ROMAN RENAISSANCE.
§ I. Of all the buildings in Venice, later in date than the final
additions to the Ducal Palace, the noblest is, beyond all question, that
which, having been condemned by its proprietor, not many years ago, to
be pulled down and sold for the value of its materials, was rescued by
the Austrian government, and appropriated--the government officers
having no other use for it--to the business of the Post-Office; though
still known to the gondolier by its ancient name, the Casa Grimani. It
is composed of three stories of the Corinthian order, at once simple,
delicate, and sublime; but on so colossal a scale, that the
three-storied palaces on its right and left only reach to the cornice
which marks the level of its first floor. Yet it is not at first
perceived to be so vast; and it is only when some expedient is employed
to hide it from the eye, that by the sudden dwarfing of the whole reach
of the Grand Canal, which it commands, we become aware that it is to the
majesty of the Casa Grimani that the Rialto itself, and the whole group
of neighboring buildings, owe the greater part of their impressiveness.
Nor is the finish of its details less notable than the grandeur of their
scale. There is not an erring line, nor a mistaken proportion,
throughout its noble front; and the exceeding fineness of the chiselling
gives an appearance of lightness to the vast blocks of stone out of
whose perfect union that front is composed. The decoration is sparing,
but delicate: the first story only simpler than the rest, in that it has
pilasters instead of shafts, but all with Corinthian capitals, rich in
leafage, and fruited delicately; the rest of the walls flat and smooth,
and the mouldings sharp and shallow, so that the bold shafts look like
crystals of beryl running through a rock of quartz.
§ II. This palace is the principal type at Venice, and one of the best
in Europe, of the central architecture of the Renaissance schools; that
carefully studied and perfectly executed architecture to which those
schools owe their principal claims to our respect, and which became the
model of most of the important works subsequently produced by civilized
nations. I have called it the Roman Renaissance, because it is founded,
both in its principles of superimposition, and in the style of its
ornament, upon the architecture of classic Rome at its best period. The
revival of Latin literature both led to its adoption, and directed its
form; and the most important example of it which exists is the modern
Roman basilica of St. Peter's. It had, at its Renaissance or new birth,
no resemblance either to Greek, Gothic, or Byzantine forms, except in
retaining the use of the round arch, vault, and dome; in the treatment
of all details, it was exclusively Latin; the last links of connexion
with mediæval tradition having been broken by its builders in their
enthusiasm for classical art, and the forms of true Greek or Athenian
architecture being still unknown to them. The study of these noble Greek
forms has induced various modifications of the Renaissance in our own
times; but the conditions which are found most applicable to the uses of
modern life are still Roman, and the entire style may most fitly be
expressed by the term "Roman Renaissance."
§ III. It is this style, in its purity and fullest form,--represented by
such buildings as the Casa Grimani at Venice (built by San Micheli), the
Town Hall at Vicenza (by Palladio), St. Peter's at Rome (by Michael
Angelo), St. Paul's and Whitehall in London (by Wren and Inigo
Jones),--which is the true antagonist of the Gothic school. The
intermediate, or corrupt conditions of it, though multiplied over
Europe, are no longer admired by architects, or made the subjects of
their study; but the finished work of this central school is still, in
most cases, the model set before the student of the nineteenth century,
as opposed to those Gothic, Romanesque, or Byzantine forms which have
long been considered barbarous, and are so still by most of the leading
men of the day. That they are, on the contrary, most noble and
beautiful, and that the antagonistic Renaissance is, in the main,
unworthy and unadmirable, whatever perfection of a certain kind it may
possess, it was my principal purpose to show, when I first undertook the
labor of this work. It has been attempted already to put before the
reader the various elements which unite in the Nature of Gothic, and to
enable him thus to judge, not merely of the beauty of the forms which
that system has produced already, but of its future applicability to the
wants of mankind, and endless power over their hearts. I would now
endeavor, in like manner, to set before the reader the Nature of
Renaissance, and thus to enable him to compare the two styles under the
same light, and with the same enlarged view of their relations to the
intellect, and capacities for the service, of man.
§ IV. It will not be necessary for me to enter at length into any
examination of its external form. It uses, whether for its roofs of
aperture or roofs proper, the low gable or circular arch: but it differs
from Romanesque work in attaching great importance to the horizontal
lintel or architrave _above_ the arch; transferring the energy of the
principal shafts to the supporting of this horizontal beam, and thus
rendering the arch a subordinate, if not altogether a superfluous,
feature. The type of this arrangement has been given already at _c_,
Fig. XXXVI., p. 145, Vol. I.: and I might insist at length upon the
absurdity of a construction in which the shorter shaft, which has the
real weight of wall to carry, is split into two by the taller one, which
has nothing to carry at all,--that taller one being strengthened,
nevertheless, as if the whole weight of the building bore upon it; and
on the ungracefulness, never conquered in any Palladian work, of the two
half-capitals glued, as it were, against the slippery round sides of the
central shaft. But it is not the form of this architecture against which
I would plead. Its defects are shared by many of the noblest forms of
earlier building, and might have been entirely atoned for by excellence
of spirit. But it is the moral nature of it which is corrupt, and which
it must, therefore, be our principal business to examine and expose.
§ V. The moral, or immoral, elements which unite to form the spirit of
Central Renaissance architecture are, I believe, in the main,
two,--Pride and Infidelity; but the pride resolves itself into three
main branches,--Pride of Science, Pride of State, and Pride of System:
and thus we have four separate mental conditions which must be examined
successively.
§ VI. 1. PRIDE OF SCIENCE. It would have been more charitable, but more
confusing, to have added another element to our list, namely the _Love_
of Science; but the love is included in the pride, and is usually so
very subordinate an element that it does not deserve equality of
nomenclature. But, whether pursued in pride or in affection (how far by
either we shall see presently), the first notable characteristic of the
Renaissance central school is its introduction of accurate knowledge
into all its work, so far as it possesses such knowledge; and its
evident conviction, that such science is necessary to the excellence of
the work, and is the first thing to be expressed therein. So that all
the forms introduced, even in its minor ornament, are studied with the
utmost care; the anatomy of all animal structure is thoroughly
understood and elaborately expressed, and the whole of the execution
skilful and practised in the highest degree. Perspective, linear and
aerial, perfect drawing and accurate light and shade in painting, and
true anatomy in all representations of the human form, drawn or
sculptured, are the first requirements in all the work of this school.
§ VII. Now, first considering all this in the most charitable light, as
pursued from a real love of truth, and not from vanity, it would, of
course, have been all excellent and admirable, had it been regarded as
the aid of art, and not as its essence. But the grand mistake of the
Renaissance schools lay in supposing that science and art are the same
things, and that to advance in the one was necessarily to perfect the
other. Whereas they are, in reality, things not only different, but so
opposed, that to advance in the one is, in ninety-nine cases out of the
hundred, to retrograde in the other. This is the point to which I would
at present especially bespeak the reader's attention.
§ VIII. Science and art are commonly distinguished by the nature of
their actions; the one as knowing, the other as changing, producing, or
creating. But there is a still more important distinction in the nature
of the things they deal with. Science deals exclusively with things as
they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect
the human senses and human soul.[8] Her work is to portray the
appearance of things, and to deepen the natural impressions which they
produce upon living creatures. The work of science is to substitute
facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions. Both,
observe, are equally concerned with truth; the one with truth of aspect,
the other with truth of essence. Art does not represent things falsely,
but truly as they appear to mankind. Science studies the relations of
things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man; and
it requires of everything which is submitted to it imperatively this,
and only this,--what that thing is to the human eyes and human heart,
what it has to say to men, and what it can become to them: a field of
question just as much vaster than that of science, as the soul is larger
than the material creation.
§ IX. Take a single instance. Science informs us that the sun is
ninety-five millions of miles distant from, and 111 times broader than,
the earth; that we and all the planets revolve round it; and that it
revolves on its own axis in 25 days, 14 hours and 4 minutes. With all
this, art has nothing whatsoever to do. It has no care to know anything
of this kind. But the things which it does care to know, are these: that
in the heavens God hath set a tabernacle for the sun, "which is as a
bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to
run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his
circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat
thereof."
§ X. This, then, being the kind of truth with which art is exclusively
concerned, how is such truth as this to be ascertained and accumulated?
Evidently, and only, by perception and feeling. Never either by
reasoning, or report. Nothing must come between Nature and the artist's
sight; nothing between God and the artist's soul. Neither calculation
nor hearsay,--be it the most subtle of calculations, or the wisest of
sayings,--may be allowed to come between the universe, and the witness
which art bears to its visible nature. The whole value of that witness
depends on its being _eye_-witness; the whole genuineness,
acceptableness, and dominion of it depend on the personal assurance of
the man who utters it. All its victory depends on the veracity of the
one preceding word, "Vidi."
