NEVER MAKE A PRESENT OF YOUR WORKS--POPE REZZONICO BY
CANOVA--TENERANI--OVERBECK'S THEORIES--MINARDI AND HIS
SCHOOL--A WOMAN FROM THE TRASTEVERE WHO LOOKED LIKE THE VENUS
OF MILO--CONVENTIONALISTS AND REALISTS--AN AMBITIOUS QUESTION
AND BITTER ANSWER--FILIPPO GUALTERIO.
The church of Gesu Nuovo was at that time under the ordinance of the
Jesuit Fathers, and one of these fathers, who was devoted to the church,
set on foot a work which did him much honour. Though the church was
beautiful in its design and decorations and rich in marbles, the high
altar was of wood, and this was quite out of keeping with the general
effect. Padre Grossi, who was as learned as he was zealous in his
religion and a lover of art, made the resolve that this altar should be
entirely renewed and reconstructed of precious marble, and he succeeded
in carrying this into effect. Everybody contributed--the Court, the
nobility, the people, owners of marble, and artists. It was not,
however, yet finished; some ornaments were still wanting, and among
these the panels of the pyx. I was asked by Padre Grossi to make a model
for this to be cast in silver, and I cheerfully accepted the commission.
The subject, which was singular and unusual, but extremely pleasing, was
suggested to me by the Padre himself. It represented a youthful female
figure, accompanied by an angel, at the foot of the altar, who came to
partake of the mystic bread. As soon as I had finished the model, I sent
it to Padre Grossi, who expressed his satisfaction with it. Not so the
superior and the other fathers, to whom the subject seemed to be too
unusual. The superior wrote me a very courteous letter of thanks, the
substance of which, stripped of all its sweet and useless phrases, was
that he could not give his approval to the work. I then took back my
model and presented it to Professor Tommaso Aloysio Juvara, who kept it
as a pleasant memorial of me; and thus this work also, which was
intended as a present, fell through.
[Sidenote: MY MENTAL CONDITION.]
The time for my return to Florence now drew near, for my health could
now be considered as quite restored, save that a slight melancholy still
hung about me, induced by an importunate and persistent feeling that
made me doubt my own powers to overcome the difficulties of art, and of
that art upon which I had at first entered, as it were, in triumph. I
was oppressed by a torpor or indecision, a sense of something vague and
undefined, resembling that state of moral weakness which shows itself in
sudden impulses and as sudden prostrations--all indications of lively
fancy and active sensibility, together with a great weakness of judgment
and will. In a word, I had become a coward. In my excited imagination I
felt the beauty of art, but I could not bring myself to lay hold of it,
and express it, and reproduce it. I desired to go back to my first
steps, and so felt my vanity offended. The _bello ideale_, ill defined
and ill understood, smiled upon me with all its flattering and illusory
charms. At slight intervals I seemed to feel these allurements, and then
again I suddenly fell into uncertainty.
"E quale è quei, che disvuol ciò che volle
E per novi pensier cangia proposta;"[8]
[8] "And like to one who unwills what he wills,
And changes for new thoughts his purposes."
--DANTE: _Inferno_, Canto ii.
this was my state, and it afflicted me.
[Sidenote: STATUE OF POPE REZZONICO.]
The decision which was to overcome all my uncertainty came to me from an
idealist, or rather from an imitator of Greek art, Canova, and from one
of his works not drawn from the ideal, but from life. I was about to
return from Rome to Florence, when, as I stood looking vaguely about one
morning in St Peter's, a prey to fleeting and changeable thoughts, my
eyes were arrested by the statue of Pope Rezzonico. How often I had
looked at that grandiose monument and passed on! This time the movement
and expression of concentrated feeling in this statue, united with a
sentiment of imitation so strong, and yet so free from minute and
servile detail, made a great impression on me; and this was all the more
vivid, because I could confront it with the other statues of the same
monument, all of which are characterised by mannerism and imitation of
the antique. This comparison stood me in stead of the most powerful of
reasonings and criticism, and I seemed to hear a voice issue from those
marbles which said, "See the great affection and study that Canova has
given to these statues, and still they do not speak to your heart like
that praying figure of the Pope. Why is this? Reflect!" And, in fact, I
know no subject more worthy of consideration than to seek among the
statues of Canova for the reasons of his oscillation between the
imitation of nature and the imitation of the antique; for exactly here
is the knot of that grave question which even to-day keeps artists
divided into two schools--that of the Academicians and that of the
_veristi_.
