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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
THE EAGLE'S NEST
LOVE'S MEINIE
ARIADNE FLORENTINA
VAL D'ARNO
PROSERPINA
NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK CHICAGO
ARIADNE FLORENTINA.
SIX LECTURES
ON
WOOD AND METAL ENGRAVING
WITH APPENDIX.
GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1872.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
PAGE
DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING 1
LECTURE II.
THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE 22
LECTURE III.
THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING 42
LECTURE IV.
THE TECHNICS OF METAL ENGRAVING 61
LECTURE V.
DESIGN IN THE GERMAN SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (HOLBEIN AND DUeRER) 81
LECTURE VI.
DESIGN IN THE FLORENTINE SCHOOLS OF ENGRAVING (SANDRO BOTTICELLI) 108
APPENDIX.
ARTICLE
I. NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF ENGRAVING IN ENGLAND 143
II. DETACHED NOTES 157
LIST OF PLATES
Facing Page
Diagram 27
The Last Furrow (Fig. 2). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut 47
The Two Preachers (Fig. 3). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut 48
I. Things Celestial and Terrestrial, as apparent to the English mind 56
II. Star of Florence 62
III. "At evening from the top of Fesole" 72
IV. "By the Springs of Parnassus" 77
V. "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion." Florentine Natural
Philosophy 92
VI. Fairness of the Sea and Air. In Venice and Athens 95
The Child's Bedtime (Fig. 5). Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut 103
"He that hath ears to hear let him hear" (Fig. 6). Facsimile from
Holbein's woodcut 105
VII. For a time, and times 130
VIII. The Nymph beloved of Apollo (Michael Angelo) 131
IX. In the Woods of Ida 132
X. Grass of the Desert 135
XI. "Obediente Domino voci hominis" 145
XII. The Coronation in the Garden 158
ARIADNE FLORENTINA.
LECTURE I.
DEFINITION OF THE ART OF ENGRAVING.
1. The entrance on my duty for to-day begins the fourth year of my
official work in Oxford; and I doubt not that some of my audience are
asking themselves, very doubtfully--at all events, I ask myself, very
anxiously--what has been done.
For practical result, I have not much to show. I announced, a fortnight
since, that I would meet, the day before yesterday, any gentleman who
wished to attend this course for purposes of study. My class, so minded,
numbers four, of whom three wish to be artists, and ought not therefore,
by rights, to be at Oxford at all; and the fourth is the last remaining
unit of the class I had last year.
2. Yet I neither in this reproach myself, nor, if I could, would I
reproach the students who are not here. I do not reproach myself; for it
was impossible for me to attend properly to the schools and to write the
grammar for them at the same time; and I do not blame the absent
students for not attending a school from which I have generally been
absent myself. In all this, there is much to be mended, but, in true
light, nothing to be regretted.
I say, I had to write my school grammar. These three volumes of lectures
under my hand,[A] contain, carefully set down, the things I want you
first to know. None of my writings are done fluently; the second volume
of "Modern Painters" was all of it written twice--most of it, four
times,--over; and these lectures have been written, I don't know how
many times. You may think that this was done merely in an author's
vanity, not in a tutor's care. To the vanity I plead guilty,--no man is
more intensely vain than I am; but my vanity is set on having it _known_
of me that I am a good master, not in having it _said_ of me that I am a
smooth author. My vanity is never more wounded than in being called a
fine writer, meaning--that nobody need mind what I say.
3. Well, then, besides this vanity, I have some solicitude for your
progress. You may give me credit for it or not, as you choose, but it is
sincere. And that your advance may be safe, I have taken the best pains
I could in laying down laws for it. In these three years I have got my
grammar written, and, with the help of many friends, all working
instruments in good order; and now we will try what we can do. Not that,
even now, you are to depend on my presence with you in personal
teaching. I shall henceforward think of the lectures less, of the
schools more; but my best work for the schools will often be by drawing
in Florence or in Lancashire--not here.
4. I have already told you several times that the course through which I
mean every student in these schools should pass, is one which shall
enable them to understand the elementary principles of the finest art.
It will necessarily be severe, and seem to lead to no immediate result.
Some of you will, on the contrary, wish to be taught what is immediately
easy, and gives prospect of a manifest success.
But suppose they should come to the Professor of Logic and Rhetoric, and
tell him they want to be taught to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the
Bishop of ----.
He would say to them,--I cannot, and if I could I would not, tell you
how to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the Bishop of ----. Your own
character will form your style; your own zeal will direct it; your own
obstinacy or ignorance may limit or exaggerate it; but my business is to
prevent, as far as I can, your having _any_ particular style; and to
teach you the laws of all language, and the essential power of your own.
In like manner, this course, which I propose to you in art, will be
calculated only to give you judgment and method in future study, to
establish to your conviction the laws of general art, and to enable you
to draw, if not with genius, at least with sense and propriety.
The course, so far as it consists in practice, will be defined in my
Instructions for the schools. And the theory connected with that
practice is set down in the three lectures at the end of the first
course I delivered--those on Line, Light, and Color.
