It is not until we come to the mysteries of the Middle Ages that we find
the beginnings of the modern art, and even here it is only a most
rudimentary attempt that we can discover. The mystery probably developed
earliest in France, as it certainly flourished there most abundantly;
and the French represented the dramatized Bible story on a long, shallow
platform, at the back of which they strung along a row of summary
indications of certain necessary places, beginning with Heaven on the
spectator's left, and ending with Hell on his right, and including the
Temple, the house of the high priest and the palace of Herod. These
necessary places were called "mansions," and they served to localize the
action whenever this was deemed advisable, the front of the platform
remaining a neutral ground which might be anywhere. But these mansions
do not prove the existence of scene-painters; they were very slight
erections, a canopy over an altar serving to indicate the Temple, and a
little portico sufficing to represent a palace; and they were probably
built by house-carpenters and painted by housepainters, just as any boat
which might be called for would be constructed by the shipwrights.
[Illustration: The Roman Theater at Orange
From the model at the Paris Opera]
[Illustration: The multiple set of the French medieval stage
From the model in the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University]
[Illustration: The set of the Italian comedy of masks]
And as we need not assume the forming of a guild of scene-painters
because of these mansions which performed some of the functions of our
modern scenery, so also we must not assume it because the medieval
artisans invented a variety of elaborate spectacular devices, flying
angels, for example, and roaring flames from Hell-Mouth. Even in the
stageless and sceneless Attic theater, there had been many mechanical
effects of one kind or another, especially in the plays of
Euripides--the soaring dragon-chariot of Medea, for instance, and the
similar contrivance whereby a god might descend from the skies.
Mechanical tricks even when they are most ingenious, do not imply the
aid of the scene-painter; and even to-day they are the special task of
the property-man, or of the master-mechanic, altho the scene-painter's
aid may be invoked also to make them more effective. That there were
property-makers in the Middle Ages admits of no doubt, and also highly
skilled artificers delighting in the daring ingenuity of their
inventions. There were abundant properties, it may be noted, on the
Elizabethan stage, well-heads, thrones, and arbors; and Henslow's diary
records payment for a variety of such accessories. But there is not in
that invaluable document a single entry indicating any payment for
anything equivalent to the work of the scene-painter.
Adroit as were the French mechanics who prepared the abundant
spectacular effects of the medieval mysteries, they were surpassed in
skill by the Italian engineers of the Renascence, who lent their aid to
the superb outdoor festivals wherein the expanding artistic energy of
the period was most magnificently displayed. Leonardo da Vinci did not
disdain to design machines disclosing a surprising fertility of
resource. It was from those outdoor spectacles of the Italians that the
French court-ballets are directly descended, and also the English masks,
which demanded the collaboration of Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson. But at
first the Italians got along without the aid of the yet unborn
scene-painter, and the inventions of the engineer were carried out by
the mechanic and the decorator. Even as late as the seventeenth century
a magnificent spectacle presented in the garden of the Pitti Palace in
Florence relied mainly upon the ingenious engineer and scarcely at all
upon the scene-painter. It seems probable that it is here in Italy in
the Renascence, and at first as an accompaniment of the outdoor
spectacle, or of its indoor rival, that the art of the actual
scene-painter had its birth. The engineers required the aid of the
artists--indeed, in those days, when there was little specialization of
function, the engineers were almost always artists themselves, capable
of their own decoration.
[Illustration: An outdoor entertainment in the gardens of the Pitti
Palace in Florence in the early sixteenth century
From a contemporary print]
In time there would be necessary specialization, and after a while
certain artists came to devote themselves chiefly to scene-painting,
finding their immediate opportunity in the decoration of the operas,
which then began to multiply. The opera has always been aristocratic,
expensive, and spectacular, and it continued the tradition of the
highly decorated open-air festivals. In fact, it improved upon this
tradition, in so far as that was possible, and it achieved a variety of
mechanical effects scarcely less complicated than those which charm our
eyes to-day in 'Rheingold' and 'Parsifal.' Thirty years ago the late
Charles Nuitter, the archivist of the Paris Opera and himself a
librettist of wide experience, drew my attention to Sabbatini's
'Practica di fabricar scene e machini ne' teatri' (published in 1638),
and he assured me that the resources of the Opera did not go beyond
those which were at the command of the Italians three centuries earlier.
"They could do then," he asserted, "almost everything that we can do now
here at the Opera. For example, they could bring a ship on the stage
under full sail. We have only one superiority over them: we have
abundant light now, we have electricity, and they were dependent on
candles and lamps."
Yet even in Italy in the Renascence the most popular form of the drama,
the improvised play which we call the comedy-of-masks, was performed in
a traditional stage-setting representing an open square, whereon only
the back-cloth seems to have been the work of the scene-painter, the
sides of the stage being occupied by four or more houses, two or three
on each side, often consisting of little more than a practicable door
with a practicable window over it, not made of canvas, but constructed
out of wood by the carpenter, with the solidity demanded by the climbing
feats of the athletic comedians and by their acrobatic agility. The
traditional set of the comedy-of-masks conformed to that recommended for
the comic drama by Serlio, in his treatise on architecture, published in
1545; but it may be noted also that Serlio's suggested set for the
tragic drama was not dissimilar even if it were distinctly more
dignified.