THE LAMP OF LIFE.
I. Among the countless analogies by which the nature and relations of
the human soul are illustrated in the material creation, none are more
striking than the impressions inseparably connected with the active and
dormant states of matter. I have elsewhere endeavored to show, that no
inconsiderable part of the essential characters of Beauty depended on
the expression of vital energy in organic things, or on the subjection
to such energy, of things naturally passive and powerless. I need not
here repeat, of what was then advanced, more than the statement which I
believe will meet with general acceptance, that things in other respects
alike, as in their substance, or uses, or outward forms, are noble or
ignoble in proportion to the fulness of the life which either they
themselves enjoy, or of whose action they bear the evidence, as sea
sands are made beautiful by their bearing the seal of the motion of the
waters. And this is especially true of all objects which bear upon them
the impress of the highest order of creative life, that is to say, of
the mind of man: they become noble or ignoble in proportion to the
amount of the energy of that mind which has visibly been employed upon
them. But most peculiarly and imperatively does the rule hold with
respect to the creations of Architecture, which being properly capable
of no other life than this, and being not essentially composed of things
pleasant in themselves,--as music of sweet sounds, or painting of fair
colors, but of inert substance,--depend, for their dignity and
pleasurableness in the utmost degree, upon the vivid expression of the
intellectual life which has been concerned in their production.
II. Now in all other kind of energies except that of man's mind, there
is no question as to what is life, and what is not. Vital sensibility,
whether vegetable or animal, may, indeed, be reduced to so great
feebleness, as to render its existence a matter of question, but when it
is evident at all, it is evident as such: there is no mistaking any
imitation or pretence of it for the life itself; no mechanism nor
galvanism can take its place; nor is any resemblance of it so striking
as to involve even hesitation in the judgment; although many occur which
the human imagination takes pleasure in exalting, without for an instant
losing sight of the real nature of the dead things it animates; but
rejoicing rather in its own excessive life, which puts gesture into
clouds, and joy into waves, and voices into rocks.
III. But when we begin to be concerned with the energies of man, we find
ourselves instantly dealing with a double creature. Most part of his
being seems to have a fictitious counterpart, which it is at his peril
if he do not cast off and deny. Thus he has a true and false (otherwise
called a living and dead, or a feigned or unfeigned) faith. He has a
true and a false hope, a true and a false charity, and, finally, a true
and a false life. His true life is like that of lower organic beings,
the independent force by which he moulds and governs external things; it
is a force of assimilation which converts everything around him into
food, or into instruments; and which, however humbly or obediently it
may listen to or follow the guidance of superior intelligence, never
forfeits its own authority as a judging principle, as a will capable
either of obeying or rebelling. His false life is, indeed, but one of
the conditions of death or stupor, but it acts, even when it cannot be
said to animate, and is not always easily known from the true. It is
that life of custom and accident in which many of us pass much of our
time in the world; that life in which we do what we have not purposed,
and speak what we do not mean, and assent to what we do not understand;
that life which is overlaid by the weight of things external to it, and
is moulded by them, instead of assimilating them; that, which instead of
growing and blossoming under any wholesome dew, is crystallised over
with it, as with hoar frost, and becomes to the true life what an
arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration of thoughts and
habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy, which can neither
bend nor grow, but must be crushed and broken to bits, if it stand in
our way. All men are liable to be in some degree frost-bitten in this
sort; all are partly encumbered and crusted over with idle matter; only,
if they have real life in them, they are always breaking this bark away
in noble rents, until it becomes, like the black strips upon the birch
tree, only a witness of their own inward strength. But, with all the
efforts that the best men make, much of their being passes in a kind of
dream, in which they indeed move, and play their parts sufficiently, to
the eyes of their fellow-dreamers, but have no clear consciousness of
what is around them, or within them; blind to the one, insensible to the
other, [Greek: nothroi]. I would not press the definition into its
darker application to the dull heart and heavy ear; I have to do with it
only as it refers to the too frequent condition of natural existence,
whether of nations or individuals, settling commonly upon them in
proportion to their age. The life of a nation is usually, like the flow
of a lava stream, first bright and fierce, then languid and covered, at
last advancing only by the tumbling over and over of its frozen blocks.
And that last condition is a sad one to look upon. All the steps are
marked most clearly in the arts, and in Architecture more than in any
other; for it, being especially dependent, as we have just said, on the
warmth of the true life, is also peculiarly sensible of the hemlock cold
of the false; and I do not know anything more oppressive, when the mind
is once awakened to its characteristics, than the aspect of a dead
architecture. The feebleness of childhood is full of promise and of
interest,--the struggle of imperfect knowledge full of energy and
continuity,--but to see impotence and rigidity settling upon the form of
the developed man; to see the types which once had the die of thought
struck fresh upon them, worn flat by over use; to see the shell of the
living creature in its adult form, when its colors are faded, and its
inhabitant perished,--this is a sight more humiliating, more melancholy,
than the vanishing of all knowledge, and the return to confessed and
helpless infancy.
Nay, it is to be wished that such return were always possible. There
would be hope if we could change palsy into puerility; but I know not
how far we can become children again, and renew our lost life. The
stirring which has taken place in our architectural aims and interests
within these few years, is thought by many to be full of promise: I
trust it is, but it has a sickly look to me. I cannot tell whether it be
indeed a springing of seed or a shaking among bones; and I do not think
the time will be lost which I ask the reader to spend in the inquiry,
how far all that we have hitherto ascertained or conjectured to be the
best in principle, may be formally practised without the spirit or the
vitality which alone could give it influence, value, or delightfulness.