[Sidenote: CANOVA AND THE BELLO IDEALE.]
Doubtless nature is the foundation of art, as beauty is its object; and
to forget either one or the other is to fall into error. If we kept
these two cardinal points in our mind, and made them both subjects of
study in our works, all our discussions and disputes would cease. But it
too often happens that the Academicians, holding too strongly to the
beautiful as the end to be attained, forget that its foundation is in
the truth or nature; while the Realists, blindly trusting to nature,
which when it is not subjected to selection is a bad foundation, lose
sight of the true end, which is beauty. Now in the works of Canova we
see a constant endeavour to harmonise the beautiful with nature; but as
the cry of _bello ideale_ (a magic phrase invented at that time) was
then loved, with the painter David leading the chorus, and the imperial
cannon sounding the accompaniment, the interior voices and protests of
the Christian artificers were either drowned or lifted to the hundred
pagan deities whom the epicurean philosophy of the time demanded, and to
whom they burned their incense. But the genius which nature had given to
this great artist triumphed over the tendencies of his time, over the
cry of pedants and the imperial favours; and the Pope Rezzonico, and
Pius VI., and the Magdalen, are there to demonstrate the singular force
of that genius which alone battled against the torrent of the schools
and the tyranny and customs of his age. These works of his are rays of
that light which first illuminated the mind of this great artist, when,
still young and free in his inspirations, and unbiassed by rules,
counsel, and praise, he conceived and executed that wonderful group of
Icarus.
In this careful spirit of examination and reasoning I again reviewed and
studied the masterpieces of ancient and modern art, and many of the
judgments which had been distorted by my poor brain during my first
visit were afterwards rectified. I became attached with reverent
friendship to Minardi, Tenerani, and Overbeck; and although all three
followed the school of the mystical ideal, which was far from
conformable to the rich and inexhaustible variety of nature, I admired
in them their profound conviction in the excellence of their school; and
although Tenerani united to his mysticism the graces of antique form,
still it seemed to me that precisely on this account he was often a
timid friend to nature. When, however, he was not dominated by a
preconceived idea--I mean in his portraits--he was really and
incontestably true to nature. His Count Orloff, though inspired by the
statues of the philosophers in the Vatican, is not inconsistent with
this opinion; and his Pellegrino Rossi and his Maria of Russia are
perfectly original, and show no preoccupation of his mind except with
nature. And it then seemed to me strange, as it still seems, that an
artist, in portraying a fact or a personage, however ideal, should
attempt to draw it purely from an idea, and not from living nature; for
his idea is for the most part only a remembrance of what he has seen.
The two processes are quite different; for the idea reaches out for the
source of truth or nature, which is infinitely varied, while the memory
retains types and figures of other works of so small a scale in variety
that its extreme ends soon meet each other.
[Sidenote: TENERANI AND OVERBECK.]
Overbeck was more ideal and mystical than Tenerani. He placed all the
charm of art in the conception alone, and rarely or never used a model.
One day he said to me, in a tone of the most absolute conviction, that
models (or nature) destroyed the idea. This theory, which is eminently
false as a general proposition, has a certain truth when applied to
sacred subjects and representations of divinity, and specially in regard
to those artists who in painting a Madonna make a portrait of a model.
The imitation of life is certainly necessary even in sacred subjects;
but it is difficult so to select and portray them that the religious
idea does not become obscured, as well on account of the vulgarity as of
the excessive realism and expression of the model. The expression it is
absolutely necessary that the artist should create, if he has it in
him,--and only so far as this Overbeck was right. Then, indeed, is the
opportunity for the _bello ideale_, which is so ill understood and ill
treated; for the ideal is in substance nothing else but the idea of the
truth in nature, and diffused over all creation, as well in the material
as in the intellectual world. And every artist of heart and just
perceptions feels it and sees it, and recomposes its scattered parts by
means of long study and great love.
