I. The Assumption of the Magdalene. _After Giulio Romano._ The
Original Fresco, which is in our National Gallery, was cut from the
wall of the Church of the Trinità de’ Monti, at Rome _Title_
II. A Venetian Votive Picture in commemoration of a Pestilence
(probably the pestilence of 1512, in which Giorgione perished).
St. Mark, enthroned as the Patron Saint of Venice, holds his Gospel;
on the right St. Sebastian and St. Roch, Protectors against the Plague;
on the left, St. Cosmo and St. Damian, Patron Saints of the Healing
Art. _Sketch after Titian._ The Original Picture, remarkable for
beauty of expression, and splendour and harmony of colour, in the
Church of S. Maria della Salute, at Venice 22
III. Angels of the Planets. _Raphael. From the fine set of Engravings
by L. Gruner, after the Frescoes in the Cappella Chigiana at Rome_ 80
IV. 1. St. Luke painting the Virgin. _After the Picture in the Academy
of St. Luke attributed to Raphael._ 2. St. Mark attended by St.
Gregory. _After Correggio_ 156
V. The Madonna della Cintola. The Virgin, as she ascends to heaven,
presents her girdle to St. Thomas; who kneels by the tomb, which is
full of roses. On the other side, the Archangel Michael, in reference
to the Legend. _From a Picture by Francesco Granacci in the Florence
Gallery_ 248
VI. The Last Supper. 1. _After Giotto._ 2. _After Leonardo da Vinci._
3. _After Raphael._ (For this etching I am indebted to Mr. George
Scharf.) 261
VII. The Four Latin Fathers. _From a Picture by Antonio Vivarini, in
the Academy at Venice_ 280
VIII. The Five Greek Fathers. _Drawing from an Ancient Greek Picture
in the Vatican_ 324
IX. Martha conducts her Sister Mary Magdalene to the Presence of our
Lord. _From the Engraving by Marc’ Antonio, after Raphael_ 381
[Illustration: 1 Laus Deo!]
Introduction.
I. OF THE ORIGIN AND GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LEGENDS REPRESENTED IN
ART.
We cannot look round a picture gallery—we cannot turn over a portfolio
of prints after the old masters, nor even the modern engravings which
pour upon us daily, from Paris, Munich, or Berlin—without perceiving
how many of the most celebrated productions of Art, more particularly
those which have descended to us from the early Italian and German
schools, represent incidents and characters taken from the once popular
legends of the Catholic Church. This form of ‘_Hero-Worship_’ has
become, since the Reformation, strange to us—as far removed from our
sympathies and associations as if it were antecedent to the fall of
Babylon and related to the religion of Zoroaster, instead of being
left but two or three centuries behind us and closely connected with
the faith of our forefathers and the history of civilisation and
Christianity. Of late years, with a growing passion for the works
of Art of the Middle Ages, there has arisen among us a desire to
comprehend the state of feeling which produced them, and the legends
and traditions on which they are founded;—a desire to understand, and
to bring to some surer critical test, representations which have become
familiar without being intelligible. To enable us to do this, we must
pause for a moment at the outset; and, before we plunge into the midst
of things, ascend to higher ground, and command a far wider range of
illustration than has yet been attempted, in order to take cognizance
of principles and results which, if not new, must be contemplated in a
new relation to each other.
* * * * *
The Legendary Art of the Middle Ages sprang out of the legendary
literature of the preceding ages. For three centuries at least, this
literature, the only literature which existed at the time, formed
the sole mental and moral nourishment of the _people_ of Europe. The
romances of Chivalry, which long afterwards succeeded, were confined to
particular classes, and left no impress on Art, beyond the miniature
illuminations of a few manuscripts. This legendary literature, on
the contrary, which had worked itself into the life of the people,
became, like the antique mythology, as a living soul diffused through
the loveliest forms of Art, still vivid and vivifying, even when the
old faith in its mystical significance was lost or forgotten. And it
is a mistake to suppose that these legends had their sole origin in
the brains of dreaming monks. The wildest of them had some basis of
truth to rest on, and the forms which they gradually assumed were but
the necessary result of the age which produced them. They became the
intense expression of that inner life, which revolted against the
desolation and emptiness of the outward existence; of those crushed and
outraged sympathies which cried aloud for rest, and refuge, and solace,
and could nowhere find them. It will be said, ‘In the purer doctrine of
the GOSPEL.’ But where was that to be found? The Gospel was not then
the heritage of the poor: Christ, as a comforter, walked not among men.
