BERNINI AND OTHER STUDIES
[Illustration: [Logo]]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration: PLATE I.]
BERNINI AND OTHER STUDIES
IN THE
HISTORY OF ART
BY
RICHARD NORTON
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON
=NEW YORK=
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND COMPANY
1914
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1914,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1914.
=Norwood Press=
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE
The essays presented in the following pages are the product of no hasty
thought. I am grateful to the kind friends who have encouraged their
publication, and to the publishers for giving them so attractive a form.
The choice of illustrations has been difficult. It has seemed best,
however, to reproduce in full the little-known sketches of Bernini
showing the development, in his mind, of the design for the Piazza of
St. Peter’s, and the sculptor’s models wrought by his own hands. For the
rest I have thought that it would be more serviceable for the reader to
have a few typical examples illustrating the main points of the text
rather than a larger, and perhaps more confusing, selection of subjects
from the almost inexhaustible wealth of available material. I am under
deep obligation for the generous permission to include among the
illustrations material in the Brandegee Collection (at Faulkner Farm,
Brookline, Massachusetts) hitherto unpublished. The heliotype plates
were prepared and printed under the direction of Mr. William C. Ramsay,
of Boston.
RICHARD NORTON.
LONDON, July, 1914.
CONTENTS
BERNINI
I. AN ESTIMATE OF BERNINI 3
II. A COLLECTION OF SCULPTOR’S MODELS BY BERNINI 44
III. BERNINI’S DESIGNS FOR THE PIAZZA OF ST. PETER’S 50
ASPECTS OF THE ART OF SCULPTURE
I. THE ART OF PORTRAITURE, PARTICULARLY IN SCULPTURE 57
II. PHEIDIAS AND MICHAEL ANGELO 93
III. A HEAD OF ATHENA FOUND AT CYRENE 135
GIORGIONE
I. PAINTINGS ATTRIBUTED TO GIORGIONE 155
II. THE TRUE GIORGIONE 172
INDEX 215
PLATES
PLATES I AND II. PORTRAITS OF BERNINI
NUMBER
I. Bernini. Pencil Drawing, by himself (p. 12);
Brandegee Collection _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
II. Portrait, formerly thought to be of Velasquez,
probably of Bernini (p. 12, footnote 3);
Capitoline Gallery, Rome 4
PLATES III-X. WORKS OF BERNINI
III. Æneas and Anchises (p. 16); Borghese
Collection, Rome 8
IV. David (p. 17); Borghese Collection 12
V. Proserpina and Pluto (p. 17); Borghese
Collection 16
VI. Apollo and Daphne (p. 17); Borghese Collection 18
VII. Angel with the Crown of Thorns (p. 25); Church
of S. Andrea delle Fratte, Rome 22
VIII. Angel with a Scroll (p. 25); Church of S.
Andrea delle Fratte, Rome 24
IX. Saint Theresa (p. 30); Church of S. Maria
della Vittoria, Rome 30
X. Louis XIV (p. 39); Versailles 38
PLATES XI-XXVII. SCULPTOR’S MODELS BY BERNINI; BRANDEGEE COLLECTION
XI. Female figure in relief, with helmet (p. 46,
No. 1) 44
XII. Figure of Longinus, for St. Peter’s (p. 46,
No. 2) 44
XIII. Putti, for the decoration of the piers in St.
Peter’s (p. 47, Nos. 3 and 4) 44
XIV. Two saints, for the Ciborio in the Cappella
del Sacramento in St. Peter’s (p. 47, Nos.
5, 7) 46
XV. Two saints, for the Ciborio in the Cappella
del Sacramento in St. Peter’s (p. 47, Nos.
6, 8) 46
XVI. Bas-relief with half-figures (p. 47, No. 9) 46
XVII. Half figure of a Triton holding a woman on his
shoulders (p. 47, No. 10) 46
XVIII. Study for the head of the St. Jerome in the
Duomo of Siena (p. 47, No. 11) 46
XIX-XXIV. Models of Angels (pp. 47, 48, Nos. 12–21) 48
XXV. Standing male figure in high relief (p. 49,
No. 22) 48
XXVI. Oval bas-relief of the Virgin (p. 49, No. 23) 48
XXVII. Standing female figure, and standing Angel (p.
49, Nos. 24, 25) 48
PLATES XXVIII-XL. BERNINI’S DESIGNS FOR THE PIAZZA OF ST. PETER’S;
BRANDEGEE COLLECTION
XXVIII. Orb, surmounted by a cross; outline of a
crucified figure (p. 51, Nos. 1, 2) 50
XXIX. Outline plan of St. Peter’s church correlated
with a figure on a cross above lines
suggesting the colonnades (p. 52, Nos. 3, 4) 50
XXX. More complete correlation of the crucified
figure with St. Peter’s church (p. 52, Nos.
