The way in which the work of art is born of a purpose, of something
useful to do or desirable to say, and the way in which the suggestions
of utility are used up for beauty, can best be shown by a really
existing object. Expressed in practical terms the object is humble
enough: a little trough with two taps built into a recess in a wall; a
place for washing hands and rinsing glasses, as you see the Dominican
brothers doing it all day, for I am speaking of the _Lavabo_ by
Giovanni della Robbia in the Sacristy of Santa Maria Novella in
Florence. The whole thing is small, and did not allow of the adjoining
room usually devoted to this purpose. The washing and rinsing had to
take place in the sacristy itself. But this being the case, it was
desirable that the space set apart for these proceedings should at
least appear to be separate; the trough, therefore, was sunk in a
recess, and the recess divided off from the rest of the wall by
pillars and a gable, becoming in this manner, with no loss of real
standing room, a building inside a building; the operations,
furthermore, implying a certain amount of wetting and slopping, the
dryness of the rest of the sacristy, and particularly the _idea_ of
its dryness (so necessary where precious stuffs and metal vessels are
kept) had to be secured not merely by covering a piece of wainscot and
floor with tiles, but by building the whole little enclosure (all save
the marble trough) of white and coloured majolica, which seemed to say
to the oaken and walnut presses, to the great table covered with
vestments: "Don't be afraid, you shall not feel a drop from all this
washing and rinsing."
So far, therefore, we have got for our lavabo-trough a shallow recess,
lined and paved with tiles, and cut off from the frescoed and panelled
walls by two pilasters and a rounded gable, of tile work also, the
general proportions being given by the necessity of two monks or two
acolytes washing the sacred vessels at the same moment. The word
_sacred_ now leads us to another determining necessity of our work of
art. For this place, where the lavabo stands, is actually consecrated;
it has an altar; and it is in it that take place all the preparations
and preliminaries for the most holy and most magnificent of rites. The
sacristy, like the church, is moreover an offering to heaven; and the
lavabo, since it has to exist, can exist with fitness only if it also
be offered, and made worthy of offering, to heaven. Besides,
therefore, those general proportions which have had to be made
harmonious for the satisfaction not merely of the builder, but of the
people whose eye rests on them daily and hourly; besides the
shapeliness and dignity which we insist upon in all things needful; we
further require of this object that it should have a certain
superabundance of grace, that it should have colour, elaborate
pattern, what we call _ornament_; details which will show that it is a
gift, and make it a fit companion for the magnificent embroideries and
damasks, the costly and exquisite embossed and enamelled vessels which
inhabit that place; and a worthy spectator of the sacred pageantry
which issues from this sacristy. The little tiled recess, the trough
and the little piece of architecture which frames it all, shall not
only be practically useful, they shall also be spiritually useful as
the expression of men's reverence and devotion. To whom? Why, to the
dear mother of Christ and her gracious angels, whom we place, in
effigy, on the gable, white figures on a blue ground. And since this
humble thing is also an offering, what can be more appropriate than to
hang it round with votive garlands, such as we bind to mark the course
of processions, and which we garnish (filling the gaps of glossy bay
and spruce pine branches) with the finest fruits of the earth, lemons,
and pears, and pomegranates, a grateful tithe to the Powers who make
the orchards fruitful. But, since such garlands wither and such fruits
decay, and there must be no withering or decaying in the sanctuary,
the bay leaves and the pine branches, and the lemons and pears and
pomegranates, shall be of imperishable material, majolica coloured
like reality, and majolica, moreover, which leads us back, pleasantly,
to the humble necessity of the trough, the spurting and slopping of
water, which we have secured against by that tiled floor and wainscot.
But here another suggestion arises. Water is necessary and infinitely
pleasant in a hot country and a hot place like this domed sacristy.
But we have very, oh, so very, little of it in Florence! We cannot
even, however great our love and reverence, offer Our Lady and the
Angels the thinnest perennial spurt; we must let out the water only
for bare use, and turn the tap off instantly after. There is something
very disappointing in this; and the knowledge of that dearth of water,
of those two taps symbolical of chronic drought, is positively
disheartening. Beautiful proportions, delicate patterns, gracious
effigies of the Madonna and the angels we can have, and also the most
lovely garlands. But we cannot have a fountain. For it is useless
calling this a fountain, this poor little trough with two taps....
But you _shall_ have a fountain! Giovanni della Robbia answers in his
heart; or, at least, you shall _feel_ as if you had one! And here we
may witness, if we use the eyes of the spirit as well as of the body,
one of the strangest miracles of art, when art is married to a
purpose. The idea of a fountain, the desirability of water, becomes,
unconsciously, dominant in the artist's mind; and under its sway, as
under the divining rod, there trickle and well up every kind of
thought, of feeling, about water; until the images thereof, visible,
audible, tactile, unite and steep and submerge every other notion.
Nothing deliberate; and, in all probability, nothing even conscious;
those watery thoughts merely lapping dreamily round, like a half-heard
murmur of rivers, the waking work with which his mind is busy. Nothing
deliberate or conscious, but all the more inevitable and efficacious,
this multifold suggestion of water.
And behold the result, the witness of the miracle: In the domed
sacristy, the fountain cooling this sultry afternoon of June as it has
cooled four hundred Junes and more since set up, arch and pilasters
and statued gables hung with garlands by that particular Robbia;
cooling and refreshing us with its empty trough and closed taps,
without a drop of real water! For it is made of water itself, or the
essence, the longing memory of water. It is water, this shining pale
amber and agate and grass-green tiling and wainscotting, starred at
regular intervals by wide-spread patterns as of floating weeds; water
which makes the glossiness of the great leaf-garlands and the
juiciness of the smooth lemons and cool pears and pomegranates; water
which has washed into ineffable freshness this piece of blue heaven
within the gable; and water, you would say, as of some shining
fountain in the dusk, which has gathered together into the white
glistening bodies and draperies which stand out against that
newly-washed æther. All this is evident, and yet insufficient to
account for our feelings. The subtlest and most potent half of the
spell is hidden; and we guess it only little by little. In this little
Grecian tabernacle, every line save the bare verticals and horizontals
is a line suggestive of trickling and flowing and bubbles; a line
suggested by water and water's movement; and every light and shadow is
a light or a shadow suggested by water's brightness or transparent
gloom; it is water which winds in tiny meanders of pattern along the
shallow shining pillars, and water which beads and dimples along the
shady cornice. The fountain has been thought out in longing for water,
and every detail of it has been touched by the memory thereof. Water!
they wanted water, and they should have it. By a coincidence almost,
Giovanni della Robbia has revealed the secret which himself most
probably never guessed, in the little landscape of lilac and bluish
tiles with which he filled up the arch behind the taps. Some Tuscan
scene, think you? Hills and a few cypresses, such as his
contemporaries used for background? Not a bit. A great lake, an
estuary, almost a sea, with sailing ships, a flooded country, such as
no Florentine had ever seen with mortal eyes; but such as, in his
longing for water, he must have dreamed about. Thus the landscape sums
up this dream, this realisation of every cool and trickling sight and
touch and sound which fills that sacristy as with a spray of watery
thoughts. In this manner, with perhaps but a small effort of invention
and a small output of fancy, and without departing in the least from
the general proportions and shapes and ornaments common in his day,
has an artist of the second order left us one of the most exquisitely
shapely and poetical of works, merely by following the suggestions of
the use, the place, the religious message and that humble human wish
for water where there was none.