His own blessed teaching was inaccessible except to the learned: it was
shut up in rare manuscripts; it was perverted and sophisticated by the
passions and the blindness of those few to whom it _was_ accessible.
The bitter disputes in the early Church relative to the nature of the
Godhead, the subtle distinctions and incomprehensible arguments of
the theologians, the dread entertained by the predominant church of
any heterodox opinions concerning the divinity of the Redeemer, had
all conspired to remove _Him_, in his personal character of Teacher
and Saviour, far away from the hearts of the benighted and miserable
people—far, far away into regions speculative, mysterious, spiritual,
whither they could not, dared not follow Him. In this state of things,
as it has been remarked by a distinguished writer, ‘Christ became the
object of a remoter, a more awful adoration. The mind began, therefore,
to seek out, or eagerly to seize, some other more material beings in
closer alliance with human sympathies.’ And the same author, after
tracing in vivid and beautiful language the dangerous but natural
consequences of this feeling, thus sums up the result: ‘During the
perilous and gloomy days of persecution, the reverence for those who
endured martyrdom for the religion of Christ had grown up out of the
best feelings of man’s improved nature. Reverence gradually grew into
veneration, worship, adoration: and although the more rigid theology
maintained a marked distinction between the honour shown to the
martyrs, and that addressed to the Redeemer and the Supreme Being,
the line was too fine and invisible not to be transgressed by excited
popular feeling.’[1]
* * * * *
‘We live,’ says the poet, ‘through admiration, hope, and love.’ Out
of these vital aspirations—not indeed always ‘well or wisely placed,’
but never, as in the heathen mythology, degraded to vicious and
contemptible objects—arose and spread the universal passion for the
traditional histories of the saints and martyrs,—personages endeared
and sanctified in all hearts, partly as examples of the loftiest
virtue, partly as benign intercessors between suffering humanity and
that Deity who, in every other light than as a God of Vengeance, had
been veiled from their eyes by the perversities of schoolmen and
fanatics, till He had receded beyond their reach, almost beyond their
comprehension. Of the prevalence and of the incalculable influence
of this legendary literature from the seventh to the tenth century,
that is, just about the period when Modern Art was struggling into
existence, we have a most striking picture in Guizot’s ‘Histoire de la
Civilisation.’ ‘As after the siege of Troy (says this philosophical
and eloquent writer) there were found, in every city of Greece, men who
collected the traditions and adventures of heroes, and sung them for
the recreation of the people, till these recitals became a national
passion, a national poetry, so, at the time of which we speak, the
traditions of what may be called the heroic ages of Christianity had
the same interest for the nations of Europe. There were men who made it
their business to collect them, to transcribe them, to read or recite
them aloud, for the edification and delight of the people. And this was
the only literature, properly so called, of that time.‘
Now, if we go back to the _authentic_ histories of the sufferings and
heroism of the early martyrs, we shall find enough there, both of the
wonderful and the affecting, to justify the credulity and enthusiasm of
the unlettered people, who saw no reason why they should not believe
in one miracle as well as in another. In these universally diffused
legends, we may recognise the means, at least one of the means, by
which a merciful Providence, working through its own immutable laws,
had provided against the utter depravation, almost extinction, of
society. Of the ‘Dark Ages,’ emphatically so called, the period to
which I allude was perhaps the darkest; it was ‘of Night’s black arch
the key-stone.’ At a time when men were given over to the direst evils
that can afflict humanity,—ignorance, idleness, wickedness, misery;
at a time when the every-day incidents of life were a violation of
all the moral instincts of mankind; at a time when all things seemed
abandoned to a blind chance, or the brutal law of force; when there was
no repose, no refuge, no safety anywhere; when the powerful inflicted,
and the weak endured, whatever we can conceive of most revolting and
intolerable; when slavery was recognised by law throughout Europe;
when men fled to cloisters, to shut themselves from oppression, and
women to shield themselves from outrage; when the manners were harsh,
the language gross; when all the softer social sentiments, as pity,
reverence, tenderness, found no resting-place in the actual relations
of life; when for the higher ranks there was only the fierce excitement
of war, and on the humbler classes lay the weary, dreary monotony of
a stagnant existence, poor in pleasures of every kind, without aim,
without hope; _then_—wondrous reaction of the ineffaceable instincts
of good implanted within us!—arose a literature which reversed the
outward order of things, which asserted and kept alive in the hearts
of men those pure principles of Christianity which were outraged in
their daily actions; a literature in which peace was represented as
better than war, and sufferance more dignified than resistance; which
exhibited poverty and toil as honourable, and charity as the first
of virtues; which held up to imitation and emulation, self-sacrifice
in the cause of good and contempt of death for conscience’ sake: a
literature, in which the tenderness, the chastity, the heroism of
woman, played a conspicuous part; which distinctly protested against
slavery, against violence, against impurity in word and deed; which
refreshed the fevered and darkened spirit with images of moral beauty
and truth; revealed bright glimpses of a better land, where ‘the wicked
cease from troubling,’ and brought down the angels of God with shining
wings and bearing crowns of glory, to do battle with the demons of
darkness, to catch the fleeting soul of the triumphant martyr, and
carry it at once into a paradise of eternal blessedness and peace!