You will have, therefore, to get this book,[B] and it is the only one
which you will need to have of your own,--the others are placed, for
reference, where they will be accessible to you.
5. In the 139th paragraph it states the order of your practical study in
these terms:--
"I wish you to begin by getting command of line;--that is to say, by
learning to draw a steady line, limiting with absolute correctness the
form or space you intend it to limit; to proceed by getting command over
flat tints, so that you may be able to fill the spaces you have inclosed
evenly, either with shade or color, according to the school you adopt;
and, finally, to obtain the power of adding such fineness of drawing,
within the masses, as shall express their undulation, and their
characters of form and texture."
And now, since in your course of practice you are first required to
attain the power of drawing lines accurately and delicately, so in the
course of theory, or grammar, I wish you first to learn the principles
of linear design, exemplified by the schools which (Sec. 137) you will find
characterized as the Schools of Line.
6. If I had command of as much time as I should like to spend with you
on this subject, I would begin with the early forms of art which used
the simplest linear elements of design. But, for general service and
interest, it will be better that I should sketch what has been
accomplished by the greatest masters in that manner; the rather that
their work is more or less accessible to all, and has developed into the
vast industries of modern engraving, one of the most powerful existing
influences of education and sources of pleasure among civilized people.
And this investigation, so far from interrupting, will facilitate our
examination of the history of the nobler arts. You will see in the
preface to my lectures on Greek sculpture that I intend them to be
followed by a course on architecture, and that by one on Florentine
sculpture. But the art of engraving is so manifestly, at Florence,
though not less essentially elsewhere, a basis of style both in
architecture and sculpture, that it is absolutely necessary I should
explain to you in what the skill of the engraver consists, before I can
define with accuracy that of more admired artists. For engraving, though
not altogether in the method of which you see examples in the
print-shops of the High Street, is, indeed, a prior art to that either
of building or sculpture, and is an inseparable part of both, when they
are rightly practiced.
7. And while we thus examine the scope of this first of the arts, it
will be necessary that we learn also the scope of mind of the early
practicers of it, and accordingly acquaint ourselves with the main
events in the biography of the schools of Florence. To understand the
temper and meaning of one great master is to lay the best, if not the
only, foundation for the understanding of all; and I shall therefore
make it the leading aim of this course of lectures to remind you of what
is known, and direct you to what is knowable, of the life and character
of the greatest Florentine master of engraving, Sandro Botticelli; and,
incidentally, to give you some idea of the power of the greatest master
of the German, or any northern, school, Hans Holbein.
8. You must feel, however, that I am using the word "engraving" in a
somewhat different, and, you may imagine, a wider, sense, than that
which you are accustomed to attach to it. So far from being a wider
sense, it is in reality a more accurate and restricted one, while yet it
embraces every conceivable right application of the art. And I wish, in
this first lecture, to make entirely clear to you the proper meaning of
the word, and proper range of the art of, engraving; in my next
following lecture, to show you its place in Italian schools, and then,
in due order, the place it ought to take in our own, and in all schools.
9. First then, to-day, of the Differentia, or essential quality of
Engraving, as distinguished from other arts.
What answer would you make to me, if I asked casually what engraving
was? Perhaps the readiest which would occur to you would be, "The
translation of pictures into black and white by means admitting
reduplication of impressions." But if that be done by lithography, we do
not call it engraving,--whereas we speak contentedly and continually of
seal engraving, in which there is no question of black and white. And,
as scholars, you know that this customary mode of speaking is quite
accurate; and that engraving means, primarily, making a permanent cut or
furrow in something. The central syllable of the word has become a
sorrowful one, meaning the most permanent of furrows.
10. But are you prepared absolutely to accept this limitation with
respect to engraving as a pictorial art? Will you call nothing an
engraving, except a group of furrows or cavities cut in a hard
substance? What shall we say of mezzotint engraving, for instance, in
which, though indeed furrows and cavities are produced mechanically as a
ground, the artist's work is in effacing them? And when we consider the
power of engraving in representing pictures and multiplying them, are we
to recognize and admire no effects of light and shade except those which
are visibly produced by dots or furrows? I mean, will the virtue of an
engraving be in exhibiting these imperfect means of its effect, or in
concealing them?
11. Here, for instance, is the head of a soldier by Duerer,--a mere
gridiron of black lines. Would this be better or worse engraving if it
were more like a photograph or lithograph, and no lines seen?--suppose,
more like the head of Mr. Santley, now in all the music-shops, and
really quite deceptive in light and shade, when seen from over the way?
Do you think Duerer's work would be better if it were more like that? And
would you have me, therefore, leaving the question of technical method
of production altogether to the craftsman, consider pictorial engraving
simply as the production of a light-and-shade drawing, by some method
permitting its multiplication for the public?