The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing and
feeling creature; to be an instrument of such tenderness and
sensitiveness, that no shadow, no hue, no line, no instantaneous and
evanescent expression of the visible things around him, nor any of the
emotions which they are capable of conveying to the spirit which has
been given him, shall either be left unrecorded, or fade from the book
of record. It is not his business either to think, to judge, to argue,
or to know. His place is neither in the closet, nor on the bench, nor at
the bar, nor in the library. They are for other men and other work. He
may think, in a by-way; reason, now and then, when he has nothing better
to do; know, such fragments of knowledge as he can gather without
stooping, or reach without pains; but none of these things are to be his
care. The work of his life is to be twofold only: to see, to feel.
§ XI. Nay, but, the reader perhaps pleads with me, one of the great uses
of knowledge is to open the eyes; to make things perceivable which,
never would have been seen, unless first they had been known.
Not so. This could only be said or believed by those who do not know
what the perceptive faculty of a great artist is, in comparison with
that of other men. There is no great painter, no great workman in any
art, but he sees more with the glance of a moment than he could learn by
the labor of a thousand hours. God has made every man fit for his work;
He has given to the man whom he means for a student, the reflective,
logical, sequential faculties; and to the man whom He means for an
artist, the perceptive, sensitive, retentive faculties. And neither of
these men, so far from being able to do the other's work, can even
comprehend the way in which it is done. The student has no understanding
of the vision, nor the painter of the process; but chiefly the student
has no idea of the colossal grasp of the true painter's vision and
sensibility.
The labor of the whole Geological Society, for the last fifty years, has
but now arrived at the ascertainment of those truths respecting mountain
form which Turner saw and expressed with a few strokes of a camel's hair
pencil fifty years ago, when he was a boy. The knowledge of all the laws
of the planetary system, and of all the curves of the motion of
projectiles, would never enable the man of science to draw a waterfall
or a wave; and all the members of Surgeons' Hall helping each other
could not at this moment see, or represent, the natural movement of a
human body in vigorous action, as a poor dyer's son did two hundred
years ago.[9]
§ XII. But surely, it is still insisted, granting this peculiar faculty
to the painter, he will still see more as he knows more, and the more
knowledge he obtains, therefore, the better. No; not even so. It is
indeed true, that, here and there, a piece of knowledge will enable the
eye to detect a truth which might otherwise have escaped it; as, for
instance, in watching a sunrise, the knowledge of the true nature of the
orb may lead the painter to feel more profoundly, and express more
fully, the distance between the bars of cloud that cross it, and the
sphere of flame that lifts itself slowly beyond them into the infinite
heaven. But, for one visible truth to which knowledge thus opens the
eyes, it seals them to a thousand: that is to say, if the knowledge
occur to the mind so as to occupy its powers of contemplation at the
moment when the sight work is to be done, the mind retires inward, fixes
itself upon the known fact, and forgets the passing visible ones; and a
_moment_ of such forgetfulness loses more to the painter than a day's
thought can gain. This is no new or strange assertion. Every person
accustomed to careful reflection of any kind, knows that its natural
operation is to close his eyes to the external world. While he is
thinking deeply, he neither sees nor feels, even though naturally he may
possess strong powers of sight and emotion. He who, having journeyed all
day beside the Leman Lake, asked of his companions, at evening, where it
was,[10] probably was not wanting in sensibility; but he was generally a
thinker, not a perceiver. And this instance is only an extreme one of
the effect which, in all cases, knowledge, becoming a subject of
reflection, produces upon the sensitive faculties. It must be but poor
and lifeless knowledge, if it has no tendency to force itself forward,
and become ground for reflection, in despite of the succession of
external objects. It will not obey their succession. The first that
comes gives it food enough for its day's work; it is its habit, its
duty, to cast the rest aside, and fasten upon that. The first thing that
a thinking and knowing man sees in the course of the day, he will not
easily quit. It is not his way to quit anything without getting to the
bottom of it, if possible. But the artist is bound to receive all things
on the broad, white, lucid field of his soul, not to grasp at one. For
instance, as the knowing and thinking man watches the sunrise, he sees
something in the color of a ray, or the change of a cloud, that is new
to him; and this he follows out forthwith into a labyrinth of optical
and pneumatical laws, perceiving no more clouds nor rays all the
morning. But the painter must catch all the rays, all the colors that
come, and see them all truly, all in their real relations and
succession; therefore, everything that occupies room in his mind he must
cast aside for the time, as completely as may be. The thoughtful man is
gone far away to seek; but the perceiving man must sit still, and open
his heart to receive. The thoughtful man is knitting and sharpening
himself into a two-edged sword, wherewith to pierce. The perceiving man
is stretching himself into a four-cornered sheet wherewith to catch. And
all the breadth to which he can expand himself, and all the white
emptiness into which he can blanch himself, will not be enough to
receive what God has to give him.
§ XIII. What, then, it will be indignantly asked, is an utterly ignorant
and unthinking man likely to make the best artist? No, not so neither.
Knowledge is good for him so long as he can keep it utterly, servilely,
subordinate to his own divine work, and trample it under his feet, and
out of his way, the moment it is likely to entangle him.
And in this respect, observe, there is an enormous difference between
knowledge and education. An artist need not be a _learned_ man, in all
probability it will be a disadvantage to him to become so; but he ought,
if possible, always to be an _educated_ man: that is, one who has
understanding of his own uses and duties in the world, and therefore of
the general nature of the things done and existing in the world; and who
has so trained himself, or been trained, as to turn to the best and most
courteous account whatever faculties or knowledge he has. The mind of an
educated man is greater than the knowledge it possesses; it is like the
vault of heaven, encompassing the earth which lives and flourishes
beneath it: but the mind of an educated and learned man is like a
caoutchouc band, with an everlasting spirit of contraction in it,
fastening together papers which it cannot open, and keeps others from
opening.
Half our artists are ruined for want of education, and by the possession
of knowledge; the best that I have known have been educated, and
illiterate. The ideal of an artist, however, is not that he should be
illiterate, but well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred,
both in heart and in bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best
society, _and should keep out of it_.[11]
§ XIV. There are, indeed, some kinds of knowledge with which an artist
ought to be thoroughly furnished; those, for instance, which enable him
to express himself; for this knowledge relieves instead of encumbering
his mind, and permits it to attend to its purposes instead of wearying
itself about means. The whole mystery of manipulation and manufacture
should be familiar to the painter from a child. He should know the
chemistry of all colors and materials whatsoever, and should prepare all
his colors himself, in a little laboratory of his own. Limiting his
chemistry to this one object, the amount of practical science necessary
for it, and such accidental discoveries as might fall in his way in the
course of his work, of better colors or better methods of preparing
them, would be an infinite refreshment to his mind; a minor subject of
interest to which it might turn when jaded with comfortless labor, or
exhausted with feverish invention, and yet which would never interfere
with its higher functions, when it chose to address itself to them. Even
a considerable amount of manual labor, sturdy color-grinding and
canvas-stretching, would be advantageous; though this kind of work ought
to be in great part done by pupils. For it is one of the conditions of
perfect knowledge in these matters, that every great master should have
a certain number of pupils, to whom he is to impart all the knowledge of
materials and means which he himself possesses, as soon as possible; so
that, at any rate, by the time they are fifteen years old, they may know
all that he knows himself in this kind; that is to say, all that the
world of artists know, and his own discoveries besides, and so never be
troubled about methods any more. Not that the knowledge even of his own
particular methods is to be of purpose confined to himself and his
pupils, but that necessarily it must be so in some degree; for only
those who see him at work daily can understand his small and
multitudinous ways of practice. These cannot verbally be explained to
everybody, nor is it needful that they should, only let them be
concealed from nobody who cares to see them; in which case, of course,
his attendant scholars will know them best. But all that can be made
public in matters of this kind should be so with all speed, every artist
throwing his discovery into the common stock, and the whole body of
artists taking such pains in this department of science as that there
shall be no unsettled questions about any known material or method: that
it shall be an entirely ascertained and indisputable matter which is the
best white, and which the best brown; which the strongest canvas, and
safest varnish; and which the shortest and most perfect way of doing
everything known up to that time: and if any one discovers a better, he
is to make it public forthwith. All of them taking care to embarrass
themselves with no theories or reasons for anything, but to work
empirically only: it not being in any wise their business to know
whether light moves in rays or in waves; or whether the blue rays of the
spectrum move slower or faster than the rest; but simply to know how
many minutes and seconds such and such a powder must be calcined, to
give the brightest blue.