Now the Legendary Art of the three centuries which comprise the revival
of learning, was, as I have said, the reflection of this literature, of
this teaching. Considered in this point of view, can we easily overrate
its interest and importance?
* * * * *
When, after the long period of darkness which followed upon the decline
of the Roman Empire, the Fine Arts began to revive, the first, and for
several ages the only, impress they received was that of the religious
spirit of the time. Painting, Sculpture, Music, and Architecture, as
they emerged one after another from the ‘formless void,’ were pressed
into the service of the Church. But it is a mistake to suppose that
in adroitly adapting the reviving Arts to her purposes, in that
magnificent spirit of calculation which at all times characterised her,
the Church from the beginning selected the subjects, or dictated the
use that was to be made of them. We find, on the contrary, edicts and
councils _repressing_ the popular extravagances in this respect, and
denouncing those apocryphal versions of sacred events and traditions
which had become the delight of the people. But vain were councils and
edicts; the tide was too strong to be so checked. The Church found
herself obliged to accept and mould to her own objects the exotic
elements she could not eradicate. She _absorbed_, so to speak, the
evils and errors she could not expel. There seems to have been at this
time a sort of compromise between the popular legends, with all their
wild mixture of northern and classical superstitions, and the Church
legends properly so called. The first great object to which reviving
Art was destined, was to render the Christian places of worship a
theatre of instruction and improvement for the people, to attract and
to interest them by representations of scenes, events, and personages,
already so familiar as to require no explanation, appealing; at once
to their intelligence and their sympathies; embodying in beautiful
shapes (beautiful at least in their eyes) associations and feelings and
memories deep-rooted in their very hearts, and which had influenced,
in no slight degree, the progress of civilisation, the development of
mind. Upon these creations of ancient Art we cannot look as _those_ did
for whom they were created; we cannot annihilate the centuries which
lie between us and them; we cannot, in simplicity of heart, forget the
artist in the image he has placed before us, nor supply what may be
deficient in his work, through a reverentially excited fancy. We are
critical, not credulous. We no longer accept this polytheistic form of
Christianity; and there is little danger, I suppose, of our falling
again into the strange excesses of superstition to which it led. But
if we have not much sympathy with modern imitations of Mediæval Art,
still less should we sympathise with that narrow puritanical jealousy
which holds the monuments of a real and earnest faith in contempt. All
that God has permitted once to exist in the past should be considered
as the possession of the present; sacred for example or warning, and
held as the foundation on which to build up what is better and purer.
