you will find that the European art of 1200 includes all the most
developed and characteristic conditions of the style in the north which
you have probably been accustomed to think of as NORMAN, and which you
may always most conveniently call so; and the most developed conditions
of the style in the south, which, formed out of effete Greek, Persian,
and Roman tradition, you may, in like manner, most conveniently express
by the familiar word BYZANTINE. Whatever you call them, they are in
origin adverse in temper, and remain so up to the year 1200. Then an
influence appears, seemingly that of one man, Nicholas the Pisan, (our
first MASTER, observe,) and a new spirit adopts what is best in each,
and gives to what it adopts a new energy of its own; namely, this
conscientious and didactic power which is the speciality of its
progressive existence. And just as the new-born and natural art of
Athens collects and reanimates Pelasgian and Egyptian tradition,
purifying their worship, and perfecting their work, into the living
heathen faith of the world, so this new-born and natural art of Florence
collects and animates the Norman and Byzantine tradition, and forms out
of the perfected worship and work of both, the honest Christian faith,
and vital craftsmanship, of the world.
67. Get this first summary, therefore, well into your minds. The word
'Norman' I use roughly for North-savage;--roughly, but advisedly. I mean
Lombard, Scandinavian, Frankish; everything north-savage that you can
think of, except Saxon. (I have a reason for that exception; never mind
it just now.)[L]
All north-savage I call NORMAN, all south-savage I call BYZANTINE; this
latter including dead native Greek primarily--then dead foreign Greek,
in Rome;--then Arabian--Persian--Phoenician--Indian--all you can think
of, in art of hot countries, up to this year 1200, I rank under the one
term Byzantine. Now all this cold art--Norman, and all this hot
art--Byzantine, is virtually dead, till 1200. It has no conscience, no
didactic power;[M] it is devoid of both, in the sense that dreams are.
Then in the thirteenth century, men wake as if they heard an alarum
through the whole vault of heaven, and true human life begins again, and
the cradle of this life is the Val d'Arno. There the northern and
southern nations meet; there they lay down their enmities; there they
are first baptized unto John's baptism for the remission of sins; there
is born, and thence exiled,--thought faithless, for breaking the font of
baptism to save a child from drowning, in his 'bel San Giovanni,'--the
greatest of Christian poets; he who had pity even for the lost.
68. Now, therefore, my whole history of _Christian_ architecture and
painting begins with this Baptistery of Florence, and with its
associated Cathedral. Arnolfo brought the one into the form in which you
now see it; he laid the foundation of the other, and that to purpose,
and he is therefore the CAPTAIN of our first school.
For this Florentine Baptistery[N] is the great one of the world. Here is
the center of Christian knowledge and power.
And it is one piece of large _engraving_. White substance, cut into, and
filled with black, and dark-green.
No more perfect work was afterwards done; and I wish you to grasp the
idea of this building clearly and irrevocably,--first, in order (as I
told you in a previous lecture) to quit yourselves thoroughly of the
idea that ornament should be decorated construction; and, secondly, as
the noblest type of the intaglio ornamentation, which developed itself
into all minor application of black and white to engraving.
69. That it should do so first at Florence, was the natural sequence,
and the just reward, of the ancient skill of Etruria in chased
metal-work. The effects produced in gold, either by embossing or
engraving, were the direct means of giving interest to his surfaces at
the command of the 'auri faber,' or orfevre: and every conceivable
artifice of studding, chiseling, and interlacing was exhausted by the
artists in gold, who were at the head of the metal-workers, and from
whom the ranks of the sculptors were reinforced.
The old French word 'orfroiz,' (aurifrigia,) expresses essentially what
we call 'frosted' work in gold; that which resembles small dew or
crystals of hoar-frost; the 'frigia' coming from the Latin frigus. To
chase, or enchase, is not properly said of the gold; but of the jewel
which it secures with hoops or ridges, (French, _en_chasser[O]). Then
the armorer, or cup and casket maker, added to this kind of decoration
that of flat inlaid enamel; and the silver-worker, finding that the
raised filigree (still a staple at Genoa) only attracted tarnish, or got
crushed, early sought to decorate a surface which would bear external
friction, with labyrinths of safe incision.