IV. Now, in the first place--and this is rather an important point--it
is no sign of deadness in a present art that it borrows or imitates, but
only if it borrows without paying interest, or if it imitates without
choice. The art of a great nation, which is developed without any
acquaintance with nobler examples than its own early efforts furnish,
exhibits always the most consistent and comprehensible growth, and
perhaps is regarded usually as peculiarly venerable in its
self-origination. But there is something to my mind more majestic yet in
the life of an architecture like that of the Lombards, rude and
infantine in itself, and surrounded by fragments of a nobler art of
which it is quick in admiration and ready in imitation, and yet so
strong in its own new instincts that it re-constructs and re-arranges
every fragment that it copies or borrows into harmony with its own
thoughts,--a harmony at first disjointed and awkward, but completed in
the end, and fused into perfect organisation; all the borrowed elements
being subordinated to its own primal, unchanged life. I do not know any
sensation more exquisite than the discovering of the evidence of this
magnificent struggle into independent existence; the detection of the
borrowed thoughts, nay, the finding of the actual blocks and stones
carved by other hands and in other ages, wrought into the new walls,
with a new expression and purpose given to them, like the blocks of
unsubdued rocks (to go back to our former simile) which we find in the
heart of the lava current, great witnesses to the power which has fused
all but those calcined fragments into the mass of its homogeneous fire.
V. It will be asked, How is imitation to be rendered healthy and vital?
Unhappily, while it is easy to enumerate the signs of life, it is
impossible to define or to communicate life; and while every intelligent
writer on Art has insisted on the difference between the copying found
in an advancing or recedent period, none have been able to communicate,
in the slightest degree, the force of vitality to the copyist over whom
they might have influence. Yet it is at least interesting, if not
profitable, to note that two very distinguishing characters of vital
imitation are, its Frankness and its Audacity; its Frankness is
especially singular; there is never any effort to conceal the degree of
the sources of its borrowing. Raffaelle carries off a whole figure from
Masaccio, or borrows an entire composition from Perugino, with as much
tranquillity and simplicity of innocence as a young Spartan pickpocket;
and the architect of a Romanesque basilica gathered his columns and
capitals where he could find them, as an ant picks up sticks. There is
at least a presumption, when we find this frank acceptance, that there
is a sense within the mind of power capable of transforming and renewing
whatever it adopts; and too conscious, too exalted, to fear the
accusation of plagiarism,--too certain that it can prove, and has
proved, its independence, to be afraid of expressing its homage to what
it admires in the most open and indubitable way; and the necessary
consequence of this sense of power is the other sign I have named--the
Audacity of treatment when it finds treatment necessary, the
unhesitating and sweeping sacrifice of precedent where precedent becomes
inconvenient. For instance, in the characteristic forms of Italian
Romanesque, in which the hypaethral portion of the heathen temple was
replaced by the towering nave, and where, in consequence, the pediment
of the west front became divided into three portions, of which the
central one, like the apex of a ridge of sloping strata lifted by a
sudden fault, was broken away from and raised above the wings; there
remained at the extremities of the aisles two triangular fragments of
pediment, which could not now be filled by any of the modes of
decoration adapted for the unbroken space; and the difficulty became
greater when the central portion of the front was occupied by columnar
ranges, which could not, without painful abruptness, terminate short of
the extremities of the wings. I know not what expedient would have been
adopted by architects who had much respect for precedent, under such
circumstances, but it certainly would not have been that of the
Pisan,--to continue the range of columns into the pedimental space,
shortening them to its extremity until the shaft of the last column
vanished altogether, and there remained only its _capital_ resting in
the angle on its basic plinth. I raise no question at present whether
this arrangement be graceful or otherwise; I allege it only as an
instance of boldness almost without a parallel, casting aside every
received principle that stood in its way, and struggling through every
discordance and difficulty to the fulfilment of its own instincts.
VI. Frankness, however, is in itself no excuse for repetition, nor
audacity for innovation, when the one is indolent and the other unwise.
Nobler and surer signs of vitality must be sought,--signs independent
alike of the decorative or original character of the style, and constant
in every style that is determinedly progressive.
Of these, one of the most important I believe to be a certain neglect or
contempt of refinement in execution, or, at all events, a visible
subordination of execution to conception, commonly involuntary, but not
unfrequently intentional. This is a point, however, on which, while I
speak confidently, I must at the same time reservedly and carefully, as
there would otherwise be much chance of my being dangerously
misunderstood. It has been truly observed and well stated by Lord
Lindsay, that the best designers of Italy were also the most careful in
their workmanship; and that the stability and finish of their masonry,
mosaic, or other work whatsoever, were always perfect in proportion to
the apparent improbability of the great designers condescending to the
care of details among us so despised. Not only do I fully admit and
re-assert this most important fact, but I would insist upon perfect and
most delicate finish in its right place, as a characteristic of all the
highest schools of architecture, as much as it is those of painting.
But on the other hand, as perfect finish belongs to the perfected art, a
progressive finish belongs to progressive art; and I do not think that
any more fatal sign of a stupor or numbness settling upon that
undeveloped art could possibly be detected, than that it had been _taken
aback_ by its own execution, and that the workmanship had gone ahead of
the design; while, even in my admission of absolute finish in the right
place, as an attribute of the perfected school, I must reserve to myself
the right of answering in my own way the two very important questions,
what _is_ finish? and what _is_ its right place?
