peace and justice to rule over the earth, instead of the sword; but see
how differently they will say what is in their hearts to the people they
address. To Bewick, war was more an absurdity than it was a horror: he
had not seen battle-fields, still less had he read of them, in ancient
days. He cared nothing about heroes,--Greek, Roman, or Norman. What he
knew, and saw clearly, was that Farmer Hodge's boy went out of the
village one holiday afternoon, a fine young fellow, rather drunk, with
a colored ribbon in his hat; and came back, ten years afterwards, with
one leg, one eye, an old red coat, and a tobacco-pipe in the pocket of
it. That is what he has got to say, mainly. So, for the pathetic side of
the business, he draws you two old soldiers meeting as bricklayers'
laborers; and for the absurd side of it, he draws a stone, sloping
sideways with age, in a bare field, on which you can just read, out of a
long inscription, the words "glorious victory;" but no one is there to
read them,--only a jackass, who uses the stone to scratch himself
against.
202. Now compare with this Botticelli's reproof of war. _He_ had seen
it, and often; and between noble persons;--knew the temper in which the
noblest knights went out to it;--knew the strength, the patience, the
glory, and the grief of it. He would fain see his Florence in peace; and
yet he knows that the wisest of her citizens are her bravest soldiers.
So he seeks for the ideal of a soldier, and for the greatest glory of
war, that in the presence of these he may speak reverently, what he must
speak. He does not go to Greece for his hero. He is not sure that even
her patriotic wars were always right. But, by his religious faith, he
cannot doubt the nobleness of the soldier who put the children of Israel
in possession of their promised land, and to whom the sign of the
consent of heaven was given by its pausing light in the valley of
Ajalon. Must then setting sun and risen moon stay, he thinks, only to
look upon slaughter? May no soldier of Christ bid them stay otherwise
than so? He draws Joshua, but quitting his hold of the sword: its hilt
rests on his bent knee; and he kneels before the sun, not commands it;
and this is his prayer:--
"Oh, King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone rulest always in
eternity, and who correctest all our wanderings,--Giver of melody to the
choir of the angels, listen Thou a little to our bitter grief, and come
and rule us, oh Thou highest King, with Thy love which is so sweet!"
Is not that a little better, and a little wiser, than Bewick's jackass?
Is it not also better, and wiser, than the sneer of modern science?
'What great men are we!--we, forsooth, can make almanacs, and know that
the earth turns round. Joshua indeed! Let us have no more talk of the
old-clothes-man.'
All Bewick's simplicity is in that; but none of Bewick's understanding.
203. I pass to the attack made by Botticelli upon the guilt of wealth.
So I had at first written; but I should rather have written, the appeal
made by him against the cruelty of wealth, then first attaining the
power it has maintained to this day.
The practice of receiving interest had been confined, until this
fifteenth century, with contempt and malediction, to the profession, so
styled, of usurers, or to the Jews. The merchants of Augsburg introduced
it as a convenient and pleasant practice among Christians also; and
insisted that it was decorous and proper even among respectable
merchants. In the view of the Christian Church of their day, they might
more reasonably have set themselves to defend adultery.[AX] However,
they appointed Dr. John Eck, of Ingoldstadt, to hold debates in all
possible universities, at their expense, on the allowing of interest;
and as these Augsburgers had in Venice their special mart, Fondaco,
called of the Germans, their new notions came into direct collision with
old Venetian ones, and were much hindered by them, and all the more,
because, in opposition to Dr. John Eck, there was preaching on the other
side of the Alps. The Franciscans, poor themselves, preached mercy to
the poor: one of them, Brother Marco of San Gallo, planned the 'Mount of
Pity' for their defense, and the merchants of Venice set up the first in
the world, against the German Fondaco. The dispute burned far on towards
our own times. You perhaps have heard before of one Antonio, a merchant
of Venice, who persistently retained the then obsolete practice of
lending money gratis, and of the peril it brought him into with the
usurers. But you perhaps did not before know why it was the flesh, or
heart of flesh, in him, that they so hated.