70. Of the _security_ of incision as a means of permanent decoration, as
opposed to ordinary carving, here is a beautiful instance in the base of
one of the external shafts of the Cathedral of Lucca; thirteenth-century
work, which by this time, had it been carved in relief, would have been
a shapeless remnant of indecipherable bosses. But it is still as safe as
if it had been cut yesterday, because the smooth round mass of the
pillar is entirely undisturbed; into that, furrows are cut with a chisel
as much under command and as powerful as a burin. The effect of the
design is trusted entirely to the depth of these incisions--here dying
out and expiring in the light of the marble, there deepened, by drill
holes, into as definitely a black line as if it were drawn with ink;
and describing the outline of the leafage with a delicacy of touch and
of perception which no man will ever surpass, and which very few have
rivaled, in the proudest days of design.
71. This security, in silver plates, was completed by filling the
furrows with the black paste which at once exhibited and preserved them.
The transition from that niello-work to modern engraving is one of no
real moment: my object is to make you understand the qualities which
constitute the _merit_ of the engraving, whether charged with niello or
ink. And this I hope ultimately to accomplish by studying with you some
of the works of the four men, Botticelli and Mantegna in the south,
Duerer and Holbein in the north, whose names I have put in our last flag,
above and beneath those of the three mighty painters, Perugino the
captain, Bellini on one side--Luini on the other.
The four following lectures[P] will contain data necessary for such
study: you must wait longer before I can place before you those by which
I can justify what must greatly surprise some of my audience--my having
given Perugino the captain's place among the three painters.
72. But I do so, at least primarily, because what is commonly thought
affected in his design is indeed the true remains of the great
architectural symmetry which was soon to be lost, and which makes him
the true follower of Arnolfo and Brunelleschi; and because he is a sound
craftsman and workman to the very heart's core. A noble, gracious, and
quiet laborer from youth to death,--never weary, never impatient, never
untender, never untrue. Not Tintoret in power, not Raphael in
flexibility, not Holbein in veracity, not Luini in love,--their gathered
gifts he has, in balanced and fruitful measure, fit to be the guide, and
impulse, and father of all.
FOOTNOTES:
[D] Compare "Aratra Pentelici," Sec. 154.
[E] "Holbein and His Time," 4to, Bentley, 1872, (a very valuable book,)
p. 17. Italics mine.
[F] See Carlyle, "Frederick," Book III., chap. viii.
[G] I believe I am taking too much trouble in writing these lectures.
This sentence, Sec. 44, has cost me, I suppose, first and last, about as
many hours as there are lines in it;--and my choice of these two words,
faith and death, as representatives of power, will perhaps, after all,
only puzzle the reader.
[H] He is said by Vasari to have called Francia the like. Francia is a
child compared to Perugino; but a finished working-goldsmith and
ornamental painter nevertheless; and one of the very last men to be
called 'goffo,' except by unparalleled insolence.
[I] The diagram used at the lecture is engraved on page 30; the reader
had better draw it larger for himself, as it had to be made
inconveniently small for this size of leaf.
[J] 'Ascertained,' scarcely any date ever is, quite satisfactorily. The
diagram only represents what is practically and broadly true. I may have
to modify it greatly in detail.
[K] For fust, log of wood, erroneously 'fer' in the later printed
editions. Compare the account of the works of Art and Nature, towards
the end of the Romance of the Rose.
[L] Of course it would have been impossible to express in any accurate
terms, short enough for the compass of a lecture, the conditions of
opposition between the Heptarchy and the Northmen;--between the
Byzantine and Roman;--and between the Byzantine and Arab, which form
minor, but not less trenchant, divisions of Art-province, for subsequent
delineation. If you can refer to my "Stones of Venice," see Sec. 20 of its
first chapter.
[M] Again much too broad a statement: not to be qualified but by a
length of explanation here impossible. My lectures on Architecture, now
in preparation ("Val d'Arno"), will contain further detail.