12. This, you observe, is a very practical question indeed. For
instance, the illustrations of my own lectures on sculpture are
equivalent to permanent photographs. There can be little doubt that
means will be discovered of thus producing perfect facsimiles of
artists' drawings; so that, if no more than facsimile be required, the
old art of cutting furrows in metal may be considered as, at this day,
virtually ended. And, indeed, it is said that line engravers cannot any
more get apprentices, and that a pure steel or copper plate is not
likely to be again produced, when once the old living masters of the
bright field shall have been all laid in their earth-furrows.
13. Suppose, then, that this come to pass; and more than this, suppose
that wood engraving also be superseded, and that instead of imperfect
transcripts of drawings, on wood-blocks or metal-plates, photography
enabled us to give, quite cheaply, and without limit to number,
facsimiles of the finished light-and-shade drawings of artists
themselves. Another group of questions instantly offers itself, on these
new conditions; namely, What are the best means for a light-and-shade
drawing--the pen, or the pencil, the charcoal, or the flat wash? That is
to say, the pen, producing shade by black lines, as old engraving did;
the pencil, producing shade by gray lines, variable in force; the
charcoal, producing a smoky shadow with no lines in it, or the washed
tint, producing a transparent shadow with no lines in it. Which of
these methods is the best?--or have they, each and all, virtues to be
separately studied, and distinctively applied?
14. See how curiously the questions multiply on us. 1st, Is engraving to
be only considered as cut work? 2d, For present designs multipliable
without cutting, by the sunshine, what methods or instruments of drawing
will be best? And now, 3dly, before we can discuss these questions at
all, is there not another lying at the root of both,--namely, what a
light-and-shade drawing itself properly _is_, and how it differs, or
should differ, from a painting, whether by mere deficiency, or by some
entirely distinct merit?
15. For instance, you know how confidently it is said, in common talk
about Turner, that his works are intelligible and beautiful when
engraved, though incomprehensible as paintings. Admitting this to be so,
do you suppose it is because the translation into light and shade is
deficient in some qualities which the painting had, or that it possesses
some quality which the painting had not? Does it please more because it
is deficient in the color which confused a feeble spectator, and
offended a dogmatic one,--or because it possesses a decision in its
steady linear labor which interprets, or corrects, the swift penciling
of the artist?
16. Do you notice the two words I have just used, _Decision_, and
_Linear_?--Decision, again introducing the idea of cuts or divisions, as
opposed to gradations; Linear, as opposed to massive or broad?
Yet we use all these words at different times in praise, while they
evidently mark inconsistent qualities. Softness and decision, breadth
and delineation, cannot co-exist in equal degrees. There must surely
therefore be a virtue in the engraving inconsistent with that of the
painting, and vice versa.
Now, be clear about these three questions which we have to-day to
answer.
A. Is all engraving to be cut work?
B. If it need not be cut work, but only the reproduction of a
drawing, what methods of executing a light-and-shade drawing
will be best?
C. Is the shaded drawing itself to be considered only as a
deficient or imperfect painting, or as a different thing from a
painting, having a virtue of its own, belonging to black and
white, as opposed to color?
17. I will give you the answers at once, briefly, and amplify them
afterwards.
A. All engraving must be cut work;--_that_ is its differentia.
Unless your effect be produced by cutting into some solid
substance, it is not engraving at all.
B. The proper methods for light-and-shade drawing vary
according to subject, and the degree of completeness
desired,--some of them having much in common with engraving,
and others with painting.
C. The qualities of a light-and-shade drawing ought to be
entirely different from those of a painting. It is not a
deficient or partial representation of a colored scene or
picture, but an entirely different reading of either. So that
much of what is intelligible in a painting ought to be
unintelligible in a light-and-shade study, and _vice versa_.
You have thus three arts,--engraving, light-and-shade drawing, and
painting.
Now I am not going to lecture, in this course, on painting, nor on
light-and-shade drawing, but on engraving only. But I must tell you
something about light-and-shade drawing first; or, at least, remind you
of what I have before told.
18. You see that the three elementary lectures in my first volume are on
Line, Light, and Color,--that is to say, on the modes of art which
produce linear designs,--which produce effects of light,--and which
produce effects of color.
I must, for the sake of new students, briefly repeat the explanation of
these.
Here is an Arabian vase, in which the pleasure given to the eye is only
by lines;--no effect of light, or of color, is attempted. Here is a
moonlight by Turner, in which there are no lines at all, and no colors
at all. The pleasure given to the eye is only by modes of light and
shade, or effects of light. Finally, here is an early Florentine
painting, in which there are no lines of importance, and no effect of
light whatever; but all the pleasure given to the eye is in gayety and
variety of color.
19. I say, the pleasure given to the _eye_. The lines on this vase write
something; but the ornamentation produced by the beautiful writing is
independent of its meaning. So the moonlight is pleasant, first, as
light; and the figures, first, as color. It is not the shape of the
waves, but the light on them; not the expression of the figures, but
their color, by which the _ocular_ pleasure is to be given.
These three examples are violently marked ones; but, in preparing to
draw _any_ object, you will find that, practically, you have to ask
yourself, Shall I aim at the color of it, the light of it, or the lines
of it? You can't have all three; you can't even have any two out of the
three in equal strength. The best art, indeed, comes so near nature as
in a measure to unite all. But the best is not, and cannot be, as good
as nature; and the mode of its deficiency is that it must lose some of
the color, some of the light, or some of the delineation. And in
consequence, there is one great school which says, We will have the
color, and as much light and delineation as are consistent with it.