VII. But in illustrating either of these points, we must remember that
the correspondence of workmanship with thought is, in existent examples,
interfered with by the adoption of the designs of an advanced period by
the workmen of a rude one. All the beginnings of Christian architecture
are of this kind, and the necessary consequence is of course an increase
of the visible interval between the power of realisation and the beauty
of the idea. We have at first an imitation, almost savage in its
rudeness, of a classical design; as the art advances, the design is
modified by a mixture of Gothic grotesqueness, and the execution more
complete, until a harmony is established between the two, in which
balance they advance to new perfection. Now during the whole period in
which the ground is being recovered, there will be found in the living
architecture marks not to be mistaken, of intense impatience; a struggle
towards something unattained, which causes all minor points of handling
to be neglected; and a restless disdain of all qualities which appear
either to confess contentment or to require a time and care which might
be better spent. And, exactly as a good and earnest student of drawing
will not lose time in ruling lines or finishing backgrounds about
studies which, while they have answered his immediate purpose, he knows
to be imperfect and inferior to what he will do hereafter,--so the vigor
of a true school of early architecture, which is either working under
the influence of high example or which is itself in a state of rapid
development, is very curiously traceable, among other signs, in the
contempt of exact symmetry and measurement, which in dead architecture
are the most painful necessities.
[Illustration: PLATE XII.--(Page 149--Vol. V.)
FRAGMENTS FROM ABBEVILLE, LUCCA, VENICE, AND PISA.]
VIII. In Plate XII. fig. 1 I have given a most singular instance both of
rude execution and defied symmetry, in the little pillar and spandril
from a panel decoration under the pulpit of St. Mark's at Venice. The
imperfection (not merely simplicity, but actual rudeness and ugliness)
of the leaf ornament will strike the eye at once: this is general in
works of the time, but it is not so common to find a capital which has
been so carelessly cut; its imperfect volutes being pushed up one side
far higher than on the other, and contracted on that side, an additional
drill hole being put in to fill the space; besides this, the member _a_,
of the mouldings, is a roll where it follows the arch, and a flat fillet
at _a_; the one being slurred into the other at the angle _b_, and
finally stopped short altogether at the other side by the most
uncourteous and remorseless interference of the outer moulding: and in
spite of all this, the grace, proportion, and feeling of the whole
arrangement are so great, that, in its place, it leaves nothing to be
desired; all the science and symmetry in the world could not beat it. In
fig. 4 I have endeavored to give some idea of the execution of the
subordinate portions of a much higher work, the pulpit of St. Andrea at
Pistoja, by Nicolo Pisano. It is covered with figure sculptures,
executed with great care and delicacy; but when the sculptor came to the
simple arch mouldings, he did not choose to draw the eye to them by over
precision of work or over sharpness of shadow. The section adopted, _k_,
_m_, is peculiarly simple, and so slight and obtuse in its recessions as
never to produce a sharp line; and it is worked with what at first
appears slovenliness, but it is in fact sculptural _sketching_; exactly
correspondent to a painter's light execution of a background: the lines
appear and disappear again, are sometimes deep, sometimes shallow,
sometimes quite broken off; and the recession of the cusp joins that of
the external arch at _n_, in the most fearless defiance of all
mathematical laws of curvilinear contact.
IX. There is something very delightful in this bold expression of the
mind of the great master. I do not say that it is the "perfect work" of
patience, but I think that impatience is a glorious character in an
advancing school; and I love the Romanesque and early Gothic especially,
because they afford so much room for it; accidental carelessness of
measurement or of execution being mingled undistinguishably with the
purposed departures from symmetrical regularity, and the luxuriousness
of perpetually variable fancy, which are eminently characteristic of
both styles. How great, how frequent they are, and how brightly the
severity of architectural law is relieved by their grace and suddenness,
has not, I think, been enough observed; still less, the unequal
measurements of even important features professing to be absolutely
symmetrical. I am not so familiar with modern practice as to speak with
confidence respecting its ordinary precision; but I imagine that the
following measures of the western front of the cathedral of Pisa, would
be looked upon by present architects as very blundering approximations.
That front is divided into seven arched compartments, of which the
second, fourth or central, and sixth contain doors; the seven are in a
most subtle alternating proportion; the central being the largest, next
to it the second and sixth, then the first and seventh, lastly the third
and fifth. By this arrangement, of course, these three pairs should be
equal; and they are so to the eye, but I found their actual measures to
be the following, taken from pillar to pillar, in Italian braccia, palmi
(four inches each), and inches:--
Braccia. Palmi. Inches. Total in
inches.
1. Central door 8 0 0 = 192
2. Northern door } 6 3 1-1/2 = 157-1/2
3. Southern door } 6 4 3 = 163
4. Extreme northern space } 5 5 3-1/2 = 143-1/2
5. Extreme southern space } 6 1 0-1/2 = 148-1/2
6. Northern intervals between the doors } 5 2 1 = 129
7. Southern intervals between the doors } 5 2 1-1/2 = 129-1/2
There is thus a difference, severally, between 2, 3 and 4, 5, of five
inches and a half in the one case, and five inches in the other.
X. This, however, may perhaps be partly attributable to some
accommodation of the accidental distortions which evidently took place
in the walls of the cathedral during their building, as much as in those
of the campanile. To my mind, those of the Duomo are far the most
wonderful of the two: I do not believe that a single pillar of its walls
is absolutely vertical: the pavement rises and falls to different
heights, or rather the plinth of the walls sinks into it continually to
different depths, the whole west front literally overhangs (I have not
plumbed it; but the inclination may be seen by the eye, by bringing it
into visual contact with the upright pilasters of the Campo Santo): and
a most extraordinary distortion in the masonry of the southern wall
shows that this inclination had begun when the first story was built.
The cornice above the first arcade of that wall touches the tops of
eleven out of its fifteen arches; but it suddenly leaves the tops of the
four westernmost; the arches nodding westward and sinking into the
ground, while the cornice rises (or seems to rise), leaving at any rate,
whether by the rise of the one or the fall of the other, an interval of
more than two feet between it and the top of the western arch, filled by
added courses of masonry. There is another very curious evidence of this
struggle of the architect with his yielding wall in the columns of the
main entrance. (These notices are perhaps somewhat irrelevant to our
immediate subject, but they appear to me highly interesting; and they,
at all events, prove one of the points on which I would insist,--how
much of imperfection and variety in things professing to be symmetrical
the eyes of those eager builders could endure: they looked to loveliness
in detail, to nobility in the whole, never to petty measurements.) Those
columns of the principal entrance are among the loveliest in Italy;
cylindrical, and decorated with a rich arabesque of sculptured foliage,
which at the base extends nearly all round them, up to the black
pilaster in which they are lightly engaged: but the shield of foliage,
bounded by a severe line, narrows to their tops, where it covers their
frontal segment only; thus giving, when laterally seen, a terminal line
sloping boldly outwards, which, as I think, was meant to conceal the
accidental leaning of the western walls, and, by its exaggerated
inclination in the same direction, to throw them by comparison into a
seeming vertical.
