And now I pass to the arts with which I have special concern, in
which, though the facts are exactly the same, I shall have more
difficulty in proving my assertion, because very few of us are as
cognizant of the merit of painting as we are of that of language; and
I can only show you whence that merit springs, after having thoroughly
shown you in what it consists. But, in the meantime, I have simply to
tell you, that the manual arts are as accurate exponents of ethical
state, as other modes of expression; first, with absolute precision,
of that of the workman; and then with precision, disguised by many
distorting influences, of that of the nation to which it belongs.
And, first, they are a perfect exponent of the mind of the workman:
but, being so, remember, if the mind be great or complex, the art is
not an easy book to read; for we must ourselves possess all the mental
characters of which we are to read the signs. No man can read the
evidence of labour who is not himself laborious, for he does not know
what the work cost: nor can he read the evidence of true passion if he
is not passionate; nor of gentleness if he is not gentle: and the most
subtle signs of fault and weakness of character he can only judge by
having had the same faults to fight with. I myself, for instance, know
impatient work, and tired work, better than most critics, because I am
myself always impatient, and often tired:--so also, the patient and
indefatigable touch of a mighty master becomes more wonderful to me
than to others. Yet, wonderful in no mean measure it will be to you
all, when I make it manifest;--and as soon as we begin our real work,
and you have learned what it is to draw a true line, I shall be able
to make manifest to you,--and undisputably so,--that the day's work of
a man like Mantegna or Paul Veronese consists of an unfaltering,
uninterrupted, succession of movements of the hand more precise than
those of the finest fencer: the pencil leaving one point and arriving
at another, not only with unerring precision at the extremity of the
line, but with an unerring and yet varied course--sometimes over
spaces a foot or more in extent--yet a course so determined everywhere
that either of these men could, and Veronese often does, draw a
finished profile, or any other portion of the contour of the face,
with one line, not afterwards changed. Try, first, to realize to
yourselves the muscular precision of that action, and the intellectual
strain of it; for the movement of a fencer is perfect in practised
monotony; but the movement of the hand of a great painter is at every
instant governed by direct and new intention. Then imagine that
muscular firmness and subtlety, and the instantaneously selective and
ordinant energy of the brain, sustained all day long, not only without
fatigue, but with a visible joy in the exertion, like that which an
eagle seems to take in the wave of his wings; and this all life long,
and through long life, not only without failure of power, but with
visible increase of it, until the actually organic changes of old age.
And then consider, so far as you know anything of physiology, what
sort of an ethical state of body and mind that means!--ethic through
ages past! what fineness of race there must be to get it, what
exquisite balance and symmetry of the vital powers! And then, finally,
determine for yourselves whether a manhood like that is consistent
with any viciousness of soul, with any mean anxiety, any gnawing lust,
any wretchedness of spite or remorse, any consciousness of rebellion
against law of God or man, or any actual, though unconscious violation
of even the least law to which obedience is essential for the glory of
life, and the pleasing of its Giver.
It is, of course, true that many of the strong masters had deep faults
of character, but their faults always show in their work. It is true
that some could not govern their passions; if so, they died young, or
they painted ill when old. But the greater part of our misapprehension
in the whole matter is from our not having well known who the great
painters were, and taking delight in the petty skill that was bred in
the fumes of the taverns of the North, instead of theirs who breathed
empyreal air, sons of the morning, under the woods of Assisi and the
crags of Cadore.
It is true however also, as I have pointed out long ago, that the
strong masters fall into two great divisions, one leading simple and
natural lives, the other restrained in a Puritanism of the worship of
beauty; and these two manners of life you may recognize in a moment
by their work. Generally the naturalists are the strongest; but there
are two of the Puritans, whose work if I can succeed in making
clearly understandable to you during my three years[183] here, it is
all I need care to do. But of these two Puritans one I cannot name
to you, and the other I at present will not. One I cannot, for no one
knows his name, except the baptismal one, Bernard, or "dear little
Bernard"--Bernardino, called from his birthplace, (Luino, on the Lago
Maggiore,) Bernard of Luino. The other is a Venetian, of whom many of
you probably have never heard, and of whom, through me, you shall not
hear, until I have tried to get some picture by him over to England.
