Stokes in association with tempera painting.
[Illustration: ITALIAN CASSONE, NO. 317--1894
(VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM).]
Stamped work, again, mentioned by Cennino, is another distinct method
in gesso decoration. Of this a very beautiful example is the early
fourteenth-century Italian cassone (No. 317--1894). This cassone is
decorated with figures of knights and ladies on horseback, in hawking
and hunting array, each figure being silhouetted in clear profile in
a separate square panel, in white, upon a black or a red ground,
alternately. These spaces or panels are divided horizontally by
bands of running ornament in relief, and, vertically by bands of
thin wrought iron foliated at the edges which form protecting and
strengthening bands for the chest. The stamps from which these figures
were produced must have been most delicately cut. They are full of
fine detail and charming in design. It is not quite clear how they
could have been so cleanly stamped upon the ground, unless perhaps,
the edges and outlines were carefully gone round and cleared
afterwards, or the paste in which they were stamped, perhaps being
slow in setting and more or less elastic, might have allowed of their
being stamped cleanly out of the material separately and applied to
the gesso ground or the chest afterwards.[10]
In design these figures (on the cassone illustrated) are characterized
by a certain graceful severity, almost Greek-like in its ornamental
restraint, yet in the delicate invention and richness of the
decorative details of the costumes and housings of the horses they are
oriental in treatment.
It has often been said that human figures cannot be repeated with
satisfactory decorative effect, but this cassone is surely a striking
instance to the contrary, as the recurring effect of these delicately
silhouetted and slightly formalized figures and horses is extremely
refined and beautiful.
[Illustration: SHIELD IN GILDED GESSO,
NO. 3--1865 (VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM).]
We might be able to discover examples of gesso decoration in which
stamped work or moulded work was used for repeating parts, and
freehand work for other parts. In the Museum examples the majority
seem to have been worked directly with a free hand. There is a fine
example of how gesso lends itself to a bold heraldic treatment in
the Museum collection (No. 3--1865), a tournament shield on which a
griffin, sable, is emblazoned on a field, or. The sable griffin in
bold relief is not only a fine heraldic beast, but is decoratively
spaced and relieved upon the gold field, the richness of which is
greatly enhanced by the fine raised diaper pattern worked all over it
in effective ornamental contrast to the bolder relief and treatment of
the charge. It is possible stamps may have been used for the diaper
of the field. The work belongs to the second half of the fifteenth
century and is from the Palazzo Guadagni, Florence.
[Illustration: FRONT OF CASSONE IN GILDED GESSO, NO. 727--1884
(VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM)]
One of the charms of gesso work in ornamental effect is the softened,
floated, or half melted look given to the forms which take the lustre
of gilding so agreeably. This character no doubt is given by the use
of the brush in floating or dropping on the forms of the ornament.
In No. 727--1884 of the Museum collection a particularly rich and
dignified ornamental effect is produced by the contrasting allied
elements of the figure reliefs in the large lozenge-shaped enclosures,
with the rich gilded formal diaper of the heraldic sphinx, or
human-headed lion, which, in close repetition, forms the diaper on the
main field of the decoration. The raised work in this example has
the softened molten or beaten character above spoken of. The marriage
coffer (No. 718--1884) is an instance of purely ornamental treatment
in raised and gilded gesso on wood, consisting mainly of foliated
scroll forms characteristic of the early Italian Renascence work,
and here again the raised patterns have the soft rich look, as if the
ornament had been squeezed or floated upon the surface of the wood,
somewhat in the way in which confectioners squeeze sugar ornaments
upon cakes. Sugar, by the way was an occasional ingredient in the
preparation of gesso, as Cennino mentions.
[Illustration: MARRIAGE COFFER, NO. 718--1884
(VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM).]
[Illustration: MARRIAGE COFFER, NO. 247--1894
(VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM).]
No. 247--1894, is a marriage coffer of walnut which has a
symmetrically and formally planned scheme of raised decoration in
gesso upon its front which suggests an earlier ornamental origin than
the actual date of its production, perhaps, given as the end of the
fourteenth century, as it resembles in character the textile patterns
of the thirteenth century or earlier. The treatment of the gesso
relief work is peculiar, and it appears as if an extremely softened,
even and almost flattened effect had been aimed at, without any
special emphasis on particular parts.