XI. There is another very curious instance of distortion above the
central door of the west front. All the intervals between the seven
arches are filled with black marble, each containing in its centre a
white parallelogram filled with animal mosaics, and the whole surmounted
by a broad white band, which, generally, does not touch the
parallelogram below. But the parallelogram on the north of the central
arch has been forced into an oblique position, and touches the white
band; and, as if the architect was determined to show that he did not
care whether it did or not, the white band suddenly gets thicker at that
place, and remains so over the two next arches. And these differences
are the more curious because the workmanship of them all is most
finished and masterly, and the distorted stones are fitted with as much
neatness as if they tallied to a hair's breadth. There is no look of
slurring or blundering about it; it is all coolly filled in, as if the
builder had no sense of anything being wrong or extraordinary: I only
wish we had a little of his impudence.
XII. Still, the reader will say that all these variations are probably
dependent more on the bad foundation than on the architect's feeling.
Not so the exquisite delicacies of change in the proportions and
dimensions of the apparently symmetrical arcades of the west front. It
will be remembered that I said the tower of Pisa was the only ugly tower
in Italy, because its tiers were equal, or nearly so, in height; a fault
this, so contrary to the spirit of the builders of the time, that it can
be considered only as an unlucky caprice. Perhaps the general aspect of
the west front of the cathedral may then have occurred to the reader's
mind, as seemingly another contradiction of the rule I had advanced. It
would not have been so, however, even had its four upper arcades been
actually equal; as they are subordinated to the great seven-arched lower
story, in the manner before noticed respecting the spire of Salisbury,
and as is actually the case in the Duomo of Lucca and Tower of Pistoja.
But the Pisan front is far more subtly proportioned. Not one of its four
arcades is of like height with another. The highest is the third,
counting upwards; and they diminish in nearly arithmetical proportion
alternately; in the order 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 4th. The inequalities in their
arches are not less remarkable: they at first strike the eye as all
equal; but there is a grace about them which equality never obtained: on
closer observation, it is perceived that in the first row of nineteen
arches, eighteen are equal, and the central one larger than the rest; in
the second arcade, the nine central arches stand over the nine below,
having, like them, the ninth central one largest. But on their flanks,
where is the slope of the shoulder-like pediment, the arches vanish, and
a wedge-shaped frieze takes their place, tapering outwards, in order to
allow the columns to be carried to the extremity of the pediment; and
here, where the heights of the shafts are so far shortened, they are set
thicker; five shafts, or rather four and a capital, above, to four of
the arcade below, giving twenty-one intervals instead of nineteen. In
the next or third arcade,--which, remember, is the highest,--eight
arches, all equal, are given in the space of the nine below, so that
there is now a central shaft instead of a central arch, and the span of
the arches is increased in proportion to their increased height.
Finally, in the uppermost arcade, which is the lowest of all, the
arches, the same in number as those below, are narrower than any of the
facade; the whole eight going very nearly above the six below them,
while the terminal arches of the lower arcade are surmounted by flanking
masses of decorated wall with projecting figures.
XIV. Now I call _that_ Living Architecture. There is sensation in every
inch of it, and an accommodation to every architectural necessity, with
a determined variation in arrangement, which is exactly like the related
proportions and provisions in the structure of organic form. I have not
space to examine the still lovelier proportioning of the external shafts
of the apse of this marvellous building. I prefer, lest the reader
should think it a peculiar example, to state the structure of another
church, the most graceful and grand piece of Romanesque work, as a
fragment, in north Italy, that of San Giovanni Evangelista at Pistoja.
The side of that church has three stories of arcade, diminishing in
height in bold geometrical proportion, while the arches, for the most
part, increase in number in arithmetical, _i.e._ two in the second
arcade, and three in the third, to one in the first. Lest, however, this
arrangement should be too formal, of the fourteen arches in the lowest
series, that which contains the door is made larger than the rest, and
is not in the middle, but the sixth from the West, leaving five on one
side and eight on the other. Farther: this lowest arcade is terminated
by broad flat pilasters, about half the width of its arches; but the
arcade above is continuous; only the two extreme arches at the west end
are made larger than all the rest, and instead of coming, as they
should, into the space of the lower extreme arch, take in both it and
its broad pilaster. Even this, however, was not out of order enough to
satisfy the architect's eye; for there were still two arches above to
each single one below: so at the east end, where there are more arches,
and the eye might be more easily cheated, what does he do but _narrow_
the two extreme _lower_ arches by half a braccio; while he at the same
time slightly enlarged the upper ones, so as to get only seventeen upper
to nine lower, instead of eighteen to nine. The eye is thus thoroughly
confused, and the whole building thrown into one mass, by the curious
variations in the adjustments of the superimposed shafts, not one of
which is either exactly in nor positively out of its place; and, to get
this managed the more cunningly, there is from an inch to an inch and a
half of gradual gain in the space of the four eastern arches, besides
the confessed half braccio. Their measures, counting from the east, I
found as follows:--
Braccia. Palmi. Inches.
