* * * * *
‘Paul, in the island of Melita, shaking the viper from his hand,’ is
not a common subject, and yet it is capable of the finest picturesque
and dramatic effects: the storm and shipwreck in the background,
the angry heavens above, the red firelight, the group of astonished
mariners, and, pre-eminent among them, the calm intellectual figure
of the apostle shaking the venomous beast from his hand,—these are
surely beautiful and available materials for a scenic picture. Even if
treated as an allegory in a devotional sense, a single majestic figure,
throwing the evil thing innocuous from him, which I have not yet
seen, it would be an excellent and a significant subject. The little
picture by Elzheimer is the best example I can cite of the picturesque
treatment. That of Le Sueur has much dignity; those of Perino del Vaga,
Thornhill, West, are all commonplace.
Thornhill, as everybody knows, painted the eight principal scenes of
the life of the apostle in the cupola of St. Paul’s.[201] Few people,
I should think, have strained their necks to examine them; the eight
original studies, small sketches _en grisaille_, are preserved in the
vestry, and display that heartless, mindless, mannered mediocrity,
which makes all criticism foolishness; I shall, however, give a list of
the subjects.
1. Paul and Barnabas at Lystra. 2. Paul preaching at Athens. 3. Elymas
struck blind. 4. The converts burn their magical books. 5. Paul before
Festus. 6. A woman seated at his feet; I presume the Conversion of
Lydia of Thyatira. 7. Paul let down in a basket. 8. He shakes the viper
from his hand.
At the time that Thornhill was covering the cupola at ‘the rate of
2_l._ the square yard,’ Hogarth, his son-in-law, would also try his
hand. He painted ‘St. Paul pleading before Felix’ for Lincoln’s.
Inn Hall; where the subject, at least, is appropriate. The picture
itself is curiously characteristic, not of the scene or of the chief
personage, but of the painter. St. Paul loaded with chains, and his
accuser Tertullus, stand in front; and Felix, with his wife Drusilla,
are seated on a raised tribunal in the background; near Felix is the
high-priest Ananias. The composition is good. The heads are full
of vivid expression—wrath, terror, doubt, fixed attention; but the
conception of character most ignoble and commonplace. Hogarth was
more at home when he took the same subject as a vehicle for a witty
caricature of the Dutch manner of treating sacred subjects—their
ludicrous anachronisms and mean incidents. St. Paul, in allusion to his
low stature, is mounted on a stool; an angel is sawing through one
leg of it; Tertullus is a barrister, in wig, band, and gown; the judge
is like an old doting justice of peace, and his attendants like old
beggars.
In the Florentine Gallery there is a very curious series of the lives
of St. Peter and St. Paul in eight pictures, in the genuine old German
style; fanciful, animated, full of natural and dramatic expression,
and exquisitely finished,—but dry, hard, grotesque, and abounding in
anachronisms.[202]
* * * * *
Among the few separate historical subjects in which St. Peter and St.
Paul are represented together, the most important is the dispute at
Antioch,—a subject avoided by the earliest painters. St. Paul says,
‘When Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because
he was to be blamed.’ Guido’s picture in the _Brera_ at _Milan_ is
celebrated: Peter is seated, looking thoughtful, with downcast eyes,
an open book on his knees; Paul, in an attitude of rebuke, stands over
against him. There is another example by Rosso: here both are standing;
Peter is looking down; Paul, with long hair and beard floating back,
and a keen reproving expression, ‘rebukes him to his face.’ I presume
the same subject to be represented by Lucas van Leyden in a rare and
beautiful little print, in which St. Peter and St. Paul are seated
together in earnest conversation. St. Peter holds a _key_ in his right
hand, and points with the other to a book which lies on his knees. St.
Paul is about to turn the leaf, and his right hand appears to rebuke
St. Peter; his left foot is on the _sword_ which lies at his feet.
* * * * *
‘The Parting of St. Peter and St. Paul before they are led to death.’