It should seem an established fact, that all revolutions in religion,
in government, and in art, which begin in the spirit of scorn, and
in a sweeping destruction of the antecedent condition, only tend
to a reaction. Our puritanical ancestors chopped off the heads of
Madonnas and Saints, and paid vagabonds to smash the storied windows
of our cathedrals;—_now_, are these rejected and outraged shapes of
beauty coming back to us, or are we not rather going back to them? As
a Protestant, I might fear lest in doing so we confound the eternal
spirit of Christianity with the mutable forms in which it has deigned
to speak to the hearts of men, forms which must of necessity vary
with the degree of social civilisation, and bear the impress of the
feelings and fashions of the age which produced them; but I must also
feel that we ought to comprehend, and to hold in due reverence, that
which has once been consecrated to holiest aims, which has shown us
what a magnificent use has been made of Art, and how it may still be
adapted to good and glorious purposes, if, while we respect these
time-consecrated images and types, we do not allow them to fetter us,
but trust in the progressive spirit of Christianity to furnish us with
new impersonations of the good—new combinations of the beautiful. I
hate the destructive as I revere the progressive spirit. We must laugh
if any one were to try and persuade us that the sun was guided along
his blazing path by a ‘fair-haired god who touched a golden lyre;’ but
shall we therefore cease to adore in the Apollo Belvedere the majestic
symbol of light, the most divine impersonation of intellectual power
and beauty? So of the corresponding Christian symbols:—may that time
never come, when we shall look up to the effigy of the winged and
radiant angel trampling down the brute-fiend, without a glow of faith
in the perpetual supremacy and final triumph of good over evil!
* * * * *
It is about a hundred years since the passion, or the fashion, for
collecting works of Art, began to be generally diffused among the
rich and the noble of this land; and it is amusing to look back
and to consider the perversions and affectations of the would-be
connoisseurship during this period;—the very small stock of ideas
on which people set up a pretension to taste—the false notions, the
mixture of pedantry and ignorance, which everywhere prevailed. The
publication of Richardson’s book, and Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses,
had this advantage,—that they, to a certain degree, diffused a more
elevated idea of Art as _Art_, and that they placed connoisseurship
on a better and truer basis. In those days we had Inquiries into the
Principles of Taste, Treatises on the Sublime and Beautiful, Anecdotes
of Painting; and we abounded in Antiquarian Essays on disputed Pictures
and mutilated Statues: but then, and up to a late period, any inquiry
into the true spirit and significance of works of Art, as connected
with the history of Religion and Civilisation, would have appeared
ridiculous—or perhaps dangerous:—we should have had another cry of
‘No Popery,’ and acts of parliament forbidding the importation of
Saints and Madonnas. It was fortunate, perhaps, that connoisseurs
meddled not with such high matters. They talked volubly and harmlessly
of ‘hands,’ and ‘masters,’ and ‘schools,’—of ‘draperies,’ of ‘tints,’
of ‘handling,’—of ‘fine heads,’ ‘fine compositions;’ of ‘the grace of
Raphael,’ and of the ‘Correggiosity of Correggio.’ The very manner in
which the names of the painters were pedantically used instead of the
name of the subject, is indicative of this factitious feeling; the only
question at issue was, whether such a picture was a genuine ‘Raphael?’
such another a genuine ‘Titian?’ The spirit of the work—whether _that_
was genuine; how far it was influenced by the faith and the condition
of the age which produced it; whether the conception was properly
characteristic, and of _what_ it was characteristic—of the subject? or
of the school? or of the time?—whether the treatment corresponded to
the idea within our own souls, or was modified by the individuality
of the artist, or by received conventionalisms of all kinds?—these
were questions which had not then occurred to any one; and I am not
sure that we are much wiser even now: yet, setting aside all higher
considerations, how can we do common justice to the artist, unless
we can bring his work to the test of truth? and how can we do this,
unless we know what to look for, what was _intended_ as to incident,
expression, character? One result of our ignorance has been the
admiration wasted on the flimsy mannerists of the later ages of Art;
men who apparently had no definite _intention_ in anything they did,
except a dashing outline, or a delicate finish, or a striking and
attractive management of colour.
* * * * *
It is curious, this general ignorance with regard to the subjects of
Mediæval Art, more particularly now that it has become a reigning
fashion among us. We find no such ignorance with regard to the subjects
of Classical Art, because the associations connected with them form a
part of every liberal education. Do we hear any one say, in looking at
Annibal Caracci’s picture in the National Gallery, ‘Which is Silenus,
and which is Apollo?’ Who ever confounds a Venus with a Minerva, or
a Vestal with an Amazon; or would endure an undraped Juno, or a
beardless Jupiter? Even the gardener in Zeluco knew Neptune by his
‘fork,’ and Vulcan by his ‘lame leg.’ We are indeed so accustomed, in
visiting the churches and the galleries abroad, and the collections at
home, to the predominance of sacred subjects, that it has become a mere
matter of course, and excites no particular interest and attention.
We have heard it all accounted for by the fact that the Church and
churchmen were the first, and for a long time the only, patrons of Art.