Another which says, We will have shade, and as much color and
delineation as are consistent with it. The third, We will have
delineation, and as much color and shade as are consistent with it.
20. And though much of the two subordinate qualities may in each school
be consistent with the leading one, yet the schools are evermore
separate: as, for instance, in other matters, one man says, I will have
my fee, and as much honesty as is consistent with it; another, I will
have my honesty, and as much fee as is consistent with it. Though the
man who will have his fee be subordinately honest,--though the man who
will have his honor, subordinately rich, are they not evermore of
diverse schools?
So you have, in art, the utterly separate provinces, though in contact
at their borders, of
The Delineators;
The Chiaroscurists; and
The Colorists.
21. The Delineators are the men on whom I am going to give you this
course of lectures. They are essentially engravers, an engraved line
being the best means of delineation. The Chiaroscurists are essentially
draughtsmen with chalk, charcoal, or single tints. Many of them paint,
but always with some effort and pain. Lionardo is the type of them; but
the entire Dutch school consists of them, laboriously painting, without
essential genius for color.
The Colorists are the true painters; and all the faultless (as far, that
is to say, as men's work can be so,) and consummate masters of art
belong to them.
22. The distinction between the colorist and chiaroscurist school is
trenchant and absolute: and may soon be shown you so that you will never
forget it. Here is a Florentine picture by one of the pupils of Giotto,
of very good representative quality, and which the University galleries
are rich in possessing. At the distance at which I hold it, you see
nothing but a checker-work of brilliant, and, as it happens, even
glaring colors. If you come near, you will find this patchwork resolve
itself into a Visitation, and Birth of St. John; but that St.
Elizabeth's red dress, and the Virgin's blue and white one, and the
brown posts of the door, and the blue spaces of the sky, are painted in
their own entirely pure colors, each shaded with more powerful tints of
itself,--pale blue with deep blue, scarlet with crimson, yellow with
orange, and green with richer green.
The whole is therefore as much a mosaic work of brilliant color as if it
were made of bits of glass. There is no effect of light attempted, or so
much as thought of: you don't know even where the sun is: nor have you
the least notion what time of day it is. The painter thinks you cannot
be so superfluous as to want to know what time of day it is.
23. Here, on the other hand, is a Dutch picture of good average quality,
also out of the University galleries. It represents a group of cattle,
and a herdsman watching them. And you see in an instant that the time is
evening. The sun is setting, and there is warm light on the landscape,
the cattle, and the standing figure.
Nor does the picture in any conspicuous way seem devoid of color. On the
contrary, the herdsman has a scarlet jacket, which comes out rather
brilliantly from the mass of shade round it; and a person devoid of
color faculty, or ill taught, might imagine the picture to be really a
fine work of color.
But if you will come up close to it, you will find that the herdsman has
brown sleeves, though he has a scarlet jacket; and that the shadows of
both are painted with precisely the same brown, and in several places
with continuous touches of the pencil. It is only in the light that the
scarlet is laid on.
This at once marks the picture as belonging to the lower or
chiaroscurist school, even if you had not before recognized it as such
by its pretty rendering of sunset effect.
24. You might at first think it a painting which showed greater skill
than that of the school of Giotto. But the skill is not the primary
question. The power of imagination is the first thing to be asked about.
This Italian work imagines, and requires you to imagine also, a St.
Elizabeth and St. Mary, to the best of your power. But this Dutch one
only wishes you to imagine an effect of sunlight on cow-skin, which is a
far lower strain of the imaginative faculty.
Also, as you may see the effect of sunlight on cow-skin, in reality, any
summer afternoon, but cannot so frequently see a St. Elizabeth, it is a
far less useful strain of the imaginative faculty.
And, generally speaking, the Dutch chiaroscurists are indeed persons
without imagination at all,--who, not being able to get any pleasure out
of their thoughts, try to get it out of their sensations; note, however,
also their technical connection with the Greek school of shade, (see my
sixth inaugural lecture, Sec. 158,) in which color was refused, not for the
sake of deception, but of solemnity.
25. With these final motives you are not now concerned; your present
business is the quite easy one of knowing, and noticing, the universal
distinction between the methods of treatment in which the aim is light,
and in which it is color; and so to keep yourselves guarded from the
danger of being misled by the, often very ingenious, talk of persons who
have vivid color sensations without having learned to distinguish them
from what else pleases them in pictures. There is an interesting volume
by Professor Taine on the Dutch school, containing a valuable historical
analysis of the influences which formed it; but full of the gravest
errors, resulting from the confusion in his mind between color and tone,
in consequence of which he imagines the Dutch painters to be colorists.