Observe then, this Puritanism in the worship of beauty, though
sometimes weak, is always honourable and amiable, and the exact
reverse of the false Puritanism, which consists in the dread or
disdain of beauty. And in order to treat my subject rightly, I ought
to proceed from the skill of art to the choice of its subject, and
show you how the moral temper of the workman is shown by his seeking
lovely forms and thoughts to express, as well as by the force of his
hand in expression. But I need not now urge this part of the proof on
you, because you are already, I believe, sufficiently conscious of the
truth in this matter, and also I have already said enough of it in my
writings; whereas I have not at all said enough of the infallibleness
of fine technical work as a proof of every other good power. And
indeed it was long before I myself understood the true meaning of the
pride of the greatest men in their mere execution, shown for a
permanent lesson to us, in the stories which, whether true or not,
indicate with absolute accuracy the general conviction of great
artists;--the stories of the contest of Apelles and Protogenes[184] in
a line only, (of which I can promise you, you shall know the meaning
to some purpose in a little while),--the story of the circle of
Giotto,[185] and especially, which you may perhaps not have observed,
the expression of Dürer in his inscription on the drawings sent him by
Raphael. These figures, he says, "Raphael drew and sent to Albert
Dürer in Nurnberg, to show him"--What? Not his invention, nor his
beauty of expression, but "sein Hand zu weisen," "to show him his
_hand_." And you will find, as you examine farther, that all inferior
artists are continually trying to escape from the necessity of sound
work, and either indulging themselves in their delights in subject, or
pluming themselves on their noble motives for attempting what they
cannot perform; (and observe, by the way, that a great deal of what is
mistaken for conscientious motive is nothing but a very pestilent,
because very subtle, condition of vanity); whereas the great men
always understand at once that the first morality of a painter, as of
everybody else, is to know his business; and so earnest are they in
this, that many, whose lives you would think, by the results of their
work, had been passed in strong emotion, have in reality subdued
themselves, though capable of the very strongest passions, into a calm
as absolute as that of a deeply sheltered mountain lake, which
reflects every agitation of the clouds in the sky, and every change of
the shadows on the hills, but AS itself motionless.
Finally, you must remember that great obscurity has been brought upon
the truth in this matter by the want of integrity and simplicity in
our modern life. I mean integrity in the Latin sense, wholeness.
Everything is broken up, and mingled in confusion, both in our habits
and thoughts; besides being in great part imitative: so that you not
only cannot tell what a man is, but sometimes you cannot tell whether
he _is_, at all!--whether you have indeed to do with a spirit, or
only with an echo. And thus the same inconsistencies appear now,
between the work of artists of merit and their personal characters, as
those which you find continually disappointing expectation in the
lives of men of modern literary power;--the same conditions of society
having obscured or misdirected the best qualities of the imagination,
both in our literature and art. Thus there is no serious question with
any of us as to the personal character of Dante and Giotto, of
Shakespeare and Holbein; but we pause timidly in the attempt to
analyze the moral laws of the art skill in recent poets, novelists,
and painters.
Let me assure you once for all, that as you grow older, if you enable
yourselves to distinguish by the truth of your own lives, what is true
in those of other men, you will gradually perceive that all good has
its origin in good, never in evil; that the fact of either literature
or painting being truly fine of their kind, whatever their mistaken
aim, or partial error, is proof of their noble origin: and that, if
there is indeed sterling value in the thing done, it has come of a
sterling worth in the soul that did it, however alloyed or defiled by
conditions of sin which are sometimes more appalling or more strange
than those which all may detect in their own hearts, because they are
part of a personality altogether larger than ours, and as far beyond
our judgment in its darkness as beyond our following in its light. And
it is sufficient warning against what some might dread as the probable
effect of such a conviction on your own minds, namely, that you might
permit yourselves in the weaknesses which you imagined to be allied to
genius, when they took the form of personal temptations;--it is
surely, I say, sufficient warning against so mean a folly, to discern,
as you may with little pains, that, of all human existences, the lives
of men of that distorted and tainted nobility of intellect are
probably the most miserable.