§ XV. Now it is perhaps the most exquisite absurdity of the whole
Renaissance system, that while it has encumbered the artist with every
species of knowledge that is of no use to him, this one precious and
necessary knowledge it has utterly lost. There is not, I believe, at
this moment, a single question which could be put respecting pigments
and methods, on which the body of living artists would agree in their
answers. The lives of artists are passed in fruitless experiments;
fruitless, because undirected by experience and uncommunicated in their
results. Every man has methods of his own, which he knows to be
insufficient, and yet jealously conceals from his fellow-workmen: every
colorman has materials of his own, to which it is rare that the artist
can trust: and in the very front of the majestic advance of chemical
science, the empirical science of the artist has been annihilated, and
the days which should have led us to higher perfection are passed in
guessing at, or in mourning over, lost processes; while the so-called
Dark ages, possessing no more knowledge of chemistry than a village
herbalist does now, discovered, established, and put into daily practice
such methods of operation as have made their work, at this day, the
despair of all who look upon it.
§ XVI. And yet even this, to the painter, the safest of sciences, and in
some degree necessary, has its temptations, and capabilities of abuse.
For the simplest means are always enough for a great man; and when once
he has obtained a few ordinary colors, which he is sure will stand, and
a white surface that will not darken nor moulder, nor rend, he is master
of the world, and of his fellow-men. And, indeed, as if in these times
we were bent on furnishing examples of every species of opposite error,
while we have suffered the traditions to escape us of the simple methods
of doing simple things, which are enough for all the arts, and to all
the ages, we have set ourselves to discover fantastic modes of doing
fantastic things,--new mixtures and manipulations of metal, and
porcelain, and leather, and paper, and every conceivable condition of
false substance and cheap work, to our own infinitely multiplied
confusion,--blinding ourselves daily more and more to the great,
changeless, and inevitable truth, that there is but one goodness in art;
and that is one which the chemist cannot prepare, nor the merchant
cheapen, for it comes only of a rare human hand, and rare human soul.
§ XVII. Within its due limits, however, here is one branch of science
which the artist may pursue; and, within limits still more strict,
another also, namely, the science of the appearances of things as they
have been ascertained and registered by his fellow-men. For no day
passes but some visible fact is pointed out to us by others, which,
without their help, we should not have noticed; and the accumulation and
generalization of visible facts have formed, in the succession of ages,
the sciences of light and shade, and perspective, linear and aerial: so
that the artist is now at once put in possession of certain truths
respecting the appearances of things, which, so pointed out to him, any
man may in a few days understand and acknowledge; but which, without
aid, he could not probably discover in his lifetime. I say, probably
could not, because the time which the history of art shows us to have
been actually occupied in the discovery and systematization of such
truth, is no measure of the time _necessary_ for such discovery. The
lengthened period which elapsed between the earliest and the perfect
developement of the science of light (if I may so call it) was not
occupied in the actual effort to ascertain its laws, but in _acquiring
the disposition to make that effort_. It did not take five centuries to
find out the appearance of natural objects; but it took five centuries
to make people care about representing them. An artist of the twelfth
century did not desire to represent nature. His work was symbolical and
ornamental. So long as it was intelligible and lovely, he had no care to
make it like nature. As, for instance, when an old painter represented
the glory round a saint's head by a burnished plate of pure gold, he had
no intention of imitating an effect of light. He meant to tell the
spectator that the figure so decorated was a saint, and to produce
splendor of effect by the golden circle. It was no matter to him what
light was like. So soon as it entered into his intention to represent
the appearance of light, he was not long in discovering the natural
facts necessary for his purpose.
§ XVIII. But, this being fully allowed, it is still true that the
accumulation of facts now known respecting visible phenomena, is greater
than any man could hope to gather for himself, and that it is well for
him to be made acquainted with them; provided always, that he receive
them only at their true value, and do not suffer himself to be misled by
them. I say, at their true value; that is, an exceedingly small one. All
the information which men can receive from the accumulated experience of
others, is of no use but to enable them more quickly and accurately to
see for themselves. It will in no wise take the place of this personal
sight. Nothing can be done well in art, except by vision. Scientific
principles and experiences are helps to the eye, as a microscope is; and
they are of exactly as much use _without_ the eye. No science of
perspective, or of anything else, will enable us to draw the simplest
natural line accurately, unless we see it and feel it. Science is soon
at her wits' end. All the professors of perspective in Europe, could
not, by perspective, draw the line of curve of a sea beach; nay, could
not outline one pool of the quiet water left among the sand. The eye and
hand can do it, nothing else. All the rules of aerial perspective that
ever were written, will not tell me how sharply the pines on the
hill-top are drawn at this moment on the sky. I shall know if I see
them, and love them; not till then. I may study the laws of atmospheric
gradation for fourscore years and ten, and I shall not be able to draw
so much as a brick-kiln through its own smoke, unless I look at it; and
that in an entirely humble and unscientific manner, ready to see all
that the smoke, my master, is ready to show me, and expecting to see
nothing more.
§ XIX. So that all the knowledge a man has must be held cheap, and
neither trusted nor respected, the moment he comes face to face with
Nature. If it help him, well; if not, but, on the contrary, thrust
itself upon him in an impertinent and contradictory temper, and venture
to set itself in the slightest degree in opposition to, or comparison
with, his sight, let it be disgraced forthwith. And the slave is less
likely to take too much upon herself, if she has not been bought for a
high price. All the knowledge an artist needs, will, in these days, come
to him almost without his seeking; if he has far to look for it, he may
be sure he does not want it. Prout became Prout, without knowing a
single rule of perspective to the end of his days; and all the
perspective in the Encyclopædia will never produce us another Prout.
§ XX. And observe, also, knowledge is not only very often unnecessary,
but it is often _untrustworthy_. It is inaccurate, and betrays us where
the eye would have been true to us. Let us take the single instance of
the knowledge of aerial perspective, of which the moderns are so proud,
and see how it betrays us in various ways. First by the conceit of it,
which often prevents our enjoying work in which higher and better things
were thought of than effects of mist. The other day I showed a line
impression of Albert Durer's "St. Hubert" to a modern engraver, who had
never seen it nor any other of Albert Durer's works. He looked at it for
a minute contemptuously, then turned away: "Ah, I see that man did not
know much about aerial perspective!" All the glorious work and thought
of the mighty master, all the redundant landscape, the living
vegetation, the magnificent truth of line, were dead letters to him,
because he happened to have been taught one particular piece of
knowledge which Durer despised.
§ XXI. But not only in the conceit of it, but in the inaccuracy of it,
this science betrays us. Aerial perspective, as given by the modern
artist, is, in nine cases out of ten, a gross and ridiculous
exaggeration, as is demonstrable in a moment. The effect of air in
altering the hue and depth of color is of course great in the exact
proportion of the volume of air between the observer and the object. It
is not violent within the first few yards, and then diminished
gradually, but it is equal for each foot of interposing air. Now in a
clear day, and clear climate, such as that generally presupposed in a
work of fine color, objects are completely visible at a distance of ten
miles; visible in light and shade, with gradations between the two.
Take, then, the faintest possible hue of shadow, or of any color, and
the most violent and positive possible, and set them side by side. The
interval between them is greater than the real difference (for objects
may often be seen clearly much farther than ten miles, I have seen Mont
Blanc at 120) caused by the ten miles of intervening air between any
given hue of the nearest, and most distant, objects; but let us assume
it, in courtesy to the masters of aerial perspective, to be the real
difference. Then roughly estimating a mile at less than it really is,
also in courtesy to them, or at 5000 feet, we have this difference
between tints produced by 50,000 feet of air. Then, ten feet of air
will produce the 5000th part of this difference. Let the reader take the
two extreme tints, and carefully gradate the one into the other. Let him
divide this gradated shadow or color into 5000 successive parts; and the
difference in depth between one of these parts and the next is the exact
amount of aerial perspective between one object, and another, ten feet
behind it, on a clear day.
§ XXII. Now, in Millais' "Huguenot," the figures were standing about
three feet from the wall behind them; and the wise world of critics,
which could find no other fault with the picture, professed to have its
eyes hurt by the want of an aerial perspective, which, had it been
accurately given (as, indeed, I believe it was), would have amounted to
the 10/3-5000th, or less than the 15,000th part of the depth of any
given color. It would be interesting to see a picture painted by the
critics, upon this scientific principle. The aerial perspective usually
represented is entirely conventional and ridiculous; a mere struggle on
the part of the pretendedly well-informed, but really ignorant, artist,
to express distances by mist which he cannot by drawing.
It is curious that the critical world is just as much offended by the
true _presence_ of aerial perspective, over distances of fifty miles,
and with definite purpose of representing mist, in the works of Turner,
as by the true _absence_ of aerial perspective, over distances of three
feet, and in clear weather, in those of Millais.