26. It is so important for you to be grounded securely in these first
elements of pictorial treatment, that I will be so far tedious as to
show you one more instance of the relative intellectual value of the
pure color and pure chiaroscuro school, not in Dutch and Florentine, but
in English art. Here is a copy of one of the lost frescoes of our
Painted Chamber of Westminster;--fourteenth-century work, entirely
conceived in color, and calculated for decorative effect. There is no
more light and shade in it than in a Queen of Hearts in a pack of
cards;--all that the painter at first wants you to see is that the young
lady has a white forehead, and a golden crown, and a fair neck, and a
violet robe, and a crimson shield with golden leopards on it; and that
behind her is clear blue sky. Then, farther, he wants you to read her
name, "Debonnairete," which, when you have read, he farther expects you
to consider what it is to be debonnaire, and to remember your Chaucer's
description of the virtue:--
She was not brown, nor dun of hue,
But white as snowe, fallen new,
With eyen glad, and browes bent,
Her hair down to her heeles went,
And she was simple, as dove on tree,
Full debonnair of heart was she.
27. You see Chaucer dwells on the color just as much as the painter
does, but the painter has also given her the English shield to bear,
meaning that good-humor, or debonnairete, cannot be maintained by
self-indulgence;--only by fortitude. Farther note, with Chaucer, the
"eyen glad," and brows "bent" (high-arched and calm), the strong life,
(hair down to the heels,) and that her gladness is to be without
subtlety,--that is to say, without the slightest pleasure in any form of
advantage-taking, or any shrewd or mocking wit: "she was simple as dove
on tree;" and you will find that the color-painting, both in the fresco
and in the poem, is in the very highest degree didactic and
intellectual; and distinguished, as being so, from all inferior forms of
art. Farther, that it requires you yourself first to understand the
nature of simplicity, and to like simplicity in young ladies better than
subtlety; and to understand why the second of Love's five kind arrows
(Beaute being the first)--
Simplece ot nom, la seconde
Qui maint homme parmi le monde
Et mainte dame fait amer.
Nor must you leave the picture without observing that there is another
reason for Debonnairete's bearing the Royal shield,--of all shields
that, rather than another. "De-bonne-aire" meant originally "out of a
good eagle's nest," the "aire" signifying the eagle's nest or eyrie
especially, because it is flat, the Latin "area" being the root of all.
And this coming out of a good nest is recognized as, of all things,
needfulest to give the strength which enables people to be good-humored;
and thus you have "debonnaire" forming the third word of the group, with
"gentle" and "kind," all first signifying "of good race."
You will gradually see, as we go on, more and more why I called my third
volume of lectures Eagle's Nest; for I am not fantastic in these titles,
as is often said; but try shortly to mark my chief purpose in the book
by them.
28. Now for comparison with this old art, here is a modern engraving,
in which color is entirely ignored; and light and shade alone are used
to produce what is supposed to be a piece of impressive religious
instruction. But it is not a piece of religious instruction at
all;--only a piece of religious sensation, prepared for the sentimental
pleasure of young ladies; whom (since I am honored to-day by the
presence of many) I will take the opportunity of warning against such
forms of false theological satisfaction. This engraving represents a
young lady in a very long and, though plain, very becoming white dress,
tossed upon the waves of a terrifically stormy sea, by which neither her
hair nor her becoming dress is in the least wetted; and saved from
despair in that situation by closely embracing a very thick and solid
stone Cross. By which far-sought and original metaphor young ladies are
expected, after some effort, to understand the recourse they may have,
for support, to the Cross of Christ, in the midst of the troubles of
this world.
29. As those troubles are for the present, in all probability, limited
to the occasional loss of their thimbles when they have not taken care
to put them into their work-boxes,--the concern they feel at the
unsympathizing gayety of their companions,--or perhaps the
disappointment at not hearing a favorite clergyman preach,--(for I will
not suppose the young ladies interested in this picture to be affected
by any chagrin at the loss of an invitation to a ball, or the like
worldliness,)--it seems to me the stress of such calamities might be
represented, in a picture, by less appalling imagery. And I can assure
my fair little lady friends,--if I still have any,--that whatever a
young girl's ordinary troubles or annoyances may be, her true virtue is
in shaking them off, as a rose-leaf shakes off rain, and remaining
debonnaire and bright in spirits, or even, as the rose would be, the
brighter for the troubles; and not at all in allowing herself to be
either drifted or depressed to the point of requiring religious
consolation. But if any real and deep sorrow, such as no metaphor can
represent, fall upon her, does she suppose that the theological advice
of this piece of modern art can be trusted? If she will take the pains
to think truly, she will remember that Christ Himself never says
anything about holding by His Cross. He speaks a good deal of bearing
it; but never for an instant of holding by it. It is His Hand, not His
Cross, which is to save either you, or St. Peter, when the waves are
rough. And the utterly reckless way in which modern religious teachers,
whether in art or literature, abuse the metaphor somewhat briefly and
violently leant on by St. Paul, simply prevents your understanding the
meaning of any word which Christ Himself speaks on this matter! So you
see this popular art of light and shade, catching you by your mere
thirst of sensation, is not only undidactic, but the reverse of
didactic--deceptive and illusory.
