it would be incorrect to represent your personages with cropped hair and
clean shaven, as though they were Romans of the later Consulate and
Augustan age.
Some Sicilian barbers, who came over to Rome about the beginning of the
third century B.C., introduced the custom of shaving and having the hair
cut short, and this custom continued without intermission until the time
of Hadrian or Trajan, when beards came into fashion again. The
Sybarites, of a later period than this, used to oil their hair and
sprinkle it with gold-dust. Wigs were also worn, by men as well as by
women. If the emperor of the time happened to have a crop of thick curly
hair, it was astonishing what a number of curly crops of hair suddenly
appeared in Rome. Perhaps we need not go as far back as ancient Rome
for phenomena of this kind. It is needless for me to describe the stiff,
tasteless style of hair-dressing which prevailed amongst the ladies of
the later Empire. It was their uncouth artificial coiffures which were
imitated in France and England about the beginning of the century. It
was this pseudo-classical style both of hair-dressing and apparel which
made our grandmothers and great-grandmothers such unlovable objects.
A real classical revival after the puff and powder of the preceding
generation, a return to the best Greek and Roman fashions, would have
been a great blessing both to society in general and to the arts
especially; but such classicism as prevailed under the first Napoleon
was hardly an improvement on the perruques and pig-tails that preceded
it.
The Roman military dress is so well known from the bas-reliefs of the
times of Trajan, Hadrian, and Vespasian, that I need not go into any
details respecting it. The only remark I would make is, that the linen
drawers we see indicated in the sculptures, were not worn in the army
before the wars of Gaul and Germany.
The dresses of the time of Constantine and his successors are very
little known.
To some artists this is rather an attraction, as affording an
opportunity of invention in costume, which is denied to them in a
better known period; and it must be admitted that, provided they keep to
what was likely to have been worn, no one can prove them to be wrong.
There are a few coins and medals in existence which give some idea of
the appearance of an emperor or great personage, but of the dress of the
common people we know nothing for certain.
In conclusion, I would remark that correctness in the matter of costume
is far more necessary to an artist now than it was formerly. In this age
of archæology and research we find, even on the stage, the most
scrupulous fidelity observed, and it behooves us, as artists, not to lag
behind.
You will find, both in the Academy library and at South Kensington, many
excellent works on costume, and with such a mass of information within
your reach it will be unpardonable if you fall into the anachronisms and
absurdities of our ancestors.
LECTURE II.
BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE ART.
In the lectures I am about to deliver on Early Italian Art, I shall not
enter into minute detail, nor shall I attempt a history of _all_ the
painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries who deserve mention.
All I can hope to give you is a sort of bird’s-eye view of the various
phases through which the Art of Painting passed from its lowest ebb to
its highest development.
I feel as if you were a party of excursionists about to be personally
conducted across a great art continent, and as if it behooved me, as
your conductor, to perform my duty with judgment and discretion.
We shall have a vast desert to cross, where nothing is found to break
the dull and ugly monotony of the scene. We cannot do better than take
the express train for this part of our journey, and get over the ground
as quickly as possible.
Substituting miles for years, we shall, when we have accomplished
something like a thousand miles, begin to notice signs of a more fertile
soil. These indications will be very faint at first, but after a time
the objects of interest will become more frequent, and we shall leave
our train and take to riding or driving so as to get a better view of
what we are passing. After a drive of a hundred miles the country will
become so interesting that we shall buckle on our knapsacks and perform
the rest of the journey on foot.
To continue the parallel, I would remind you that you are only
excursionists, and not leisurely travellers desirous of becoming
thoroughly acquainted with the products of the country they are about to
traverse.
To acquire a thorough knowledge of the decay and revival of art, it
would be necessary to consult the numerous and learned treatises on the
subject, and to study the political and social state of Italy during the
Middle Ages.