1st 3 0 1
2nd 3 0 2
3rd 3 3 2
4th 3 3 3-1/2
The upper arcade is managed on the same principle; it looks at first as
if there were three arches to each under pair; but there are, in
reality, only thirty-eight (or thirty-seven, I am not quite certain of
this number) to the twenty-seven below; and the columns get into all
manner of relative positions. Even then, the builder was not satisfied,
but must needs carry the irregularity into the spring of the arches, and
actually, while the general effect is of a symmetrical arcade, there is
not one of the arches the same in height as another; their tops undulate
all along the wall like waves along a harbor quay, some nearly touching
the string course above, and others falling from it as much as five or
six inches.
XIV. Let us next examine the plan of the west front of St. Mark's at
Venice, which, though in many respects imperfect, is in its proportions,
and as a piece of rich and fantastic color, as lovely a dream as ever
filled human imagination. It may, perhaps, however, interest the reader
to hear one opposite opinion upon this subject, and after what has been
urged in the preceding pages respecting proportion in general, more
especially respecting the wrongness of balanced cathedral towers and
other regular designs, together with my frequent references to the
Doge's palace, and campanile of St. Mark's, as models of perfection, and
my praise of the former especially as projecting above its second
arcade, the following extracts from the journal of Wood the architect,
written on his arrival at Venice, may have a pleasing freshness in them,
and may show that I have not been stating principles altogether trite or
accepted.
"The strange looking church, and the great ugly campanile, could not be
mistaken. The exterior of this church surprises you by its extreme
ugliness, more than by anything else."
"The Ducal Palace is even more ugly than anything I have previously
mentioned. Considered in detail, I can imagine no alteration to make it
tolerable; but if this lofty wall had been _set back behind_ the two
stories of little arches, it would have been a very noble production."
After more observations on "a certain justness of proportion," and on
the appearance of riches and power in the church, to which he ascribes a
pleasing effect, he goes on: "Some persons are of opinion that
irregularity is a necessary part of its excellence. I am decidedly of a
contrary opinion, and am convinced that a regular design of the same
sort would be far superior. Let an oblong of good architecture, but not
very showy, conduct to a fine cathedral, which should appear between
_two lofty towers_ and have _two obelisks_ in front, and on each side of
this cathedral let other squares partially open into the first, and one
of these extend down to a harbor or sea shore, and you would have a
scene which might challenge any thing in existence."
Why Mr. Wood was unable to enjoy the color of St. Mark's, or perceive
the majesty of the Ducal Palace, the reader will see after reading the
two following extracts regarding the Caracci and Michael Angelo.
"The pictures here (Bologna) are to my taste far preferable to those of
Venice, for if the Venetian school surpass in coloring, and, perhaps, in
composition, the Bolognese is decidedly superior in drawing and
expression, and the Caraccis _shine here like Gods_."
"What is it that is so much admired in this artist (M. Angelo)? Some
contend for a grandeur of composition in the lines and disposition of
the figures; this, I confess, I do not comprehend; yet, while I
acknowledge the beauty of certain forms and proportions in architecture,
I cannot consistently deny that similar merits may exist in painting,
though I am unfortunately unable to appreciate them."
I think these passages very valuable, as showing the effect of a
contracted knowledge and false taste in painting upon an architect's
understanding of his own art; and especially with what curious notions,
or lack of notions, about proportion, that art has been sometimes
practised. For Mr. Wood is by no means unintelligent in his observations
generally, and his criticisms on classical art are often most valuable.
But those who love Titian better than the Caracci, and who see something
to admire in Michael Angelo, will, perhaps, be willing to proceed with
me to a charitable examination of St. Mark's. For, although, the present
course of European events affords us some chance of seeing the changes
proposed by Mr. Wood carried into execution, we may still esteem
ourselves fortunate in having first known how it was left by the
builders of the eleventh century.
XV. The entire front is composed of an upper and lower series of arches,
enclosing spaces of wall decorated with mosaic, and supported on ranges
of shafts of which, in the lower series of arches, there is an upper
range superimposed on a lower. Thus we have five vertical divisions of
the facade; _i.e._ two tiers of shafts, and the arched wall they bear,
below; one tier of shafts, and the arched wall they bear, above. In
order, however, to bind the two main divisions together, the central
lower arch (the main entrance) rises above the level of the gallery and
balustrade which crown the lateral arches.
The proportioning of the columns and walls of the lower story is so
lovely and so varied, that it would need pages of description before it
could be fully understood; but it may be generally stated thus: The
height of the lower shafts, upper shafts, and wall, being severally
expressed by _a_, _b_, and _c_, then _a_:_c_::_c_:_b_ (_a_ being the
highest); and the diameter of shaft _b_ is generally to the diameter of
shaft _a_ as height _b_ is to height _a_, or something less, allowing
for the large plinth which diminishes the apparent height of the upper
shaft: and when this is their proportion of width, one shaft above is
put above one below, with sometimes another upper shaft interposed: but
in the extreme arches a single under shaft bears two upper, proportioned
as truly as the boughs of a tree; that is to say, the diameter of each
upper = 2/3 of lower. There being thus the three terms of proportion
gained in the lower story, the upper, while it is only divided into two
main members, in order that the whole height may not be divided into an
even number, has the third term added in its pinnacles. So far of the
vertical division. The lateral is still more subtle. There are seven
arches in the lower story; and, calling the central arch _a_, and
counting to the extremity, they diminish in the alternate order _a_,
_c_, _b_, _d_. The upper story has five arches, and two added pinnacles;
and these diminish in _regular_ order, the central being the largest,
and the outermost the least. Hence, while one proportion ascends,
another descends, like parts in music; and yet the pyramidal form is
secured for the whole, and, which was another great point of attention,
none of the shafts of the upper arches stand over those of the lower.
