writings, are thus prepared for an everlasting influence over humanity;
and, finally, Christ himself, setting the concluding example to the
conduct and thoughts of men, spends nearly His whole life in the fields,
the mountains, or the small country villages of Judea; and in the very
closing scenes of His life, will not so much as sleep within the walls
of Jerusalem, but rests at the little village of Bethphage, walking in
the morning, and returning in the evening, through the peaceful avenues
of the Mount of Olives, to and from His work of teaching in the temple.
81. It would thus naturally follow, both from the general tone and
teaching of the Scriptures, and from the example of our Lord himself,
that wherever Christianity was preached and accepted, there would be an
immediate interest awakened in the works of God, as seen in the natural
world: and, accordingly, this is the second universal and distinctive
character of Christian art, as distinguished from all pagan work; the
first being a peculiar spirituality in its conception of the human form,
preferring holiness of expression and strength of character, to beauty
of features or of body; and the second, as I say, its intense fondness
for natural objects--animals, leaves, and flowers,--inducing an
immediate transformation of the cold and lifeless pagan ornamentation
into vivid imagery of nature. Of course this manifestation of feeling
was at first checked by the circumstances under which the Christian
religion was disseminated. The art of the first three centuries is
entirely subordinate,--restrained partly by persecution, partly by a
high spirituality, which cared much more about preaching than painting;
and then when, under Constantine, Christianity became the religion of
the Roman empire, myriads of persons gave the aid of their wealth and of
their art to the new religion, who were Christians in nothing but the
name, and who decorated a Christian temple just as they would have
decorated a pagan one, merely because the new religion had become
Imperial. Then, just as the new art was beginning to assume a
distinctive form, down came the northern barbarians upon it; and all
their superstitions had to be leavened with it, and all their hard hands
and hearts softened by it, before their art could appear in anything
like a characteristic form. The warfare in which Europe was perpetually
plunged retarded this development for ages; but it steadily and
gradually prevailed, working from the eighth to the eleventh century
like a seed in the ground, showing little signs of life, but still, if
carefully examined, changing essentially every day and every hour: at
last, in the twelfth century the blade appears above the black earth;
in the thirteenth, the plant is in full leaf.
82. I begin, then, with the thirteenth century, and must now make to you
a general assertion, which, if you will note down and examine at your
leisure, you will find true and useful, though I have not time at
present to give you full demonstration of it.
I say, then, that the art of the thirteenth century is the foundation of
all art--nor merely the foundation, but the root of it; that is to say,
succeeding art is not merely built upon it, but was all comprehended in
it, and is developed out of it. Passing this great century, we find
three successive branches developed from it, in each of the three
following centuries. The fourteenth century is pre-eminently the age of
_Thought_, the fifteenth the age of _Drawing_, and the sixteenth the age
of _Painting_.
83. Observe, first, the fourteenth century is pre-eminently the age of
thought. It begins with the first words of the poem of Dante; and all
the great pictorial poems--the mighty series of works in which
everything is done to relate, but nothing to imitate--belong to this
century. I should only confuse you by giving you the names of marvelous
artists, most of them little familiar to British ears, who adorned this
century in Italy; but you will easily remember it as the age of Dante
and Giotto--the age of _Thought_.
The men of the succeeding century (the fifteenth) felt that they could
not rival their predecessors in invention, but might excel them in
execution. Original thoughts belonging to this century are comparatively
rare; even Raphael and Michael Angelo themselves borrowed all their
principal ideas and plans of pictures from their predecessors; but they
executed them with a precision up to that time unseen. You must
understand by the word "drawing," the perfect rendering of forms,
whether in sculpture or painting; and then remember the fifteenth
century as the age of Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and
Raphael--pre-eminently the age of _Drawing_.
[Illustration: PLATE XIII. (Fig. 20., Fig. 21.)]
The sixteenth century produced the four greatest _Painters_, that is to
say, managers of color, whom the world has seen; namely, Tintoret, Paul
Veronese, Titian, and Correggio. I need not say more to justify my
calling it the age of _Painting_.
84. This, then, being the state of things respecting art in general, let
us next trace the career of landscape through these centuries.