5, 6) 50
XXXI. Outline elevation of north half of the facade
of St. Peter’s, with the colonnade (p. 52,
No. 7) 52
XXXII. Sketches of the north colonnade (p. 53, No. 8) 52
XXXIII. More elaborate sketch of the north colonnade
(p. 53, No. 9) 52
XXXIV. Outline sketch of the outer end of the north
arm of the colonnade, treated as if in two
stories (p. 53, No. 10) 52
XXXV. Interior of inner end of north arm of
colonnade (p. 53, No. 11) 52
XXXVI. Plan and elevation of the Cortile di S. Damaso
(p. 53, No. 12) 54
XXXVII. Façade of St. Peter’s, with both colonnades
treated as if in two stories (p. 53, No. 13) 54
XXXVIII. View looking east from the front of St.
Peter’s (p. 54, No. 14) 54
XXXIX. The Borgo, looking toward St. Peter’s (p. 54,
No. 15) 54
XL. Correlation of the Piazza with the Orb (p. 54,
No. 16) 54
PLATES XLI-LI. PORTRAITS
XLI. Sheik-el-Beled, statue of wood, Fourth Dynasty
(p. 57); Boulak Museum, Cairo 58
XLII. Sheik-el-Beled, head of statue shown in plate
XLI 60
XLIII. Portrait, so-called Scipio type, now
identified as priest of Isis (p. 57); Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston 64
XLIV. Pericles (p. 78); British Museum 66
XLV. So-called Menander (p. 82); Brandegee
Collection 72
XLVI. Periander (p. 82); Vatican Museum 74
XLVII. Unknown Roman, terra-cotta (p. 85); Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston 78
XLVIII. Unknown old man, Roman (p. 85); Brandegee
Collection 84
XLIX. Antoninus Pius (p. 88); Brandegee Collection 86
L. Roman girl (p. 90); Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston 88
LI. Sabina? (p. 90); Brandegee Collection 90
PLATES LII-LIX. PHEIDIAS AND MICHAEL ANGELO
LII. Caryatid from the Erechtheum, Athens (p. 101);
British Museum 96
LIII. Madonna and Child, by Michael Angelo (p. 116);
Bruges 100
LIV. The Victor, by Michael Angelo (p. 116);
National Museum, Florence 106
LV. Bacchus with Satyr, by Michael Angelo (p.
116); National Museum, Florence 112
LVI. Eros, by Michael Angelo (p. 118); South
Kensington Museum 118
LVII. Ares and other Divinities (p. 118); Frieze of
the Parthenon, Athens 124
LVIII. So-called Athena Medici (p. 119); École des
Beaux-Arts, Paris 126
LIX. Madonna and Child, by Michael Angelo,
unfinished (p. 131); Church of S. Lorenzo,
Florence 130
PLATES LX, LXI. CYRENE ATHENA
LX. Profile view of head (p. 135); Cyrene 136
LXI. Front view of head 144
PLATES LXII-LXIX. PAINTINGS BY GIORGIONE
LXII. The Judgment of Solomon (p. 172); Kingston
Lacy, England 162
LXIII. Adoration of the Magi, or Epiphany (p. 175);
National Gallery, London 168
LXIV. Shepherd’s Offering (p. 180); in the Lord
Allandale Collection, London 174
LXV. The Storm, gypsy woman and soldier in the
foreground (p. 181); Giovanelli Palace,
Venice 180
LXVI. The Three Philosophers (p. 181); Vienna 186
LXVII. Head of Christ bearing the Cross (p. 185);
Gardner Collection, Boston 194
LXVIII. Portrait (p. 202); Wood Collection, Temple
Newsam, England 202
LXIX. Madonna and Child (p. 204); Vienna 204
BERNINI
I. AN ESTIMATE OF BERNINI
During the last hundred years there has come a great change in the
feeling of most people towards the art of the different epochs of the
Renaissance. Whereas our grandfathers and our great-grandfathers held
Carracci and Guido and others of the same time in high esteem, we are
now taught that these later men are of little value or interest in
comparison with the artists of the fifteenth century, and even the most
halting and stuttering “Primitive” is held of more worth than the more
able masters of the seventeenth century. This change is natural enough,
but betokens a lack of true understanding of the purpose and powers of
the fine arts.
The altered mental attitude in religious matters which renders most
people incapable of feeling the appeal of the mystical fervour of the
seventeenth century explains in a measure why the earlier work is
preferred; and added to this is the effect of the development of
archæological training which has given rise to an interest in the mere
search for origins—a search that has done infinite harm in blinding the
eyes of students to the fact that, for the world at large, it is far
more important to see whither life is carrying us than from what slow,
groping, and inexplicable protoplasm and haphazard chance it sprung. The
teachers of our universities go on in their dull round, like Dervishes,
repeating that the Parthenon was the most perfect expression of Greek
art, and there are those who cannot see the beauty of the silver vases
from Boscoreale because they choose to call them Roman. Without doubt
there are many sound reasons for the purely archæological study of
classic art, and recently a small but perceptive band of scholars has
raised Roman art from the ignorant neglect into which it had fallen and
given it the proper position due to any such able expression of great
ideas; this justifies the hope that the worth of the later Italian
schools will become once more manifest, not again to be forgotten.