[Sidenote: MINARDI AND HIS SCHOOL.]
Minardi, the father, so to speak, of all the artistic youths of his day,
strove to reform them in taste and composition, founding himself on the
works and the canons of the _Cinquecentisti_. This recognition is all
the more due to him when we remember that precisely at this time, when
he was endeavouring to carry out this reform, he had before him
Camuccini and all his school in full vigour, and that now Minardi's
school is flourishing and strengthened as much by the conquests he has
made in variety of imitation from nature as in mastery of colour. I have
said that Minardi was like a father; and so he was. He treated his young
pupils as if they were his children, kept them in his own studio, and I
have seen three--Consoni, Mariani, Marianecci--and many others around
him gaily jesting with their venerable master. His portfolios and albums
were always open to all, and he delighted to show them, and, while
looking over their studies and compositions, to add those words of
explanation, counsel, and warning which are so useful to young artists.
I seem to see him now in that great studio of his, which was somewhat in
disorder, and encumbered with easels, drawings, cartoons, books, prints,
and antique furniture--the air filled with clouds of tobacco-smoke which
issued from the pipe he had always in his mouth, and he himself always
working or talking, reading or writing. He was affable, gracious, and
eloquent, and, with those little eyes looking through his spectacles, he
seemed to read into your soul; and if he found it sad, he threw out a
word, and awakened it again to life and courage. One day, seeing me more
than ordinarily melancholy, he rose from his work, took me by the hands,
and puffing from his pipe a larger volume of smoke than usual, asked
what was troubling me; and when I had made a clean breast of it to him,
he laid his pipe down, and embracing me, said, "Cheer up, my son! drive
away from your head all those whims: go back to Florence, take up your
work again with courage, and have more faith in yourself and in your
powers. It is an old man who is speaking to you, who neither can nor
will deceive you." The words of the excellent master went straight to my
heart, and filled it with courage, hope, and peace.
[Sidenote: ROMAN AND FLORENTINE MODELS.]
In this way, with studying the ancient monuments, and going about among
the living artists, I passed several days in Rome. The models, and
particularly those of the artists I have named, I found more robust and
rounded than our Florentine models, which are for the most part slender
and lymphatic. Among our girls you will not find, though you should pay
a million, such necks, so firm and robust, and at the same time so soft
and flexible, and like the examples which Greek and Roman art has left
us. So it seems that, without seeking for the cause of the contradiction
between the living nature I had found in Florence, and that which was
represented in antique art, I had come to the conclusion that the Greeks
and Romans worked purely from ideas, and corrected nature according to
that established rule which we call convention. Nothing is more
erroneous than this notion, and the proof of it I found in Rome itself,
as I shall now tell.
[Sidenote: A ROMAN MODEL.]
[Sidenote: AN ADVENTURE WITH A TRASTEVERE GIRL.]
Whoever is familiar with the Roman people will have observed a notable
difference between the figures of the common people, and especially
those of the Trasteverini and the Monti, and those of the higher classes
who are in better circumstances. The latter are more slender, with a
fine and white skin, and often with chestnut hair; while the former have
dark eyes, skin, and hair, are harsh and short in their ways and voices,
and for a mere nothing throw up their barricades, and blood runs without
much lamentation over it. You can easily see in these people their
uninterrupted derivation from those fierce legions who planted their
eagles over all the then known earth. Nor is the blood in the women
different from that in the men; and if the men carry their knives in
their pockets (they certainly did then), the women carried, thrust
across their massive knots of ebon hair with much taste, a sharp dagger
with a silver handle, which was in every way capable of sending any poor
unfortunate devil into the other world. One day (it was Sunday towards
evening) I was, as usual, dreaming about those busts or necks of Minerva
and Polymnia, and the Venus of Milo, and I know not how many other
antique statues, which seemed to me to give a solemn contradiction to
all my little models of pastry that I had left in Florence, and I
fixed my eyes on the neck of every woman that I passed. This examination
induced me to modify in measure my opinion as to the conventionalism of
the necks of the antique statues; and I should have been satisfied, and
have changed my mind entirely, even had I not purely by chance gone on
into the Trastevere. Here there was a great number of young persons,
both male and female,--the men either in the pot-houses, or gathered