204. Against this newly risen demon of authorized usury, Holbein and
Botticelli went out to war together. Holbein, as we have partly seen in
his designs for the Dance of Death, struck with all his soldier's
strength.[AY] Botticelli uses neither satire nor reproach. He turns
altogether away from the criminals; appeals only to heaven for defense
against them. He engraves the design which, of all his work, must have
cost him hardest toil in its execution,--the Virgin praying to her Son
in heaven for pity upon the poor: "For these are also my children."[AZ]
Underneath, are the seven works of Mercy; and in the midst of them, the
building of the Mount of Pity: in the distance lies Italy, mapped in
cape and bay, with the cities which had founded mounts of pity,--Venice
in the distance, chief. Little seen, but engraved with the master's
loveliest care, in the background there is a group of two small
figures--the Franciscan brother kneeling, and an angel of Victory
crowning him.
205. I call it an angel of Victory, observe, with assurance; although
there is no legend claiming victory, or distinguishing this angel from
any other of those which adorn with crowns of flowers the nameless
crowds of the blessed. For Botticelli has other ways of speaking than by
written legends. I know by a glance at this angel that he has taken the
action of it from a Greek coin; and I know also that he had not, in his
own exuberant fancy, the least need to copy the action of any figure
whatever. So I understand, as well as if he spoke to me, that he expects
me, if I am an educated gentleman, to recognize this particular action
as a Greek angel's; and to know that it is a temporal victory which it
crowns.
206. And now farther, observe, that this classical learning of
Botticelli's, received by him, as I told you, as a native element of his
being, gives not only greater dignity and gentleness, but far wider
range, to his thoughts of Reformation. As he asks for pity from the
cruel Jew to the _poor_ Gentile, so he asks for pity from the proud
Christian to the _untaught_ Gentile. Nay, for more than pity, for
fellowship, and acknowledgment of equality before God. The learned men
of his age in general brought back the Greek mythology as
anti-Christian. But Botticelli and Perugino, as pre-Christian; nor only
as pre-Christian, but as the foundation of Christianity. But chiefly
Botticelli, with perfect grasp of the Mosaic and classic theology,
thought over and seized the harmonies of both; and he it was who gave
the conception of that great choir of the prophets and sibyls, of which
Michael Angelo, more or less ignorantly borrowing it in the Sistine
Chapel, in great part lost the meaning, while he magnified the aspect.
207. For, indeed, all Christian and heathen mythology had alike become
to Michael Angelo only a vehicle for the display of his own powers of
drawing limbs and trunks: and having resolved, and made the world of his
day believe, that all the glory of design lay in variety of difficult
attitude, he flings the naked bodies about his ceiling with an
upholsterer's ingenuity of appliance to the corners they could fit, but
with total absence of any legible meaning. Nor do I suppose that one
person in a million, even of those who have some acquaintance with the
earlier masters, takes patience in the Sistine Chapel to conceive the
original design. But Botticelli's mastership of the works evidently was
given to him as a theologian, even more than as a painter; and the
moment when he came to Rome to receive it, you may hold for the crisis
of the Reformation in Italy. The main effort to save her priesthood was
about to be made by her wisest Reformer,--face to face with the head of
her Church,--not in contest with him, but in the humblest subjection to
him; and in adornment of his own chapel for his own delight, and more
than delight, if it might be.
208. Sandro brings to work, not under him, but with him, the three other
strongest and worthiest men he knows, Perugino, Ghirlandajo, and Luca
Signorelli. There is evidently entire fellowship in thought between
Botticelli and Perugino. They two together plan the whole; and
Botticelli, though the master, yields to Perugino the principal place,
the end of the chapter, on which is to be the Assumption of the Virgin.
It was Perugino's favorite subject, done with his central strength;
assuredly the crowning work of his life, and of lovely Christian art in
Europe.
Michael Angelo painted it out, and drew devils and dead bodies all over
the wall instead. But there remains to us, happily, the series of
subjects designed by Botticelli to lead up to this lost one.
209. He came, I said, not to attack, but to restore the Papal authority.
To show the power of inherited honor, and universal claim of divine law,
in the Jewish and Christian Church,--the law delivered first by Moses;
then, in final grace and truth, by Christ.
He designed twelve great pictures, each containing some twenty figures
the size of life, and groups of smaller ones scarcely to be counted.