The idea that the art of any civilized people rises by a steady and
constantly more perfect progression to one glorious peak of perfection
and then falls by rapid and recurring blunders to a waste of meaningless
effort is, I believe, due to the too frequent mistake of considering the
monuments of the arts as separate entities and as self-ordained rather
than as indices of vital currents of thought and life. The English
dictionary is not synonymous with English literature. Nor does the
will-o’-the-wisp phrase “art for art’s sake” mean that each work of art
is a unique and inexplicable phenomenon. Its true meaning is that the
artist, be he poet or sculptor or musician—no matter what form his art
takes—finds the only adequate expression of himself in the forms and
under the governance of the laws of the art which he follows. By so far
as he follows these laws is his work intelligible to other men; by so
far as he finds new combinations for the forms and new adaptations of
the laws to meet the new circumstances of ever changing life is he
original and great. When Shakespeare or Keats wrote a sonnet the verses
were not produced by them merely for the sake of using a certain
complicated formula of fourteen lines to make certain statements, nor
when Pheidias carved the Athena or Praxiteles the Hermes was it merely
with the idea of reproducing the human form in stone.
[Illustration: PLATE II.]
Had such been the motive of these poets and sculptors their results
would have had small value; but each one of them had something to say
that he could best express in the form chosen, some feeling towards life
he wished to share with others, and in this outgiving he steadily sought
to perfect the form that held his idea. The care he lavished on the
verse and marble so that the expression of this thought might be the
completest possible and truest to his idea, the delight in making his
chosen art conform to the laws of language or of gravity, while at the
same time it held the thought as a nest holds an egg, _that_ was art for
art’s sake, and a very different matter from mere technical dexterity.
All the arts are alike means of conveying ideas from brain to brain and
from the past and forgotten generations to those not yet thought of. No
one school ever told the whole truth, but only that part of it maybe
which local circumstances enable it to see. Each of them, from the
earliest which faded away before recorded time, to the latest which
looks eagerly forward to to-morrow with the hope of new accomplishment
and absorption in new truths discovered, is but as the searchlight
casting its sharp-defined ray through the immeasurable dark. The flames
of Priam’s pyre crimsoning the night which hung over the “topless
towers” were not marked on the Argive hills, but the message was flashed
hither and yon over the star-tracked sea, raising now hopes now fears,
till at Mycenæ no answering flame was lit, but instead the young Phœnix
was born.
And as no one school can answer all the questions, so no one single
pundit can tell all the truth even of his own school. In each honest,
unshamming workman there is something of truth, something others long
ago thrilled to or that others yet to come may also feel, something that
he knows with a clarity and conviction not to be equalled by any other.
In a sense he does express his time, but neither the artist nor any man
else is merely the product of his time, and the truly great ones go
ahead of it, following the gleam of the divine spark which each man is
born with to shelter in his heart as best he may. If it keep alight, by
God’s grace, his life becomes in truth art for art’s sake, and he is one
of the successful runners in the torch race across the great divide of
life that separates the hopeless past from the hopeful future.
Of such there are many to spur on the weary and to guide the strayed
back to the beacon path. In every man who has appealed to the masses,
whose ears have rung and whose heart has swelled with the loud cries of
“well done,” there is, be sure, something of the ultimate divine
truth—some no mockery—some sincerity which heated in the fires of his
soul and beaten with long pain and trouble on the anvil of his heart,
shall be, if we can grasp it, a treasure undiminishing so long as we
have breath to live.
Such an one was Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, whose life was almost
coterminous with the seventeenth century (1598–1680). Honoured during
life by three courts, and at that time court patronage was a very
different thing to what it is now, he has of late been treated with a
disregard which is unjustified, and has been blamed for faults which
were not his. These false judgments can be traced back to the envy of
some of his contemporaries, who on the one hand accused him of ignorance
of the mechanics of his art and of stupidity of design, and on the
other, oftentimes, did their best to copy him. But it gives us pause
when we consider that notwithstanding the forces of jealousy backed by
powerful influence that were brought to bear on him he remained in the
eyes of artistic Italy during his sixty and more working years the
“Michael Angelo of the seicento.” And this estimate of him, if we lay
aside preconceived notions and formulas handed down to us by our
parents, and look at his work with our own eyes and study it in the
light of our own knowledge, will turn out to be the right one. Only the
rash and heedless dare say of one who acquired such admiration in his
own day that his work was poor and unworthy. And yet this is what is
said. His style is said to be extravagant and artificial and his violent
material effects are said to show that he was unable to express thought.
Even the group of Apollo and Daphne is held to exhibit his ignorance of
the proper domain of sculpture. It seems to me more likely that the
judgment of the artists and critics of the seventeenth century is apt to
be the correct one.
What would be artificial in an artist to-day was not so in Bernini, but
was, if we could see it and free our hearts from the bonds of tradition,
the most honest and simplest expression of a genius who had a new
message for those who would take the trouble to understand. Frequently
his work is criticised for not conforming to the “severe laws” of good
sculpture and in this criticism lies the common fallacy of letting
personal taste usurp the place of critical judgment. There are, of
course, laws of gravity, and of stress or strain to which a sculptor
must conform because they are in the nature of the material he uses,
just as there are optical laws which the painter should know; but there
are no laws to fix what the artist may or may not represent or the forms
which he should give to his representations. Personal taste is very well
in its place, but it is not criticism; and severe laws are good training
for our powers, but dependence on them leads to stagnation and not to
discovery. Because the stage-coach follows the old gray road is it
artificial of the aeroplane to soar through the trackless ether?
