be decorated in the Byzantine style, I will give Didron’s description of
Oriental fresco-painting. He was at Mount Athos about forty years ago,
and had the opportunity of seeing a monk and his five assistants at
work. Mount Athos has for the last thirteen centuries been the
headquarters and principal laboratory of Byzantine art, and a countless
number of pictures on wood are to this day exported thence as articles
of commerce to the Russian Empire. M. Didron says: “One pupil spread the
mortar on the wall; the master drew the outline, without either cartoon
or tracings; another pupil laid on the colors; a third gilt the nimbi,
painted the ornaments, and wrote the inscriptions, which the master
dictated to him from memory; and lastly, two boys were fully occupied in
grinding and mixing the colors.”
The subject was a Christ and eleven apostles (life size), and the time
taken to complete the work was under an hour!
I am not quite sure but what a couple of months’ experience in the Mount
Athos workshops might not be of advantage to some of our students in the
antique school.
Our traveller adds (I think quite unnecessarily) that the work seemed to
him very rude and coarse--but it can be easily understood that at this
rate a whole church could be covered with frescoes in a few days. “C’est
magnifique, mais ce n’est pas de l’art.”
From what I have said, you will understand the unchangeable nature of
Byzantine art. Pictures painted in this style may be more or less neatly
executed, but their artistic merit varies very little, whether they be
of the seventh or the nineteenth centuries, whether they decorate St.
Mark’s at Venice or an obscure monastery on Mount Athos. As an
illustration of this, note a picture in the National Gallery, by a Greek
artist of the name of Emmanuel. The date of this work is 1650. It was
therefore painted long after Titian, Raffaelle, P. Veronese, and all the
great masters had departed this life, and yet with all their glorious
works before his eyes what does this primeval artist produce? All I can
say is, “Go and see for yourselves.” Other schools have their ups and
downs. The Italian, the Flemish, the French, and the English schools
have all had, and will continue to have, their periods of elevation and
depression; but Byzantine painting always maintains its dead level, and
will continue to do so as long as the Greek Church lasts.
Pictures of this school are often associated with ideas of sanctity,
not only in holy Russia but in Western Europe. Almost all
miracle-working pictures belong to this class. The Calabrian peasant, or
the Andalusian muleteer, who would probably be unmoved by the Madonna di
S. Sisto, is wrought up to a high pitch of religious fervor at the
shrine of some olive Byzantine Virgin, with her pinched peevish face and
wooden shoulders.
That this class of pictures has at all times been held to be peculiarly
sacred, is proved from the fact that at Venice (even in the time of
Titian) the cultivation of the stiff Byzantine style, for popular
devotion, was maintained in juxtaposition with that of the most
perfectly developed form of painting.
We may smile at the Venetian religious world, but I am not sure that at
the present day an analogous tendency could not be imputed to some of
us.
Is there not to some æsthetic nostrils a kind of odor of sanctity about
mediæval perspective and composition? It is true that our revivalists do
not wish to go back to the Byzantine period for our religious art; the
Romanesque or at any rate the Quattro Cento style is the correct thing.
But why go back at all? I can quite understand that in restoring an old
cathedral it would be desirable to do so; but in a modern building
(whether gothic or not) to reproduce forms which we know to be
incorrect, and to introduce perspective which we know to be absurd,
seems to me to be carrying our reverence for the past a little too far.
A letter appeared in the _Times_ last summer which is so much to the
purpose that I really must read it to you:--
“_To the Editor of the ‘Times.’_”
June 30th.
“SIR,--I have before me a design for a window which it is proposed
to place in a village church in Lincolnshire, as one of a group
memorial of the late vicar, his widow, and two sons, clergymen, one
of them a missionary of the Church Missionary Society who died in
India. May I be allowed to describe the design? The window is of
two lights. The dexter represents a cardinal in red hat and
stockings, red robe with blue lining, and a nimbus round his head
of a color resembling olive-green. The sinister light has an
archbishop with mitre, pall, polychromatic vestments, and a blue
nimbus round his head; in his left hand a pastoral staff, and in
his right the Sacred Heart, crimson, with gold flames issuing from
the top. The drawing is signed by an eminent London firm, and is
submitted by the present vicar as a suitable memorial of his
predecessor, who was an Evangelical of the old school, and of his
widow, a lady whose dread of ‘Popery’ was almost morbid.”