It was only towards the close of the thirteenth century that figure
painting began to assume so perfect a condition as to require some
elaborate suggestion of landscape background. Up to that time, if any
natural object had to be represented, it was done in an entirely
conventional way, as you see it upon Greek vases, or in a Chinese
porcelain pattern; an independent tree or flower being set upon the
white ground, or ground of any color, wherever there was a vacant space
for it, without the smallest attempt to imitate the real colors and
relations of the earth and sky about it. But at the close of the
thirteenth century, Giotto, and in the course of the fourteenth,
Orcagna, sought, for the first time, to give some resemblance to nature
in their backgrounds, and introduced behind their figures pieces of true
landscape, formal enough still, but complete in intention, having
foregrounds and distances, sky and water, forests and mountains,
carefully delineated, not exactly in their true color, but yet in color
approximating to the truth. The system which they introduced (for though
in many points enriched above the work of earlier ages, the Orcagna and
Giotto landscape was a very complete piece of recipe) was observed for a
long period by their pupils, and may be thus briefly described:--The sky
is always pure blue, paler at the horizon, and with a few streaky white
clouds in it, the ground is green even to the extreme distance, with
brown rocks projecting from it; water is blue streaked with white. The
trees are nearly always composed of clusters of their proper leaves
relieved on a black or dark ground, thus (_fig._ 20).[31] And observe
carefully, with respect to the complete drawing of the leaves on this
tree, and the smallness of their number, the real distinction between
noble conventionalism and false conventionalism. You will often hear
modern architects defending their monstrous ornamentation on the ground
that it is "conventional," and that architectural ornament ought to be
conventionalized. Remember, when you hear this, that noble
conventionalism is not an agreement between the artist and spectator
that the one shall misrepresent nature sixty times over, and the other
believe the misrepresentation sixty times over, but it is an agreement
that certain means and limitations being prescribed, only that _kind of
truth_ is to be expected which is consistent with those means. For
instance, if Sir Joshua Reynolds had been talking to a friend about the
character of a face, and there had been nothing in the room but a deal
table and an inkbottle--and no pens--Sir Joshua would have dipped his
finger in the ink, and painted a portrait on the table with his finger,
and a noble portrait too; certainly not delicate in outline, nor
representing any of the qualities of the face dependent on rich outline,
but getting as much of the face as in that manner was attainable. That
is noble conventionalism, and Egyptian work on granite, or illuminator's
work in glass, is all conventional in the same sense, but not
conventionally false. The two noblest and truest carved lions I have
ever seen, are the two granite ones in the Egyptian room of the British
Museum, and yet in them, the lions' manes and beards are represented by
rings of solid rock, as smooth as a mirror!
[Footnote 31: Having no memoranda of my own, taken from Giotto's
landscape, I had this tree copied from an engraving; but I imagine the
rude termination of the stems to be a misrepresentation. Fig. 21 is
accurately copied from a MS., certainly executed between 1250 and 1270,
and is more truly characteristic of the early manner.]
85. There are indeed one or two other conditions of noble
conventionalism, notice more fully in the Addenda (Sec.Sec. 68-71); but you
will find that they always consist in _stopping short_ of nature, not in
falsifying nature; and thus in Giotto's foliage, he _stops short_ of the
quantity of leaves on the real tree, but he gives you the form of the
leaves represented with perfect truth. His foreground also is nearly
always occupied by flowers and herbage, carefully and individually
painted from nature; while, although thus simple in plan, the
arrangements of line in these landscapes of course show the influence of
the master-mind, and sometimes, where the story requires it, we find the
usual formulae overleaped, and Giotto at Avignon painting the breakers of
the sea on a steep shore with great care, while Orcagna, in his Triumph
of Death, has painted a thicket of brambles mixed with teazles, in a
manner worthy of the best days of landscape art.
[Illustration: PLATE XIV. (Fig. 22.)]
86. Now from the landscape of these two men to the landscape of Raphael,
Leonardo, and Perugino, the advance consists principally in two great
steps: The first, that distant objects were more or less invested with a
blue color,--the second, that trees were no longer painted with a black
ground, but with a rich dark brown, or deep green. From Giotto's old
age, to the youth of Raphael, the advance in, and knowledge of,
landscape, consisted of no more than these two simple steps; but the
_execution_ of landscape became infinitely more perfect and elaborate.
All the flowers and leaves in the foreground were worked out with the
same perfection as the features of the figures; in the middle distance
the brown trees were most delicately defined against the sky; the blue
mountains in the extreme distance were exquisitely thrown into aerial
gradations, and the sky and clouds were perfect in transparency and
softness. But still there is no real advance in knowledge of natural
objects. The leaves and flowers are, indeed, admirably painted, and
thrown into various intricate groupings, such as Giotto could not have
attempted, but the rocks and water are still as conventional and
imperfect as ever, except only in color: the forms of rock in Leonardo's
celebrated "Vierge aux Rochers" are literally no better than those on a
china plate. _Fig._ 22 shows a portion of them in mere outline, with one
cluster of the leaves above, and the distant "ideal" mountains. On the
whole, the most satisfactory work of the period is that which most
resembles missal painting, that is to say, which is fullest of beautiful
flowers and animals scattered among the landscape, in the old
independent way, like the birds upon a screen. The landscape of Benozzo
Gozzoli is exquisitely rich in incident of this kind.