Such a study, though doubtless very instructive, would be rather a dry
subject for a lecture, even if I were equal to the task. I shall,
therefore, attempt nothing of the kind, and having always had a tender
feeling for those whose attendance here is compulsory, and admiration
for those who come of their own free will, I shall endeavor to be as
little tedious as possible, whilst imparting to you a sort of _résumé_
of mediæval painting and the early Italian schools.
The designs and paintings which have been discovered in the catacombs
are commonly held to be the earliest specimens we possess of Christian
art; and if by Christian art we mean the representation of Biblical and
New Testament subjects, they undoubtedly _are_ the earliest. If,
however, by Christian art we mean the peculiar style which grew up and
was fostered by the early Church, we must look elsewhere, for these
paintings are essentially pagan in style.
In common with the paintings of the Constantine baths, and with the
numerous decorative designs discovered in the pagan catacombs of the
period, they are clearly derived direct from classical sources.
They vary in merit according to the skill of the artist who executed
them, and also according to the epoch of their production, those of the
second century being infinitely superior to those of the third and
fourth. In the earliest of these paintings, the Good Shepherd replaces
Orpheus, Elias replaces Apollo, and so on, but the style is in no way
distinguishable from contemporary Roman wall-paintings. The arabesque
ornamentation of the panels is exactly similar, and although the
subjects are such as Moses striking the rock, Jonah swallowed by the
whale, Daniel in the lions’ den, and various Christian miracles, these
interesting works cannot be considered in any other light than specimens
of late Roman art adapted to the illustration of Scriptural subjects.
These catacomb paintings look to me more like copies of better things
than original paintings. They appear to have been done by decorative
artists, who would naturally be more at home with the ornamental
borders and arabesques than with the figures. We may often notice this
kind of inequality of work in modern houses.
The skilled workmen employed by the professional decorator will execute
with consummate neatness all the ornamental parts, but if any figure is
introduced into the panels it will be a coarse replica of some Pompeii
muse, nymph, or cupid, possibly quite good enough for the purpose, but
hardly indicative of the state of art of the period.
In the paintings of the third and fourth centuries there is a very
noticeable decline in the drawing and execution, but there is still a
reminiscence of a classical style. The draperies are still disposed with
something like taste, and the heads, though very rude and clumsy, have
not the barbaric hideousness of a later period. The last flicker of the
antique lamp is to be found in those catacomb paintings of the fourth
and fifth centuries.
When I say that they are not Christian in style, I mean that they are
not ecclesiastical. Speaking strictly, from a common-sense rather than
from an art point of view, it appears to me that the simple garments and
the un-nimbi’d heads of the personages are more in keeping with the
spirit of the New Testament than the gold and the gorgeous ornamentation
of a later period. However that may be, viewed simply as works of art,
they are the natural sequence to Pompeii and the later forms of Roman
mural painting.
The case is very different with the large Roman and Ravenna mosaics of
the fourth and fifth centuries, but before proceeding to criticise these
productions, I should wish to say a few words about antique mosaic work.
The art of depicting objects by means of small cubes of marble, stone,
or terra-cotta was invented about 300 years before the Christian era.
From a very simple beginning it gradually developed itself, until under
the first emperors we find the most complicated ornaments, and even
large historical compositions, executed in mosaic. The use of mosaic for
the floors of temples and dwelling-houses was universal wherever the
Romans spread. It was not confined to Imperial Rome or to luxurious
Pompeii, but is invariably found wherever a wealthy Roman planted his
villa, whether in the vicinity of the great Sahara Desert, or in the
less savage neighborhood of the Isle of Wight. As your average modern
Briton cannot do without his carpets, so the ancient Roman could not be
happy without his tessellated pavement. In spite, however, of this
widespread fashion, we do not find mosaic used as a means of wall
decoration; it was almost exclusively employed for floors and tables.
Some of these small cabinet pieces are beautifully inlaid, and, as works
of art, are by no means contemptible. In a very few which have been
preserved to us, we find specimens of the “opus sectile” of the Romans.