[Illustration: MARRIAGE COFFER, NO. 58--1867
(VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM).]
The rich encrusted effect of another treatment of gesso decoration
characteristic of later fifteenth century work is shown in the
beautiful coffer, No. 58--1867, the painted shields of arms being in
ornamental contrast. Here we have an instance of the use of painting
to relieve gesso decoration, as distinct from the use of gesso work to
enrich the effect in painting.
Gesso decoration was also finely and freely used for small caskets
and other objects and with delightful results, as the rich Museum
collection again demonstrates.
[Illustration: COFFER, NO. 9--1890
(VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM).]
The coffret, No. 9--1890, is an interesting instance of this
adaptability of gesso and the extraordinary variety and richness of
effect obtainable; almost emulating carved work in the bolder parts
of its relief, and yet with a softness and richness of its own. The
designs are singularly interesting and spirited, and the whole work
fully deserves the encomium suggested by its motto (in Lombardic
letters on the lid) "Onesta e bella."
[Illustration: GESSO BOX, NO. 5757--1859
(VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM).]
In No. 5757--1859 we have another good example of gesso decoration
on a small scale, and its rich ornate effect in a well-balanced
distribution of ornament adapted to a circular form, showing the fine
sense of scale and quantity in ornament which distinguishes Italian
work of this period--the first half of the fifteenth century.
[Illustration: FRONT OF A COFFER, NO. 7830--1861
(VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM).]
Finally, in my last example (No. 7830--1861), the panel of a coffer
belonging to the early sixteenth century, we see another use and
treatment of gesso--to soften and enrich the effect of woodcarving
and to make a good surface for gilding. The figures here are carved in
bold relief and overlaid with a coating of gesso.
All carved work to be gilded was treated in this way with gesso, which
greatly softens the effect, giving a smooth surface for the gilding
and increases its richness, especially when done over Armenian bole,
which we may see was used under the gilding of these raised gesso
ornaments generally--another method which is being revived with the
general revival of the forgotten arts of design and handicraft in our
own time.
NOTE.--With reference to the early use of gesso, the extremely
interesting and remarkable recent discoveries of Prof.
Flinders Petrie in Egypt in the shape of mummies of the Roman
period of the first century A.D., in addition to the light
they throw on antique portrait painting, show that gilded
gesso enrichment over linen was freely used at that period,
some of the masks being moulded, and the ornament apparently
stamped, the toes of each mummy being modelled and gilded and
burnished, and the wrappings relieved with gilded buttons of
gesso.
[Footnote 9: Before the appointment of Sir Cecil Smith.]
[Footnote 10: Cennino describes a method of cutting stamps in
_stone_ (Chapter 170) to be used as moulds for figures to be
applied to the decoration of chests or coffers, but he speaks
of beating tin into these moulds and forming the figures in
this way, afterwards backing them or filling them in with
gesso grosso, cutting them out and sticking them on the chest
with glue, gilding them and adding colour and varnish.]
NOTES ON THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS IN ART
NOTES ON THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS IN ART
Looking back over the vast field of historic art it is obvious
that the representation of animals has occupied a very important
position--even the prehistoric cave-men display their artistic
instinct in animal draughtsmanship, and in that alone, and their
naturalistic scratched and incised outlines have set down for us in
unerring characterization, the forms of the mastodon, reindeer, and
other animals of the primitive hunter.
Judging from these relics it would seem as if naturalistic sketching
preceded systematic ornamental or decorative treatment of animals in
design such as distinguishes the art of the ancient civilizations of
the East.
[Illustration: Egyptian treatment of birds.
from hieroglyphics of the 18^{th} Dynasty.
Tombs of the kings. Thebes.]
Long before such systematization as we find in ancient Egyptian art,
no doubt the power of depicting animals became important in the
tribal state, when it was necessary for each tribe to have their
distinguishing totem, and to be able to establish their identity or
respectability by unmistakable portraits, if not of their ancestors,
at least of their protecting animal deities and symbolic progenitors.