Writers on art are fond of asserting that in spite of the repulsive
ugliness of the Byzantine types, we ought to be grateful to the school
for keeping the lamp of art alive during seven or eight centuries; but I
think that the history of the great revival does not bear out this
assertion. We find Giotto and his followers hampered with the old
traditions. We find Byzantine work rampant in Venice down to the time of
the Bellinis, impeding and indeed excluding all the various forms of
progress which were spreading over Northern Italy; and it may be noticed
that all the faults and weaknesses of the early Italian painters are
traceable to Byzantine sources. I question very much whether the revival
of art would not have been more rapid and complete had the Byzantine
school never existed.
The early reformers, Cimabue, Giotto, and Duccio, would have had the
great mosaics of the fifth century, and such remnants of ancient pagan
art as were then known, to inspire them. They would have been unfettered
by Byzantine tradition, and I think it probable that their works would
have been better in every respect.
Every one with any experience knows that it is easier to instil sound
principles of art into one who is totally uninstructed, than into one
who has already contracted a bad style of drawing; and as it is with
individuals, so also is it with schools and phases of art.
Then again it must be remembered that although the Byzantine school was
the dominant one during the Middle Ages, there were, in Italy, France,
and Germany, artists who had no connection with it, and whose
compositions, as seen in manuscripts and missals, will bear favorable
comparison with similar work by Greek artists of the same period.
I must refer you again to d’Agincourt’s book, where you will find a
great number of outlines from these miniatures.
In judging these works you must not, however, form your opinion as to
their merits entirely by d’Agincourt’s illustrations. They give a very
fair idea of the drawing and composition, but the charm of these small
paintings lies in their color and execution, which are sometimes very
beautiful.
The Bayeux tapestry, for instance, though charming in the original,
becomes very uninteresting and ugly when translated into black and
white.
The transition from Byzantine to Romanesque art was so gradual that it
is very difficult to decide when the change took place. Byzantine rules
and traditions had taken such firm root, that it was not till the end of
the fourteenth century that its influence was finally overcome.
We are, however, approaching the time of Guido da Siena and Guinto da
Pisa, and it is pleasant at last to know (or to suppose we know) the
names of two artists after centuries of anonymous work. The fact of
these names having been preserved shows at any rate that their bearers
were not mere workmen bound to execute the morbid fancies of the Church,
but painters of some repute, whose creations, though still very cramped
and stiff, show better modelling and a more intelligent execution than
are to be found in the works of their predecessors.
Every one has heard of Cimabue, but comparatively few have seen his
frescoes. I imagine that his best work is in the Church of St. Francis
at Assisi. I once spent six weeks at Assisi, and devoted a good deal of
time to the wall-paintings of the church.
The frescoes of Cimabue seemed to me infinitely better than his panel
pictures, but they were (even then) in such a state of decay that it was
difficult to form an opinion of them. This was twenty-two years ago, and
since that time I believe that the progress of decay has been very rapid
indeed. The Arundel Society had some admirable _fac-simile_ drawings of
these works executed five years ago.
It is curious how much more rapidly all the old frescoes are decaying
now than formerly.
I attribute this accelerated rate of ruin to the presence of gas in the
towns. At Pisa the Campo Santo frescoes are deteriorating much more
rapidly than before the introduction of gas into the town. I don’t know
whether Assisi is now blessed with a gasometer, but if it is, poor old
Cimabue’s work is doomed.
His famous Madonna, which was carried in triumphant procession through
the streets of Florence, is painted quite in the Greek style. The flesh
is better modelled, and the draperies of the surrounding angels are much
better drawn, than in any previous example of Byzantine work, but I
cannot understand the enthusiasm of the Florentines.
The specimen we have in the National Gallery appears to me to have been
much re-painted; the heads especially (although ugly enough to be early
work) are of a later character, and are painted in the fumbling,
uncertain way which is characteristic of restorers.