Probably most critics, when they speak of severe laws as fixed and
irrevocable, have in mind those followed by the Greeks of the fifth
century B.C.—surely of no later time, for what of the violent material
effects of Pergamon? But suppose portraits of the present-day business
kings were carved according to the one-time valid classic laws?
Strangely unlike the subject would such portraits be!
There is nothing ultimately right in severity nor ultimately wrong in
violence. The money-changers were not led from the temple by a ribbon
round their necks. The pioneer and path breaker must be violent. This
was Bernini’s work and purpose, and it is no more reasonable to blame
him for the insincerity and stupidity of his followers than to blame
Columbus for lynch law. As of many another, Bernini’s fame has been
dimmed by the follies and shams of his would-be imitators. Many tried to
imitate and surpass him, but it was not to be done. He had the quality
of genius which is more than the power of taking infinite pains. That
his pupils had, but they merely exaggerated the form of the outer husk
of his work till it lost all semblance of truth and became nothing but
untruth and error. In him was the divine spark, the light of which
showed new worlds for sculpture to work in and the heat of which moulded
his material into the eternal forms of beauty.
[Illustration: PLATE III.]
The study of Bernini is established on very strong foundations, and the
misinterpretation of his aims is inexcusable; for we have sure records
of every kind concerning him. From his surprising youth to his busy old
age we can trace his progress and the development of his powers. Of all
his numerous works scarcely one is lost, and such as have disappeared
are of no importance whatever in comparison with what remains. The full
account of his life was written by two contemporaries, one of them his
son, and this is amplified by many letters and other papers—accounts of
payments for his work, stories of his doings, plans for work sometimes
never undertaken and other times finally accomplished by himself or his
pupils, that have been turned up into the light after long sleep in
Italian archives.[1] It is all before us, and each chapter of his life
can be recalled from the Elysian fields. We grow eager with the same
hopes, we feel despondent at the same broken faith and pledges, we grow
interested in the same companionships, we rest after the same
magnificent accomplishments, and to the end we are keen in search of new
worlds to open up.
Even the look of him we know; what the appearance was as he moved among
the Popes and Kings, the Cardinals and Princes of Europe. What it was
for a man they saw we too can see. What it was of a heart he felt
dragging him on with engine throbs we can guess when our amazed eyes
rest on the Saint Theresa, the bust of Louis XIV, or the throne in St.
Peter’s. A strongly built, dark man, his thick hair whitening in old
age, but the quick eye never losing its brilliancy and piercing glance.
Of simple fashion in dress, as the pictures and drawings by himself and
others show him, for all his love of rich stuffs and floating draperies.
A ready and pleasant wit made him the best of company, though at times
withdrawn into himself by some mystical absorption. For just as the
great religious leaders, so the great artists are at times lifted by
some ecstasy away from actual surrounding fact and lost in worlds only
visible to their inner eye, and though visible never to be told of. At
other times his spirits broke forth in irrepressible gaiety which though
it might form itself as satire was never malevolent. Generous to a
fault, and always ready to lift up a friend, he was implacable towards
his enemies, and rightly showed them no mercy. He had the strength to be
a good hater,—not feebly excusing hypocrisy and meanness because the
hypocrite was weak or knew no better, but hating, not the poor miserable
individual, but his qualities, and, to the best of his own power,
destroying them. Proud and self-confident, but willing to answer
questions or to explain what might seem faults. A lonely man; one with
many acquaintances but few friends. Too sincere not to be shocked by the
heartless brutishness of the woman he loved, too honest a workman not to
be hurt by the attacks of envy, but never losing heart, always following
his ideal and seeking to eternize the beautiful visions of his bright
soul.
There are many portraits of him, some done with pencil or pen or graver,
others more elaborate oil paintings. They are the work of his friends,
or done by himself, and show him at various periods of life from young
manhood to old age. Naturally they vary in many ways, but the variance
is for the most part in the details of the outer shell of the man. The
thick dark locks of the youth give place to the thin gray hairs of the
old man; the full cheeks grow sunken and wrinkles frame the piercing
eyes; but in all the portraits certain characteristics remain constant.
A pencil drawing in the Galleria Nazionale in Rome is the best of the
youthful portraits.[2] It is by himself, done when he was some twenty
years old. It shows a finely shaped head with thick, waving hair. The
face is strongly modelled, and all the features noticeable; the nose
large and slightly bent, the chin square and strong. Lips full and
sensitive, but vigorous. Most noticeable of all are the eyes, large and
dark, set rather deeply under heavy brows, looking straightly and sadly
but imperturbably on the world. A face of power yet of sweetness. A man
to ask after and to watch what he will do in this world. Rather older we
see him in two drawings in the private collection of Prince Chigi in
Rome.[3] Life was testing him severely we know, but the eyes are still
steady, are still bright with the inner light that was leading him on,
and the mouth is still sweet and undrawn.
Of about the same time, or a little later maybe, is the oil portrait
supposed to be by himself (though for this there is little proof), in
the Uffizi.[4] No change yet in the character except in a strengthening
and making permanent the good qualities of his youth. The man has found
himself. Many years go by before we again see him face to face.
