is strange that no one seems to think of this! What do men

travel for, in this Europe of ours? Is it only to gamble with French

dies--to drink coffee out of French porcelain--to dance to the beat of

German drums, and sleep in the soft air of Italy? Are the ball-room, the

billiard-room, and the Boulevard, the only attractions that win us into

wandering, or tempt us to repose? And when the time is come, as come it

will, and that shortly, when the parsimony--or lassitude--which, for the

most part, are the only protectors of the remnants of elder time, shall

be scattered by the advance of civilization--when all the monuments,

preserved only because it was too costly to destroy them, shall have

been crushed by the energies of the new world, will the proud nations of

the twentieth century, looking round on the plains of Europe,

disencumbered of their memorial marbles,--will those nations indeed

stand up with no other feeling than one of triumph, freed from the

paralysis of precedent and the entanglement of memory, to thank us, the

fathers of progress, that no saddening shadows can any more trouble the

enjoyments of the future,--no moments of reflection retard its

activities; and that the new-born population of a world without a record

and without a ruin may, in the fullness of ephemeral felicity, dispose

itself to eat, and to drink, and to die?

268. Is this verily the end at which we aim, and will the mission of the

age have been then only accomplished, when the last castle has fallen

from our rocks, the last cloisters faded from our valleys, the last

streets, in which the dead have dwelt, been effaced from our cities, and

regenerated society is left in luxurious possession of towns composed

only of bright saloons, overlooking gay parterres? If this indeed be our

end, yet why must it be so laboriously accomplished? Are there no new

countries on the earth, as yet uncrowned by thorns of cathedral spires,

untenanted by the consciousness of a past? Must this little Europe--this

corner of our globe, gilded with the blood of old battles, and gray with

the temples of old pieties--this narrow piece of the world's pavement,

worn down by so many pilgrims' feet, be utterly swept and garnished for

the masque of the Future? Is America not wide enough for the

elasticities of our humanity? Asia not rich enough for its pride? or

among the quiet meadowlands and solitary hills of the old land, is there

not yet room enough for the spreadings of power, or the indulgences of

magnificence, without founding all glory upon ruin, and prefacing all

progress with obliteration?

269. We must answer these questions speedily, or we answer them in vain.

The peculiar character of the evil which is being wrought by this age is

its utter irreparableness. Its newly formed schools of art, its

extending galleries, and well-ordered museums will assuredly bear some

fruit in time, and give once more to the popular mind the power to

discern what is great, and the disposition to protect what is precious.

But it will be too late. We shall wander through our palaces of

crystal, gazing sadly on copies of pictures torn by cannon-shot, and on

casts of sculpture dashed to pieces long ago. We shall gradually learn

to distinguish originality and sincerity from the decrepitudes of

imitation and palsies of repetition; but it will be only in hopelessness

to recognize the truth, that architecture and painting can be "restored"

when the dead can be raised,--and not till then.

270. Something might yet be done, if it were but possible thoroughly to

awaken and alarm the men whose studies of archaeology have enabled them

to form an accurate judgment of the importance of the crisis. But it is

one of the strange characters of the human mind, necessary indeed to its

peace, but infinitely destructive of its power, that we never thoroughly

feel the evils which are not actually set before our eyes. If, suddenly,

in the midst of the enjoyments of the palate and lightnesses of heart of

a London dinner-party, the walls of the chamber were parted, and through

their gap, the nearest human beings who were famishing, and in misery,

were borne into the midst of the company--feasting and fancy-free--if,

pale with sickness, horrible in destitution, broken by despair, body by

body, they were laid upon the soft carpet, one beside the chair of every

guest, would only the crumbs of the dainties be cast to them--would only

a passing glance, a passing thought be vouchsafed to them? Yet the

actual facts, the real relations of each Dives and Lazarus, are not

altered by the intervention of the house wall between the table and the

sick-bed--by the few feet of ground (how few!) which are indeed all that

separate the merriment from the misery.