§ XXIII. "Well but," still answers the reader, "this kind of error may
here and there be occasioned by too much respect for undigested
knowledge; but, on the whole, the gain is greater than the loss, and the
fact is, that a picture of the Renaissance period, or by a modern
master, does indeed represent nature more faithfully than one wrought in
the ignorance of old times." No, not one whit; for the most part less
faithfully. Indeed, the outside of nature is more truly drawn; the
material commonplace, which can be systematized, catalogued, and taught
to all pains-taking mankind,--forms of ribs and scapulæ,[12] of eyebrows
and lips, and curls of hair. Whatever can be measured and handled,
dissected and demonstrated,--in a word, whatever is of the body
only,--that the schools of knowledge do resolutely and courageously
possess themselves of, and portray. But whatever is immeasurable,
intangible, indivisible, and of the spirit, that the schools of
knowledge do as certainly lose, and blot out of their sight, that is to
say, all that is worth art's possessing or recording at all; for
whatever can be arrested, measured, and systematized, we can contemplate
as much as we will in nature herself. But what we want art to do for us
is to stay what is fleeting, and to enlighten what is incomprehensible,
to incorporate the things that have no measure, and immortalize the
things that have no duration. The dimly seen, momentary glance, the
flitting shadow of faint emotion, the imperfect lines of fading thought,
and all that by and through such things as these is recorded on the
features of man, and all that in man's person and actions, and in the
great natural world, is infinite and wonderful; having in it that spirit
and power which man may witness, but not weigh; conceive, but not
comprehend; love, but not limit; and imagine, but not define;--this, the
beginning and the end of the aim of all noble art, we have, in the
ancient art, by perception; and we have _not_, in the newer art, by
knowledge. Giotto gives it us, Orcagna gives it us. Angelico, Memmi,
Pisano, it matters not who,--all simple and unlearned men, in their
measure and manner,--give it us; and the learned men that followed them
give it us not, and we, in our supreme learning, own ourselves at this
day farther from it than ever.
§ XXIV. "Nay," but it is still answered, "this is because we have not
yet brought our knowledge into right use, but have been seeking to
accumulate it, rather than to apply it wisely to the ends of art. Let us
now do this, and we may achieve all that was done by that elder ignorant
art, and infinitely more." No, not so; for as soon as we try to put our
knowledge to good use, we shall find that we have much more than we can
use, and that what more we have is an encumbrance. All our errors in
this respect arise from a gross misconception as to the true nature of
knowledge itself. We talk of learned and ignorant men, as if there were
a certain quantity of knowledge, which to possess was to be learned, and
which not to possess was to be ignorant; instead of considering that
knowledge is infinite, and that the man most learned in human estimation
is just as far from knowing anything as he ought to know it, as the
unlettered peasant. Men are merely on a lower or higher stage of an
eminence, whose summit is God's throne, infinitely above all; and there
is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest man being
discontented with his position, as respects the real quantity of
knowledge he possesses. And, for both of them, the only true reasons for
contentment with the sum of knowledge they possess are these: that it is
the kind of knowledge they need for their duty and happiness in life;
that all they have is tested and certain, so far as it is in their
power; that all they have is well in order, and within reach when they
need it; that it has not cost too much time in the getting; that none of
it, once got, has been lost; and that there is not too much to be easily
taken care of.
§ XXV. Consider these requirements a little, and the evils that result
in our education and polity from neglecting them. Knowledge is mental
food, and is exactly to the spirit what food is to the body (except that
the spirit needs several sorts of food, of which knowledge is only one),
and it is liable to the same kind of misuses. It may be mixed and
disguised by art, till it becomes unwholesome; it may be refined,
sweetened, and made palatable, until it has lost all its power of
nourishment; and, even of its best kind, it may be eaten to surfeiting,
and minister to disease and death.
§ XXVI. Therefore, with respect to knowledge, we are to reason and act
exactly as with respect to food. We no more live to know, than we live
to eat. We live to contemplate, enjoy, act, adore; and we may know all
that is to be known in this world, and what Satan knows in the other,
without being able to do any of these. We are to ask, therefore, first,
is the knowledge we would have fit food for us, good and simple, not
artificial and decorated? and secondly, how much of it will enable us
best for our work; and will leave our hearts light, and our eyes clear?
For no more than that is to be eaten without the old Eve-sin.
§ XXVII. Observe, also, the difference between tasting knowledge, and
hoarding it. In this respect it is also like food; since, in some
measure, the knowledge of all men is laid up in granaries, for future
use; much of it is at any given moment dormant, not fed upon or enjoyed,
but in store. And by all it is to be remembered, that knowledge in this
form may be kept without air till it rots, or in such unthreshed
disorder that it is of no use; and that, however good or orderly, it is
still only in being tasted that it becomes of use; and that men may
easily starve in their own granaries, men of science, perhaps, most of
all, for they are likely to seek accumulation of their store, rather
than nourishment from it. Yet let it not be thought that I would
undervalue them. The good and great among them are like Joseph, to whom
all nations sought to buy corn; or like the sower going forth to sow
beside all waters, sending forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass:
only let us remember that this is not all men's work. We are not
intended to be all keepers of granaries, nor all to be measured by the
filling of a storehouse; but many, nay, most of us, are to receive day
by day our daily bread, and shall be as well nourished and as fit for
our labor, and often, also, fit for nobler and more divine labor, in
feeding from the barrel of meal that does not waste, and from the cruse
of oil that does not fail, than if our barns were filled with plenty,
and our presses bursting out with new wine.
§ XXVIII. It is for each man to find his own measure in this matter; in
great part, also, for others to find it for him, while he is yet a
youth. And the desperate evil of the whole Renaissance system is, that
all idea of measure is therein forgotten, that knowledge is thought the
one and the only good, and it is never inquired whether men are vivified
by it or paralyzed. Let us leave figures. The reader may not believe the
analogy I have been pressing so far; but let him consider the subject in
itself, let him examine the effect of knowledge in his own heart, and
see whether the trees of knowledge and of life are one now, any more
than in Paradise. He must feel that the real animating power of
knowledge is only in the moment of its being first received, when it
fills us with wonder and joy; a joy for which, observe, the previous
ignorance is just as necessary as the present knowledge. That man is
always happy who is in the presence of something which he cannot know to
the full, which he is always going on to know. This is the necessary
condition of a finite creature with divinely rooted and divinely
directed intelligence; this, therefore, its happy state,--but observe, a
state, not of triumph or joy in what it knows, but of joy rather in the
continual discovery of new ignorance, continual self-abasement,
continual astonishment. Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases to
give us pleasure. It may be practically useful to us, it may be good for
others, or good for usury to obtain more; but, in itself, once let it be
thoroughly familiar, and it is dead. The wonder is gone from it, and all
the fine color which it had when first we drew it up out of the infinite
sea. And what does it matter how much or how little of it we have laid
aside, when our only enjoyment is still in the casting of that deep sea
line? What does it matter? Nay, in one respect, it matters much, and not
to our advantage. For one effect of knowledge is to deaden the force of
the imagination and the original energy of the whole man: under the
weight of his knowledge he cannot move so lightly as in the days of his
simplicity. The pack-horse is furnished for the journey, the war-horse
is armed for war; but the freedom of the field and the lightness of the
limb are lost for both. Knowledge is, at best, the pilgrim's burden or
the soldier's panoply, often a weariness to them both: and the
Renaissance knowledge is like the Renaissance armor of plate, binding
and cramping the human form; while all good knowledge is like the
crusader's chain mail, which throws itself into folds with the body, yet
it is rarely so forged as that the clasps and rivets do not gall us. All
men feel this, though they do not think of it, nor reason out its
consequences. They look back to the days of childhood as of greatest
happiness, because those were the days of greatest wonder, greatest
simplicity, and most vigorous imagination. And the whole difference
between a man of genius and other men, it has been said a thousand
times, and most truly, is that the first remains in great part a child,
seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not
conscious of much knowledge,--conscious, rather, of infinite ignorance,
and yet infinite power; a fountain of eternal admiration, delight, and
creative force within him meeting the ocean of visible and governable
things around him.
That is what we have to make men, so far as we may. All are to be men of
genius in their degree,--rivulets or rivers, it does not matter, so that
the souls be clear and pure; not dead walls encompassing dead heaps of
things known and numbered, but running waters in the sweet wilderness of
things unnumbered and unknown, conscious only of the living banks, on
which they partly refresh and partly reflect the flowers, and so pass
on.