I pass to the second, and for us the more practically important
question, What is the effect of noble art upon other men; what has it
done for national morality in time past: and what effect is the
extended knowledge or possession of it likely to have upon us now?
And here we are at once met by the facts, which are as gloomy as
indisputable, that, while many peasant populations, among whom
scarcely the rudest practice of art has ever been attempted, have
lived in comparative innocence, honour, and happiness, the worst
foulness and cruelty of savage tribes have been frequently associated
with fine ingenuities of decorative design; also, that no people has
ever attained the higher stages of art skill, except at a period of
its civilization which was sullied by frequent, violent, and even
monstrous crime; and, lastly, that the attaining of perfection in art
power, has been hitherto, in every nation, the accurate signal of the
beginning of its ruin.
Respecting which phenomena, observe first, that although good never
springs out of evil, it is developed to its highest by contention with
evil. There are some groups of peasantry, in far-away nooks of
Christian countries, who are nearly as innocent as lambs; but the
morality which gives power to art is the morality of men, not of
cattle.
Secondly, the virtues of the inhabitants of many country districts are
apparent, not real; their lives are indeed artless, but not innocent;
and it is only the monotony of circumstances, and the absence of
temptation, which prevent the exhibition of evil passions not less
real because often dormant, nor less foul because shown only in petty
faults, or inactive malignities.
But you will observe also that _absolute_ artlessness, to men in any
kind of moral health, is impossible; they have always, at least, the
art by which they live--agriculture or seamanship; and in these
industries, skilfully practised, you will find the law of their moral
training; while, whatever the adversity of circumstances, every
rightly-minded peasantry, such as that of Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria, or
Switzerland, has associated with its needful industry a quite studied
school of pleasurable art in dress; and generally also in song, and
simple domestic architecture.
Again, I need not repeat to you here what I endeavoured to explain in
the first lecture in the book I called _The Two Paths_, respecting the
arts of savage races: but I may now note briefly that such arts are
the result of an intellectual activity which has found no room to
expand, and which the tyranny of nature or of man has condemned to
disease through arrested growth. And where neither Christianity, nor
any other religion conveying some moral help, has reached, the animal
energy of such races necessarily flames into ghastly conditions of
evil, and the grotesque or frightful forms assumed by their art are
precisely indicative of their distorted moral nature.
But the truly great nations nearly always begin from a race possessing
this imaginative power; and for some time their progress is very slow,
and their state not one of innocence, but of feverish and faultful
animal energy. This is gradually subdued and exalted into bright human
life; the art instinct purifying itself with the rest of the nature,
until social perfectness is nearly reached; and then comes the period
when conscience and intellect are so highly developed, that new forms
of error begin in the inability to fulfil the demands of the one, or
to answer the doubts of the other. Then the wholeness of the people is
lost; all kinds of hypocrisies and oppositions of science develope
themselves; their faith is questioned on one side, and compromised
with on the other; wealth commonly increases at the same period to a
destructive extent; luxury follows; and the ruin of the nation is then
certain: while the arts, all this time, are simply, as I said at first,
the exponents of each phase of its moral state, and no more control it
in its political career than the gleam of the firefly guides its
oscillation. It is true that their most splendid results are usually
obtained in the swiftness of the power which is hurrying to the
precipice; but to lay the charge of the catastrophe to the art by
which it is illumined, is to find a cause for the cataract in the hues
of its iris. It is true that the colossal vices belonging to periods
of great national wealth (for wealth, you will find, is the real root
of all evil)[186] can turn every good gift and skill of nature or of
man to evil purpose. If, in such times, fair pictures have been
misused, how much more fair realities? And if Miranda is immoral to
Caliban is that Miranda's fault?
[183] As Slade Professor, Ruskin held a three years' appointment at
Oxford.
[184] This story comes from Pliny, _Natural History_, 35. 36; the
two rival painters alternately showing their skill by the drawing
of lines of increasing fineness.
[185] This story comes from Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_. See
Blashfield and Hopkins's ed. vol. 1, p. 61. Giotto was asked by a
messenger of the Pope for a specimen of his work, and sent a perfect
circle, drawn free hand.
[186] _Timothy_ vi, 10.