271. It is the same in the matters of which I have hitherto been

speaking. If every one of us, who knows what food for the human heart

there is in the great works of elder time, could indeed see with his own

eyes their progressive ruin; if every earnest antiquarian, happy in his

well-ordered library, and in the sense of having been useful in

preserving an old stone or two out of his parish church, and an old coin

or two out of a furrow in the next plowed field, could indeed behold,

each morning as he awaked, the mightiest works of departed nations

moldering to the ground in disregarded heaps; if he could always have in

clear phantasm before his eyes the ignorant monk trampling on the

manuscript, the village mason striking down the monument, the court

painter daubing the despised and priceless masterpiece into freshness of

fatuity, he would not always smile so complacently in the thoughts of

the little learnings and petty preservations of his own immediate

sphere. And if every man, who has the interest of Art and of History at

heart, would at once devote himself earnestly--not to enrich his own

collection--not even to enlighten his own neighbors or investigate his

own parish-territory--but to far-sighted and _fore_-sighted endeavor in

the great field of Europe, there is yet time to do much. An association

might be formed, thoroughly organized so as to maintain active watchers

and agents in every town of importance, who, in the first place, should

furnish the society with a _perfect_ account of every monument of

interest in its neighborhood, and then with a yearly or half-yearly

report of the state of such monuments, and of the changes proposed to be

made upon them; the society then furnishing funds, either to buy,

freehold, such buildings or other works of untransferable art as at any

time might be offered for sale, or to assist their proprietors, whether

private individuals or public bodies, in the maintenance of such

guardianship as was really necessary for their safety; and exerting

itself, with all the influence which such an association would rapidly

command, to prevent unwise restoration and unnecessary destruction.

272. Such a society would of course be rewarded only by the

consciousness of its usefulness. Its funds would have to be supplied, in

pure self-denial, by its members, who would be required, so far as they

assisted it, to give up the pleasure of purchasing prints or pictures

for their own walls, that they might save pictures which in their

lifetime they might never behold; they would have to forego the

enlargement of their own estates, that they might buy, for a European

property, ground on which their feet might never tread. But is it absurd

to believe that men are capable of doing this? Is the love of art

altogether a selfish principle in the heart? and are its emotions

altogether incompatible with the exertions of self-denial or enjoyments

of generosity?

273. I make this appeal at the risk of incurring only contempt for my

Utopianism. But I should forever reproach myself if I were prevented

from making it by such a risk; and I pray those who may be disposed in

any wise to favor it to remember that it must be answered at once or

never. The next five years determine what is to be saved--what

destroyed. The restorations have actually begun like cancers on every

important piece of Gothic architecture in Christendom; the question is

only how much can yet be saved. All projects, all pursuits, having

reference to art, are at this moment of less importance than those which

are simply protective. There is time enough for everything else. Time

enough for teaching--time enough for criticising--time enough for

inventing. But time little enough for saving. Hereafter we can create,

but it is now only that we can preserve. By the exertion of great

national powers, and under the guidance of enlightened monarchs, we may

raise magnificent temples and gorgeous cities; we may furnish labor for

the idle, and interest for the ignorant. But the power neither of

emperors, nor queens, nor kingdoms, can ever print again upon the sands

of time the effaced footsteps of departed generations, or gather

together from the dust the stones which had been stamped with the spirit

of our ancestors.

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE IN OUR SCHOOLS.[57]

274. I suppose there is no man who, permitted to address, for the first

time, the Institute of British Architects, would not feel himself

abashed and restrained, doubtful of his claim to be heard by them, even

if he attempted only to describe what had come under his personal

observation, much more if on the occasion he thought it would be

expected of him to touch upon any of the general principles of the art

of architecture before its principal English masters.

But if any more than another should feel thus abashed, it is certainly

one who has first to ask their pardon for the petulance of boyish

expressions of partial thought; for ungraceful advocacy of principles

which needed no support from him, and discourteous blame of work of

which he had never felt the difficulty.

275. Yet, when I ask this pardon, gentlemen--and I do it sincerely and

in shame--it is not as desiring to retract anything in the general tenor

and scope of what I have hitherto tried to say. Permit me the pain, and

the apparent impertinence, of speaking for a moment of my own past work;

for it is necessary that what I am about to submit to you to-night

should be spoken in no disadvantageous connection with that; and yet

understood as spoken, in no discordance of purpose with that. Indeed

there is much in old work of mine which I could wish to put out of mind.

Reasonings, perhaps not in themselves false, but founded on

insufficient data and imperfect experience--eager preferences, and

dislikes, dependent on chance circumstances of association, and

limitations of sphere of labor: but, while I would fain now, if I could,

modify the applications, and chasten the extravagance of my writings,

let me also say of them that they were the expression of a delight in

the art of architecture which was too intense to be vitally deceived,

and of an inquiry too honest and eager to be without some useful result;