In every sacred edifice, and in every public or private collection
enriched from the plunder of sacred edifices, we look for the usual
proportion of melancholy martyrdoms and fictitious miracles,—for
the predominance of Madonnas and Magdalenes, St. Catherines and St.
Jeromes: but why these should predominate, why certain events and
characters from the Old and the New Testament should be continually
repeated, and others comparatively neglected; whence the predilection
for certain legendary personages, who seemed to be multiplied to
infinity, and the rarity of others; of this we know nothing.
We have learned, perhaps, after running through half the galleries
and churches in Europe, to distinguish a few of the attributes and
characteristic figures which meet us at every turn, yet without any
clear idea of their meaning, derivation, or relative propriety. The
palm of victory, we know, designates the martyr triumphant in death.
We so far emulate the critical sagacity of the gardener in Zeluco
that we have learned to distinguish St. Laurence by his gridiron,
and St. Catherine by her wheel. We are not at a loss to recognise
the Magdalene’s ‘loose hair and lifted eye,’ even when without her
skull and her vase of ointment. We learn to know St. Francis by his
brown habit and shaven crown and wasted ardent features; but do we
distinguish him from St. Anthony, or St. Dominick? As for St. George
and the dragon—from the St. George of the Louvre,—Raphael’s,—who sits
his horse with the elegant tranquillity of one assured of celestial
aid, down to him ‘who swings on a sign post at mine hostess’s door,’—he
is our familiar acquaintance. But who is that lovely being in the first
blush of youth, who, bearing aloft the symbolic cross, stands with one
foot on the vanquished dragon? ‘That is a copy after Raphael.’ And who
is that majestic creature holding her palm branch, while the unicorn
crouches at her feet? ‘That is the famous Moretto at Vienna.’ Are we
satisfied?—not in the least! but we try to look wiser, and pass on.
* * * * *
In the old times the painters of these legendary scenes and subjects
could always reckon securely on certain associations and certain
sympathies in the minds of the spectators. We have outgrown these
associations, we repudiate these sympathies. We have taken these
works from their consecrated localities, in which they once held each
their dedicated place, and we have hung them in our drawing-rooms
and our dressing-rooms, over our pianos and our side-boards—and now
what do they say to us? That Magdalene, weeping amid her hair, who
once spoke comfort to the soul of the fallen sinner—that Sebastian,
arrow-pierced, whose upward ardent glance spoke of courage and hope
to the tyrant-ridden serf,—that poor tortured slave, to whose aid St.
Mark comes sweeping down from above,—can they speak to _us_ of nothing
save flowing lines and correct drawing and gorgeous colour? must we be
told that one is a Titian, the other a Guido, the third a Tintoret,
before we dare to melt in compassion or admiration?—or the moment we
refer to their ancient religious signification and influence, must
it be with disdain or with pity? This, as it appears to me, is to
take not a rational, but rather a most irrational as well as a most
irreverent, view of the question; it is to confine the pleasure and
improvement to be derived from works of Art within very narrow bounds;
it is to seal up a fountain of the richest poetry, and to shut out a
thousand ennobling and inspiring thoughts. Happily there is a growing
appreciation of these larger principles of criticism as applied to
the study of Art. People look at the pictures which hang round their
walls, and have an awakening suspicion that there is more in them than
meets the eye—more than mere connoisseurship can interpret; and that
they have another, a deeper, significance than has been dreamed of by
picture dealers and picture collectors, or even picture critics.
II. OF THE DISTINCTION TO BE DRAWN BETWEEN THE DEVOTIONAL AND THE
HISTORICAL SUBJECTS.
At first, when entering on a subject so boundless and so diversified,
we are at a loss for some leading classification which shall be
distinct and intelligible, without being mechanical. It appears to me,
that all sacred representations, in as far as they appeal to sentiment
and imagination, resolve themselves into two great classes, which I
shall call the DEVOTIONAL and the HISTORICAL.
Devotional pictures are those which portray the objects of our
veneration with reference only to their sacred character, whether
standing singly or in company with others. They place before us
no action or event, real or supposed. They are neither portrait
nor history. A group of sacred personages where no action is
represented, is called in Italian a ‘_sacra conversazione_:’ the word
_conversazione_, which signifies a society in which there is communion,
being here, as it appears to me, used with peculiar propriety. All
subjects, then, which exhibit to us sacred personages, alone or in
groups, simply in the character of superior beings, must be considered
as _devotionally_ treated.