In the Gallery of St. Luke[5] and in the possession of Count Andreozzi
in Rome[6] are portraits of him in his last years, and a very fine
pencil drawing by himself in the Brandegee Collection (Plate I). All his
works were completed, his visits to the courts of Europe were over, he
is the “Michael Angelo of the seicento,” and yet he is just as simple in
his dress and pose as ever. Obviously a great man whose ideals were so
much greater to him than what he had accomplished that no possible
flattery could disturb the balance of his mental poise. One change there
is in the face more to be remarked than the higher forehead and the
fuller chin. The eyes are still bright and level, the mouth still as
soft and strong, but the sadness of expression has gone. Had he
realized, I wonder, that soon all the sorrows of life would be hidden
and lost under the gray church floor? Though the glad light of the sun
no longer shone upon his life his face is bright with a mystical light
as of the ranging stars which for countless thousands of years have
guided the feet of man.[7]
[Illustration: PLATE IV.]
It may be thought that I have given a fanciful interpretation to the
change that came in his face from youth to old age, but it can be shown
that some such thoughts as I have suggested moved him. About 1650, at a
time when his enemies had attacked his work in St. Peter’s and caused
him great financial damage and still greater hurt to his natural and
proper pride, the idea came to him to carve an allegory that should show
the ages what his feeling towards his critics, towards art and towards
life truly was. Allegories in painting or sculpture are usually, owing
to the fixed limitations of these arts, unintelligible, but no artist
ever lived who could have done as well as Bernini in making clear his
idea with the material he used. Even if we did not have his own words
about this group his thought would be seen, for his amazing command of
technique and his knowledge of statics made it possible for him to
combine figures with a freedom rarely equalled, and thereby to express
himself with an ease and fulness beyond the powers of most sculptors of
any time. Only one of the two figures which were to form the group was
ever finished, but there is a sepia sketch showing the whole
composition.
In it we see the winged figure of Time hovering above a beautiful woman
from whose nude body he lifts a mantle. She is Truth; in her hand she
holds an image of the Sun darting bright rays in all directions. This
group meant much to him; was perhaps the most personal and truly
expressive work he ever made, and till his death he kept it by him. In
his will he says that not without reason has he kept this statue of
Truth unveiled by Time which he wishes to remain for ever in the
possession of his descendants who, as they look on it, may remember that
the most lovely of the virtues is Truth and that if one works under her
guidance Time in the end reveals her. Are the “severe laws” of the
ancients any more severe than this rule Bernini held before himself and
wished his descendants never to forget, and is it sensible because at
first sight his work seems strange and unaccountable to damn it with
such words as “fantastic” or “baroque”?
The group was never finished, but in a dirty courtyard off the Corso in
Rome, neglected as only the Italians know how to neglect such things
till some outsider stirs their jaded appreciation to new interest, is
the Discovered Truth. Time on hasty wings flies by, but as Bernini knew,
Truth stays always, heedless of neglect, the fixed pole for all those
who set their aim beyond the bounds within which their earthly eyes
would prison them. And knowing this, it came to pass that his old face
was lit with a peaceful smile as he came to the evening of life.
Bernini’s work is of unusual variety, but the best of it falls into four
classes. There are the wonderful groups illustrating old world myths
that he produced in the full joy of life in his youth; there are the
amazing religious monuments in which he embodied with unrivalled skill
the mystical intensity of the religion whose chief priests he served;
there are the superbly joyous settings for fountains which though the
waters might dry up and cease to flow will still, so long as the stone
lasts, echo their murmuring music; and there are the long series of
magnificent busts on which he was employed from his very earliest days
to his latest. He was besides author, painter, illustrator, and
architect. I have no intention of cataloguing the long series of work
his never idle hand produced, but wish merely to point out some of the
forgotten beauties that he brought into being. In a measure, it is
possible to trace the source of his inspiration and in lesser degree to
foresee its outcome.
His father, Pietro, a Florentine, was a sculptor of no mean power before
him. His mother was of Naples, and in that southern, passionate city
Gian Lorenzo was born in 1598 and there he passed his first years. Some
day another Mendel may be able to establish what were the forces of
Florentine and Neapolitan blood that lay dormant in his young brain, but
for us is no such certainty, and we can only guess at the effect of the
father’s artistic occupations and the mother’s quick blood. In 1604,
when the boy was but six years old, his father moved to Rome, the city
his son was destined to impress with his genius as no city but Athens
has ever been impressed by a single artist. Working at first for his
father, he was only fourteen years old when he drew to himself the
attention of all the _connoscenti_ by two busts which, as Annibale
Carracci said, any artist after years of work might have been proud to
make. The admiration Bernini won for these works, to which I shall
return, led, as was the good habit of those days, to the patronage of
the Borghese pope, Paul V.
In the Borghese villa, the ruined grandeur of which is still the chief
pride of Rome, the young Bernini was surrounded by beautiful antique
marbles, some of which he was called upon to restore. This familiarity
with ancient sculpture, and this subjection in the task of restoration
of his own spirit to that of classic masters, had a very marked effect
on him—an effect which in its deepest sense lasted throughout his long
life, though its more obvious and visible manifestation soon waned and
faded away. That is to say, while his work at all times showed a perfect
comprehension of some of the fundamental laws of the material out of
which sculpture is formed, laws that were first clearly expounded by the
Greeks, it is only in a few of his earliest, and for a youth miraculous,
works that he shows a tendency to imitate classic form.