around the doors, or standing in groups, and the girls in companies of
three or four walking up and down the street of the Longaretta. Among
these I saw one who, if she had been made on purpose to prove that the
necks of the antique statues were not conventional, could not have here
offered a more absolute proof. There were three girls, two small, and
one large who was between them. She walked along with a slow and
majestic step, talking with her companions. A sportsman who spies a
hare, a creditor who meets a debtor, a friend who finds another friend
whom he thought to be far away or dead, these give a weak notion of my
surprise in beholding this girl. My dear reader, I do not in the least
exaggerate when I say that I seemed to look on the Venus of Milo. Her
head and neck, which alone were exposed to view, were as like that
statue as two drops of water. I was astounded. I turned back to look at
her again, and it would have been well for me had I contented myself
with this; but I wished to see her yet once more. The girl, who had not
an idea within a thousand miles of what I was pondering, nor of the
corrections that I was formulating on an æsthetical opinion of such
great importance, suddenly stopped, and taking the dagger from her hair,
advanced towards me, and with a strong and almost masculine voice, said
to me, "Well, Mr Dandy, does your life stink in your nostrils?" I shot
off home directly, looking neither to the right nor left; and when I
arrived I told my wife what had happened, and she reproved me gently for
making my studies so out of time and place. Now I ask, why this disdain?
Had I been guilty of anything improper in looking at the girl? Is it
possible that she could have really been offended? I do not believe it.
I know something about women, and I know that it is their weakness to
try to attract attention. It is more probable that there was some one
near her to whom the girl wished to show that in respect to anything
touching her honour she was too fierce to allow any other person even to
look at her. Leonardo none the less counsels us to study from nature, in
the open air, not only by looking, but also by taking notes; and he
makes no exception as to the Trasteverini. For the benefit of young
artists, I propose to add a note on this subject to all new editions of
Leonardo.
[Sidenote: GREEK LIFE AND MODELS.]
The discovery of this beautiful head and neck of the antique style and
character set upon a living girl (and what a complexion!) led me to
consider how many other parts of incontestable beauty which we find in
the antique statues, and so readily believe to be born of the
imagination of the Greek sculptors, are really to be found in nature;
and the Greeks only selected them for imitation. But if this be so, how
can the absolute deficiency of such models in our day be explained? Then
I considered the different education of this people, their warlike
lives, their games, and prizes at throwing the disc, racing, boxing, and
the esteem in which physical beauty was held. If, indeed, for these
reasons there is in our day a deficiency of fine models, we are not
absolutely without them, as this spirited and beautiful girl clearly
proves; and I firmly believe she must have been in respect to all the
rest of her body an excellent model. Hence the necessity of carefully
selecting our models. In this respect, however, we find ourselves in a
much more difficult position than the ancients. First, because, as I
have said, their education lent itself more efficaciously to the
development of the body; and then, because the public games afforded far
greater opportunities to see and select among them.
[Sidenote: A BEAUTIFUL NUDE MODEL.]
The first thing which assures a good result to a work is the selection
of good models; and after taking great heed of this, good imitation is
of absolute necessity. I have observed that he who exercises little or
no selection, and contents himself with the first model he sees, belongs
to that class of conventional artists who allow themselves such an
infinity of additions and subtractions, and corrections of the model,
that generally only the remnants of nature are to be found in their
works; while those who follow the opposite school copy the model
minutely just as it is, and even with all its imperfections. If the
former remain cold and false, the latter are vulgar and tasteless; for
they carry their love for truth to such an excess, that they do not
distinguish the beautiful from the ugly. Nay, they prefer the ugly,
because to them it seems more true because it is more common. It
happened to me once to be in the studio of one of these young artists,
who was engaged on I do not remember what work. When the model was
stripped he was beautiful to see: a small head, squared breast, an
elegant pelvis, delicate knees and ankles, and, in a word, seemed the
"Idolino" itself, living and speaking. Will you believe it?--he was set
aside.
"But what are you doing?" said I. "Don't you see how beautiful this boy
is? Copy him fearlessly. He is beautiful as Idolino himself."