30. This _popular_ art, you hear me say, scornfully; and I have told
you, in some of my teaching in "Aratra Pentelici," that all great art
must be popular. Yes, but great art is popular, as bread and water are
to children fed by a father. And vile art is popular, as poisonous jelly
is, to children cheated by a confectioner. And it is quite possible to
make any kind of art popular on those last terms. The color school may
become just as poisonous as the colorless, in the hands of fools, or of
rogues. Here is a book I bought only the other day,--one of the things
got up cheap to catch the eyes of mothers at bookstalls,--Puss in Boots,
illustrated; a most definite work of the color school--red jackets and
white paws and yellow coaches as distinct as Giotto or Raphael would
have kept them. But the thing is done by fools for money, and becomes
entirely monstrous and abominable. Here, again, is color art produced by
fools for religion: here is Indian sacred painting,--a black god with a
hundred arms, with a green god on one side of him and a red god on the
other; still a most definite work of the color school. Giotto or Raphael
could not have made the black more resolutely black, (though the whole
color of the school of Athens is kept in distinct separation from one
black square in it), nor the green more unquestionably green. Yet the
whole is pestilent and loathsome.
31. Now but one point more, and I have done with this subject for
to-day.
You must not think that this manifest brilliancy and Harlequin's-jacket
character is essential in the color school. The essential matter is only
that everything should be of _its own_ definite color: it may be
altogether sober and dark, yet the distinctness of hue preserved with
entire fidelity. Here, for instance, is a picture of Hogarth's,--one of
quite the most precious things we have in our galleries. It represents a
meeting of some learned society--gentlemen of the last century, very
gravely dressed, but who, nevertheless, as gentlemen pleasantly did in
that day,--you remember Goldsmith's weakness on the point--wear coats of
tints of dark red, blue, or violet. There are some thirty gentlemen in
the room, and perhaps seven or eight different tints of subdued
claret-color in their coats; and yet every coat is kept so distinctly of
its own proper claret-color, that each gentleman's servant would know
his master's.
Yet the whole canvas is so gray and quiet, that as I now hold it by this
Dutch landscape, with the vermilion jacket, you would fancy Hogarth's
had no color in it at all, and that the Dutchman was half-way to
becoming a Titian; whereas Hogarth's is a consummate piece of the most
perfect colorist school, which Titian could not beat, in its way; and
the Dutchman could no more paint half an inch of it than he could summon
a rainbow into the clouds.
32. Here then, you see, are, altogether, five works, all of the
absolutely pure color school:--
1. One, Indian,--Religious Art;
2. One, Florentine,--Religious Art;
3. One, English,--from Painted Chamber, Westminster,--Ethic Art;
4. One, English,--Hogarth,--Naturalistic Art;
5. One, English,--to-day sold in the High Street,--Caricaturist Art.
And of these, the Florentine and old English are divine work,
God-inspired; full, indeed, of faults and innocencies, but divine, as
good children are.
Then this by Hogarth is entirely wise and right; but worldly-wise, not
divine.
While the old Indian, and this, with which we feed our children at this
hour, are entirely damnable art;--every bit of it done by the direct
inspiration of the devil,--feeble, ridiculous,--yet mortally poisonous
to every noble quality in body and soul.
33. I have now, I hope, guarded you sufficiently from the danger either
of confusing the inferior school of chiaroscuro with that of color, or
of imagining that a work must necessarily be good, on the sole ground of
its belonging to the higher group. I can now proceed securely to
separate the third school, that of Delineation, from both; and to
examine its special qualities.
It begins (see "Inaugural Lectures," Sec. 137) in the primitive work of
races insensible alike to shade and to color, and nearly devoid of
thought and of sentiment, but gradually developing into both.
Now as the design is primitive, so are the means likely to be primitive.
A line is the simplest work of art you can produce. What are the
simplest means you can produce it with?
A Cumberland lead-pencil is a work of art in itself, quite a
nineteenth-century machine. Pen and ink are complex and scholarly; and
even chalk or charcoal not always handy.
But the primitive line, the first and last, generally the best of lines,
is that which you have elementary faculty of at your fingers' ends, and
which kittens can draw as well as you--the scratch.
The first, I say, and the last of lines. Permanent exceedingly,--even in
flesh, or on mahogany tables, often more permanent than we desire. But
when studiously and honorably made, divinely permanent, or
delightfully--as on the venerable desks of our public schools, most of
them, now, specimens of wood engraving dear to the heart of England.
34. Engraving, then, is, in brief terms, the Art of Scratch. It is
essentially the cutting into a solid substance for the sake of making
your ideas as permanent as possible, graven with an iron pen in the
Rock forever. _Permanence_, you observe, is the object, not
multiplicability;--that is quite an accidental, sometimes not even a
desirable, attribute of engraving. Duration of your work--fame, and
undeceived vision of all men, on the pane of glass of the window on a
wet day, or on the pillars of the castle of Chillon, or on the walls
of the pyramids;--a primitive art,--yet first and last with us.