The scene is without the gates of Rome; and as the soldiers drag Peter
away, he turns back to Paul with a pathetic expression. This picture,
now in the Louvre, is one of Lanfranco’s best compositions.[203]
When the crucifixion of St. Peter and the decollation of St. Paul
are represented together in the same picture, such a picture must be
considered as religious and devotional, not historical; it does not
express the action as it really occurred, but, like many pictures
of the crucifixion of our Saviour, it is placed before us as an
excitement to piety, self-sacrifice, and repentance. We have this kind
of treatment in a picture by Niccolò dell’ Abate:[204] St. Paul kneels
before a block, and the headsman stands with sword uplifted in act to
strike; in the background, two other executioners grasp St. Peter, who
is kneeling on his cross and praying fervently: above, in a glory, is
seen the Virgin; in her arms the Infant Christ, who delivers to two
angels palm-branches for the martyred saints. The genius of Niccolò was
not precisely fitted for this class of subjects. But the composition
is full of poetical feeling. The introduction of the Madonna and Child
stamps the character of the picture as devotional, not historical—it
would otherwise be repulsive, and out of keeping with the subject.
There is a Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul engraved after
Parmigiano,[205] which I shall notice on account of its careless and
erroneous treatment. They are put to death together; an executioner
prepares to decapitate St. Peter, and another drags St. Paul by the
beard: the incidents are historically false, and, moreover, in a
degraded and secular taste. These are the mistakes that make us turn
disgusted from the technical facility, elegance, and power of the
sixteenth century, to the simplicity and reverential truth of the
fourteenth.
* * * * *
There are various traditions concerning the relics of St. Peter and
St. Paul. According to some, the bodies of the two apostles were, in
the reign of Heliogabalus, deposited by the Christian converts in the
catacombs of Rome, and were laid in the same sepulchre. After the lapse
of about two hundred years, the Greek or Oriental Christians attempted
to carry them off; but were opposed by the Roman Christians. The Romans
conquered; and the two bodies were transported to the church of the
Vatican, where they reposed together in a magnificent shrine, beneath
the church. Among the engravings in the work of Ciampini and Bosio are
two rude old pictures commemorating this event. The first represents
the combat of the Orientals and the Romans for the bodies of the
Saints; in the other, the bodies are deposited in the Vatican. In these
two ancient representations, which were placed in the portico of the
old basilica of St. Peter, the traditional types may be recognised—the
broad full features, short curled beard, and bald head of St. Peter,
and the oval face and long beard of St. Paul.
* * * * *
Here I must conclude this summary of the lives and characters of the
two greatest apostles, as they have been exhibited in Christian Art;
to do justice to the theme would have required a separate volume. One
observation, however, suggests itself, and cannot be passed over. The
usual type of the head of St. Peter, though often ill rendered and
degraded by coarseness, can in general be recognised as characteristic;
but is there among the thousand representations of the apostle Paul,
_one_ on which the imagination can rest completely satisfied? I know
not one. No doubt the sublimest ideal of embodied eloquence that ever
was expressed in Art is Raphael’s St. Paul preaching at Athens. He
stands there the delegated voice of the true God, the antagonist and
conqueror of the whole heathen world:—‘Whom ye ignorantly worship,
HIM declare I unto you’—is not this what he says? Every feature, nay,
every fold in his drapery, speaks; as in the other St. Paul leaning
on his sword (in the famous St. Cecilia), every feature and every
fold of drapery meditates. The latter is as fine in its tranquil
melancholy grandeur, as the former in its authoritative energy: in the
one the orator, in the other the philosopher, were never more finely
rendered: but is it, in either, the Paul of Tarsus whom we know? It
were certainly both unnecessary and pedantic to adhere so closely
to historic fact as to make St. Paul of diminutive stature, and St.
Peter weak-eyed: but has Raphael done well in wholly rejecting the
traditional portrait which reflected to us the Paul of Scripture,
the man of many toils and many sorrows, wasted with vigils, worn
down with travel, whose high bald forehead, thin flowing hair, and
long pointed beard, spoke so plainly the fervent and indomitable,
yet meditative and delicate, organisation,—and in substituting this
Jupiter Ammon head, with the dark redundant hair, almost hiding the
brow, and the full bushy beard? This is one of the instances in which
Raphael, in yielding to the fashion of his time, has erred, as it
seems to me,—though I say it with all reverence! The St. Paul rending
his garments at Lystra, and rejecting the sacrifice of the misguided
people, is more particularly false as to the character of the man,
though otherwise so grandly expressive, that we are obliged to admire
what our better sense—our _conscience_—cannot wholly approve.
* * * * *