"That is exactly why I do not want him as a model. I am afraid it will
be said that I have copied my Idolino."
[Sidenote: CONVENTIONAL IMITATION.]
To such a point did their aberration arrive. But at the same time, I am
sure that if this model had fallen into the hands of one of the
idealistic reformers of nature, he would have been corrected (that is,
ruined) in every part, according to the suggestions of his stupid
conventionalism. This mania of correcting nature is in itself extremely
injurious, and the young artist must be constantly on his guard against
it. A finished artist may sometimes do this, because in his skill and
experience he finds the limits and the measure of the liberty which are
permissible. Indeed he is not aware of the corrections that he is
making, and believes that he sees it so; but this depends on the habit
of seeing and portraying beautiful nature. But a youth who once is set
going on this incline never stops; for he finds it far easier to draw
freely on his memory than to keep within the proper bounds of imitation.
I repeat, then, that he who does not select from beautiful nature with
studious love shows little faith in her beauty, and thence come
carelessness and unwillingness to portray her, and then a headlong fall
into the conventional. He, however, who finds the beautiful in
everything, or rather, he who despises antique art and calls it
conventional, even though it be by Phidias, is quite as conventional
himself in his realism. His wish is to be considered naturalistic and
realistic at all hazards, even to denying nature itself, in case it
reminds him of anything classic (as we have already seen), and at last
he goes so far as to puzzle his brains and struggle to arrange the model
and draperies so as to make them appear naturalistic.
I have seen an artist get into a rage because his draperies would not
come upon the natural model just as he wished, and who kept tossing them
about and disarranging them so that they should not seem to be
artificially disposed. I observed to him that he was really arranging
them artificially, so that they should not appear to be so arranged. He
was making a seated figure in a cloak. After the model had seated
himself, and thrown the cloak about him in folds which were perfectly
natural, and fell beautifully about his body and knees, the artist kept
foolishly changing them, putting them out of their proper place,
because, he said, that as they came naturally, they looked as if they
had been artificially disposed.
[Sidenote: ARRANGEMENT OF DRAPERIES.]
"But that is not so," said I. "They arrange themselves naturally, and
you keep disarranging them exactly like those artists whom you blame for
being imitators of the antique and conventionalists, and you are in this
neither more nor less than a conventionalist like them, and even worse,
for they always strive to put the folds in their proper place, in a
certain number and a certain disposition; and though this is detestable
and tiresome pedantry, because it destroys that variety which is the
first attribute of nature, still they are not renegades to it as you
are, when you thus obstinately insist on placing the folds where they
cannot possibly be, with the pretence that otherwise they would seem
adjusted. You, even more than they, are an illogical conventionalist."
But to be just, I must say that at this time the neophytes of the new
school were few and scattered. The school, indeed, is new only in so far
as it has carried us into the excessive, the negative, and the
illogical; for the school of the _veristi_ is as old as art itself, and
its principles are correct. Indeed, strictly speaking, it has one single
principle, the imitation of nature; but what the ancients meant was
imitation of life in its perfection, while the moderns (at least some of
them) mean all life, all nature, even though it be ugly. More than this,
they prefer the ugly and deformed, not perceiving that the deformity of
nature is outside of true nature, since any defect alters the essential
character of nature, which consists of a harmony of parts answering to
beauty. In a word, the deformed, which is the same thing as the ugly, is
nature debased, and thus ceases to be nature. I am well aware that the
_veristi_ deny that they prefer vulgar and ugly nature; and if their
denial were justified by their works, I should entirely agree with them,
and my discourse on this subject would be entirely futile. But saying is
not the same as doing.
[Sidenote: RETURN TO FLORENCE WITH A FRESH MIND.]
I returned to Florence quite restored in health, strengthened by the
example of the works of art in Rome, and inspirited by the brotherly
words of those old and venerated artists, who, alas! now sleep the
eternal sleep, or rather, who have waked from the brief sleep of life to
one eternal day. The discovery of the famous head and neck of that
Trasteverina had cured me of my prejudiced belief that the ancients
corrected nature according to their completely ideal mode of looking at
it--a belief which induces in the mind of the artist a weak faith,
slight esteem of nature, and thence an unwillingness to imitate it, and
an effrontery in correcting it.