XVI. It might have been thought that, by this plan, enough variety had
been secured, but the builder was not satisfied even thus: for--and this
is the point bearing on the present part of our subject--always calling
the central arch _a_, and the lateral ones _b_ and _c_ in succession,
the northern _b_ and _c_ are considerably wider than the southern _b_
and _c_, but the southern _d_ is as much wider than the northern _d_,
and lower beneath its cornice besides; and, more than this, I hardly
believe that one of the effectively symmetrical members of the facade is
actually symmetrical with any other. I regret that I cannot state the
actual measures. I gave up the taking them upon the spot, owing to their
excessive complexity, and the embarrassment caused by the yielding and
subsidence of the arches.
Do not let it be supposed that I imagine the Byzantine workmen to have
had these various principles in their minds as they built. I believe
they built altogether from feeling, and that it was because they did so,
that there is this marvellous life, changefulness, and subtlety running
through their every arrangement; and that we reason upon the lovely
building as we should upon some fair growth of the trees of the earth,
that know not their own beauty.
XVII. Perhaps, however, a stranger instance than any I have yet given,
of the daring variation of pretended symmetry, is found in the front of
the Cathedral of Bayeux. It consists of five arches with steep
pediments, the outermost filled, the three central with doors; and they
appear, at first, to diminish in regular proportion from the principal
one in the centre. The two lateral doors are very curiously managed. The
tympana of their arches are filled with bas-reliefs, in four tiers; in
the lowest tier there is in each a little temple or gate containing the
principal figure (in that on the right, it is the gate of Hades with
Lucifer). This little temple is carried, like a capital, by an isolated
shaft which divides the whole arch at about 2/3 of its breadth, the
larger portion outmost; and in that larger portion is the inner entrance
door. This exact correspondence, in the treatment of both gates, might
lead us to expect a correspondence in dimension. Not at all. The small
inner northern entrance measures, in English feet and inches, 4 ft. 7
in. from jamb to jamb, and the southern five feet exactly. Five inches
in five feet is a considerable variation. The outer northern porch
measures, from face shaft to face shaft, 13 ft. 11 in., and the
southern, 14 ft. 6 in.; giving a difference of 7 in. on 14-1/2 ft. There
are also variations in the pediment decorations not less extraordinary.
XVIII. I imagine I have given instances enough, though I could multiply
them indefinitely, to prove that these variations are not mere blunders,
nor carelessnesses, but the result of a fixed scorn, if not dislike, of
accuracy in measurements; and, in most cases, I believe, of a determined
resolution to work out an effective symmetry by variations as subtle as
those of Nature. To what lengths this principle was sometimes carried,
we shall see by the very singular management of the towers of Abbeville.
I do not say it is right, still less that it is wrong, but it is a
wonderful proof of the fearlessness of a living architecture; for, say
what we will of it, that Flamboyant of France, however morbid, was as
vivid and intense in its animation as ever any phase of mortal mind; and
it would have lived till now, if it had not taken to telling lies. I
have before noticed the general difficulty of managing even lateral
division, when it is into two equal parts, unless there be some third
reconciling member. I shall give, hereafter, more examples of the modes
in which this reconciliation is effected in towers with double lights:
the Abbeville architect put his sword to the knot perhaps rather too
sharply. Vexed by the want of unity between his two windows he literally
laid their heads together, and so distorted their ogee curves, as to
leave only one of the trefoiled panels above, on the inner side, and
three on the outer side of each arch. The arrangement is given in Plate
XII. fig. 3. Associated with the various undulation of flamboyant curves
below, it is in the real tower hardly observed, while it binds it into
one mass in general effect. Granting it, however, to be ugly and wrong,
I like sins of the kind, for the sake of the courage it requires to
commit them. In plate II. (part of a small chapel attached to the West
front of the Cathedral of St. Lo), the reader will see an instance,
from the same architecture, of a violation of its own principles, for
the sake of a peculiar meaning. If there be any one feature which the
flamboyant architect loved to decorate richly, it was the niche--it was
what the capital is to the Corinthian order; yet in the case before us
there is an ugly beehive put in the place of the principal niche of the
arch. I am not sure if I am right in my interpretation of its meaning,
but I have little doubt that two figures below, now broken away, once
represented an Annunciation; and on another part of the same cathedral,
I find the descent of the Spirit, encompassed by rays of light,
represented very nearly in the form of the niche in question; which
appears, therefore, to be intended for a representation of this
effulgence, while at the same time it was made a canopy for the delicate
figures below. Whether this was its meaning or not, it is remarkable as
a daring departure from the common habits of the time.
XIX. Far more splendid is a license taken with the niche decoration
of the portal of St. Maclou at Rouen. The subject of the tympanum
bas-relief is the Last Judgment, and the sculpture of the inferno side
is carried out with a degree of power whose fearful grotesqueness I can
only describe as a mingling of the minds of Orcagna and Hogarth. The
demons are perhaps even more awful than Orcagna's; and, in some of the
expressions of debased humanity in its utmost despair, the English
painter is at least equalled. Not less wild is the imagination which
gives fury and fear even to the placing of the figures. An evil angel,
poised on the wing, drives the condemned troops from before the Judgment
seat; with his left hand he drags behind him a cloud, which is spreading
like a winding-sheet over them all; but they are urged by him so
furiously, that they are driven not merely to the extreme limit of that
scene, which the sculptor confined elsewhere within the tympanum, but
out of the tympanum and _into the niches_ of the arch; while the flames
that follow them, bent by the blast, as it seems, of the angel's wings,
rush into the niches also, and burst up _through their tracery_, the
three lowermost niches being represented as all on fire, while,
instead of their usual vaulted and ribbed ceiling, there is a demon in
the roof of each, with his wings folded over it, grinning down out of
the black shadow.
[Illustration: PLATE XIII.--(Page 161--Vol. V.)
PORTIONS OF AN ARCADE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CATHEDRAL OF FERRARA.]