87. The first man who entirely broke through the conventionality of his
time, and painted pure landscape, was Masaccio, but he died too young to
effect the revolution of which his genius was capable. It was left for
other men to accomplish, namely, for Correggio and Titian. These two
painters were the first who relieved the foregrounds of their landscape
from the grotesque, quaint, and crowded formalism of the early painters;
and gave a close approximation to the forms of nature in all things;
retaining, however, thus much of the old system, that the distances were
for the most part painted in deep ultramarine blue, the foregrounds in
rich green and brown; there were no effects of sunshine and shadow, but
a generally quiet glow over the whole scene; and the clouds, though now
rolling in irregular masses, and sometimes richly involved among the
hills, were never varied in conception, or studied from nature. There
were no changes of weather in them, no rain clouds or fair-weather
clouds, nothing but various shapes of the cumulus or cirrus, introduced
for the sake of light on the deep blue sky. Tintoret and Bonifazio
introduced more natural effects into this monotonous landscape: in their
works we meet with showers of rain, with rainbows, sunsets, bright
reflections in water, and so on; but still very subordinate, and
carelessly worked out, so as not to justify us in considering their
landscape as forming a class by itself.
[Illustration: PLATE XV. (Fig. 23.)]
88. _Fig._ 23, which is a branch of a tree from the background of
Titian's "St. Jerome," at Milan, compared with _fig._ 20, will give you
a distinct idea of the kind of change which took place from the time of
Giotto to that of Titian, and you will find that this whole range of
landscape may be conveniently classed in three divisions, namely,
_Giottesque_, _Leonardesque_, and _Titianesque_; the Giottesque
embracing nearly all the work of the fourteenth, the Leonardesque that
of the fifteenth, and the Titianesque that of the sixteenth century. Now
you see there remained a fourth step to be taken,--the doing away
with conventionalism altogether, so as to create the perfect art of
landscape painting. The course of the mind of Europe was to do this; but
at the very moment when it ought to have been done, the art of all
civilized nations was paralyzed at once by the operation of the
poisonous elements of infidelity and classical learning together, as I
have endeavored to show elsewhere. In this paralysis, like a soldier
shot as he is just gaining an eminence, the art of the seventeenth
century struggled forward, and sank upon the spot it had been
endeavoring to attain. The step which should have freed landscape from
conventionalism was actually taken by Claude and Salvator Rosa, but
taken in a state of palsy,--taken so as to lose far more than was
gained. For up to this time, no painter ever had thought of drawing
anything, pebble or blade of grass, or tree or mountain, but as well and
distinctly as he could; and if he could not draw it completely, he drew
it at least in a way which should thoroughly show his knowledge and
feeling of it. For instance, you saw in the oak tree of the Giottesque
period, that the main points of the tree, the true shape of leaf and
acorn, were all there, perfectly and carefully articulated, and so they
continued to be down to the time of Tintoret; both he and Titian working
out the separate leaves of their foliage with the most exquisite
botanical care. But now observe: as Christianity had brought this love
of nature into Paganism, the return of Paganism in the shape of
classical learning at once destroyed this love of nature; and at the
moment when Claude and Salvator made the final effort to paint the
_effects_ of nature faithfully, the _objects_ of nature had ceased to be
regarded with affection; so that, while people were amused and
interested by the new effects of sunsets over green seas, and of
tempests bursting on rocky mountains, which were introduced by the
rising school, they entirely ceased to require on the one side, or
bestow on the other, that care and thought by which alone the beauty of
nature can be understood. The older painting had resembled a careful and
deeply studied diagram, illustrative of the most important facts; it was
not to be understood or relished without application of serious
thought; on the contrary, it developed and addressed the highest powers
of mind belonging to the human race; while the Claude and Salvator
painting was like a scene in a theater, viciously and falsely painted
throughout, and presenting a deceptive appearance of truth to nature;
understood, as far as it went, in a moment, but conveying no accurate
knowledge of anything, and, in all its operations on the mind,
unhealthy, hopeless, and profitless.
89. It was, however, received with avidity; for this main reason, that
the architecture, domestic life, and manners of the period were
gradually getting more and more artificial; as I showed you last
evening, all natural beauty had ceased to be permitted in architectural
decoration, while the habits of society led them more and more to live,
if possible, in cities; and the dress, language, and manners of men in
general were approximating to that horrible and lifeless condition in
which you find them just before the outbreak of the French Revolution.
