In the picture-gallery at Modena there is a masterpiece of Dosso Dossi.
The frame is old and richly carved; and the painting, bordered by its
beautiful dull gold, shines with the lustre of an emerald. In his happy
moods Dosso set color upon canvas as no other painter out of Venice ever
did; and here he is at his happiest. The picture is the portrait of a
jester, dressed in courtly clothes and with a feathered cap upon his
head. He holds a lamb in his arms, and carries the legend, _Sic Genius_.
Behind him is a landscape of exquisite brilliancy and depth. His face is
young and handsome. Dosso has made it one most wonderful laugh. Even so
perhaps laughed Yorick. Nowhere else have I seen a laugh thus painted:
not violent, not loud, although the lips are opened to show teeth of
dazzling whiteness; but fine and delicate, playing over the whole face
like a ripple sent up from the depths of the soul within? Who was he?
What does the lamb mean? How should the legend be interpreted? We cannot
answer these questions. He may have been the court-fool of Ferrara; and
his genius, the spiritual essence of the man, may have inclined him to
laugh at all things. That at least is the value he now has for us. He
is the portrait of perpetual irony, the spirit of the golden sixteenth
century which delicately laughed at the whole world of thoughts and
things, the quintessence of the poetry of Ariosto, the wit of Berni, all
condensed into one incarnation and immortalized by truthfullest art.
With the Gaul, the Spaniard, and the German at her gates, and in her
cities, and encamped upon her fields, Italy still laughed; and when the
voice of conscience sounding through Savonarola asked her why, she only
smiled--_Sic Genius_.
One evening in May we rowed from Venice to Torcello, and at sunset broke
bread and drank wine together among the rank grasses just outside that
ancient church. It was pleasant to sit in the so-called chair of Attila
and feel the placid stillness of the place. Then there came lounging by
a sturdy young fellow in brown country clothes, with a marvellous old
wide-awake upon his head, and across his shoulders a bunch of massive
church-keys. In strange contrast to his uncouth garb he flirted a pink
Japanese fan, gracefully disposing it to cool his sun-burned olive
cheeks. This made us look at him. He was not ugly. Nay, there was
something of attractive in his face--the smooth-curved chin, the shrewd
yet sleepy eyes, and finely-cut thin lips--a curious mixture of audacity
and meekness blended upon his features. Yet this impression was but the
prelude to his smile. When that first dawned, some breath of humor
seeming to stir in him unbidden, the true meaning was given to his face.
Each feature helped to make a smile that was the very soul's life of the
man expressed. It broadened, showing brilliant teeth, and grew into a
noiseless laugh; and then I saw before me Dosso's jester, the type of
Shakespeare's fools, the life of that wild irony, now rude, now fine,
which once delighted courts. The laughter of the whole world and of all
the centuries was silent in his face. What he said need not be repeated.
The charm was less in his words than in his personality; for
Momus-philosophy lay deep in every look and gesture of the man. The
place lent itself to irony; parties of Americans and English parsons,
the former agape for any rubbishy old things, the latter learned in the
lore of obsolete church-furniture, had thronged Torcello; and now they
were all gone, and the sun had set behind the Alps, while an irreverent
stranger drank his wine in Attila's chair, and nature's jester
smiled--_Sic Genius_.
When I slept that night I dreamed of an altar-piece in the Temple of
Folly. The goddess sat enthroned beneath a canopy hung with bells and
corals. On her lap was a beautiful winged smiling genius, who flourished
two bright torches. On her left hand stood the man of Modena with his
white lamb, a new St. John. On her right stood the man of Torcello with
his keys, a new St. Peter. Both were laughing after their all-absorbent,
divine, noiseless fashion; and under both was written, _Sic Genius_. Are
not all things, even profanity, permissible in dreams?