XX. I have, however, given enough instances of vitality shown in mere
daring, whether wise, as surely in this last instance, or inexpedient;
but, as a single example of the Vitality of Assimilation, the faculty
which turns to its purposes all material that is submitted to it, I
would refer the reader to the extraordinary columns of the arcade on the
south side of the Cathedral of Ferrara. A single arch of it is given in
Plate XIII. on the right. Four such columns forming a group, there are
interposed two pairs of columns, as seen on the left of the same plate;
and then come another four arches. It is a long arcade of, I suppose,
not less than forty arches, perhaps of many more; and in the grace and
simplicity of its stilted Byzantine curves I hardly know its equal. Its
like, in fancy of column, I certainly do not know; there being hardly
two correspondent, and the architect having been ready, as it seems, to
adopt ideas and resemblances from any sources whatsoever. The vegetation
growing up the two columns is fine, though bizarre; the distorted
pillars beside it suggest images of less agreeable character; the
serpentine arrangements founded on the usual Byzantine double knot are
generally graceful; but I was puzzled to account for the excessively
ugly type of the pillar, fig. 3, one of a group of four. It so happened,
fortunately for me, that there had been a fair in Ferrara; and, when I
had finished my sketch of the pillar, I had to get out of the way of
some merchants of miscellaneous wares, who were removing their stall. It
had been shaded by an awning supported by poles, which, in order that
the covering might be raised or lowered according to the height of the
sun, were composed of two separate pieces, fitted to each other by a
_rack_, in which I beheld the prototype of my ugly pillar. It will not
be thought, after what I have above said of the inexpedience of
imitating anything but natural form, that I advance this architect's
practice as altogether exemplary; yet the humility is instructive, which
condescended to such sources for motives of thought, the boldness, which
could depart so far from all established types of form, and the life
and feeling, which out of an assemblage of such quaint and uncouth
materials, could produce an harmonious piece of ecclesiastical
architecture.
XXI. I have dwelt, however, perhaps, too long upon that form of vitality
which is known almost as much by its errors as by its atonements for
them. We must briefly note the operation of it, which is always right,
and always necessary, upon those lesser details, where it can neither be
superseded by precedents, nor repressed by proprieties.
I said, early in this essay, that hand-work might always be known from
machine-work; observing, however, at the same time, that it was possible
for men to turn themselves into machines, and to reduce their labor to
the machine level; but so long as men work _as_ men, putting their heart
into what they do, and doing their best, it matters not how bad workmen
they may be, there will be that in the handling which is above all
price: it will be plainly seen that some places have been delighted in
more than others--that there has been a pause, and a care about them;
and then there will come careless bits, and fast bits; and here the
chisel will have struck hard, and there lightly, and anon timidly; and
if the man's mind as well as his heart went with his work, all this will
be in the right places, and each part will set off the other; and the
effect of the whole, as compared with the same design cut by a machine
or a lifeless hand, will be like that of poetry well read and deeply
felt to that of the same verses jangled by rote. There are many to whom
the difference is imperceptible; but to those who love poetry it is
everything--they had rather not hear it at all, than hear it ill read;
and to those who love Architecture, the life and accent of the hand are
everything. They had rather not have ornament at all, than see it ill
cut--deadly cut, that is. I cannot too often repeat, it is not coarse
cutting, it is not blunt cutting, that is necessarily bad; but it is
cold cutting--the look of equal trouble everywhere--the smooth, diffused
tranquillity of heartless pains--the regularity of a plough in a level
field. The chill is more likely, indeed, to show itself in finished work
than in any other--men cool and tire as they complete: and if
completeness is thought to be vested in polish, and to be attainable by
help of sand paper, we may as well give the work to the engine-lathe at
once. But _right_ finish is simply the full rendering of the intended
impression; and _high_ finish is the rendering of a well intended and
vivid impression; and it is oftener got by rough than fine handling. I
am not sure whether it is frequently enough observed that sculpture is
not the mere cutting of the _form_ of anything in stone; it is the
cutting of the _effect_ of it. Very often the true form, in the marble,
would not be in the least like itself. The sculptor must paint with his
chisel: half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into the
form: they are touches of light and shadow; and raise a ridge, or sink a
hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of
light, or a spot of darkness. In a coarse way, this kind of execution is
very marked in old French woodwork; the irises of the eyes of its
chimeric monsters being cut boldly into holes, which, variously placed,
and always dark, give all kinds of strange and startling expressions,
averted and askance, to the fantastic countenances. Perhaps the highest
examples of this kind of sculpture-painting are the works of Mino da
Fiesole; their best effects being reached by strange angular, and
seemingly rude, touches of the chisel. The lips of one of the children
on the tombs in the church of the Badia, appear only half finished when
they are seen close; yet the expression is farther carried and more
ineffable, than in any piece of marble I have ever seen, especially
considering its delicacy, and the softness of the child-features. In a
sterner kind, that of the statues in the sacristy of St. Lorenzo equals
it, and there again by incompletion. I know no example of work in which
the forms are absolutely true and complete where such a result is
attained; in Greek sculptures is not even attempted.