This differed from ordinary mosaic by the tesseræ being cut into the
form of the object to be depicted, and then accurately put together like
a puzzle map. The well-known four pigeons perched on a tazza, discovered
at Tivoli, is, I believe, the most beautiful specimen extant of the
ordinary Roman cabinet mosaic.
The examples of Roman tessellated work applied to perpendicular surfaces
are so rare and so unimportant that we cannot consider them as
prototypes of the subsequent gigantic mosaic wall-pictures. The
intermediate links are at any rate wanting. There is one, and only one,
mosaic, that of St. Costanza, near Rome, which might be viewed as the
missing link. It is supposed to have been executed toward the end of the
fourth century, and belongs essentially to the decorative school of
ancient pagan art. Indeed, so numerous are the little cupids and genii,
and so prodigal has the artist been of vine tendrils, that the building
containing it was formerly supposed to have been a temple of Bacchus. It
is now, however, known that this, the earliest specimen of wall mosaic,
was executed not in honor of Bacchus, but as a monument to the Christian
Emperor Constantine’s two daughters.
Not until the fifth century do we get to those colossal figures, those
blue and gold backgrounds, those richly ornamented draperies, which
constitute the true starting-point of ecclesiastical art. We often hear
that Cimabue is the father of modern art, but the only reason for
making him a kind of art Adam is because his name has been handed down
to us. The real fathers of modern Christian art are the nameless authors
of these gorgeous though somewhat grim mosaics.
Most art historians have included these splendid works in the later
Roman period. They cannot certainly be called truly Byzantine, although
they have a decided Byzantine flavor about them, and it is probable that
many of them were executed by Greek or Byzantine artists; but, on the
other hand, they are so strikingly dissimilar to late Roman work that
they ought to be classed in a school by themselves. The forms of the
figures are of course stiff and lifeless, if compared to the antique or
to sixteenth-century art; but they are quite graceful and animated when
compared with the dead ugliness of the real Byzantine work. There is a
certain grandeur, _sui generis_, about them (particularly in the
Justinian and Theodora mosaics of Ravenna) quite independent of their
size and gorgeous ornamentation, which we never find in later Byzantine
work.
The mosaics of the sixth century are in no way different in style from
those of the fifth. The finest specimens of this period are the
well-known mosaics of SS. Cosmo and Damiano in Rome. The head and figure
of the gigantic Christ, which forms the centre, has been much eulogized
by critics; but I confess I was disappointed when I last saw this
mosaic. Size, and perhaps antiquity, have a good deal to do with the
awe-inspiring qualities attributed to this work.
If the art displayed in this figure were really of a high quality, some
of its beauty would be retained in a reproduction on a small scale.
However much the panels of the Sistine Chapel may be reduced, they
always retain their original grandeur, whereas this over-praised figure
appears to me to lose all its imposing appearance when copied or
engraved on a small scale.
Of historical or Biblical compositions, properly so-called, there are
none extant of this period. The cause of this is partly no doubt owing
to the nature of the materials then in use. Mosaic is certainly not
suitable for figures in action, nor for complicated compositions; but
there is also another reason for the absence of subject-pictures during
the whole of the long interval between the early Roman emperors and
Giotto, and that is, they were not wanted.
There were no wealthy patricians in those dark ages who required their
villas decorated, no Mæcenas to give a helping hand to struggling
genius. The Church was the only patron the poor artists of the period
had, and a very hard and narrow-minded patron she was, reducing men who
(for aught we know) may have had some talent, to the level of mere
workmen and artificers, strictly limiting the range of their subjects
and fettering them with traditional rules.
We are now fast approaching the true Byzantine period of art. Historians
tell us that Byzantine or Greek Christian art was the offspring of the
Eastern Church, influenced originally by ancient Greek art. It seems
hard to believe that these hideous deformities should have descended
from ancient Greek sculpture. It is a kind of Darwinian theory turned
upside down, but still it may be true.
