Leonardo da Vinci's unfinished _Saint Jerome_, in the Vatican at Rome,
is exactly like intarsia work; the ground almost black, the men and the
lion a light brown. This particular way of painting reminds me of the
intarsia work in the halls in Santo Spirito in Bergamo by Fra Damiano in
1520; done just one year after Leonardo died. Here, in this supple and
vigorous work in wood, I saw what could be done by a fine artist in the
handling of somewhat intractable material. The work was broad or minute
at will, with splendid masses and divisions of color in some designs
which seemed to represent the Deluge, sharp, clear, firmly outlined in
the patterns of streets and houses; full of rich color in the setting of
wood against wood, and at times almost as delicate as a Japanese design.
There was the head of John the Baptist laid on a stone slab, which was
like a drawing of Daumier. And, in the whole composition of the design,
with its two ovals set on each side like mirrors for the central horror,
there was perfect balance. San Acre, this superb intarsia work of Fra
Damiano, seemed a criticism on Lotto, the criticism of a thing,
comparatively humble in itself, but in itself wholly satisfying, upon
the failure of a more conspicuous endeavor, which has made its own place
in art, to satisfy certain primary demands which one may logically make
upon it.
In the Jerome, as in his finished work, one sees Leonardo's undeviating
devotion to the perfect achievement of everything to which he set his
hand; and how, after a long lapse of time, in the heat of the day, he
crosses Florence to mount the scaffold, adds two or three touches to a
single figure, and returns forthwith. Never did Michelangelo paint in
such various ways as Leonardo; for, in his frescoes in the Sistine
Chapel, art ceases to approach one directly, through this sense or that,
through color, or some fancied outlook of the soul; only, one seems to
be of the same vivid and eternal world as these meditative and joyous
beings, joyous even in hell, where the rapture of their torment broods
in eyes and limbs with the same energy as the rapture of God in
creation, of the women in disobedience.
Certainly, however, in the Jerome there is a glimpse of background in
which I find already the suggestion of the magical rocks of the _Virgin_
and of _Monna Lisa_; only it is sketched in green, and in it there are
gaunt brown rocks, which seem to open on another glimpse in yellow. All
of the outline is gaunt, both the saint and his rocky cave; only not the
lion, who is the most ample and living beast I have ever seen attendant
on any Jerome. All the lines are outlined; the painful but not grotesque
anatomy of the saint and of the sharp angles of the rocks, are painted
in dim, almost uniform, tones. Is the picture rhetorical, like the other
Saint Jeromes, or does it in some subtle fashion escape? It seems to me
to escape, retaining only the inevitable violence of gesture and the
agony of emotion in body and face; together with an immense dignity,
loneliness and obscure suffering.
Leonardo, who was in Venice in 1500, certainly must have seen Titian's
early _Annunciation_ in the Scuola di San Rocco; which is a rebuke to
Tintoretto's explosive _Crucifixion._ Before this picture it struck me
that Tintoretto is the Zola of painting. Here, in this immense drama of
paint, is a drama in which the central emotion is lacking; Christ is no
more than the robber who is being nailed to the cross or the robber
whose cross is being hoisted. Every part of the huge and bustling scene
has equal interest, equal intensity; and it is all an interest and
intensity of execution--which in its way is stupendous. But there is no
awe, no religious sense. The beauty of detail is enormous, the energy
overwhelming; but there is no nobility, no subtlety; it is a tumultuous
scene painted to cover a wall.
In the Old Pinakothek in Munich the finest piece of paint in the Gallery
is the _Scourging of Christ_ by Titian. The modern point of view, indeed
most modern art, has come out of it--equally in Watts and in Monticelli
and in the Impressionists. We see Titian breaking the achieved rules, at
the age of ninety, inventing an art absolutely new, a new way, a more
immediate way of rendering what he sees, with all that moving beauty of
life in action: lights, colors, and not forms merely, all in movement.
The depth and splendor of a moment are caught, with all the beauty of
every accident in which color comes or changes, and in the space of a
moment. Color is no longer set against color, each for itself, with its
own calm beauty; but each tone rushes with exquisite violence into the
embrace of another tone; there are fierce adulteries of color unheard of
till now. And a new, adorable, complete thing is born, which is to give
life to all the painting that is to come after it It seems as if paint
at last had thoroughly mastered its own language.
I have always believed that Giorgione, born in 1478, one year before the
birth of Titian, played in the development of Venetian Art a part
exactly the same as that played by Marlowe, born in the same year as
Shakespeare, in the history of tragic Drama. Shakespeare never forgot
Marlowe, Titian never forgot Giorgione; only the influence of his
predecessor on Shakespeare was a passing one; that of Giorgione on
Titian was, until he finally escaped from his influence, immense. It is
from Andrea del Verrocchio that Leonardo begins to learn the art of
painting; soon surpasses him; but, as Pater supposes, catches from him
his love of beautiful toys. Giorgione possesses perfection without
excess; Leonardo's absolute perfection often leads him into passionate
excesses. He adored hair; and certainly hair, mostly women's hair, is
the most mysterious of human things. No one ever experimented in more
amazing ways than he did; but his experiment in attempting to invent a
medium of using oils in the painting of frescoes failed him in what
might have been his masterpiece, _The Last Supper_, painted on the damp
wall of the refectory, oozing with mineral salts, of the Chaedo Vinciano
in Milan. One looks at it as through a veil, which Time seems to have
drawn over it, even when it is most cracked and chipped. Or it is as if
it had soaked inward, the plaster sullenly absorbing all the color and
all but the life. It is one of the few absolute things in the world,
still; here, for once, a painter who is the subtlest of painters has
done a great, objective thing, a thing in the grand style, supreme, and
yet with no loss of subtlety. It is in a sense the measure of his
greatness. It proves that the painter of _Monna Lisa_ means the power to
do anything.