Since then engraving, we say, is essentially cutting into the surface of
any solid; as the primitive design is in lines or dots, the primitive
cutting of such design is a scratch or a hole; and scratchable solids
being essentially three--stone, wood, metal,--we shall have three great
schools of engraving to investigate in each material.
35. On tablet of stone, on tablet of wood, on tablet of steel,--the
first giving the law to everything; the second true Athenian, like
Athena's first statue in olive-wood, making the law legible and homely;
and the third true Vulcanian, having the splendor and power of
accomplished labor.
Now of stone engraving, which is joined inseparably with sculpture and
architecture, I am not going to speak at length in this course of
lectures. I shall speak only of wood and metal engraving. But there is
one circumstance in stone engraving which it is necessary to observe in
connection with the other two branches of the art.
The great difficulty for a primitive engraver is to make his scratch
deep enough to be visible. Visibility is quite as essential to your fame
as permanence; and if you have only your furrow to depend on, the
engraved tablet, at certain times of day, will be illegible, and passed
without notice.
But suppose you fill in your furrow with something black, then it will
be legible enough at once; and if the black fall out or wash out, still
your furrow is there, and may be filled again by anybody.
Therefore, the noble stone engravers, using marble to receive their
furrow, fill that furrow with marble ink.
And you have an engraved plate to purpose;--with the whole sky for its
margin! Look here--the front of the church of San Michele of
Lucca,--white marble with green serpentine for ink; or here,--the steps
of the Giant's Stair, with lead for ink; or here,--the floor of the
Pisan Duomo, with porphyry for ink. Such cutting, filled in with color
or with black, branches into all sorts of developments,--Florentine
mosaic on the one hand, niello on the other, and infinite minor arts.
36. Yet we must not make this filling with color part of our definition
of engraving. To engrave is, in final strictness, "to decorate a surface
with furrows." (Cameos, in accuratest terms, are minute sculptures, not
engravings.) A plowed field is the purest type of such art; and is, on
hilly land, an exquisite piece of decoration.
Therefore it will follow that engraving distinguishes itself from
ordinary drawing by greater need of muscular effort.
The quality of a pen drawing is to be produced easily,--deliberately,
always,[C] but with a point that _glides_ over the paper. Engraving, on
the contrary, requires always force, and its virtue is that of a line
produced by pressure, or by blows of a chisel.
It involves, therefore, always, ideas of power and dexterity, but also
of restraint; and the delight you take in it should involve the
understanding of the difficulty the workman dealt with. You perhaps
doubt the extent to which this feeling justly extends, (in the first
volume of "Modern Painters," expressed under the head "Ideas of Power.")
But why is a large stone in any building grander than a small one?
Simply because it was more difficult to raise it. So, also, an engraved
line is, and ought to be, recognized as more grand than a pen or pencil
line, because it was more difficult to execute it.
In this mosaic of Lucca front you forgive much, and admire much,
because you see it is all cut in stone. So, in wood and steel, you ought
to see that every line has been costly; but observe, costly of
deliberative, no less than athletic or executive power. The main use of
the restraint which makes the line difficult to draw, is to give time
and motive for deliberation in drawing it, and to insure its being the
best in your power.
37. For, as with deliberation, so without repentance, your engraved line
must be. It may, indeed, be burnished or beaten out again in metal, or
patched and botched in stone; but always to disadvantage, and at pains
which must not be incurred often. And there is a singular evidence in
one of Duerer's finest plates that, in his time, or at least in his
manner of work, it was not possible at all. Among the disputes as to the
meaning of Duerer's Knight and Death, you will find it sometimes
suggested, or insisted, that the horse's raised foot is going to fall
into a snare. What has been fancied a noose is only the former outline
of the horse's foot and limb, uneffaced.
The engraved line is therefore to be conclusive; not experimental. "I
have determined this," says the engraver. Much excellent pen drawing is
excellent in being tentative,--in being experimental. Indeterminate, not
through want of meaning, but through fullness of it--halting _wisely_
between two opinions--feeling cautiously after clearer opinions. But
your engraver has made up his opinion. This is so, and must forever be
so, he tells you. A very proper thing for a thoughtful man to say; a
very improper and impertinent thing for a foolish one to say. Foolish
engraving is consummately foolish work. Look,--all the world,--look for
evermore, says the foolish engraver; see what a fool I have been! How
many lines I have laid for nothing! How many lines upon lines, with no
precept, much less superprecept!
38. Here, then, are two definite ethical characters in all engraved
work. It is Athletic; and it is Resolute. Add one more; that it is
Obedient;--in their infancy the nurse, but in their youth the slave, of
the higher arts; servile, both in the mechanism and labor of it, and in
its function of interpreting the schools of painting as superior to
itself.
And this relation to the higher arts we will study at the source of
chief power in all the normal skill of Christendom, Florence; and
chiefly, as I said, in the work of one Florentine master, Sandro
Botticelli.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] "Inaugural Series," "Aratra Pentelici," and "Eagle's Nest."
[B] My inaugural series of seven lectures (now published uniform in size
with this edition. 1890).
[C] Compare Inaugural Lectures, Sec. 144.