§ XXIX. Let each man answer for himself how far his knowledge has made
him this, or how far it is loaded upon him as the pyramid is upon the
tomb. Let him consider, also, how much of it has cost him labor and time
that might have been spent in healthy, happy action, beneficial to all
mankind; how many living souls may have been left uncomforted and
unhelped by him, while his own eyes were failing by the midnight lamp;
how many warm sympathies have died within him as he measured lines or
counted letters; how many draughts of ocean air, and steps on
mountain-turf, and openings of the highest heaven he has lost for his
knowledge; how much of that knowledge, so dearly bought, is now
forgotten or despised, leaving only the capacity of wonder less within
him, and, as it happens in a thousand instances, perhaps even also the
capacity of devotion. And let him,--if, after thus dealing with his own
heart, he can say that his knowledge has indeed been fruitful to
him,--yet consider how many there are who have been forced by the
inevitable laws of modern education into toil utterly repugnant to their
natures, and that in the extreme, until the whole strength of the young
soul was sapped away; and then pronounce with fearfulness how far, and
in how many senses, it may indeed be true that the wisdom of this world
is foolishness with God.
§ XXX. Now all this possibility of evil, observe, attaches to knowledge
pursued for the noblest ends, if it be pursued imprudently. I have
assumed, in speaking of its effect both on men generally and on the
artist especially, that it was sought in the true love of it, and with
all honesty and directness of purpose. But this is granting far too much
in its favor. Of knowledge in general, and without qualification, it is
said by the Apostle that "it puffeth up;" and the father of all modern
science, writing directly in its praise, yet asserts this danger even in
more absolute terms, calling it a "venomousness" in the very nature of
knowledge itself.
§ XXXI. There is, indeed, much difference in this respect between the
tendencies of different branches of knowledge; it being a sure rule that
exactly in proportion as they are inferior, nugatory, or limited in
scope, their power of feeding pride is greater. Thus philology, logic,
rhetoric, and the other sciences of the schools, being for the most part
ridiculous and trifling, have so pestilent an effect upon those who are
devoted to them, that their students cannot conceive of any higher
sciences than these, but fancy that all education ends in the knowledge
of words: but the true and great sciences, more especially natural
history, make men gentle and modest in proportion to the largeness of
their apprehension, and just perception of the infiniteness of the
things they can never know. And this, it seems to me, is the principal
lesson we are intended to be caught by the book of Job; for there God
has thrown open to us the heart of a man most just and holy, and
apparently perfect in all things possible to human nature except
humility. For this he is tried: and we are shown that no suffering, no
self-examination, however honest, however stern, no searching out of the
heart by its own bitterness, is enough to convince man of his
nothingness before God; but that the sight of God's creation will do it.
For, when the Deity himself has willed to end the temptation, and to
accomplish in Job that for which it was sent, He does not vouchsafe to
reason with him, still less does He overwhelm him with terror, or
confound him by laying open before his eyes the book of his iniquities.
He opens before him only the arch of the dayspring, and the fountains of
the deep; and amidst the covert of the reeds, and on the heaving waves,
He bids him watch the kings of the children of pride,--"Behold now
Behemoth, which I made with thee:" And the work is done.
§ XXXII. Thus, if, I repeat, there is any one lesson in the whole book
which stands forth more definitely than another, it is this of the holy
and humbling influence of natural science on the human heart. And yet,
even here, it is not the science, but the perception, to which the good
is owing; and the natural sciences may become as harmful as any others,
when they lose themselves in classification and catalogue-making. Still,
the principal danger is with the sciences of words and methods; and it
was exactly into those sciences that the whole energy of men during the
Renaissance period was thrown. They discovered suddenly that the world
for ten centuries had been living in an ungrammatical manner, and they
made it forthwith the end of human existence to be grammatical. And it
mattered thenceforth nothing what was said, or what was done, so only
that it was said with scholarship, and done with system. Falsehood in a
Ciceronian dialect had no opposers; truth in patois no listeners. A
Roman phrase was thought worth any number of Gothic facts. The sciences
ceased at once to be anything more than different kinds of
grammars,--grammar of language, grammar of logic, grammar of ethics,
grammar of art; and the tongue, wit, and invention of the human race
were supposed to have found their utmost and most divine mission in
syntax and syllogism, perspective and five orders.
Of such knowledge as this, nothing but pride could come; and, therefore,
I have called the first mental characteristic of the Renaissance
schools, the "pride" of science. If they had reached any science worth
the name, they might have loved it; but of the paltry knowledge they
possessed, they could only be proud. There was not anything in it
capable of being loved. Anatomy, indeed, then first made a subject of
accurate study, is a true science, but not so attractive as to enlist
the affections strongly on its side: and therefore, like its meaner
sisters, it became merely a ground for pride; and the one main purpose
of the Renaissance artists, in all their work, was to show how much they
knew.
§ XXXIII. There were, of course, noble exceptions; but chiefly belonging
to the earliest periods of the Renaissance, when its teaching had not
yet produced its full effect. Raphael, Leonardo, and Michael Angelo were
all trained in the old school; they all had masters who knew the true
ends of art, and had reached them; masters nearly as great as they were
themselves, but imbued with the old religious and earnest spirit, which
their disciples receiving from them, and drinking at the same time
deeply from all the fountains of knowledge opened in their day, became
the world's wonders. Then the dull wondering world believed that their
greatness rose out of their new knowledge, instead of out of that
ancient religious root, in which to abide was life, from which to be
severed was annihilation. And from that day to this, they have tried to
produce Michael Angelos and Leonardos by teaching the barren sciences,
and still have mourned and marvelled that no more Michael Angelos came;
not perceiving that those great Fathers were only able to receive such
nourishment because they were rooted on the rock of all ages, and that
our scientific teaching, nowadays, is nothing more nor less than the
assiduous watering of trees whose stems are cut through. Nay, I have
even granted too much in saying that those great men were able to
receive pure nourishment from the sciences; for my own conviction is,
and I know it to be shared by most of those who love Raphael
truly,--that he painted best when he knew least. Michael Angelo was
betrayed, again and again, into such vain and offensive exhibition of
his anatomical knowledge as, to this day, renders his higher powers
indiscernible by the greater part of men; and Leonardo fretted his life
away in engineering, so that there is hardly a picture left to bear his
name. But, with respect to all who followed, there can be no question
that the science they possessed was utterly harmful; serving merely to
draw away their hearts at once from the purposes of art and the power of
nature, and to make, out of the canvas and marble, nothing more than
materials for the exhibition of petty dexterity and useless knowledge.
§ XXXIV. It is sometimes amusing to watch the naïve and childish way in
which this vanity is shown. For instance, when perspective was first
invented, the world thought it a mighty discovery, and the greatest men
it had in it were as proud of knowing that retiring lines converge, as
if all the wisdom of Solomon had been compressed into a vanishing point.
And, accordingly, it became nearly impossible for any one to paint a
Nativity, but he must turn the stable and manger into a Corinthian
arcade, in order to show his knowledge of perspective; and half the best
architecture of the time, instead of being adorned with historical
sculpture, as of old, was set forth with bas-relief of minor corridors
and galleries, thrown into perspective.
Now that perspective can be taught to any schoolboy in a week, we can
smile at this vanity. But the fact is, that all pride in knowledge is
precisely as ridiculous, whatever its kind, or whatever its degree.
There is, indeed, nothing of which man has any right to be proud; but
the very last thing of which, with any show of reason, he can make his
boast is his knowledge, except only that infinitely small portion of it
which he has discovered for himself. For what is there to be more proud
of in receiving a piece of knowledge from another person, than in
receiving a piece of money? Beggars should not be proud, whatever kind
of alms they receive. Knowledge is like current coin. A man may have
some right to be proud of possessing it, if he has worked for the gold
of it, and assayed it, and stamped it, so that it may be received of
all men as true; or earned it fairly, being already assayed: but if he
has done none of these things, but only had it thrown in his face by a
passer-by, what cause has he to be proud? And though, in this mendicant
fashion, he had heaped together the wealth of Croesus, would pride any
more, for this, become him, as, in some sort, it becomes the man who has
labored for his fortune, however small? So, if a man tells me the sun is
larger than the earth, have I any cause for pride in knowing it? or, if
any multitude of men tell me any number of things, heaping all their
wealth of knowledge upon me, have I any reason to be proud under the
heap? And is not nearly all the knowledge of which we boast in these
days cast upon us in this dishonorable way; worked for by other men,
proved by them, and then forced upon us, even against our wills, and
beaten into us in our youth, before we have the wit even to know if it
be good or not? (Mark the distinction between knowledge and thought.)
Truly a noble possession to be proud of! Be assured, there is no part of
the furniture of a man's mind which he has a right to exult in, but that
which he has hewn and fashioned for himself. He who has built himself a
hut on a desert heath, and carved his bed, and table, and chair out of
the nearest forest, may have some right to take pride in the appliances
of his narrow chamber, as assuredly he will have joy in them. But the
man who has had a palace built, and adorned, and furnished for him, may,
indeed, have many advantages above the other, but he has no reason to be
proud of his upholsterer's skill; and it is ten to one if he has half
the joy in his couches of ivory that the other will have in his pallet
of pine.