There are other artists of this period whose works show a great
improvement on the old Byzantine. These are Toriti, who executed some
fine mosaics in Rome; the brothers Cosmati, also of Rome; and Gaddo
Gaddi, the Florentine. The mosaics of the last named in the dome of the
baptistery at Florence are very highly commended, but they appear to me
rather improved Byzantine than true Romanesque. Indeed, with the single
exception of Cimabue’s frescoes at Assisi, I don’t know of any work of
the thirteenth century which has a true Romanesque character at all.
Giotto was (as every one knows) the pupil of Cimabue, and I believe that
the truth of the old story about Cimabue finding him when a shepherd boy
occupied in drawing a sheep, and taking him back to Florence as an
apprentice, has not yet been doubted. We can easily imagine the respect
and awe which this shepherd lad would feel for the greatest painter of
the capital, and can readily believe that the work of his early youth
would be founded entirely on that of his master. It is more than
probable that he served his apprenticeship at the great sanctuary of
piety and art which arose after the death of St. Francis at Assisi. At
any rate it is there that his earliest known, and to my mind his best,
works are to be found. The series of frescoes illustrative of the life
of the saint, may be considered as the starting-point of historical
painting in Italy. Compare the figures in these frescoes with the best
work of Cimabue, and notice what an enormous advance has been made. Here
we have natural, if somewhat timid, action, well-proportioned figures,
and skilful arrangement of drapery. I confess I was surprised to hear
that these works were anterior to his larger frescoes in the lower
church, which represent the glorification of St. Francis, and which
appeared to me to indicate a step backward toward Cimabue. It is
probable that in these last-named frescoes, which adorn the compartments
under the high altar, Giotto did not venture to depart much from the
traditional arrangement of his predecessors, and accordingly we find the
poor, meagre composition and the horizontal lines of heads cherished by
the thirteenth century painters.
Giotto would require a whole lecture to himself, were I to attempt an
account of what he did at Padua, Florence, Rome, and Naples. His
_chefs-d’œuvre_ are said to be in Florence, at the Church of St.
Croce. No less than four chapels in this church were decorated by him;
but, alas! there is very little left. Time, whitewash, and the
restorers, have done their work pretty effectually. Still, the mere
outlines of many of the groups show that these works may very well have
been the finest that the master ever produced.
I have seen the Arena Chapel at Padua, which is literally covered with
Giotto’s frescoes. It is many years since I was there, and very
possibly, were I to revisit the chapel, I might form a different
opinion, but at the time I was disappointed with the paintings, which
appeared to me weak in design and feeble in execution.
When we recollect that Giotto had the customs and prejudices of eight
centuries to contend against, no antiques at hand to guide and purify
his taste, no great predecessors to imitate, we cannot help paying
homage to the genius of the man who produced the St. Francis series of
frescoes at Assisi, and numberless other works, both at Florence and
elsewhere. I think that the true explanation of his wonderful success is
to be found in the old sheep-drawing anecdote. It shows that even as a
shepherd boy he felt that nature was the foundation of art. Instead of
working by mere routine, like the Byzantine painters, or, like his
master Cimabue, endeavoring to improve in the same direction, he went
direct to nature both for his compositions, his action, and his drapery.
To us it may appear the simplest thing in the world to make studies from
nature for our pictures, but in the time of Giotto such a course would
be unusual, and would be placed in the category of happy thoughts.
It may be argued that if he had lived in the tenth or eleventh century
instead of the fourteenth, he would never have been allowed by his
patrons to attempt such daring innovations. He must have remained in the
old beaten track. This is no doubt true enough, and there may have been
during the dark ages a dozen embryo Giottos whose genius had been
strangled by ecclesiastical leading-strings; but we are none the less
indebted to the man who gave the death-blow to the barbarous mechanical
craft which for long centuries had usurped the place of art.