Twelve pictures,--six to illustrate the giving of the law by Moses; and
six, the ratification and completion of it by Christ. Event by event,
the jurisprudence of each dispensation is traced from dawn to close in
this correspondence.
1. Covenant of Circumcision.
2. Entrance on his Ministry by Moses.
3. Moses by the Red Sea.
4. Delivery of Law on Sinai.
5. Destruction of Korah.
6. Death of Moses.
7. Covenant of Baptism.
8. Entrance on His Ministry by Christ.
9. Peter and Andrew by the Sea of Galilee.
10. Sermon on Mount.
11. Giving Keys to St. Peter.
12. Last Supper.
Of these pictures, Sandro painted three himself, Perugino three, and the
Assumption; Ghirlandajo one, Signorelli one, and Rosselli four.[BA] I
believe that Sandro intended to take the roof also, and had sketched out
the main succession of its design; and that the prophets and sibyls
which he meant to paint, he drew first small, and engraved his drawings
afterwards, that some part of the work might be, at all events, thus
communicable to the world outside of the Vatican.
210. It is not often that I tell you my beliefs; but I am forced here,
for there are no dates to found more on. Is it not wonderful that among
all the infinite mass of fools' thoughts about the "majestic works of
Michael Angelo" in the Sistine Chapel, no slightly more rational person
has ever asked what the chapel was first meant to be like, and how it
was to be roofed?
Nor can I assume myself, still less you, that all these prophets and
sibyls are Botticelli's. Of many there are two engravings, with
variations: some are inferior in parts, many altogether. He signed none;
never put grand tablets with 'S. B.' into his skies; had other letters
than those to engrave, and no time to spare. I have chosen out of the
series three of the sibyls, which have, I think, clear internal evidence
of being his; and these you shall compare with Michael Angelo's. But
first I must put you in mind what the sibyls were.
211. As the prophets represent the voice of God in man, the sibyls
represent the voice of God in nature. They are properly all forms of one
sibyl, [Greek: Dios Boule], the counsel of God; and the chief one, at
least in the Roman mind, was the Sibyl of Cumae. From the traditions of
her, the Romans, and we through them, received whatever lessons the
myth, or fact, of sibyl power has given to mortals.
How much have you received, or may you yet receive, think you, of that
teaching? I call it the myth, or fact; but remember that, _as_ a myth,
it _is_ a fact. This story has concentrated whatever good there is in
the imagination or visionary powers in women, inspired by nature only.
The traditions of witch and gypsy are partly its offshoots. You despise
both, perhaps. But can you, though in utmost pride of your supreme
modern wisdom, suppose that the character--say, even of so poor and
far-fallen a sibyl as Meg Merrilies--is only the coinage of Scott's
brain; or that, even being no more, it is valueless? Admit the figure of
the Cumaean Sibyl, in like manner, to be the coinage only of Virgil's
brain. As such, it, and the words it speaks, are yet facts in which we
may find use, if we are reverent to them.
To me, personally, (I must take your indulgence for a moment to speak
wholly of myself,) they have been of the truest service--quite material
and indisputable.
I am writing on St. John's Day, in the monastery of Assisi; and I had no
idea whatever, when I sat down to my work this morning, of saying any
word of what I am now going to tell you. I meant only to expand and
explain a little what I said in my lecture about the Florentine
engraving. But it seems to me now that I had better tell you what the
Cumaean Sibyl has actually done for me.
212. In 1871, partly in consequence of chagrin at the Revolution in
Paris, and partly in great personal sorrow, I was struck by acute
inflammatory illness at Matlock, and reduced to a state of extreme
weakness; lying at one time unconscious for some hours, those about me
having no hope of my life. I have no doubt that the immediate cause of
the illness was simply, eating when I was not hungry; so that modern
science would acknowledge nothing in the whole business but an extreme
and very dangerous form of indigestion; and entirely deny any
interference of the Cumaean Sibyl in the matter.
I once heard a sermon by Dr. Guthrie, in Edinburgh, upon the wickedness
of fasting. It was very eloquent and ingenious, and finely explained the
superiority of the Scotch Free Church to the benighted Catholic Church,
in that the Free Church saw no merit in fasting. And there was no
mention, from beginning to end of the sermon, of even the existence of
such texts as Daniel i. 12, or Matthew vi. 16.