Four wonderful works were produced for the Borghese family. The Æneas
and Anchises (Plate III), the David (Plate IV), the Rape of Proserpina
(Plate V), and the exquisite group of Apollo and Daphne (Plate VI). All
these were finished when he was only twenty-seven. Realizing this, the
comparison of him with Michael Angelo no longer seems exaggerated, but
one sees further that no such comparison can perform the ordinary
service of all such juxtapositions, which is to afford a scale of better
or worse, for the two masters are supreme, each in his own individual
and original way, and incomparable.
[Illustration: PLATE V.]
Opinion may easily differ in regard to the first three of the works just
mentioned. To me the Æneas is the least pleasing and the David the least
successful artistically. The faults of both may be in part due to the
fact that in each case Bernini’s imagination was to a certain degree
hampered by work of other men which he seems to have set himself to
surpass, and even though it may be granted that he did surpass his
models, he would have done better, as in the Proserpina and Daphne, to
let his own genius lead him whither it would and ignore other
suggestion. The models I refer to are, in the case of the Æneas, the
Christ by Michael Angelo in Santa Maria sopra Minerva and for the David
the Borghese Warrior now in the Louvre, both works of small merit.[8]
The reason the Æneas seems to me unpleasing is because of the weakness
and unheroic look of the faces and figures, but others may not feel
this, and the skill of the group is undoubted. The lack of success in
the David is due to a slight failure in understanding the Greek motive
that Bernini was copying. Whether or not he had in mind the Borghese
Warrior as he carved this figure is a matter of slight importance. He
was in any case representing a single figure in a position of strongly
marked action, a problem that Myron magnificently solved in the
Discobolus. The Borghese Warrior is by no means so successful. The David
would rival the Discobolus had Bernini not made one mistake. The figure
is turned to the wrong side. As he stands, the right arm drawn back, the
left hand holding the stone in the sling in front of the body, the sling
must fall loose and dead, the body must again be flung forward and the
right arm swung upwards before the youth can get the momentum to hurl
the stone at his enemy. Had Bernini turned the figure the other way with
the left hand behind and the right in front of the body, this sense of
ineffectiveness in the pose would not have existed, and the whole body
would have been tensely set at the moment of rest between the action of
drawing back for the aim and the instantaneously following motion of the
cast.[9]
Though such slight criticism may be passed on these two works, the other
two, the Proserpina and Daphne are not open to any similar attack. They
are magnificent, and compel admiration even from those whose training
would tend to limit their preferences to work of another type. Never was
the spirit of the two stories more fully understood or more adequately
rendered. Never was marble managed in more masterful fashion and given
such flux and flow of life. One’s breath catches as one looks, for it
seems no longer a work of art before one’s eyes, but life itself. There
is the dark, passionate rape of Proserpine, her splendid soft body
shrinking and twisting in the grasp of the undeniable, compelling God of
the underworld. There is the sweet, sad loss of Daphne, her exquisite
springtime figure fading and changing into the rustling silver leaves in
fright at the too hasty claim of her lover. Her face is still lovely,
though the wide eyes and open mouth show her fear, but is there nothing
in her fear of loss of her dear pursuer? And what of him? Not to be
thought of as Olympian brother to the cruel, forceful Pluto. His face
and action betoken the tenderness that would save the woman he loves
from the heartless folly she would thoughtlessly commit. In the one
group the storm and rush of passion; in the other the tender restraint
of love. Both purely Greek and classic, and both carved with such
consummate mastery that we forget the marble and see only the dark
Tartarean glow and hear only the whispering of the sad leaves.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.]
The perfection of technique displayed in the works of Bernini’s youthful
years is obvious to anyone with the slightest knowledge of sculpture.
His knowledge of anatomy must have been almost instinctive, while he
used the chisel with an ease that few painters could rival with a brush.
His understanding, too, of balance and composition and of the forms the
marble could be given was a revelation, and infinitely enlarged the
field of sculpture. As a mere group, the Daphne has never been
surpassed, and Bernini himself recognised that, at least from the point
of view of technique, none of his later works were any more marvellous.
The spirit and character, however, of the later work are very different.
It is worth noting that his method of production differs greatly from
that of his predecessors. Hundreds of sepia drawings by him still exist
which show the fertility of his invention and the labour he spent in
getting the best design for his works. There are also many terra cotta
models for his statues, and in all of these we see a directness in the
way he approached his subject that differentiates him from the
forerunners in the art. Among the Greeks, among the painters at least,
it was not uncommon to think of the body and the drapery as separate and
to draw or model the first entirely nude and then afterwards to put
drapery over it. This habit was common enough during the Renaissance,
and the studies of such men as Dürer and Leonardo show that it was not
confined to the lesser men whose lack of skill and knowledge was helped
by such double process.
But among all the hundreds of sketches on paper and models in
terra-cotta that are left us of Bernini’s work there is scarcely a trace
of this method of procedure. He visualized each work in endless
different ways, making rapid but most skilful studies of them all, but
he saw the figure each time completed. The figures and drapery and
setting were one indivisible whole to him, and his uncommon knowledge of
anatomy, and the rare clearness of his mental vision, made it possible
for him when the final form of the work was fixed upon to work at it
from the outside inwards, and not, as in something built of blocks, from
the inside outwards. And while his sketches differ in this regard from
those of most other artists, the variety of them, especially the very
numerous ones for the same monument, show the pitch of excellence to
which art had arrived, for these sketches are no longer the record of
the artist’s search to learn _how_, but of his eager search _how best_.