Before going to work in my studio I wished again to see and study, in
view of my new convictions, our own monuments. I made the tour of the
churches, palaces, and public and private galleries, just as if I was a
stranger. To many things indeed I might call myself really a stranger,
for I had either never seen them, or but slightly and superficially.
From this examination I came to the conclusion that the artists of all
times studied their predecessors, and only imitated nature after having
studiously selected what was conformable to the idea which first rose in
their minds. Henceforth the way was clear, the light shone upon it, and
the objects of art which I examined came out distinctly and really in
their true aspect. Never to my intellect had the veil which covers the
subtle and recondite reasons of the beautiful seemed so clear and
transparent; and I felt tranquil, satisfied, strong, and ready to devote
myself to my new works in the studio. One incident, however, did
momentarily disturb this peace and security of mine.
[Sidenote: AN ADVENTURE IN THE PITTI.]
One day I was in the Pitti Gallery, and passing through the room where
the two statues of Cain and Abel are placed, I saw a youth who was
drawing from the latter. He seemed from his aspect to be a foreigner. I
spoke to him not only to assure myself of this fact, but also (I
confess) because it gave me pleasure to see him copying my statue, and I
wished by exchanging a few words with him to taste still more strongly
this pleasure, which, for the rest, is excusable in a young author.
Approaching him I said--
"Do you like this statue?"
"Yes, very much; and that is the reason I am copying it."
"It seems," I said, as I saw he did not recognise me, "to be a modern
work, does it not?"
"Certainly; so modern that the author is still living--though one might
say that he is dead."
"What! I do not understand you. How can one say that he is dead when he
is living?" and I could scarcely restrain the wonder and emotion that
these singular words created in me.
"It is indeed a very sad fact, and is very much talked about; but it
seems that the poor artist, so young and full of talent----"
[Sidenote: FILIPPO GUALTERIO.]
"Well?" I interrupted him suddenly.
"It seems that he is going mad."
I was silent. These last words wounded me to the quick, and I remembered
that during my past sufferings I too had a fear lest I should lose my
head, but I never suspected that this idea had entered into the minds of
others. I went out of the room without even saluting the young
foreigner, and walked up and down in the open air, going over in my
memory my past suffering, my voyage to Naples, the cure I had undergone,
and my re-establishment in health both in body and spirit, and at last I
became tranquil, and almost smiled in recalling this strange
conversation with the young foreigner.
I set myself to work with good will, and threw down the first model of
the Bacchino dell'Uva Malata, which I had left without casting in order
to remake it according to a new conception that had come to me in
Naples. Secure of the road I meant now to take, convinced in my
principles, which in substance did not differ from those that had guided
me in my first statues, I modelled with great rapidity the small
Bacchus, the Bacchante, and a figure of the daughter of the Marchese
Filippo Gualterio, lying dead.
I first made the acquaintance of Filippo Gualterio at Siena, in the
house of my friend Count dei Gori, in the first revolutionary movement
of 1847. He was a thorough gentleman, of careful education, a lover of
art, an enthusiast for beauty, a facile writer of the moderate party,
not then in favour of the unity of Italy, but attached heart and soul to
the theories of Gioberti as set forth in the 'Primato.' Out of pique, on
account of some annoyance he had received from the Pontifical
Government, of which he was a subject, he exiled himself from his native
country, Orvieto, and joined the revolutionary movement of Turin,
Florence, and Genoa. Later he took a prominent part in the revolution of
1859, embraced the cause of unity, became Minister, and shortly after
died of paralysis of the brain.
[Sidenote: PIETRO SELVATICO.]
The statuette of the Bacchino so much pleased my friend Pietro
Selvatico, who happened to be in Florence precisely at the time when I
finished it, that he made a drawing of it as a _souvenir_ in his album.
This able writer and distinguished critic and historian of art was also
an artist and accomplished draughtsman, or rather he was so until an
obstinate disease in his eyes deprived them of that clearness of vision
which is necessary to mastery as a draughtsman.