Nature worship, which became elaborated in a symbolic religious system
under the ancient Egyptians, under the conditions of mural and glyptic
art led to that severe and dignified formalism combined with essential
characterization in the treatment of birds and animals which has
never been surpassed and which have given splendid types for the
mural painter and sculptor for all time. Heavier and more formal and
architectural in their sculptural treatment of symbolic animals, such
as the winged bulls which form essential architectural features, the
Assyrians, when they came to the treatment of actual scenes of life
(such as the lion-hunts of their kings, carved in low relief on the
walls of their palaces,) showed a freer and more naturalistic feeling
which breaks through a prevailing formalism and convention sometimes
with almost startling power, as in the celebrated wounded lioness of
the Nineveh slabs in the British Museum.
[Illustration: Lion from Assyrian Bas-relief.]
[Illustration: Persian Lion from the frieze at Susa
(Perrot & chipiez)]
[Illustration: Lion from a Theban bas-relief.
(Perrot & chipiez)]
There is a considerable resemblance in treatment between the Assyrian
lion in sculpture and the lion of ancient Persia as he appears at the
palace of Susa, though, heightened with enamel, the latter acquires
a certain decorative and distinctive ferocity. A lion from a Theban
bas-relief shows the simpler and more abstract treatment of Egyptian
art.
This Perso-Assyrian type of lion might almost be called a central
Asian type, and is curiously perpetuated in the well-known supporters
of the pillar over the gate of Mycenæ.
In fact the later Greek lion shows marked traces of his descent from
his Asian prototypes. The influence of the same decorative formalism,
more especially of the mane and hirsute appendages, is indeed
traceable through Byzantine times, from the bronze lion of St. Mark
to the heraldic lions of the middle ages. The same influence is seen
again in the remarkable group of lions forming the capital of a column
discovered at Sarnath near Benares in India, associated with many
other sculptures of Graeco-Buddhist origin.
[Illustration: Græco-Buddhist Group of Lions carved in marble
forming summit of a column excavated at Sarnath n^r. Benares]
For perfect monumental treatment of horses, when truthful action
and vitality are perfectly united with linear rhythm and decorative
effect, we must still turn to the pan-athenaic frieze--despite the
opinion of the Yorkshire horse-dealer who pronounced them "only damned
galloways, not worth ten pounds apiece!" They remain full of life and
movement and as examples of most delicate relief sculpture governed by
ornamental feeling.
[Illustration: Animal forms from early Greek pottery]
I should just like to mention, while speaking of Greek art, the
practice of the early vase painter, who, frequently using animals
as his main decorative motive, had a system by which he was able
to harmonize many different kinds in, say, a running border, or
succession of borders. This was done partly through the influence of
the brush and partly by the recognition of typical resemblances even
in apparently diverse forms. The basis of unity was the oval or ovoid
shape of the bodies of all animals and birds. The vase painter with
his ornamental purpose in view exaggerated this resemblance, governing
his individual shapes by a sort of invisible volute-like curves, he
gained a rhythmic decorative effect without loss of identity in his
forms.
With the development of heraldry in mediaeval times we come upon a
world of spirited and vividly decorative design in which the forms of
animals play a very important part. A very instructive study might be
made of the mediaeval heraldic lion alone. The heraldic designer
had to be emphatic in his forms, and distinct though simple in
characterization. As with the Greek vase painter, profile best served
his purpose, and effective silhouette became all important. When the
lion is "passant regardant" in mediaeval heraldry the full face has
a curiously human character, as in the arms of Prince John at Eltham
which Mr. G. W. Eve gives in his "Heraldry as Art."
[Illustration: The Lion in English heraldry.
Arms of Prince John of Eltham, Westminster Abbey.]
Among the finest examples of the treatment of animals in decorative
art of an heraldic and symbolic character are the designs of the
twelfth and thirteenth-century textiles, in the celebrated Sicilian
silks, or those of Lucca of the fourteenth century. In these fabrics
the animal forms are used with the greatest ornamental effect, the
conditions of the repeat of the pattern and the exigences of the
loom being essential, and, frankly acknowledged, contribute to the
character and beauty of the result.