§ XXXV. And observe how we feel this, in the kind of respect we pay to
such knowledge as we are indeed capable of estimating the value of. When
it is our own, and new to us, we cannot judge of it; but let it be
another's also, and long familiar to us, and see what value we set on
it. Consider how we regard a schoolboy, fresh from his term's labor. If
he begin to display his newly acquired small knowledge to us, and plume
himself thereupon, how soon do we silence him with contempt! But it is
not so if the schoolboy begins to feel or see anything. In the strivings
of his soul within him he is our equal; in his power of sight and
thought he stands separate from us, and may be a greater than we. We are
ready to hear him forthwith. "You saw that? you felt that? No matter for
your being a child; let us hear."
§ XXXVI. Consider that every generation of men stands in this relation
to its successors. It is as the schoolboy: the knowledge of which it is
proudest will be as the alphabet to those who follow. It had better make
no noise about its knowledge; a time will come when its utmost, in that
kind, will be food for scorn. Poor fools! was that all they knew? and
behold how proud they were! But what we see and feel will never be
mocked at. All men will be thankful to us for telling them that.
"Indeed!" they will say, "they felt that in their day? saw that? Would
God we may be like them, before we go to the home where sight and
thought are not!"
This unhappy and childish pride in knowledge, then, was the first
constituent element of the Renaissance mind, and it was enough, of
itself, to have cast it into swift decline: but it was aided by another
form of pride, which was above called the Pride of State; and which we
have next to examine.
§ XXXVII. II. PRIDE OF STATE. It was noticed in the second volume of
"Modern Painters," p. 122, that the principle which had most power in
retarding the modern school of portraiture was its constant expression
of individual vanity and pride. And the reader cannot fail to have
observed that one of the readiest and commonest ways in which the
painter ministers to this vanity, is by introducing the pedestal or
shaft of a column, or some fragment, however simple, of Renaissance
architecture, in the background of the portrait. And this is not merely
because such architecture is bolder or grander than, in general, that of
the apartments of a private house. No other architecture would produce
the same effect in the same degree. The richest Gothic, the most massive
Norman, would not produce the same sense of exaltation as the simple
and meagre lines of the Renaissance.
§ XXXVIII. And if we think over this matter a little, we shall soon feel
that in those meagre lines there is indeed an expression of aristocracy
in its worst characters; coldness, perfectness of training, incapability
of emotion, want of sympathy with the weakness of lower men, blank,
hopeless, haughty self-sufficiency. All these characters are written in
the Renaissance architecture as plainly as if they were graven on it in
words. For, observe, all other architectures have something in them that
common men can enjoy; some concession to the simplicities of humanity,
some daily bread for the hunger of the multitude. Quaint fancy, rich
ornament, bright color, something that shows a sympathy with men of
ordinary minds and hearts; and this wrought out, at least in the Gothic,
with a rudeness showing that the workman did not mind exposing his own
ignorance if he could please others. But the Renaissance is exactly the
contrary of all this. It is rigid, cold, inhuman; incapable of glowing,
of stooping, of conceding for an instant. Whatever excellence it has is
refined, high-trained, and deeply erudite; a kind which the architect
well knows no common mind can taste. He proclaims it to us aloud. "You
cannot feel my work unless you study Vitruvius. I will give you no gay
color, no pleasant sculpture, nothing to make you happy; for I am a
learned man. All the pleasure you can have in anything I do is in its
proud breeding, its rigid formalism, its perfect finish, its cold
tranquillity. I do not work for the vulgar, only for the men of the
academy and the court."
§ XXXIX. And the instinct of the world felt this in a moment. In the new
precision and accurate law of the classical forms, they perceived
something peculiarly adapted to the setting forth of state in an
appalling manner: Princes delighted in it, and courtiers. The Gothic was
good for God's worship, but this was good for man's worship. The Gothic
had fellowship with all hearts, and was universal, like nature: it could
frame a temple for the prayer of nations, or shrink into the poor man's
winding stair. But here was an architecture that would not shrink, that
had in it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced
in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not
be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof
itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall
itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small
windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever
there was room for it, in the street corners. It would be of hewn stone;
it would have its windows and its doors, and its stairs and its pillars,
in lordly order, and of stately size; it would have its wings and its
corridors, and its halls and its gardens, as if all the earth were its
own. And the rugged cottages of the mountaineers, and the fantastic
streets of the laboring burgher were to be thrust out of its way, as of
a lower species.
§ XL. It is to be noted also, that it ministered as much to luxury as to
pride. Not to luxury of the eye, that is a holy luxury; Nature ministers
to that in her painted meadows, and sculptured forests, and gilded
heavens; the Gothic builder ministered to that in his twisted traceries,
and deep-wrought foliage, and burning casements. The dead Renaissance
drew back into its earthliness, out of all that was warm and heavenly;
back into its pride, out of all that was simple and kind; back into its
stateliness, out of all that was impulsive, reverent, and gay. But it
understood the luxury of the body; the terraced and scented and grottoed
garden, with its trickling fountains and slumbrous shades; the spacious
hall and lengthened corridor for the summer heat; the well-closed
windows, and perfect fittings and furniture, for defence against the
cold; and the soft picture, and frescoed wall and roof, covered with the
last lasciviousness of Paganism;--this is understood and possessed to
the full, and still possesses. This is the kind of domestic architecture
on which we pride ourselves, even to this day, as an infinite and
honorable advance from the rough habits of our ancestors; from the time
when the king's floor was strewn with rushes, and the tapestries swayed
before the searching wind in the baron's hall.
§ XLI. Let us hear two stories of those rougher times.
At the debate of King Edwin with his courtiers and priests, whether he
ought to receive the Gospel preached to him by Paulinus, one of his
nobles spoke as follows:
"The present life, O king! weighed with the time that is unknown, seems
to me like this. When you are sitting at a feast with your earls and
thanes in winter time, and the fire is lighted, and the hall is warmed,
and it rains and snows, and the storm is loud without, there comes a
sparrow, and flies through the house. It comes in at one door and goes
out at the other. While it is within, it is not touched by the winter's
storm; but it is but for the twinkling of an eye, for from winter it
comes and to winter it returns. So also this life of man endureth for a
little space; what goes before or what follows after, we know not.
Wherefore, if this new lore bring anything more certain, it is fit that
we should follow it."[13]
That could not have happened in a Renaissance building. The bird could
not have dashed in from the cold into the heat, and from the heat back
again into the storm. It would have had to come up a flight of marble
stairs, and through seven or eight antechambers; and so, if it had ever
made its way into the presence chamber, out again through loggias and
corridors innumerable. And the truth which the bird brought with it,
fresh from heaven, has, in like manner, to make its way to the
Renaissance mind through many antechambers, hardly, and as a despised
thing, if at all.
§ XLII. Hear another story of those early times.
The king of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, at the siege of Asshur, or
Arsur, gave audience to some emirs from Samaria and Naplous. They found
him seated on the ground on a sack of straw. They expressing surprise,
Godfrey answered them: "May not the earth, out of which we came, and
which is to be our dwelling after death, serve us for a seat during
life?"
It is long since such a throne has been set in the reception chambers
of Christendom, or such an answer heard from the lips of a king.
Thus the Renaissance spirit became base both in its abstinence and its
indulgence. Base in its abstinence; curtailing the bright and playful
wealth of form and thought, which filled the architecture of the earlier
ages with sources of delight for their hardy spirit, pure, simple, and
yet rich as the fretwork of flowers and moss, watered by some strong and
stainless mountain stream: and base in its indulgence; as it granted to
the body what it withdrew from the heart, and exhausted, in smoothing
the pavement for the painless feet, and softening the pillow for the
sluggish brain, the powers of art which once had hewn rough ladders into
the clouds of heaven, and set up the stones by which they rested for
houses of God.
§ XLIII. And just in proportion as this courtly sensuality lowered the
real nobleness of the men whom birth or fortune raised above their
fellows, rose their estimate of their own dignity, together with the
insolence and unkindness of its expression, and the grossness of the
flattery with which it was fed. Pride is indeed the first and the last
among the sins of men, and there is no age of the world in which it has
not been unveiled in the power and prosperity of the wicked. But there
was never in any form of slavery, or of feudal supremacy, a
forgetfulness so total of the common majesty of the human soul, and of
the brotherly kindness due from man to man, as in the aristocratic
follies in the Renaissance. I have not space to follow out this most
interesting and extensive subject; but here is a single and very curious
example of the kind of flattery with which architectural teaching was
mingled when addressed to the men of rank of the day.