LECTURE II.
THE RELATION OF ENGRAVING TO OTHER ARTS IN FLORENCE.
39. From what was laid before you in my last lecture, you must now be
aware that I do not mean, by the word 'engraving,' merely the separate
art of producing plates from which black pictures may be printed.
I mean, by engraving, the art of producing decoration on a surface by
the touches of a chisel or a burin; and I mean by its relation to other
arts, the subordinate service of this linear work, in sculpture, in
metal work, and in painting; or in the representation and repetition of
painting.
And first, therefore, I have to map out the broad relations of the arts
of sculpture, metal work, and painting, in Florence, among themselves,
during the period in which the art of engraving was distinctly connected
with them.[D]
40. You will find, or may remember, that in my lecture on Michael Angelo
and Tintoret I indicated the singular importance, in the history of art,
of a space of forty years, between 1480, and the year in which Raphael
died, 1520. Within that space of time the change was completed, from the
principles of ancient, to those of existing, art;--a manifold change,
not definable in brief terms, but most clearly characterized, and easily
remembered, as the change of conscientious and didactic art, into that
which proposes to itself no duty beyond technical skill, and no object
but the pleasure of the beholder. Of that momentous change itself I do
not purpose to speak in the present course of lectures; but my endeavor
will be to lay before you a rough chart of the course of the arts in
Florence up to the time when it took place; a chart indicating for you,
definitely, the growth of conscience, in work which is distinctively
conscientious, and the perfecting of expression and means of popular
address, in that which is distinctively didactic.
41. Means of popular address, observe, which have become singularly
important to us at this day. Nevertheless, remember that the power of
printing, or reprinting, black _pictures_,--practically contemporary
with that of reprinting black _letters_,--modified the art of the
draughtsman only as it modified that of the scribe. Beautiful and unique
writing, as beautiful and unique painting or engraving, remain exactly
what they were; but other useful and reproductive methods of both have
been superadded. Of these, it is acutely said by Dr. Alfred
Woltmann,[E]--
"A far more important part is played in the art-life of Germany
by the technical arts for the _multiplying_ of works; for
Germany, while it was the land of book-printing, is also the
land of picture-printing. Indeed, wood-engraving, which
preceded the invention of book-printing, _prepared the way for
it, and only left one step more necessary for it_.
_Book-printing_ and _picture-printing_ have both the same inner
cause for their origin, namely, the impulse to make each mental
gain a common blessing. Not merely princes and rich nobles were
to have the privilege of adorning their private chapels and
apartments with beautiful religious pictures; the poorest man
was also to have his delight in that which the artist had
devised and produced. It was not sufficient for him when it
stood in the church as an altar-shrine, visible to him and to
the congregation from afar; he desired to have it as his own,
to carry it about with him, to bring it into his own home. The
grand importance of wood-engraving and copperplate is not
sufficiently estimated in historical investigations. They were
not alone of use in the advance of art; they form an epoch in
the entire life of mind and culture. The idea embodied and
multiplied in pictures became like that embodied in the printed
word, the herald of every intellectual movement, and conquered
the world."
42. "Conquered the world"? The rest of the sentence is true, but this,
hyperbolic, and greatly false. It should have been said that both
painting and engraving have conquered much of the good in the world,
and, hitherto, little or none of the evil.
Nor do I hold it usually an advantage to art, in teaching, that it
_should_ be common, or constantly seen. In becoming intelligibly and
kindly beautiful, while it remains solitary and unrivaled, it has a
greater power. Westminster Abbey is more didactic to the English nation,
than a million of popular illustrated treatises on architecture.
Nay, even that it cannot be understood but with some difficulty, and
must be sought before it can be seen, is no harm. The noblest didactic
art is, as it were, set on a hill, and its disciples come to it. The
vilest destructive and corrosive art stands at the street corners,
crying, "Turn in hither; come, eat of my bread, and drink of my wine,
which I have mingled."
And Dr. Woltmann has allowed himself too easily to fall into the common
notion of Liberalism, that bad art, disseminated, is instructive, and
good art isolated, not so. The question is, first, I assure you, whether
what art you have got is good or bad. If essentially bad, the more you
see of it, the worse for you. Entirely popular art is all that is noble,
in the cathedral, the council chamber, and the market-place; not the
paltry colored print pinned on the wall of a private room.
43. I despise the poor!--do I, think you? Not so. They only despise the
poor who think them better off with police news, and colored tracts of
the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, than they were with Luini
painting on their church walls, and Donatello carving the pillars of
their market-places.
Nevertheless, the effort to be universally, instead of locally,
didactic, modified advantageously, as you know, and in a thousand ways
varied, the earlier art of engraving: and the development of its popular
power, whether for good or evil, came exactly--so fate appointed--at a
time when the minds of the masses were agitated by the struggle which
closed in the Reformation in some countries, and in the desperate
refusal of Reformation in others.[F] The two greatest masters of
engraving whose lives we are to study, were, both of them, passionate
reformers: Holbein no less than Luther; Botticelli no less than
Savonarola.