It has always been the frank and workmanlike acceptance of the
necessary conditions of the materials and methods of production,
which, while defining the character of the treatment, gives both
character and beauty to decorative art, and we find this especially
true in regard to the treatment of animal forms in all kinds of
design.
[Illustration: SICILIAN SILK, THIRTEENTH CENTURY (FISHBACH).]
[Illustration: SICILIAN SILK, THIRTEENTH CENTURY (FISHBACH).]
[Illustration: SICILIAN SILK, THIRTEENTH CENTURY (FISHBACH).]
The pursuit of superficial imitation in modern times, the pictorial
aim which includes atmospheric effect and the representation of
values, textures, and surfaces, extending its influence over all the
arts of design has done much to destroy the dignity, the character,
and the decorative reserve of ancient and mediaeval design in the
treatment of animals; the so-called naturalistic aim producing
palpably absurd effects in sculpture and in heraldry, for instance.
With the modern revival of design and knowledge of the handicrafts
this mistake has been largely corrected. Artists have discovered the
peculiar qualities proper to different materials and processes and
their value as means of expression in design is much more generally
understood and acknowledged, while fresh study of nature has helped,
with these, to make a fresh and appropriate convention in the
treatment of animals possible. The Japanese have taught us that
marvellous fidelity to nature may be united with decorative effect
in the treatment of animals--especially birds and fishes, and that
certain facts of structure and surface or colour may become, under
skilful treatment, brilliant parts of a design--as the scales of a
fish in inlays of pearl, or in lacquer: the plumage of a bird in silk
embroidery, or the system of structure of the feathers expressed in
the delicate lines of cloisonné enamel. Examples of Chinese art might
be referred to also for excellence in the same qualities united with
more decorative reserve and dignity.
[Illustration: FROM THE "HUNDRED BIRDS" OF BARI.]
[Illustration: Peacock bracket.
Man Mandir Palace. Gwalior.]
I have not mentioned Indian art, except the example at Sarnath, which,
at least, as regards the Hindu side abounds with examples of the
decorative treatment of animals, the temples being frequently a
mass of animal life in carving, continuous courses being formed of
elephants, horses, and bulls in succession. The peacock, too, being
a sacred bird, constantly appears. At the old palace of Man Mandir
at Gwalior, Central India, I saw a carved stone bracket in which
a peacock had been very effectively treated for its constructive
purpose: and in the south, at Tanjore, I saw the splendid bird, in
the quick, with tail like a sweeping robe, perched upon the sacred
colossal bull which, carved in black stone (or marble, darkened with
successive libations of votive oil) reposes in the court of the great
temple, and whose living prototype might easily be found drawing an
ox-cart in the town.
[Illustration: Elephant bracket
Man Mandir Palace Gwalior]
At Gwalior, too, I noted a treatment of the elephant in a carved stone
bracket in the old palace of Man Mandir, which in structure recalled
the wondrous columns of the temple at Steerungum at Trichinopoly
in the south, though in the latter case the subject is mainly the
horseman, but the resemblance is in the arrangement which seems
characteristic of Indian (Hindu) carving. At the Guest House, Gwalior,
also, elephants' heads were treated ingeniously as the corbels
supporting balconies. It was modern work, but evidently influenced by
the carvings in the old palace above mentioned. There was an abundance
of floral carving and geometric pierced work in this Guest House,
besides, extremely skilful and beautiful in detail, showing that the
modern Hindu architectural carver had by no means lost his cunning.
This, of course, was a native state.
[Illustration: Elephant corbels Guest House Gwalior]
One almost wonders that golden images of favourite race-horses are not
set up in--well, some of our public places, for it cannot be said
that there is no animal worship in our own country, though the
votive offerings in art usually take the form of sporting prints, or
paintings of fat stock with straight backs and short horns.
[Illustration: ELEPHANT CORBELS, GUEST HOUSE, GWALIOR.]