But a sacred subject, without losing wholly its religious import,
becomes historical the moment it represents any story, incident, or
action, real or imagined. All pictures which exhibit the events of
Scripture story, all those which express the actions, miracles, and
martyrdoms of saints, come under this class; and to this distinction I
must call the attention of the reader, requesting that it may be borne
in mind throughout this work.
We must also recollect that a story, action, or fact may be so
represented as to become a symbol expressive of an abstract idea:
and some scriptural and some legendary subjects may be devotional,
or historical, according to the sentiment conveyed: for example, the
Crucifixion and the Last Supper may be so represented as either to
exhibit an event, or to express a symbol of our Redemption. The raising
of Lazarus exhibits, in the catacombs, a mystical emblem of the general
resurrection; in the grand picture by Sebastian del Piombo, in our
National Gallery, it is a scene from the life of our Saviour. Among
the legendary subjects, the penance of the Magdalene, and St. Martin
dividing his cloak, may be merely incidents, or they may be symbolical,
the first of penitence, the latter of charity, in the general sense.
And, again, there are some subjects which, though expressing a scene or
an action, are _wholly_ mystical and devotional in their import; as the
vision of St. Augustine, and the marriage of St. Catherine.
* * * * *
Among the grandest of the devotional subjects, we may reckon those
compositions which represent the whole celestial hierarchy; the divine
personages of the Trinity, the angels and archangels, and the beatified
spirits of the just. Such is the subject called the ‘Paradiso,’ so
often met with in pictures and ecclesiastical decoration, where Christ
is enthroned in glory: such is also the Coronation of the Virgin, that
ancient and popular symbol of the triumph of Religion or the Church;
the Adoration of the Lamb; and the Last Judgment, from the Apocalypse.
The order of precedence in these sacred assemblages was early settled
by ecclesiastical authority, and was almost as absolute as that of
a modern code of honour. First after the Trinity, the Virgin Mary,
as _Regina Angelorum_, and St. John the Baptist: then, in order, the
Evangelists; the Patriarchs; the Prophets; the Apostles; the Fathers;
the Bishops; the Martyrs; the Hermits; the Virgins; the Monks, Nuns,
and Confessors.
As examples, I may cite the Paradiso of Angelico, in the Florence
Academy; the Coronation of the Virgin by Hans Memling, in the
Wallerstein collection, which contains not less than fifty-two figures,
all individualised with their proper attributes; and which, if it
were possible, should be considered in contrast with the Coronation
by Angelico. The Flemish painter seems to have carried his intense
impression of earthly and individual life into the regions of heaven;
the Italian, through a purer inspiration, seems to have brought all
Paradise down before us upon earth. In the Adoration of the Lamb by
Van Eyck, there are not fewer than two hundred figures. For the Last
Judgment, the grand compositions of Orcagna in the Campo Santo,—of Luca
Signorelli and Angelico at Orvieto,—and the fresco of Michael Angelo in
the Sistine Chapel, may be consulted.
Where the usual order is varied, there is generally some reason for
it; for instance, in the exaltation of a favourite saint, as we
sometimes find St. Dominick and St. Francis by the side of St. Peter
and St. Paul: and among the miniatures of that extraordinary MS., the
Hortus Deliciarum, now at Strasbourg, painted for a virgin abbess,
there is a ‘Paradiso’ in which the painter, either by her command or in
compliment to her, has placed the virgins immediately after the angels.