Although anxious to do full justice to Giotto as a great art reformer, I
must admit that he had some very unpleasant peculiarities which were
blindly adopted, and, indeed, exaggerated, by many of his followers. The
most repulsive of these peculiarities is the sameness and meanness of
his heads. In the only specimen we have of his in the National Gallery
this fault is not conspicuous, but it is very noticeable in the pictures
of his school. Indeed, the family likeness which pervades all the heads
in the large Orcagna is almost ludicrous. In Giottesque heads the eyes
are a great deal too close together and never fairly open. The nose is
thin and pinched, and the jaws weak and shapeless. The type, in short,
is diametrically the opposite of the antique, and is (it must be
confessed) a very ignoble one.
The constant recurrence of this mean type is more apparent in his later
than in his early works, and it is probable that many of these
stereotyped heads were executed by his assistants, but nevertheless
Giotto is answerable for them.
Italian sculpture, as well as Italian painting, is greatly indebted to
Giotto, for it was he who designed the reliefs for the bronze gates of
the baptistery at Florence. These designs were executed in masterly
style by Andrea Pisano, and may be looked upon as the starting-point of
Italian sculpture. In fact, it is as the father of modern art rather
than as a perfect painter that the name of Giotto ought to be held in
reverence. Many of his successors of the next century, whom I shall
mention in the course of my lectures, approached much nearer to
perfection than did Giotto. The composition of their pictures is less
archaic, the heads have more individual character and are much better
drawn; but we ought always to bear in mind, that had Giotto never lived,
we should never have had a Masaccio, a Filippo Lippi, or a Beato
Angelico, and probably neither a Leonardo nor a Raffaelle.
Louis Quatorze is reported to have said: “L’etat c’est moi”; and Giotto
might with equal truth have declared: “L’art Romanesque c’est moi,” so
all-pervading was his influence. Besides the works of his immediate
followers, such as Taddeo Gaddi and Orcagna, Italy abounds with
Giottesque frescoes, whose authors are unknown, or at least doubtful.
The most important of these nameless works are the large frescoes which
cover the walls of the Capella degli Spagnuoli, in Sta. Maria Novella at
Florence. When I first saw these frescoes they were ascribed to Taddeo
Gaddi and Simone Memmi of Siena; but modern critics have justly, I
think, pronounced against this authorship. They appeared to me to be of
a later date, but I may have been misled by the disgraceful way in which
they have been retouched.
This retouching, or rather repainting, has been the ruin of many of the
early frescoes, and it is most extraordinary that in Italy (of all
places in the world) such barbarous mangling should ever have been
allowed. The real culprits are not the obscure bunglers who did the
work, but the ignorant monks or town councillors who employed them.
These Sta. Maria Novella frescoes are very characteristic of the
allegorical mania of the Romanesque period. One of them, we are told, is
meant to represent the “Wisdom of the Church,” but the allegory is so
obscure and the component parts so heterogeneous, that with the best
intentions it is all but impossible to understand the painter’s meaning.
Why should Grammar have a globe in her hand? and why should Logic have a
serpent under her veil? What has Abraham done that he should be
associated with arithmetic? and why should John of Damascus (who, for
some occult reason, typifies Hope) be mending his pen? If the strange
jumble in this fresco is bewildering, what shall we say to the
companion fresco which represents “the activity of the Church”? A dozen
or more different centres of activity are in full play simultaneously.
The faithful are portrayed in one part of the fresco as men and women,
and in another part as a flock of sheep. The Dominicanes, or Dominicans,
are playfully represented as black and white dogs, who are defending the
sheep against wolves. St. Dominic himself is preaching against heretics,
who are entreating pardon and burning their books; but it is hopeless to
give an idea of the confusion of imagery, of the blending of piety with
punning in this extraordinary fresco. If I again refer in the course of
my lectures to the Romanesque allegories, it is not that I am fascinated
by them, but because they are so numerous and so typical of the period
that it is impossible to ignore them.
It would, of course, be unjust to blame the artists for these
allegories, or for the numerous “Inferno” pictures. They probably had to
execute and make the best of the subjects that were given them. Dante
may very likely be answerable for much of the questionable taste of the
fourteenth century.
I shall endeavor, in my next lecture, to steer a middle course between
the modern blind adoration of the fifteenth century work, and the
cynical Philistinism which can discover nothing worthy of notice in this
interesting period.[1]
LECTURE III.