[N] At the side of my page, here, I find the following memorandum, which
was expanded in the viva-voce lecture. The reader must make what he can
of it, for I can't expand it here.
_Sense_ of Italian Church plan.
Baptistery, to make Christians in; house, or dome, for them to pray and
be preached to in; bell-tower, to ring all over the town, when they were
either to pray together, rejoice together, or to be warned of danger.
Harvey's picture of the Covenanters, with a shepherd on the outlook, as
a campanile.
[O] And 'chassis,' a window frame, or tracery.
[P] This present lecture does not, as at present published, justify its
title; because I have not thought it necessary to write the viva-voce
portions of it which amplified the 69th paragraph. I will give the
substance of them in better form elsewhere; meantime the part of the
lecture here given may be in its own way useful.
LECTURE III.
THE TECHNICS OF WOOD ENGRAVING.
73. I am to-day to begin to tell you what it is necessary you should
observe respecting methods of manual execution in the two great arts of
engraving. Only to _begin_ to tell you. There need be no end of telling
you such things, if you care to hear them. The theory of art is soon
mastered; but 'dal detto al fatto, v'e gran tratto;' and as I have
several times told you in former lectures, every day shows me more and
more the importance of the Hand.
74. Of the hand as a Servant, observe,--not of the hand as a Master. For
there are two great kinds of manual work: one in which the hand is
continually receiving and obeying orders; the other in which it is
acting independently, or even giving orders of its own. And the
dependent and submissive hand is a noble hand; but the independent or
imperative hand is a vile one.
That is to say, as long as the pen, or chisel, or other graphic
instrument, is moved under the direct influence of mental attention, and
obeys orders of the brain, it is working nobly;--the moment it moves
independently of them, and performs some habitual dexterity of its own,
it is base.
75. _Dexterity_--I say;--some 'right-handedness' of its own. We might
wisely keep that word for what the hand does at the mind's bidding; and
use an opposite word--sinisterity,--for what it does at its own. For
indeed we want such a word in speaking of modern art; it is all full of
sinisterity. Hands independent of brains;--the left hand, by division of
labor, not knowing what the right does,--still less what it ought to do.
76. Turning, then, to our special subject. All engraving, I said, is
intaglio in the solid. But the solid, in wood engraving, is a coarse
substance, easily cut; and in metal, a fine substance, not easily.
Therefore, in general, you may be prepared to accept ruder and more
elementary work in one than the other; and it will be the means of
appeal to blunter minds.
You probably already know the difference between the actual methods of
producing a printed impression from wood and metal; but I may perhaps
make the matter a little more clear. In metal engraving, you cut
ditches, fill them with ink, and press your paper into them. In wood
engraving, you leave ridges, rub the tops of them with ink, and stamp
them on your paper.
The instrument with which the substance, whether of the wood or steel,
is cut away, is the same. It is a solid plowshare, which, instead of
throwing the earth aside, throws it up and out, producing at first a
simple ravine, or furrow, in the wood or metal, which you can widen by
another cut, or extend by successive cuts. This (Fig. 1) is the general
shape of the solid plowshare: but it is of course made sharper or
blunter at pleasure. The furrow produced is at first the wedge-shaped or
cuneiform ravine, already so much dwelt upon in my lectures on Greek
sculpture.
[Illustration: FIG. 1]
77. Since, then, in wood printing, you print from the surface left
solid; and, in metal printing, from the hollows cut into it, it follows
that if you put few touches on wood, you draw, as on a slate, with white
lines, leaving a quantity of black; but if you put few touches on metal,
you draw with black lines, leaving a quantity of white.
Now the eye is not in the least offended by quantity of white, but is,
or ought to be, greatly saddened and offended by quantity of black.
Hence it follows that you must never put little work on wood. You must
not sketch upon it. You may sketch on metal as much as you please.
78. "Paradox," you will say, as usual. "Are not all our journals,--and
the best of them, Punch, par excellence,--full of the most brilliantly
swift and slight sketches, engraved on wood; while line-engravings take
ten years to produce, and cost ten guineas each when they are done?"