Ancient Greek does not necessarily mean the art of Phidias and
Praxiteles. It may mean the barbaric sculpture which preceded the advent
of these great masters, and I confess there is something in the odious
grimace and the stiff draperies of Byzantine figures which reminds me of
certain very early Greek work.
The introduction of the Byzantine style into Italy seems to have been
very gradual. The school existed at Constantinople certainly in the
fifth century, and possibly much earlier.
Its influence may be traced in the large Italian mosaics of the sixth
century, but it was not till near the year 700, when Constantinople was
fairly established as the capital of the world, that it became in all
its ugliness the dominant school in Italy.
The Church of the fifth and sixth centuries, with all its
narrow-mindedness in the choice of subjects, gave the artist a certain
amount of liberty in his drawing and flesh-painting, but about the year
700 even this liberty was denied him.
Certain types were invented by monkish painters, that is, by men who
were violently opposed to every thing that made life agreeable. These
men, it is needless to say, were quite untrained artists, but in their
uncouth way they endeavored to substitute their own ideal of humanity
for the real thing, and they succeeded only too well. The ghastly type
being once firmly established, all subsequent artists of this school
were obliged to conform to it. In the second Nicene Council, A.D. 787,
it was decreed that:
“It is not the invention of the painter which creates the picture, but
an inviolable law, a tradition of the Church. It is not the painters,
but the holy fathers, who have to invent and to dictate.
“To them manifestly belongs the composition, to the painter only the
execution.”
As I have already stated, there is good reason for believing that the
holy fathers not only dictated the composition, but interfered pretty
considerably with the execution, insisting as they did on ascetic,
cadaverous heads and an indiscriminate use of gold.
There may have been another cause besides morbid asceticism which in the
ninth century caused the Church to adopt such an unearthly type of
humanity; namely, the fear of the Jews and Mahometans, who were very
numerous at Constantinople.
It was natural that the growing sanctity of the grim mosaics should be
associated in the minds both of Jew and Mahometan with idol-worship,
and accordingly we find that the Emperor Leo the Isaurian wished to
conciliate his non-Christian subjects by the prohibition of all
representation of the human form.
This, however, did not suit the monks. A synod was called, and
ultimately it was agreed that sculpture alone should be interdicted; but
may we not suppose that a kind of compromise was made about painting,
and that it was settled that any near approach to the human form should
be tabooed, that art in short was to be of the nature of that which
graced the Auld Brig of Ayr?--
“Forms like some bedlam statuary’s dream,
The crazed creations of misguided whim,
Forms might be worshipped on the bended knee,
And still the second dread command be free,
Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea.”
Kugler’s description of these Byzantine heads is so good that I cannot
refrain from giving it. He says:
“The large ill-shaped eyes stare straight forward; a deep unhappy line,
in which ill-humor seems to have taken up its permanent abode, extends
from brow to brow beneath the bald and heavily-wrinkled forehead. The
nose has the broad ridge of the antique still left above, but is narrow
and pinched below, the anxious nostrils corresponding with the deep
lines on each side of them.
“The mouth is small, but the somewhat protruding lower lip is in
character with the melancholy of the whole picture. As long as such
representations are confined to gray-headed saints and ecclesiastics
they may be tolerated, but when the introduction of a kind of smirk is
intended to convey the idea of a youthful countenance this type becomes
intolerable. Even the Madonna, to whose countenance the meagreness of
asceticism was hardly applicable, here assumes a thoroughly peevish
expression, and was certainly never represented under so unattractive an
aspect.”
I have given you this quotation from Kugler, in order to show you the
opinion of a learned and liberal-minded writer, who certainly cannot be
called a severe critic.
He goes on to compare Byzantine with Chinese art, which is, I think,
rather hard upon the poor Celestials.
Both styles of figure-painting are equally conventional, and equally
untrue to nature, but Chinese figures are far more cheerful and
decorative than the unhappy Byzantine.
