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 colour 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 immortalised 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
sunburned 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 blent upon his features. Yet this
impression was but the prelude to his smile. When that first dawned,
some breath of humour 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. I broadened,
showing brilliant teeth, and grew into a noiseless laugh; and then I
saw before me Dosso's jester, the type of Shakspere'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 S. John. On her right stood the man
of Torcello with his keys, a new S. 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?
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