* * * * *
The representation of the Virgin and Child with saints grouped around
them, is a devotional subject familiar to us from its constant
recurrence. It also frequently happens that the tutelary saint of the
locality, or the patron saint of the votary, is represented as seated
on a raised throne in the centre; and other saints, though under every
other circumstance taking a superior rank, become here accessories,
and are placed on each side or lower down in the picture: for example,
where St. Augustine is enthroned, and St. Peter and St. Paul stand on
each side, as in a picture by B. Vivarini,[2] or where St. Barbara is
enthroned, and Mary Magdalene and St. Catherine stand on each side, as
in a picture by Matteo di Siena.[3]
In such pictures, the votary or donor is often introduced kneeling at
the feet of his patron, either alone or accompanied by his wife and
other members of his family: and to express the excess of his humility,
he is sometimes so diminutive in proportion to the colossal object
of his veneration, as to be almost lost to sight; we have frequent
examples of this _naïveté_ of sentiment in the old mosaics and votive
altar-pieces; for instance, in a beautiful old fresco at Assisi,
where the Magdalene, a majestic figure about six feet high, holds out
her hand in benediction to a little Franciscan friar about a foot in
height: but it was abandoned as barbarous in the later schools of Art,
and the votary, when retained, appears of the natural size; as in the
_Madonna del Donatore_ of Raphael[4], where Sigismond Conti is almost
the finest and most striking part of that inestimable picture: and in
the _Madonna_ of the Meyer family by Holbein.[5]
When a bishop is introduced into a group of saints kneeling, while all
the others are standing, he may be supposed to be the _Donatore_ or
_Divoto_, the person who presents the picture. When he is standing, he
is one of the bishop-patrons or bishop-martyrs, of whom there are some
hundreds, and who are more difficult to discriminate than any other
pictured saints.
* * * * *
And this leads me to the subject of the so-called _anachronisms_ in
devotional subjects, where personages who lived at different and
distant periods of time are found grouped together. It is curious
to find the critics of the last century treating with pity and
ridicule, as the result of ignorance or a barbarous unformed taste,
the noblest and most spiritual conceptions of poetic art. Even Sir
Joshua Reynolds had so little idea of the true object and feeling of
such representations, that he thinks it necessary to apologise for the
error of the painter, or the mistaken piety of his employer. We must
remember that the personages here brought together in their sacred
character belong no more to our earth, but to heaven and eternity: for
them there is no longer time or place; they are here assembled together
in the perpetual ‘communion of saints,’—immortal contemporaries in that
kingdom where the Angel of the Apocalypse proclaimed ‘that there should
be time no longer.’
Such groups are sometimes arranged with an artless solemnity, all the
personages standing and looking straight out of the picture at the
worshipper. Sometimes there is a touch of dramatic sentiment, which,
without interfering with the solemn devotional feeling, lights up the
whole with the charm of a purpose: as in the Correggio at Parma, where
St. Jerome presents his translation of the Scriptures to the infant
Christ, while an angel turns the leaves, and Mary Magdalene, symbol of
redemption and reconciliation, bends to kiss the feet of the Saviour.
* * * * *
Our ancestors of the middle ages were not particular in drawing
that strong line of demarcation between the classical, Jewish and
Christian periods of history, that we do. They saw only Christendom
every where; they regarded the past only in relation to Christianity.
Hence we find in the early ecclesiastical monuments and edifices such
a strange assemblage of pagan, scriptural, and Christian worthies;
as, Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, King David, Judas Maccabeus,
King Arthur, St. George, Godfrey of Boulogne, Lucretia, Virginia,
Judith, St. Elizabeth, St. Bridget (as in the Cross of Nuremburg).
In the curious Manual of Greek Art, published by Didron, we find the
Greek philosophers and poets entering into a scheme of ecclesiastical
decoration, as in the carved stalls in the Cathedral of Ulm, where
Solon, Apollonius, Plutarch, Plato, Sophocles, are represented, holding
each a scroll, on which is inscribed a passage from their works,
interpreted into an allusion to the coming of Christ: and I have seen
a picture of the Nativity in which the sibyls are dancing hand-in-hand
around the cradle of the new-born Saviour. This may appear profane to
some, but the comprehension of the whole universe within the pale of
Christianity strikes me as being in the most catholic, as well as in
the most poetical, spirit.
* * * * *
It is in devotional subjects that we commonly find those
anthropomorphic representations of the Divinity which shock devout
people; and which no excuse or argument can render endurable to those
who see in them only ignorant irreverence, or intentional profaneness.
It might be pleaded that the profaneness is not intentional; that
emblems and forms are, in the imitative arts, what figures of speech
are in language; that only through a figure of speech can any attempt
be made to place the idea of Almighty Power before us. Familiar
expressions, consecrated by Scripture usage, represent the Deity as
reposing, waking, stretching forth his hand, sitting on a throne;
as pleased, angry, vengeful, repentant; and the ancient painters,
speaking the language proper to their art, appear to have turned these
emblematical words into emblematical pictures. I forbear to say more on
this point, because I have taken throughout the poetical and not the
religious view of Art, and this is an objection which must be left,
as a matter of feeling, to the amount of candour and knowledge in the
critical reader.