Yes, that is so; but observe, in the first place, what appears to you a
sketch on wood is not so at all, but a most laborious and careful
imitation of a sketch on paper; whereas when you see what appears to be
a sketch on metal, it _is_ one. And in the second place, so far as the
popular fashion is contrary to this natural method,--so far as we do in
reality try to produce effects of sketching in wood, and of finish in
metal,--our work is wrong.
Those apparently careless and free sketches on the wood ought to have
been stern and deliberate; those exquisitely toned and finished
engravings on metal ought to have looked, instead, like free ink
sketches on white paper. That is the theorem which I propose to you for
consideration, and which, in the two branches of its assertion, I hope
to prove to you; the first part of it, (that wood-cutting should be
careful,) in this present lecture; the second, (that metal-cutting
should be, at least in a far greater degree than it is now, slight, and
free,) in the following one.
79. Next, observe the distinction in respect of _thickness_, no less
than number, of lines which may properly be used in the two methods.
In metal engraving, it is easier to lay a fine line than a thick one;
and however fine the line may be, it lasts;--but in wood engraving it
requires extreme precision and skill to leave a thin dark line, and when
left, it will be quickly beaten down by a careless printer. Therefore,
the virtue of wood engraving is to exhibit the qualities and power of
_thick_ lines; and of metal engraving, to exhibit the qualities and
power of _thin_ ones.
All thin dark lines, therefore, in wood, broadly speaking, are to be
used only in case of necessity; and thick lines, on metal, only in case
of necessity.
80. Though, however, thin _dark_ lines cannot easily be produced in
wood, thin _light_ ones may be struck in an instant. Nevertheless, even
thin light ones must not be used, except with extreme caution. For
observe, they are equally useless as outline, and for expression of
mass. You know how far from exemplary or delightful your boy's first
quite voluntary exercises in white line drawing on your slate were? You
could, indeed, draw a goblin satisfactorily in such method;--a round O,
with arms and legs to it, and a scratch under two dots in the middle,
would answer the purpose; but if you wanted to draw a pretty face, you
took pencil or pen, and paper--not your slate. Now, that instinctive
feeling that a white outline is wrong, is deeply founded. For Nature
herself draws with diffused light, and concentrated dark;--never, except
in storm or twilight, with diffused dark, and concentrated light; and
the thing we all like best to see drawn--the human face--cannot be drawn
with white touches, but by extreme labor. For the pupil and iris of the
eye, the eyebrow, the nostril, and the lip are all set in dark on pale
ground. You can't draw a white eyebrow, a white pupil of the eye, a
white nostril, and a white mouth, on a dark ground. Try it, and see what
a specter you get. But the same number of dark touches, skillfully
applied, will give the idea of a beautiful face. And what is true of the
subtlest subject you have to represent, is equally true of inferior
ones. Nothing lovely can be quickly represented by white touches. You
must hew out, if your means are so restricted, the form by sheer labor;
and that both cunning and dextrous. The Florentine masters, and Duerer,
often practice the achievement, and there are many drawings by the
Lippis, Mantegna, and other leading Italian draughtsmen, completed to
great perfection with the white line; but only for the sake of severest
study, nor is their work imitable by inferior men. And such studies,
however accomplished, always mark a disposition to regard chiaroscuro
too much, and local color too little.
We conclude, then, that we must never trust, in wood, to our power of
outline with white; and our general laws, thus far determined, will
be--thick lines in wood; thin ones in metal; complete drawing on wood;
sketches, if we choose, on metal.
81. But why, in wood, lines at all? Why not cut out white _spaces_, and
use the chisel as if its incisions were so much white paint? Many fine
pieces of wood-cutting are indeed executed on this principle. Bewick
does nearly all his foliage so; and continually paints the light plumes
of his birds with single touches of his chisel, as if he were laying on
white.
But this is not the finest method of wood-cutting. It implies the idea
of a system of light and shade in which the shadow is totally black.