ON THE PAINTERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
Before proceeding to speak of the painters of the eighteenth century, it
will not be out of place to give a general sketch of the state of the
art toward the close of the seventeenth. I trust that in my last lecture
I made it clear to you that after Rubens and Vandyke no painter of any
talent appeared, to support the fame of the Flemish school, but that in
the northern provinces of Flanders and in Holland a whole constellation
of imitative painters arose, who, for truthful color and exquisite
skill, have rarely been equalled, and never surpassed. This brilliant
outburst of talent did not, however, last very long. Indeed, it may be
said with truth, that all the best Dutch pictures were painted within
the space of sixty years--from about 1620 to 1680. We then perceive a
gradual decline of the school, not such a rapid decay as overtook the
Antwerp and Brussels academies, but a perceptible inferiority both in
the color and the handling; the former became more opaque and heavy, and
less true, whilst the latter lost a good deal of its admirable
dexterity.
I know of no Dutch paintings of first-rate excellence unless it be some
of Van Huysum’s flower-pieces which were executed in the eighteenth
century.
If we turn to Italy, we find the art of painting, which had been
partially arrested in its downward course by the Eclectic and
Naturalistic schools, now getting lower and lower. Devoid alike of
original conception or good execution, the Italian painters of this time
were little better than coarse decorators. When I say that Luca Giordano
towers like a giant over his contemporaries, it will be easily
understood what a pigmy race they must have been.
In France, Poussin, Lesueur, Lebrun, and Claude Gelée, all died in the
latter half of the seventeenth century, leaving no worthy successors
behind them.
Germany, owing perhaps to her long civil wars and political troubles,
had produced no great artist since Holbein, and the English school was
as yet non-existent, so we may easily comprehend the very low level to
which art sank toward the beginning of the eighteenth century. When I
say that the English school was non-existent in the seventeenth century,
I do not mean that there were no painters in England. The Stuart princes
were generally liberal patrons of art, but all the best painters
patronized by them were foreigners. Vandyke, Sir Peter Lely, and even
Sir G. Kneller, were all foreigners, and the country was inundated with
third-rate Flemish and Italian painters. Of the latter, Verrio is a good
typical example. Charles II employed him to cover the ceilings and walls
of his palaces with tasteless sprawling allegories, and we learn from
Walpole that the sums paid by the king, or rather by the unfortunate
country, for these wretched parodies of Italian decorative painting,
were very considerable.
I think that of late years Sir Peter Lely has had scant justice done to
his talent. A contemporary of Vandyke, his portraits have many points of
resemblance with those of that master. His inferiority is chiefly
noticeable in the hands, dresses, and accessories of his portraits, but
his female heads are often very beautiful, and are singularly
characteristic of the period.
Sir Godfrey Kneller, although he lived well into the eighteenth century,
must be looked upon as a seventeenth-century painter, all his best work
having been done when he was comparatively young. He is another of those
predecessors of Reynolds whom it has been the fashion to villify and
decry. I have seen portraits by Kneller which were infinitely better
than much of the highly-praised portraiture of the last century; but
unfortunately this clever though intensely vain artist regarded painting
more as a lucrative trade than as a liberal profession. No one can wish
that Kneller had devoted his talents to the stupid allegorical style
then in fashion, instead of sticking to portraits; but what may be
wished is that he had been more conscientious, and less greedy for
money, in the particular branch of art to which he devoted himself.
In speaking of court patronage I noticed that the painters encouraged by
the Stuarts were all foreigners, but this does not seem to have been
done from systematic neglect of native talent, but simply because no
painters worthy of the name were born in England. The only real
Englishman of the century who rose above mediocrity was William Dobson,
and he had no reason to complain of want of royal patronage, for King
Charles appointed him at a very early age to be court painter on the
death of Vandyke, and used to call him the English Tintoretto.
From what I have seen of Dobson’s I don’t think I should have compared
him to Tintoretto. Nevertheless I consider him as a genuine artist, and
had he not died at the age of thirty-six he would probably have achieved
much greater fame.