Now, observe: exactly as hoops, and starch, and false hair, and all that
in mind and heart these things typify and betray, as these, I say,
gained upon men, there was a necessary reaction in favor of the
_natural_. Men had never lived so utterly in defiance of the laws of
nature before; but they could not do this without feeling a strange
charm in that which they defied; and, accordingly, we find this
reactionary sentiment expressing itself in a base school of what was
called _pastoral_ poetry; that is to say, poetry written in praise of
the country, by men who lived in coffee-houses and on the Mall. The
essence of pastoral poetry is the sense of strange delightfulness in
grass, which is occasionally felt by a man who has seldom set his foot
on it; it is essentially the poetry of the cockney, and for the most
part corresponds in its aim and rank, as compared with other literature,
to the porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses on a chimney-piece as
compared with great works of sculpture.
90. Of course all good poetry, descriptive of rural life, is
essentially pastoral, or has the effect of the pastoral on the minds of
men living in cities; but the class of poetry which I mean, and which
you probably understand by the term pastoral, is that in which a
farmer's girl is spoken of as a "nymph," and a farmer's boy as a
"swain," and in which, throughout, a ridiculous and unnatural refinement
is supposed to exist in rural life, merely because the poet himself has
neither had the courage to endure its hardships, nor the wit to conceive
its realities. If you examine the literature of the 17th and 18th
centuries you will find that nearly all its expressions, having
reference to the country, show something of this kind; either a foolish
sentimentality, or a morbid fear, both of course coupled with the most
curious ignorance. You will find all its descriptive expressions at once
vague and monotonous. Brooks are always "purling;" birds always
"warbling;" mountains always "lift their horrid peaks above the clouds;"
vales always "are lost in the shadow of gloomy woods;" a few more
distinct ideas about hay-making and curds and cream, acquired in the
neighborhood of Richmond Bridge, serving to give an occasional
appearance of freshness to the catalogue of the sublime and beautiful
which descended from poet to poet; while a few true pieces of pastoral,
like the "Vicar of Wakefield," and Walton's "Angler," relieved the
general waste of dullness. Even in these better productions, nothing is
more remarkable than the general conception of the country merely as a
series of green fields, and the combined ignorance and dread of more
sublime scenery; of which the mysteries and dangers were enhanced by the
difficulties of traveling at the period. Thus in Walton's "Angler," you
have a meeting of two friends, one a Derbyshire man, the other a lowland
traveler, who is as much alarmed, and uses nearly as many expressions of
astonishment, at having to go down a steep hill and ford a brook, as a
traveler uses now at crossing the glacier of the Col du Geant. I am not
sure whether the difficulties which, until late years, have lain in the
way of peaceful and convenient traveling, ought not to have great weight
assigned to them among the other causes of the temper of the period;
but be that as it may, if you will examine the whole range of its
literature--keeping this point in view--I am well persuaded that you
will be struck most forcibly by the strange deadness to the higher
sources of landscape sublimity which is mingled with the morbid
pastoralism. The love of fresh air and green grass forced itself upon
the animal natures of men; but that of the sublimer features of scenery
had no place in minds whose chief powers had been repressed by the
formalisms of the age. And although in the second-rate writers
continually, and in the first-rate ones occasionally, you find an
affectation of interest in mountains, clouds, and forests, yet whenever
they write from their heart, you will find an utter absence of feeling
respecting anything beyond gardens and grass. Examine, for instance, the
novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Sterne, the comedies of Moliere, and
the writings of Johnson and Addison, and I do not think you will find a
single expression of true delight in sublime nature in any one of them.
Perhaps Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," in its total absence of
sentiment on any subject but humanity, and its entire want of notice of
anything at Geneva, which might not as well have been seen at Coxwold,
is the most striking instance I could give you; and if you compare with
this negation of feeling on one side, the interludes of Moliere, in
which shepherds and shepherdesses are introduced in court dress, you
will have a very accurate conception of the general spirit of the age.
91. It was in such a state of society that the landscape of Claude,
Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator Rosa attained its reputation. It is the
complete expression on canvas of the spirit of the time. Claude embodies
the foolish pastoralism, Salvator the ignorant terror, and Gaspar the
dull and affected erudition.
It was, however, altogether impossible that this state of things could
long continue. The age which had buried itself in formalism grew weary
at last of the restraint; and the approach of a new era was marked by
the appearance, and the enthusiastic reception, of writers who took
true delight in those wild scenes of nature which had so long been
despised.