Now, no light and shade can be good, much less pleasant, in which all
the shade is stark black. Therefore the finest wood-cutting ignores
light and shade, and expresses only form, and _dark local color_. And it
is convenient, for simplicity's sake, to anticipate what I should
otherwise defer telling you until next lecture, that fine metal
engraving, like fine wood-cutting, ignores light and shade; and that, in
a word, all good engraving whatsoever does so.
82. I hope that my saying so will make you eager to interrupt me. 'What!
Rembrandt's etchings, and Lupton's mezzotints, and Le Keux's
line-work,--do you mean to tell us that these ignore light and shade?'
I never said that _mezzotint_ ignored light and shade, or ought to do
so. Mezzotint is properly to be considered as chiaroscuro drawing on
metal. But I do mean to tell you that both Rembrandt's etchings, and Le
Keux's finished line-work, are misapplied labor, in so far as they
regard chiaroscuro; and that consummate engraving never uses it as a
primal element of pleasure.
[Illustration: THE LAST FURROW.
(Fig. 2) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.]
83. We have now got our principles so far defined that I can proceed to
illustration of them by example.
Here are facsimiles, very marvelous ones,[Q] of two of the best wood
engravings ever produced by art,--two subjects in Holbein's Dance of
Death. You will probably like best that I should at once proceed to
verify my last and most startling statement, that fine engraving
disdained chiaroscuro.
This vignette (Fig. 2) represents a sunset in the open mountainous
fields of southern Germany. And Holbein is so entirely careless about
the light and shade, which a Dutchman would first have thought of, as
resulting from the sunset, that, as he works, he forgets altogether
where his light comes from. Here, actually, the shadow of the figure is
cast from the side, right across the picture, while the sun is in front.
And there is not the slightest attempt to indicate gradation of light in
the sky, darkness in the forest, or any other positive element of
chiaroscuro.
This is not because Holbein cannot give chiaroscuro if he chooses. He is
twenty times a stronger master of it than Rembrandt; but he, therefore,
knows exactly when and how to use it; and that wood engraving is not the
proper means for it. The quantity of it which is needful for his story,
and will not, by any sensational violence, either divert, or vulgarly
enforce, the attention, he will give; and that with an unrivaled
subtlety. Therefore I must ask you for a moment or two to quit the
subject of technics, and look what these two woodcuts mean.
84. The one I have first shown you is of a plowman plowing at evening.
It is Holbein's object, here, to express the diffused and intense light
of a golden summer sunset, so far as is consistent with grander
purposes. A modern French or English chiaroscurist would have covered
his sky with fleecy clouds, and relieved the plowman's hat and his
horses against it in strong black, and put sparkling touches on the
furrows and grass. Holbein scornfully casts all such tricks aside; and
draws the whole scene in pure white, with simple outlines.
[Illustration: THE TWO PREACHERS.
(Fig. 3) Facsimile from Holbein's woodcut.]
85. And yet, when I put it beside this second vignette, (Fig. 3,) which
is of a preacher preaching in a feebly lighted church, you will feel
that the diffused warmth of the one subject, and diffused twilight in
the other, are complete; and they will finally be to you more impressive
than if they had been wrought out with every superficial means of
effect, on each block.
For it is as a symbol, not as a scenic effect, that in each case the
chiaroscuro is given. Holbein, I said, is at the head of the
painter-reformers, and his Dance of Death is the most energetic and
telling of all the forms given, in this epoch, to the _Rationalist_
spirit of reform, preaching the new Gospel of Death,--"It is no matter
whether you are priest or layman, what you believe, or what you do: here
is the end." You shall see, in the course of our inquiry, that
Botticelli, in like manner, represents the _Faithful_ and _Catholic_
temper of reform.
86. The teaching of Holbein is therefore always melancholy,--for the
most part purely rational; and entirely furious in its indignation
against all who, either by actual injustice in this life, or by what he
holds to be false promise of another, destroy the good, or the energy,
of the few days which man has to live. Against the rich, the luxurious,
the Pharisee, the false lawyer, the priest, and the unjust judge,
Holbein uses his fiercest mockery; but he is never himself unjust; never
caricatures or equivocates; gives the facts as he knows them, with
explanatory symbols, few and clear.