XXII. It is evident that, for architectural appliances, such masculine
handling, likely as it must be to retain its effectiveness when higher
finish would be injured by time, must always be the most expedient; and
as it is impossible, even were it desirable that the highest finish
should be given to the quantity of work which covers a large building,
it will be understood how precious the intelligence must become, which
renders incompletion itself a means of additional expression; and how
great must be the difference, when the touches are rude and few, between
those of a careless and those of a regardful mind. It is not easy to
retain anything of their character in a copy; yet the reader will find
one or two illustrative points in the examples, given in Plate XIV.,
from the bas-reliefs of the north of Rouen Cathedral. There are three
square pedestals under the three main niches on each side of it, and one
in the centre; each of these being on two sides decorated with five
quatrefoiled panels. There are thus seventy quatrefoils in the lower
ornament of the gate alone, without counting those of the outer course
round it, and of the pedestals outside: each quatrefoil is filled with a
bas-relief, the whole reaching to something above a man's height. A
modern architect would, of course, have made all the five quatrefoils of
each pedestal-side equal: not so the Mediaeval. The general form being
apparently a quatrefoil composed of semicircles on the sides of a
square, it will be found on examination that none of the arcs are
semicircles, and none of the basic figures squares. The latter are
rhomboids, having their acute or obtuse angles uppermost according to
their larger or smaller size; and the arcs upon their sides slide into
such places as they can get in the angles of the enclosing
parallelogram, leaving intervals, at each of the four angles, of various
shapes, which are filled each by an animal. The size of the whole panel
being thus varied, the two lowest of the five are tall, the next two
short, and the uppermost a little higher than the lowest; while in the
course of bas-reliefs which surrounds the gate, calling either of the
two lowest (which are equal), _a_, and either of the next two _b_, and
the fifth and sixth _c_ and _d_, then _d_ (the largest):
_c_::_c_:_a_::_a_:_b_. It is wonderful how much of the grace of the
whole depends on these variations.
XXIII. Each of the angles, it was said, is filled by an animal. There
are thus 70 x 4=280 animals, all different, in the mere fillings of the
intervals of the bas-reliefs. Three of these intervals, with their
beasts, actual size, the curves being traced upon the stone, I have
given in Plate XIV.
[Illustration: PLATE XIV.--(Page 165--Vol. V.)
SCULPTURE FROM THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN.]
I say nothing of their general design, or of the lines of the wings and
scales, which are perhaps, unless in those of the central dragon, not
much above the usual commonplaces of good ornamental work; but there is
an evidence in the features of thoughtfulness and fancy which is not
common, at least now-a-days. The upper creature on the left is biting
something, the form of which is hardly traceable in the defaced
stone--but biting he is; and the reader cannot but recognise in the
peculiarly reverted eye the expression which is never seen, as I think,
but in the eye of a dog gnawing something in jest, and preparing to
start away with it: the meaning of the glance, so far as it can be
marked by the mere incision of the chisel, will be felt by comparing it
with the eye of the couchant figure on the right, in its gloomy and
angry brooding. The plan of this head, and the nod of the cap over its
brow, are fine; but there is a little touch above the hand especially
well meant: the fellow is vexed and puzzled in his malice; and his hand
is pressed hard on his cheek bone, and the flesh of the cheek is
_wrinkled_ under the eye by the pressure. The whole, indeed, looks
wretchedly coarse, when it is seen on a scale in which it is naturally
compared with delicate figure etchings; but considering it as a mere
filling of an interstice on the outside of a cathedral gate, and as one
of more than three hundred (for in my estimate I did not include the
outer pedestals), it proves very noble vitality in the art of the time.
XXIV. I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is
simply this: Was it done with enjoyment--was the carver happy while he
was about it? It may be the hardest work possible, and the harder
because so much pleasure was taken in it; but it must have been happy
too, or it will not be living. How much of the stone mason's toil this
condition would exclude I hardly venture to consider, but the condition
is absolute. There is a Gothic church lately built near Rouen, vile
enough, indeed, in its general composition, but excessively rich in
detail; many of the details are designed with taste, and all evidently
by a man who has studied old work closely. But it is all as dead as
leaves in December; there is not one tender touch, not one warm stroke,
on the whole facade. The men who did it hated it, and were thankful when
it was done. And so long as they do so they are merely loading your
walls with shapes of clay: the garlands of everlastings in Pere la
Chaise are more cheerful ornaments. You cannot get the feeling by paying
for it--money will not buy life. I am not sure even that you can get it
by watching or waiting for it. It is true that here and there a workman
may be found who has it in him, but he does not rest contented in the
inferior work--he struggles forward into an Academician; and from the
mass of available handicraftsmen the power is gone--how recoverable I
know not: this only I know, that all expense devoted to sculptural
ornament, in the present condition of that power, comes literally under
the head of Sacrifice for the sacrifice's sake, or worse. I believe the
only manner of rich ornament that is open to us is the geometrical
color-mosaic, and that much might result from our strenuously taking up
this mode of design. But, at all events, one thing we have in our
power--the doing without machine ornament and cast-iron work. All the
stamped metals, and artificial stones, and imitation woods and bronzes,
over the invention of which we hear daily exultation--all the short, and
cheap, and easy ways of doing that whose difficulty is its honor--are
just so many new obstacles in our already encumbered road. They will not
make one of us happier or wiser--they will extend neither the pride of
judgment nor the privilege of enjoyment. They will only make us
shallower in our understandings, colder in our hearts, and feebler in
our wits. And most justly. For we are not sent into this world to do any
thing into which we cannot put our hearts. We have certain work to do
for our bread, and that is to be done strenuously; other work to do for
our delight, and that is to be done heartily: neither is to be done by
halves or shifts, but with a will; and what is not worth this effort is
not to be done at all. Perhaps all that we have to do is meant for
nothing more than an exercise of the heart and of the will, and is
useless in itself; but, at all events, the little use it has may well be
spared if it is not worth putting our hands and our strength to. It
does not become our immortality to take an ease inconsistent with its
authority, nor to suffer any instruments with which it can dispense, to
come between it and the things it rules: and he who would form the
creations of his own mind by any other instrument than his own hand,
would, also, if he might, give grinding organs to Heaven's angels, to
make their music easier. There is dreaming enough, and earthiness
enough, and sensuality enough in human existence without our turning the
few glowing moments of it into mechanism; and since our life must at the
best be but a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes
away, let it at least appear as a cloud in the height of Heaven, not as
the thick darkness that broods over the blast of the Furnace, and
rolling of the Wheel.