A room decorated by a Chinese artist would be a pleasant place to live
in; but who except a long-distance walker, a forty days’ faster, or one
of our modern votaries of self-inflicted martyrdom, would care about
inhabiting a house hung with Byzantine pictures?
In these pictures the draperies gradually became more and more wooden,
until at last they got to be thoroughly in keeping with the heads. There
was a traditional arrangement of folds derived from the late Roman
works, but this arrangement, though originally founded on sound
principles, became in the hands of Byzantine artificers most untrue and
stupid. The folds used to be indicated by a number of unmeaning straight
lines, regardless of the form underneath.
The one redeeming feature in the art of Byzantium was the treatment of
ornament. Founded partly on the late Roman as existing in numerous
temples of Asia Minor during the reign of the Cæsars, and partly on the
Persian style as seen at Persepolis, Palmyra, and elsewhere, Byzantine
ornamentation is both rich and graceful. The Arabs and Moors carried the
intricacies of Byzantine tracery still further, until the _ne plus
ultra_ was reached at the Alhambra; but to my taste the original
Byzantine style of ornamentation is bolder and more effective than the
elaborate Mauresque.
There is no want of taste or invention betrayed here. Indeed there is
far more variety than in the somewhat overloaded Roman style of
ornamentation, as may be seen at once by comparing Byzantine capitals
with the debased Corinthian of the Romans. This excellence (not only in
architectural detail but in every department of ornamental art) shows
clearly that when the artists had free play they where not deficient in
taste, and that we must ascribe the utter badness of Byzantine
figure-painting to the proper cause; namely, to the veto the Church
seems to have set on the study of the human form.
The principal difference between the Byzantine and Romanesque
ornamentation is the more frequent occurrence in the latter of
geometrical patterns, formed principally by squares and equilateral
triangles intersecting each other. The walls and pavements of the
Romanesque churches of Italy abound with examples of this geometric
decoration. In Romanesque ornament again, gold and mosaic are not so
universally used as in Byzantine; but the transition between the two
styles was so gradual, and they were so closely connected, that it is
almost impossible to draw the line between them.
Italy was in a very miserable and disturbed state during the dark
centuries of the Middle Ages, being overrun by barbarous invaders and
often afflicted by internecine wars, so that even without the leaden
hand of the Church stifling all original talent, it is very improbable
that any improvement in art could have been made.
For art to thrive, it is absolutely necessary that a country should be
undisturbed and tolerably prosperous; although it by no means follows
that a prosperous country _must_ produce great artists. Take, for
instance, the Republic of Venice during the Middle Ages, which, whilst
Italy was being vexed with endless invasions and civil war, enjoyed
great prosperity; and yet not a single attempt was made by her artists
to emancipate themselves from the dead level of Byzantine rules. On the
contrary, the famous early mosaics of St. Mark’s are amongst the most
characteristic specimens of Byzantine art which have been preserved to
us.
Of their original splendor (as far as gold and workmanship could
contribute to it) there can be no doubt, but of legitimate art there is
no trace. Like all the work of this school, whether mosaic or fresco,
the figures are done by routine, and are as lifeless and mean in
character as the worst Byzantine types. Of course I am speaking of the
series of _early_ mosaics in St. Mark’s. The later ones executed in the
twelfth century, although very Byzantine in character, partake largely
of the general improvement which was noticeable at that time.
The tremendous rapidity with which Byzantine frescoes used to be
executed is no excuse for their badness. Had the artists given ten times
the labor they would have done no better. All original design was
prohibited; every thing was done from tracings of previous works. These
tracings were reproduced on the wall to be painted, and the flesh tints
were filled in with a uniform flat color, sometimes of a brick-dust and
sometimes of a green hue. The draperies were done in the same way,
first a flat tint and then a few unmeaning black lines to represent
folds. This process was entirely mechanical, the lines having no respect
whatever for the limbs underneath.