* * * * *
In the sacred subjects, properly called HISTORICAL, we must be careful
to distinguish between those which are _Scriptural_, representing
scenes from the Old or New Testament; and those which are _Legendary_.
Of the first, for the present; I do not speak, as they will be fully
treated hereafter.
The historical subjects from the lives of the saints consist
principally of _Miracles_ and _Martyrdoms_.
In the first, it is worth remarking that we have no pictured miracle
which is not imitated from the Old or the New Testament (unless it be
an obvious emblem, as where the saint carries his own head). There is
no act of supernatural power related of any saint which is not recorded
of some great scriptural personage. The object was to represent the
favourite patron as a copy of the great universal type of beneficence,
CHRIST OUR REDEEMER. And they were not satisfied that the resemblance
should lie in character only; but should emulate the power of Christ
in his visible actions. We must remember that the common people of
the middle ages did not, and could not, distinguish between miracles
accredited by the testimony of Scripture, and those which were
fabrications, or at least exaggerations. All miracles related as divine
interposition were to them equally possible, equally credible. If a
more extended knowledge of the natural laws renders us in these days
less credulous, it also shows us that many things were possible, under
particular conditions, which were long deemed supernatural.
* * * * *
We find in the legendary pictures, that the birth of several saints
is announced by an angel, or in a dream, as in the stories of St.
Catherine, St. Roch, &c. They exhibit precocious piety and wisdom, as
in the story of St. Nicholas, who also calms a tempest, and guides
the storm-tossed vessel safe to land. They walk on the water, as in
the stories of St. Raymond and St. Hyacinth; or a river divides,
to let them pass, as in the story of St. Alban. Saints are fed and
comforted miraculously, or delivered from prison by angels; or resist
fire, like the ‘Three Children.’ The multiplication of bread, and the
transformation of water into wine, are standing miracles. But those
which most frequently occur in pictures, are the healing of the sick,
the lame, the blind; the casting out of demons, the restoration of the
dead, or some other manifestation of compassionate and beneficent power.
* * * * *
Some of the pictured legends are partly scriptural, partly historical,
as the story of St. Peter; others are clearly religious apologues
founded on fact or tradition, as those of St. Mary of Egypt and St.
Christopher; others are obviously and purely allegorical, as the
Greek story of St. Sophia (i. e. Heavenly Wisdom, ΣΟΦΙΑ) and her
celestial progeny, St. Faith, St. Hope, and St. Charity, all martyred
by the blind and cruel Pagans. The names sound as if borrowed from the
‘Pilgrim’s Progress;’ and it is curious to find Bunyan’s allegorical
legend, the favourite picture-book of the people, appearing just at
the time when the legends and pictures of the saints became objects
of puritanical horror, and supplying their place in the popular
imagination.
Martyrdoms are only too common: they present to us Christianity under
its most mystical aspect—the deification of suffering; but to render
these representations effective, they should be pathetic without being
terrible, they should speak to us
Of melancholy fear subdued by faith,
Of blessed consolations in distress;
but not of the horrid cruelty of man towards man. It has been well
remarked by my friend M. Rio, (to whose charming and eloquent
exposition of Christian Art I refer with ever-new delight,) that the
early painters of Western Christendom avoided these subjects, and that
their prevalence in ecclesiastical decoration marked the decline of
religious feeling, and the degeneracy of Art. But this remark does
not apply to Byzantine Art; for we find from the exact description of
a picture of the martyrdom of St. Euphemia (both the picture and the
description dating from the third century), that such representations
were then common, and were appealed to in the same manner as now, to
excite the feelings of the people.
The martyrdoms generally met with are those of St. Peter and St.
Paul, St. Stephen Protomartyr, St. Laurence, St. Catherine, and St.
Sebastian. These we find everywhere, in all countries and localities.
Where the patron of the church or chapel is a martyr, his martyrdom
holds a conspicuous place, often over the high altar, and accompanied
by all the moving circumstances which can excite the pity, or horror,
or enthusiasm of the pious votaries; but in the best examples we find
the saint preparing for his death, not suffering the torments actually
inflicted; so that the mind is elevated by the sentiment of his
courage, not disturbed and disgusted by the spectacle of his agonies.