Without the smallest merit, I admit, in fasting, I was nevertheless
reduced at Matlock to a state very near starvation; and could not rise
from my pillow, without being lifted, for some days. And in the first
clearly pronounced stage of recovery, when the perfect powers of spirit
had returned, while the body was still as weak as it well could be, I
had three dreams, which made a great impression on me; for in ordinary
health my dreams are supremely ridiculous, if not unpleasant; and in
ordinary conditions of illness, very ugly, and always without the
slightest meaning. But these dreams were all distinct and impressive,
and had much meaning, if I chose to take it.
213. The first[BB] was of a Venetian fisherman, who wanted me to follow
him down into some water which I thought was too deep; but he called me
on, saying he had something to show me; so I followed him; and
presently, through an opening, as if in the arsenal wall, he showed me
the bronze horses of St. Mark's, and said, 'See, the horses are putting
on their harness.'
The second was of a preparation at Rome, in St. Peter's, (or a vast hall
as large as St. Peter's,) for the exhibition of a religious drama. Part
of the play was to be a scene in which demons were to appear in the sky;
and the stage servants were arranging gray fictitious clouds, and
painted fiends, for it, under the direction of the priests. There was a
woman dressed in black, standing at the corner of the stage watching
them, having a likeness in her face to one of my own dead friends; and I
knew somehow that she was not that friend, but a spirit; and she made me
understand, without speaking, that I was to watch, for the play would
turn out other than the priests expected. And I waited; and when the
scene came on, the clouds became real clouds, and the fiends real
fiends, agitating them in slow quivering, wild and terrible, over the
heads of the people and priests. I recollected distinctly, however, when
I woke, only the figure of the black woman mocking the people, and of
one priest in an agony of terror, with the sweat pouring from his brow,
but violently scolding one of the stage servants for having failed in
some ceremony, the omission of which, he thought, had given the devils
their power.
The third dream was the most interesting and personal. Some one came to
me to ask me to help in the deliverance of a company of Italian
prisoners who were to be ransomed for money. I said I had no money. They
answered, Yes, I had some that belonged to me as a brother of St.
Francis, if I would give it up. I said I did not know even that I _was_
a brother of St. Francis; but I thought to myself, that perhaps the
Franciscans of Fesole, whom I had helped to make hay in their field in
1845, had adopted me for one; only I didn't see how the consequence of
that would be my having any money. However, I said they were welcome to
whatever I had; and then I heard the voice of an Italian woman singing;
and I have never heard such divine singing before nor since;--the sounds
absolutely strong and real, and the melody altogether lovely. If I could
have written it! But I could not even remember it when I woke,--only how
beautiful it was.
214. Now these three dreams have, every one of them, been of much use to
me since; or so far as they have failed to be useful, it has been my own
fault, and not theirs; but the chief use of them at the time was to give
me courage and confidence in myself, both in bodily distress, of which I
had still not a little to bear; and worse, much mental anxiety about
matters supremely interesting to me, which were turning out ill. And
through all such trouble--which came upon me as I was recovering, as if
it meant to throw me back into the grave,--I held out and recovered,
repeating always to myself, or rather having always murmured in my ears,
at every new trial, one Latin line,
Tu ne cede malis, sed contra fortior ito.
Now I had got this line out of the tablet in the engraving of Raphael's
vision, and had forgotten where it came from. And I thought I knew my
sixth book of Virgil so well, that I never looked at it again while I
was giving these lectures at Oxford, and it was only here at Assisi,
the other day, wanting to look more accurately at the first scene by the
lake Avernus, that I found I had been saved by the words of the Cumaean
Sibyl.
215. "Quam tua te Fortuna sinet," the completion of the sentence, has
yet more and continual teaching in it for me now; as it has for all men.