and I only wish I had now time, and strength and power of mind, to carry

on, more worthily, the main endeavor of my early work. That main

endeavor has been throughout to set forth the life of the individual

human spirit as modifying the application of the formal laws of

architecture, no less than of all other arts; and to show that the power

and advance of this art, even in conditions of formal nobleness, were

dependent on its just association with sculpture as a means of

expressing the beauty of natural forms: and I the more boldly ask your

permission to insist somewhat on this main meaning of my past work,

because there are many buildings now rising in the streets of London, as

in other cities of England, which appear to be designed in accordance

with this principle, and which are, I believe, more offensive to all who

thoughtfully concur with me in accepting the principle of Naturalism

than they are to the classical architect to whose modes of design they

are visibly antagonistic. These buildings, in which the mere cast of a

flower, or the realization of a vulgar face, carved without pleasure by

a workman who is only endeavoring to attract attention by novelty, and

then fastened on, or appearing to be fastened, as chance may dictate, to

an arch, or a pillar, or a wall, hold such relation to nobly

naturalistic architecture as common sign-painter's furniture landscapes

do to painting, or commonest wax-work to Greek sculpture; and the

feelings with which true naturalists regard such buildings of this class

are, as nearly as might be, what a painter would experience, if, having

contended earnestly against conventional schools, and having asserted

that Greek vase-painting and Egyptian wall-painting, and Mediaeval

glass-painting, though beautiful, all, in their place and way, were yet

subordinate arts, and culminated only in perfectly naturalistic work

such as Raphael's in fresco, and Titian's on canvas;--if, I say, a

painter, fixed in such faith in an entire, intellectual and manly truth,

and maintaining that an Egyptian profile of a head, however decoratively

applicable, was only noble for such human truth as it contained, and was

imperfect and ignoble beside a work of Titian's, were shown, by his

antagonist, the colored daguerreotype of a human body in its nakedness,

and told that it was art such as that which he really advocated, and to

such art that his principles, if carried out, would finally lead.

276. And because this question lies at the very root of the organization

of the system of instruction for our youth, I venture boldly to express

the surprise and regret with which I see our schools still agitated by

assertions of the opposition of Naturalism to Invention, and to the

higher conditions of art. Even in this very room I believe there has

lately been question whether a sculptor should look at a real living

creature of which he had to carve the image. I would answer in one

sense,--no; that is to say, he ought to carve no living creature while

he still needs to look at it. If we do not know what a human body is

like, we certainly had better look, and look often, at it, before we

carve it; but if we already know the human likeness so well that we can

carve it by light of memory, we shall not need to ask whether we ought

now to look at it or not; and what is true of man is true of all other

creatures and organisms--of bird, and beast, and leaf. No assertion is

more at variance with the laws of classical as well as of subsequent art

than the common one that species should not be distinguished in great

design. We might as well say that we ought to carve a man so as not to

know him from an ape, as that we should carve a lily so as not to know

it from a thistle. It is difficult for me to conceive how this can be

asserted in the presence of any remains either of great Greek or Italian

art. A Greek looked at a cockle-shell or a cuttlefish as carefully as

he looked at an Olympic conqueror. The eagle of Elis, the lion of Velia,

the horse of Syracuse, the bull of Thurii, the dolphin of Tarentum, the

crab of Agrigentum, and the crawfish of Catana, are studied as closely,

every one of them, as the Juno of Argos, or Apollo of Clazomenae.

Idealism, so far from being contrary to special truth, is the very

abstraction of speciality from everything else. It is the earnest

statement of the characters which make man man, and cockle cockle, and

flesh flesh, and fish fish. Feeble thinkers, indeed, always suppose that

distinction of kind involves meanness of style; but the meanness is in

the treatment, not in the distinction. There is a noble way of carving a

man, and a mean one; and there is a noble way of carving a beetle, and a

mean one; and a great sculptor carves his scarabaeus grandly, as he

carves his king, while a mean sculptor makes vermin of both. And it is a

sorrowful truth, yet a sublime one, that this greatness of treatment

cannot be taught by talking about it. No, nor even by enforced imitative

practice of it. Men treat their subjects nobly only when they themselves

become noble; not till then. And that elevation of their own nature is

assuredly not to be effected by a course of drawing from models, however

well chosen, or of listening to lectures, however well intended.

Art, national or individual, is the result of a long course of previous

life and training; a necessary result, if that life has been loyal, and

an impossible one, if it has been base. Let a nation be healthful,

happy, pure in its enjoyments, brave in its acts, and broad in its

affections, and its art will spring round and within it as freely as the

foam from a fountain; but let the spring of its life be impure, and its

course polluted, and you will not get the bright spray by treatises on

the mathematical structure of bubbles.