Animal painting was once an honoured and prosperous career in England,
and prints after Landseer covered a considerable acreage in the early
Victorian epoch. Do not his lions still support Nelson in Trafalgar
Square, and perhaps afford some protection to unpopular speakers on
that historic plinth? I think, however, most of us would prefer the
little lion which was modelled by Alfred Stevens, both as a dignified
representation of our National Totem and as an example of native
artistic style and treatment.
[Illustration: Lion by Alfred Stevens,
formerly part of the outer iron railing of the British Museum.]
MODERN ASPECTS OF LIFE AND THE SENSE OF BEAUTY
[Illustration]
MODERN ASPECTS OF LIFE AND THE SENSE OF BEAUTY
That modern social and economic conditions tend to destroy beauty in
the outward aspects of human life and nature: the thesis, thus stated,
would seem almost a self-evident proposition; yet I am by no means
sure that sensitiveness to beauty--or to its absence--in our daily
surroundings is so very common (or even that there is a common
understanding as to the idea of beauty) that it would obtain general
assent without further explanation; and as I have undertaken to open
the case for the prosecution, if I may so term it, I will try to put
before you my reasons and conclusions on the matter.
My first witness shall be London, as London is typical and focusses
most of the effects of modern social and economic conditions. Now, we
hear a great deal of the beauty of London, but probably those who
talk of her beauty are really thinking of certain beauty spots or the
picturesqueness of certain favoured localities where the Thames and
the parks come in. Vast as London is, most of us really live for the
most part in a comparatively small London. Outside our usual haunts
lies a vast unknown region, of which indeed occasional glimpses are
obtained on being obliged to travel across or through the desert of
the multi-county-city.
Those whose London is bounded on the west by Kensington Gardens and
on the east by Mayfair, do not figure to themselves Clerkenwell or
Ratcliffe Highway, Bethnal Green or Bow, and would not care to
embrace the vast new suburbs spreading over the green fields in every
direction, or even to notice the comparatively select slums in the
shadow of Belgravian mansions. Supposing we approached our metropolis
by any of the great railway lines, there is nothing to indicate that
we are entering the greatest and wealthiest city in the world. We pass
rows and rows of mean dwellings--yellow brick boxes with blue slate
lids--crowded close to the railway in many places, with squalid little
backyards. We fly over narrow streets, and complex webs and networks
of railway lines, and thread our way through telegraph and telephone
wires, myriad smoking chimney-pots, steaming, throbbing works of
all kinds, sky signs, and the wonders of the parti-coloured poster
hoardings--which pursue one into the station itself, flaring on
the reluctant and jaded sight with ever-increasing importunity and
iteration, until one recalls the philosopher who remarked "Strange
that the world should need so much pressing to accept such apparently
obvious advantages!"
Inside the station, however large, all sense of architectural
proportion is lost by the strident labels of all sorts and sizes, and
banal devices on every scale and in every variety of crude colour,
stuck, like huge postage stamps, wherever likely to catch the eye.
The same thing meets us in the streets: in the busier commercial
quarters, too, it is a common device to hang the name of the firm in
gigantic gilt letters all over the windows and upper stories of the
shops; while the shops themselves become huge warehouses of goods,
protected by sheets of plate glass, upon the edges of which apparently
rest vast superstructures of flats and offices, playfully pinned
together by telegraph poles, and hung with a black spider's web of
wires, as if to catch any soaring ideas of better things that might
escape the _melée_ of the street. In the streets a vast crowd of
all sorts, sizes and conditions is perpetually hurrying to and fro,
presenting the sharpest contrasts in appearance and bearing. Here the
spruce and prosperous business man, there the ragged cadger, the club
idler, and the out-o'-work; there the lady in her luxurious carriage
or motor, in purple and fine linen, and there the wretched seller of
matches.
Modern street traffic, too, is of the most mixed and bewildering kind,
and the already too perilous London streets have been made much more
so by the motor in its various forms of van and 'bus, business or
private car. The aspect of a London street during one of the frequent
traffic blocks is certainly extraordinary, so variously sorted and
sized are the vehicles, wedged in an apparently inextricable jumble,
while the railways and tubes burrowed underground only add fresh
streams of humanity to the traffic, instead of relieving it.