Her opening words, which have become hackneyed, and lost all present
power through vulgar use of them, contain yet one of the most immortal
truths ever yet spoken for mankind; and they will never lose their power
of help for noble persons. But observe, both in that lesson, "Facilis
descensus Averni," etc.; and in the still more precious, because
universal, one on which the strength of Rome was founded,--the burning
of the books,--the Sibyl speaks only as the voice of Nature, and of her
laws;--not as a divine helper, prevailing over death; but as a mortal
teacher warning us against it, and strengthening us for our mortal time;
but not for eternity. Of which lesson her own history is a part, and her
habitation by the Avernus lake. She desires immortality, fondly and
vainly, as we do ourselves. She receives, from the love of her _refused_
lover, Apollo, not immortality, but length of life;--her years to be as
the grains of dust in her hand. And even this she finds was a false
desire; and her wise and holy desire at last is--to die. She wastes
away; becomes a shade only, and a voice. The Nations ask her, What
wouldst thou? She answers, Peace; only let my last words be true.
"L'ultimo mie parlar sie verace."
[Illustration: VII.
For a time, and times.]
216. Therefore, if anything is to be conceived, rightly, and chiefly, in
the form of the Cumaean Sibyl, it must be of fading virginal beauty, of
enduring patience, of far-looking into futurity. "For after my death
there shall yet return," she says, "another virgin."
Jam redit et virgo;--redeunt Saturnia regna,
Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas.
Here then is Botticelli's Cumaean Sibyl. She is armed, for she is the
prophetess of Roman fortitude;--but her faded breast scarcely
raises the corselet; her hair floats, not falls, in waves like the
currents of a river,--the sign of enduring life; the light is full on
her forehead: she looks into the distance as in a dream. It is
impossible for art to gather together more beautifully or intensely
every image which can express her true power, or lead us to understand
her lesson.
[Illustration: VIII.
The Nymph beloved of Apollo.
(MICHAEL ANGELO.)]
217. Now you do not, I am well assured, know one of Michael Angelo's
sibyls from another: unless perhaps the Delphian, whom of course he
makes as beautiful as he can. But of this especially Italian prophetess,
one would have thought he might, at least in some way, have shown that
he knew the history, even if he did not understand it. She might have
had more than one book, at all events, to burn. She might have had a
stray leaf or two fallen at her feet. He could not indeed have painted
her only as a voice; but his anatomical knowledge need not have hindered
him from painting her virginal youth, or her wasting and watching age,
or her inspired hope of a holier future.
218. Opposite,--fortunately, photograph from the figure itself, so that
you can suspect me of no exaggeration,--is Michael Angelo's Cumaean
Sibyl, wasting away. It is by a grotesque and most strange chance that
he should have made the figure of this Sibyl, of all others in the
chapel, the most fleshly and gross, even proceeding to the monstrous
license of showing the nipples of the breast as if the dress were molded
over them like plaster. Thus he paints the poor nymph beloved of
Apollo,--the clearest and queenliest in prophecy and command of all the
sibyls,--as an ugly crone, with the arms of Goliath, poring down upon a
single book.
219. There is one point of fine detail, however, in Botticelli's Cumaean
Sibyl, and in the next I am going to show you, to explain which I must
go back for a little while to the question of the direct relation of the
Italian painters to the Greek. I don't like repeating in one lecture
what I have said in another; but to save you the trouble of reference,
must remind you of what I stated in my fourth lecture on Greek birds,
when we were examining the adoption of the plume crests in armor, that
the crest signifies command; but the diadem, _obedience_; and that every
crown is primarily a diadem. It is the thing that binds, before it is
the thing that honors.
Now all the great schools dwell on this symbolism. The long flowing hair
is the symbol of life, and the [Greek: diadema] of the law restraining
it. Royalty, or kingliness, over life, restraining and glorifying. In
the extremity of restraint--in death, whether noble, as of death to
Earth, or ignoble, as of death to Heaven, the [Greek: diadema] is
fastened with the mort-cloth: "Bound hand and foot with grave-clothes,
and the face bound about with the napkin."
220. Now look back to the first Greek head I ever showed you, used as
the type of archaic sculpture in Aratra Pentelici, and then look at the
crown in Botticelli's Astrologia. It is absolutely the Greek form,--even
to the peculiar oval of the forehead; while the diadem--the governing
law--is set with appointed stars--to rule the destiny and thought. Then
return to the Cumaean Sibyl. She, as we have seen, is the symbol of
enduring life--almost immortal. The diadem is withdrawn from the
forehead--reduced to a narrow fillet--here, and the hair thrown free.
[Illustration: IX.
In the woods of Ida.]