Not that Bernini was unique in this. The fertility of invention of such
men as Domenico Tiepolo is as that of a tree putting forth leaves, but
no other artist illustrates these qualities and methods more completely
and masterfully than our Gian Lorenzo.
I have mentioned above the originality displayed by men such as Michael
Angelo and Bernini. Many another name could be added to these two, but
it is not of men I wish to speak, but of this quality of originality,
this crucible from which the old is drawn forth new, this Spring season
of the mind which clothes the old, dry stumps with fresh life. The word
is so often misused about the artists of to-day that its real
significance is lost and true originality is too often imitated by a
cheaper, rottener stuff. Every one of us is original in some degree. No
one, unless he be mentally dead, sees or feels or believes as his father
or grandfathers did before him. It may be the old belief was more
correct and the old eyes were sharper than the new. Only the purblind
and myopic think that all the early stages were wrong and that the
solitary Present is alone right. Were this so, how hopelessly wrong this
same Present would soon be! What a hideous precipice of error would this
life’s painful course appear! As in life, so it is in Art, and all
artists are original who are genuine and honest, who are spurred on only
by their ideals and their love for their work—who give up worshipping
the xoana and idols of a past day. It may be suggested that there is
little difference, or perhaps even none, between one’s own ideal and any
other suggested to us by some wrought image, whether in stone or verse
is no matter. But there is. There is the difference of life. The light
of one is of the dying embers, but the light of the other is of the
rising Sun which shows the path we follow till our feet grow slower and
slower, till at the last they halt and stop fixed. While the idol
remains but the symbol of the ideal it is right. When it becomes the God
it is wrong, or when doubt has cut its roots and sapped its strength and
we pay it service merely because to do so has become an easy habit. So
it is we come to see that the originality of these artists was not mere
novelty, but was truthfulness. It represents their beliefs, and what you
believe you believe for yourself alone. It shows us what their real,
sure-founded and enduring hopes and aims were. Mere novelty cannot be
believed in because it is accidental. It has neither root nor promise of
flower. It is the mirage of the salt desert, and it is this mere
queerness, mere strain, mere novelty which is too often mistaken for
originality. It is the paradox masquerading as the True Word. Just as
this world whirls like a “fretful midge” through space, ever in the same
track, a recurring course, but gradually unperceived moves elsewhither,
so do the great artists revolve, and impelled not by their own
wilfulness but by the power of the divine spark within them, slowly move
forward. And among that splendid company is Bernini.
The terra cotta studies in the Brandegee Collection[10] illustrate
clearly Bernini’s originality and the power to which I have referred
above, of seeing his visions in their completeness without having to
painfully build them up. I do not mean to imply that each separate
detail of his works was the same in his first vision of them as in their
finished form. He worked at them assiduously, and perfected them with
the greatest patience and care, but when they came into his mind they
rose before him like ghosts from the tomb—vague but entire.
It is noteworthy that most of these models are of angels, and as such
represent the religious work by which Bernini is best known, and on
which he was most often employed after his youth was past. By the time
he was twenty-five years old he had been employed by three Popes, and
before his death five others sought his aid and depended largely on his
genius in their endeavours to beautify Rome and to render their own fame
imperishable. These undertakings were of very various character, but the
greater number of them, such as statues of Saints, decoration of
chapels, altars and tabernacles, grave monuments of Popes and prelates,
were done with religious purpose and may be called his ecclesiastical
work. It is superb in its mastery, magnificent in effect, and while
utterly different from anything that had been done before, gives the
impression of complete and perfect sincerity. Though unlike earlier work
and though the religion that inspired and made it possible has changed
so that never again will an artist be able to give similar expression to
his ideals, still there is no ground for considering it merely curious
and the expression of insincerity or passing error. Anything that
affected so many thousands of men, which they found beautiful and
satisfying to their souls, must be in a measure true, must have in it
some portion of ultimate wisdom. Silence or contempt towards it, any
feeling but of sympathy with it, shows not a better knowledge but a
duller understanding.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.]
During the sixteenth century a great change had come about in the way
men looked at life. Discoveries were made of all sorts; on land for
men’s feet to follow or in mathematics and philosophy for their souls to
reach up to. Old dogmas became untenable and the roofs with which men
had sheltered their heads became scaffolding on which they planted their
feet. It was a time of revolution—the revolution of the wheel of life
which advances as it turns. I have called attention to the fact that the
artists in their search for the fullest possible expression of their
thought often threw off dozens of designs for a single work before
finding the one most adequate. Technique no longer hampered them in the
slightest way, and they readily changed their mode in accordance with
new views, no longer blindly following the old guides. The work of
Titian is one of the most obvious illustrations of this. In his youth he
followed, like the Indian, the steps of his leaders, but as he aged, he
broke from them more and more, till at the end he arrived in a world his
teachers could never have imagined. Bernini had a similar experience.