277. And I am to-night the more restrained in addressing you, because,

gentlemen--I tell you honestly--I am weary of all writing and speaking

about art, and most of my own. No good is to be reached that way. The

last fifty years have, in every civilized country of Europe, produced

more brilliant thought, and more subtle reasoning about art than the

five thousand before them, and what has it all come to? Do not let it be

thought that I am insensible to the high merits of much of our modern

work. It cannot be for a moment supposed that in speaking of the

inefficient expression of the doctrines which writers on art have tried

to enforce, I was thinking of such Gothic as has been designed and built

by Mr. Scott, Mr. Butterfield, Mr. Street, Mr. Waterhouse, Mr. Godwin,

or my dead friend, Mr. Woodward. Their work has been original and

independent. So far as it is good, it has been founded on principles

learned not from books, but by study of the monuments of the great

schools, developed by national grandeur, not by philosophical

speculation. But I am entirely assured that those who have done best

among us are the least satisfied with what they have done, and will

admit a sorrowful concurrence in my belief that the spirit, or rather, I

should say, the dispirit, of the age, is heavily against them; that all

the ingenious writing or thinking which is so rife amongst us has failed

to educate a public capable of taking true pleasure in any kind of art,

and that the best designers never satisfy their own requirements of

themselves, unless by vainly addressing another temper of mind, and

providing for another manner of life, than ours. All lovely architecture

was designed for cities in cloudless air; for cities in which piazzas

and gardens opened in bright populousness and peace; cities built that

men might live happily in them, and take delight daily in each other's

presence and powers. But our cities, built in black air which, by its

accumulated foulness, first renders all ornament invisible in distance,

and then chokes its interstices with soot; cities which are mere crowded

masses of store, and warehouse, and counter, and are therefore to the

rest of the world what the larder and cellar are to a private house;

cities in which the object of men is not life, but labor; and in which

all chief magnitude of edifice is to inclose machinery; cities in which

the streets are not the avenues for the passing and procession of a

happy people, but the drains for the discharge of a tormented mob, in

which the only object in reaching any spot is to be transferred to

another; in which existence becomes mere transition, and every creature

is only one atom in a drift of human dust, and current of interchanging

particles, circulating here by tunnels underground, and there by tubes

in the air; for a city, or cities, such as this no architecture is

possible--nay, no desire of it is possible to their inhabitants.

278. One of the most singular proofs of the vanity of all hope that

conditions of art may be combined with the occupations of such a city,

has been given lately in the design of the new iron bridge over the

Thames at Blackfriars. Distinct attempt has been there made to obtain

architectural effect on a grand scale. Nor was there anything in the

nature of the work to prevent such an effort being successful. It is not

edifices, being of iron, or of glass, or thrown into new forms, demanded

by new purposes, which need hinder its being beautiful. But it is the

absence of all desire of beauty, of all joy in fancy, and of all freedom

in thought. If a Greek, or Egyptian, or Gothic architect had been

required to design such a bridge, he would have looked instantly at the

main conditions of its structure, and dwelt on them with the delight of

imagination. He would have seen that the main thing to be done was to

hold a horizontal group of iron rods steadily and straight over stone

piers. Then he would have said to himself (or felt without saying), "It

is this holding,--this grasp,--this securing tenor of a thing which

might be shaken, so that it cannot be shaken, on which I have to

insist." And he would have put some life into those iron tenons. As a

Greek put human life into his pillars and produced the caryatid; and an

Egyptian lotus life into his pillars and produced the lily capital: so

here, either of them would have put some gigantic or some angelic life

into those colossal sockets. He would perhaps have put vast winged

statues of bronze, folding their wings, and grasping the iron rails with

their hands; or monstrous eagles, or serpents holding with claw or

coil, or strong four-footed animals couchant, holding with the paw, or

in fierce action, holding with teeth. Thousands of grotesque or of

lovely thoughts would have risen before him, and the bronze forms,

animal or human, would have signified, either in symbol or in legend,

whatever might be gracefully told respecting the purposes of the work

and the districts to which it conducted. Whereas, now, the entire

invention of the designer seems to have exhausted itself in exaggerating

to an enormous size a weak form of iron nut, and in conveying the

information upon it, in large letters, that it belongs to the London,

Chatham, and Dover Railway Company. I believe then, gentlemen, that if

there were any life in the national mind in such respects, it would be

shown in these its most energetic and costly works. But that there is no

such life, nothing but a galvanic restlessness and covetousness, with

which it is for the present vain to strive; and in the midst of which,

tormented at once by its activities and its apathies, having their work

continually thrust aside and dishonored, always seen to disadvantage,

and overtopped by huge masses, discordant and destructive, even the best