§ XLIV. In St. Mark's library there is a very curious Latin manuscript
of the twenty-five books of Averulinus, a Florentine architect, upon the
principles of his art. The book was written in or about 1460, and
translated into Latin, and richly illuminated for Corvinus, king of
Hungary, about 1483. I extract from the third book the following passage
on the nature of stones. "As there are three genera of men,--that is to
say, nobles, men of the middle classes, and rustics,--so it appears that
there are of stones. For the marbles and common stones of which we have
spoken above, set forth the rustics. The porphyries and alabasters, and
the other harder stones of mingled quality, represent the middle
classes, if we are to deal in comparisons: and by means of these the
ancients adorned their temples with incrustations and ornaments in a
magnificent manner. And after these come the chalcedonies and
sardonyxes, &c., which are so transparent that there can be seen no spot
in them.[14] Thus men endowed with nobility lead a life in which no spot
can be found."
Canute or Coeur de Lion (I name not Godfrey or St. Louis) would have
dashed their sceptres against the lips of a man who should have dared to
utter to them flattery such as this. But in the fifteenth century it was
rendered and accepted as a matter of course, and the tempers which
delighted in it necessarily took pleasure also in every vulgar or false
means, of taking worldly superiority. And among such false means
largeness of scale in the dwelling-house was of course one of the
easiest and most direct. All persons, however senseless or dull, could
appreciate size: it required some exertion of intelligence to enter into
the spirit of the quaint carving of the Gothic times, but none to
perceive that one heap of stones was higher than another.[15] And
therefore, while in the execution and manner of work the Renaissance
builders zealously vindicated for themselves the attribute of cold and
superior learning, they appealed for such approbation as they needed
from the multitude, to the lowest possible standard of taste; and while
the older workman lavished his labor on the minute niche and narrow
casement, on the doorways no higher than the head, and the contracted
angles of the turreted chamber, the Renaissance builder spared such cost
and toil in his detail, that he might spend it in bringing larger stones
from a distance; and restricted himself to rustication and five orders,
that he might load the ground with colossal piers, and raise an
ambitious barrenness of architecture, as inanimate as it was gigantic,
above the feasts and follies of the powerful or the rich. The Titanic
insanity extended itself also into ecclesiastical design: the principal
church in Italy was built with little idea of any other admirableness
than that which was to result from its being huge; and the religious
impressions of those who enter it are to this day supposed to be
dependent, in a great degree, on their discovering that they cannot span
the thumbs of the statues which sustain the vessels for holy water.
§ XLV. It is easy to understand how an architecture which thus appealed
not less to the lowest instincts of dulness than to the subtlest pride
of learning, rapidly found acceptance with a large body of mankind; and
how the spacious pomp of the new manner of design came to be eagerly
adopted by the luxurious aristocracies, not only of Venice, but of the
other countries of Christendom, now gradually gathering themselves into
that insolent and festering isolation, against which the cry of the poor
sounded hourly in more ominous unison, bursting at last into thunder
(mark where,--first among the planted walks and plashing fountains of
the palace wherein the Renaissance luxury attained its utmost height in
Europe, Versailles); that cry, mingling so much piteousness with its
wrath and indignation, "Our soul is filled with the scornful reproof of
the wealthy, and with the despitefulness of the proud."
§ XLVI. But of all the evidence bearing upon this subject presented by
the various arts of the fifteenth century, none is so interesting or so
conclusive as that deduced from its tombs. For, exactly in proportion as
the pride of life became more insolent, the fear of death became more
servile; and the difference in the manner in which the men of early and
later days adorned the sepulchre, confesses a still greater difference
in their manner of regarding death. To those he came as the comforter
and the friend, rest in his right hand, hope in his left; to these as
the humiliator, the spoiler, and the avenger. And, therefore, we find
the early tombs at once simple and lovely in adornment, severe and
solemn in their expression; confessing the power, and accepting the
peace, of death, openly and joyfully; and in all their symbols marking
that the hope of resurrection lay only in Christ's righteousness; signed
always with this simple utterance of the dead, "I will lay me down in
peace, and take my rest; for it is thou, Lord, only that makest me dwell
in safety." But the tombs of the later ages are a ghastly struggle of
mean pride and miserable terror: the one mustering the statues of the
Virtues about the tomb, disguising the sarcophagus with delicate
sculpture, polishing the false periods of the elaborate epitaph, and
filling with strained animation the features of the portrait statue; and
the other summoning underneath, out of the niche or from behind the
curtain, the frowning skull, or scythed skeleton, or some other more
terrible image of the enemy in whose defiance the whiteness of the
sepulchre had been set to shine above the whiteness of the ashes.
§ XLVII. This change in the feeling with which sepulchral monuments were
designed, from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries, has been common
to the whole of Europe. But, as Venice is in other respects the centre
of the Renaissance system, so also she exhibits this change in the
manner of the sepulchral monument under circumstances peculiarly
calculated to teach us its true character. For the severe guard which,
in earlier times, she put upon every tendency to personal pomp and
ambition, renders the tombs of her ancient monarchs as remarkable for
modesty and simplicity as for their religious feeling; so that, in this
respect, they are separated by a considerable interval from the more
costly monuments erected at the same periods to the kings or nobles of
other European states. In later times, on the other hand, as the piety
of the Venetians diminished, their pride overleaped all limits, and the
tombs which in recent epochs, were erected for men who had lived only to
impoverish or disgrace the state, were as much more magnificent than
those contemporaneously erected for the nobles of Europe, as the
monuments for the great Doges had been humbler. When, in addition to
this, we reflect that the art of sculpture, considered as expressive of
emotion, was at a low ebb in Venice in the twelfth century, and that in
the seventeenth she took the lead in Italy in luxurious work, we shall
at once see the chain of examples through which the change of feeling is
expressed, must present more remarkable extremes here than it can in any
other city; extremes so startling that their impressiveness cannot be
diminished, while their intelligibility is greatly increased, by the
large number of intermediate types which have fortunately been
preserved.
It would, however, too much weary the general reader if, without
illustrations, I were to endeavor to lead him step by step through the
aisles of St. John and Paul; and I shall therefore confine myself to a
slight notice of those features in sepulchral architecture generally
which are especially illustrative of the matter at present in hand, and
point out the order in which, if possible, the traveller should visit
the tombs in Venice, so as to be most deeply impressed with the true
character of the lessons they convey.
§ XLVIII. I have not such an acquaintance with the modes of entombment
or memorial in the earliest ages of Christianity as would justify me in
making any general statement respecting them: but it seems to me that
the perfect type of a Christian tomb was not developed until toward the
thirteenth century, sooner or later according to the civilization of
each country; that perfect type consisting in the raised and perfectly
visible sarcophagus of stone, bearing upon it a recumbent figure, and
the whole covered by a canopy. Before that type was entirely developed,
and in the more ordinary tombs contemporary with it, we find the simple
sarcophagus, often with only a rough block of stone for its lid,
sometimes with a low-gabled lid like a cottage roof, derived from
Egyptian forms, and bearing, either on the sides or the lid, at least a
sculpture of the cross, and sometimes the name of the deceased, and date
of erection of the tomb. In more elaborate examples rich
figure-sculpture is gradually introduced; and in the perfect period the
sarcophagus, even when it does not bear any recumbent figure, has
generally a rich sculpture on its sides representing an angel presenting
the dead, in person and dress as he lived, to Christ or to the Madonna,
with lateral figures, sometimes of saints, sometimes--as in the tombs of
the Dukes of Burgundy at Dijon--of mourners; but in Venice almost always
representing the Annunciation, the angel being placed at one angle of
the sarcophagus, and the Madonna at the other. The canopy, in a very
simple foursquare form, or as an arch over a recess, is added above the
sarcophagus, long before the life-size recumbent figure appears resting
upon it. By the time that the sculptors had acquired skill enough to
give much expression to this figure, the canopy attains an exquisite
symmetry and richness; and, in the most elaborate examples, is
surmounted by a statue, generally small, representing the dead person in
the full strength and pride of life, while the recumbent figure shows
him as he lay in death. And, at this point, the perfect type of the
Gothic tomb is reached.
§ XLIX. Of the simple sarcophagus tomb there are many exquisite examples
both at Venice and Verona; the most interesting in Venice are those
which are set in the recesses of the rude brick front of the Church of
St. John and Paul, ornamented only, for the most part, with two crosses
set in circles, and the legend with the name of the dead, and an "Orate
pro anima" in another circle in the centre. And in this we may note one
great proof of superiority in Italian over English tombs; the latter
being often enriched with quatrefoils, small shafts, and arches, and
other ordinary architectural decorations, which destroy their
seriousness and solemnity, render them little more than ornamental, and
have no religious meaning whatever; while the Italian sarcophagi are
kept massive, smooth, and gloomy,--heavy-lidded dungeons of stone, like
rock-tombs,--but bearing on their surface, sculptured with tender and
narrow lines, the emblem of the cross, not presumptuously nor proudly,
but dimly graven upon their granite, like the hope which the human heart
holds, but hardly perceives in its heaviness.