One of the commonest complaints brought against Bernini is that he
introduced the habit of decorating the archivolts or domed roofs of the
churches with figures of angels fluttering about like great white birds,
and in this complaint no distinction is made between the idea that
underlay this scheme of decoration and the inappropriate and exaggerated
use of it made often by his imitators. From the earliest times of the
Renaissance, this scheme had been used. Bernini did not invent it. The
Gothic portals and towers of France are crowded with figures of saints
and kings, of angels and demons. In orderly ranks they guard the gates
or singly spring into mid air from the balconies. In Italy the shepherds
of the people stood in pulpits which rested on the strong shoulders of
Christ’s soldiers or on the steady wings of the heavenly host, while
high o’erhead (as in the Portinari Chapel in S. Eustorgio, Milan), a
ring of winged figures, hand holding hand, danced and sang, and down the
long aisles and in the dark chapels every sleeper in his stony bed was
guarded by the faithful spirits.
Why then find fault with Bernini and think he erred in doing what all
the world found good? If Bernini is mistaken in putting marble figures
above our heads, why excuse Correggio for the circling swarms with which
he covered the church domes, or Michael Angelo for the cataract of
figures with which he covered the Sistine Chapel? All such work must be
considered for its suggestion, not from the point of view of its actual
substance. Why, if the conventional and halting work of the nameless
early artists is good, should the masterly work of Bernini be considered
bad? Only because the modern world thinks it foolish to believe in
anthropomorphic angels and having no belief, has lost the power of
understanding symbols. And also the antagonism Bernini’s work arouses is
due to the fad for the primitive and incomplete. The very lack of power
that every early artist tried to rid himself of is now thought to be his
chief value and grace, and as in the daily press a missing word puzzle
attracts more attention than a sonnet so the halting early work finds
more admirers than the later perfect art.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII.]
Perfect as they are, there is something more than anthropomorphism in
Bernini’s angels. Earlier artists, even the best of the Florentines,
when representing these heavenly messengers, almost always make them so
solid and human that the wings are utterly inadequate, or else they
suggest the body by a thin and shapeless swirl of drapery topped by a
perfectly substantial head. In either case the result is unsatisfactory,
for though the figures conform to the usual idea of angels as effeminate
human forms with wings, the chief impression they make is of
inconsistent and impossible anatomical combinations.
They fail just as the archaic Greek centaurs with human feet fail. When
one looks at Bernini’s angels, the two done in his youth for the altar
of Sant’ Agostino, or the two for instance which he carved in later
years for the Ponte Sant’ Angelo, but which were considered too
beautiful to be exposed in the open air and are now sheltered in Sant’
Andrea delle Fratte (Plates VII, VIII), or at the one which kneels on
the left hand of the _Ciborio_ in the _Cappella del Sacramento_ in Saint
Peter’s, one has no sense of unreality. The bodies are human in form,
but spiritual in their lightness and grace. The wings are strong and
large, and yet so feathery as to seem almost transparent. The drapery
falls and clings to and fits the body as a cloud might, and the face and
action express a perfect and soul-filling adoration that finds
expression in tireless worship and unending song of praise. These are
the true “sexless souls, ideal quires.”
This same strong religious feeling is shown with equal certainty in
other figures by Bernini which are better known than his angels. These
are the figures of saints which he made in his middle and later years.
The earliest of them, that of Santa Bibiana, done in 1626, when he was
still a young man, shows in the arrangement and pose of the figure the
influence of the antique. The technique exhibits the same magnificent
ease and the same power of reproducing the various qualities of drapery
and flesh and hair that we saw before in the Borghese groups, and there
is in the face and gesture the expression of self-effacement in
religious ecstasy that is the most noticeable quality of the later
figures of this kind. As he grows older, these two characteristics of
technical differentiation of surface and of ecstatic expression altered.
While he lost no atom of technical power he tended to lay less stress on
the appearance of the mere surface of his figures and to pay more
attention to and show forth more clearly their mental condition. In
doing this he brought into being figures as truly representative of the
religion of his time as those of Michael Angelo or any other sculptor of
any epoch.
Religious emotion must always call forth strong feeling, but the
strength is sometimes shown in terms of apparent restraint, at others it
shows itself in violent action. Athena Parthenos is as emotional as the
Santa Theresa and Savonarola, and Luther is as violent as the Crusaders.
The seventeenth century was a time when men thought it no shame to show
their feelings. The Puritans showed them as clearly as the Italians,
though in a less pleasant form. If to-day it is difficult to realize and
sympathize with the sentiment shown in Bernini’s Sant’ Andrea, or
Daniel, or Maria di Magdala, it is not because of our superiority, but
rather because we have lost a very precious sense and power of spiritual
levitation. Look at the Habakkuk. Is it not a splendid presentation of
the prophet who was burdened with the grievance which he beheld, who saw
for so long the righteous compassed about by a “bitter and hasty” race
that he felt the Lord would never respond to his cry? But even as he
complains the visible answer of the Lord appears, and the Angel with
playful tenderness pulls at his hair so that his face is upturned to the
light of Heaven, not any longer dark with earth’s despair, as he bids
him write the vision of the Lord’s judgment that shall not tarry—write
it so that he may run who readeth. And Habakkuk still points to the
iniquity that blackens the world and the angel points to the inevitably
approaching woe. It is superbly original. It is deeply felt.