§ L. Among the tombs in front of the Church of St. John and Paul there
is one which is peculiarly illustrative of the simplicity of these
earlier ages. It is on the left of the entrance, a massy sarcophagus
with low horns as of an altar, placed in a rude recess of the outside
wall, shattered and worn, and here and there entangled among wild grass
and weeds. Yet it is the tomb of two Doges, Jacopo and Lorenzo Tiepolo,
by one of whom nearly the whole ground was given for the erection of the
noble church in front of which his unprotected tomb is wasting away. The
sarcophagus bears an inscription in the centre, describing the acts of
the Doges, of which the letters show that it was added a considerable
period after the erection of the tomb: the original legend is still left
in other letters on its base, to this effect,
"Lord James, died 1251. Lord Laurence, died 1288."
At the two corners of the sarcophagus are two angels bearing censers;
and on its lid two birds, with crosses like crests upon their heads. For
the sake of the traveller in Venice the reader will, I think, pardon me
the momentary irrelevancy of telling the meaning of these symbols.
§ LI. The foundation of the church of St. John and Paul was laid by the
Dominicans about 1234, under the immediate protection of the Senate and
the Doge Giacomo Tiepolo, accorded to them in consequence of a
miraculous vision appearing to the Doge; of which the following account
is given in popular tradition:
"In the year 1226, the Doge Giacomo Tiepolo dreamed a dream; and in his
dream he saw the little oratory of the Dominicans, and, behold, the
ground all around it (now occupied by the church) was covered with
roses of the color of vermilion, and the air was filled with their
fragrance. And in the midst of the roses, there were seen flying to and
fro a crowd of white doves, with golden crosses upon their heads. And
while the Doge looked, and wondered, behold, two angels descended from
heaven with golden censers, and passing through the oratory, and forth
among the flowers, they filled the place with the smoke of their
incense. Then the Doge heard suddenly a clear and loud voice which
proclaimed, 'This is the place that I have chosen for my preachers;' and
having heard it, straightway he awoke and went to the Senate, and
declared to them the vision. Then the Senate decreed that forty paces of
ground should be given to enlarge the monastery; and the Doge Tiepolo
himself made a still larger grant afterwards."
There is nothing miraculous in the occurrence of such a dream as this to
the devout Doge; and the fact, of which there is no doubt, that the
greater part of the land on which the church stands was given by him, is
partly a confirmation of the story. But, whether the sculptures on the
tomb were records of the vision, or the vision a monkish invention from
the sculptures on the tomb, the reader will not, I believe, look upon
its doves and crosses, or rudely carved angels, any more with disdain;
knowing how, in one way or another, they were connected with a point of
deep religious belief.
§ LII. Towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, in Venice, the
recumbent figure begins to appear on the sarcophagus, the first dated
example being also one of the most beautiful; the statue of the prophet
Simeon, sculptured upon the tomb which was to receive his relics in the
church dedicated to him under the name of San Simeone Grande. So soon as
the figure appears, the sarcophagus becomes much more richly sculptured,
but always with definite religious purpose. It is usually divided into
two panels, which are filled with small bas-reliefs of the acts or
martyrdom of the patron saints of the deceased: between them, in the
centre, Christ, or the Virgin and Child, are richly enthroned, under a
curtained canopy; and the two figures representing the Annunciation are
almost always at the angles; the promise of the Birth of Christ being
taken as at once the ground and the type of the promise of eternal life
to all men.
§ LIII. These figures are always in Venice most rudely chiselled; the
progress of figure sculpture being there comparatively tardy. At Verona,
where the great Pisan school had strong influence, the monumental
sculpture is immeasurably finer; and, so early as about the year
1335,[16] the consummate form of the Gothic tomb occurs in the monument
of Can Grande della Scala at Verona. It is set over the portal of the
chapel anciently belonging to the family. The sarcophagus is sculptured
with shallow bas-reliefs, representing (which is rare in the tombs with
which I am acquainted in Italy, unless they are those of saints) the
principal achievements of the warrior's life, especially the siege of
Vicenza and battle of Placenza; these sculptures, however, form little
more than a chased and roughened groundwork for the fully relieved
statues representing the Annunciation, projecting boldly from the front
of the sarcophagus. Above, the Lord of Verona is laid in his long robe
of civil dignity, wearing the simple bonnet, consisting merely of a
fillet bound round the brow, knotted and falling on the shoulder. He is
laid as asleep; his arms crossed upon his body, and his sword by his
side. Above him, a bold arched canopy is sustained by two projecting
shafts, and on the pinnacle of its roof is the statue of the knight on
his war-horse; his helmet, dragon-winged and crested with the dog's
head, tossed back behind his shoulders, and the broad and blazoned
drapery floating back from his horse's breast,--so truly drawn by the
old workman from the life, that it seems to wave in the wind, and the
knight's spear to shake, and his marble horse to be evermore quickening
its pace, and starting into heavier and hastier charge, as the silver
clouds float past behind it in the sky.
§ LIV. Now observe, in this tomb, as much concession is made to the
pride of man as may ever consist with honor, discretion, or dignity. I
do not enter into any question respecting the character of Can Grande,
though there can be little doubt that he was one of the best among the
nobles of his time; but that is not to our purpose. It is not the
question whether his wars were just, or his greatness honorably
achieved; but whether, supposing them to have been so, these facts are
well and gracefully told upon his tomb. And I believe there can be no
hesitation in the admission of its perfect feeling and truth. Though
beautiful, the tomb is so little conspicuous or intrusive, that it
serves only to decorate the portal of the little chapel, and is hardly
regarded by the traveller as he enters. When it is examined, the history
of the acts of the dead is found subdued into dim and minute ornament
upon his coffin; and the principal aim of the monument is to direct the
thoughts to his image as he lies in death, and to the expression of his
hope of resurrection; while, seen as by the memory far away, diminished
in the brightness of the sky, there is set the likeness of his armed
youth, stately, as it stood of old, in the front of battle, and meet to
be thus recorded for us, that we may now be able to remember the dignity
of the frame, of which those who once looked upon it hardly remembered
that it was dust.
§ LV. This, I repeat, is as much as may ever be granted, but this ought
always to be granted, to the honor and the affection of men. The tomb
which stands beside that of Can Grande, nearest it in the little field
of sleep, already shows the traces of erring ambition. It is the tomb of
Mastino the Second, in whose reign began the decline of his family. It
is altogether exquisite as a work of art; and the evidence of a less
wise or noble feeling in its design is found only in this, that the
image of a virtue, Fortitude, as belonging to the dead, is placed on the
extremity of the sarcophagus, opposite to the Crucifixion. But for this
slight circumstance, of which the significance will only be appreciated
as we examine the series of later monuments, the composition of this
monument of Can Mastino would have been as perfect as its decoration is
refined. It consists, like that of Can Grande, of the raised
sarcophagus, bearing the recumbent statue, protected by a noble
foursquare canopy, sculptured with ancient Scripture history. On one
side of the sarcophagus is Christ enthroned, with Can Mastino kneeling
before Him; on the other, Christ is represented in the mystical form,
half-rising from the tomb, meant, I believe, to be at once typical of
His passion and resurrection. The lateral panels are occupied by statues
of saints. At one extremity of the sarcophagus is the Crucifixion; at
the other, a noble statue of Fortitude, with a lion's skin thrown over
her shoulders, its head forming a shield upon her breast, her flowing
hair bound with a narrow fillet, and a three-edged sword in her
gauntleted right hand, drawn back sternly behind her thigh, while, in
her left, she bears high the shield of the Scalas.
§ LVI. Close to this monument is another, the stateliest and most
sumptuous of the three; it first arrests the eye of the stranger, and
long detains it,--a many-pinnacled pile surrounded by niches with
statues of the warrior saints.
It is beautiful, for it still belongs to the noble time, the latter part
of the fourteenth century; but its work is coarser than that of the
other, and its pride may well prepare us to learn that it was built for
himself, in his own lifetime, by the man whose statue crowns it, Can
Signorio della Scala. Now observe, for this is infinitely significant.
Can Mastino II. was feeble and wicked, and began the ruin of his house;
his sarcophagus is the first which bears upon it the image of a virtue,
but he lays claim only to Fortitude. Can Signorio was twice a
fratricide, the last time when he lay upon his death-bed: _his_ tomb
bears upon its gables the images of six virtues,--Faith, Hope, Charity,
Prudence, and (I believe) Justice and Fortitude.