DECAY AND DECLINE
“Day is dying! Float, oh song,
Down the westward river,
Requiem chanting to the Day—
Day, the mighty giver.”
Now let us pass at once to the room where the later Italian pictures are
hung. It is the decay of the Italian school that we have to watch, for
painting has lost its spontaneity. The inspiration of genius has given
way to mere technical skill. This school is called the eclectic school,
for its followers sought to unite the excellences of many painters and
lost all inspiration in the attempt. Ludovico Carracci was its founder.
Tintoretto had warned him that he had no vocation for painting, that
there was nothing original or vital about his methods. Julio Romano,
Annibale Carracci, Canaletto, Guercino, Pietro Longuo, Giovanni Baptista
Tiepolo, Salvator Rosa, Carlo Dolci, Guido Reni, and Sassoferrato were
among the leaders of that school of decay.
Canaletto (1697–1768) is the painter of Venice, and he also painted
London, where he resided two years, coming thither in 1746. His pictures
are marvellous representations of the carvings of the great Venetian
palaces, accurate as photographs: he paints the gondolas, the canals;
but Venice, the land of limpid sunshine, of white marble, is a grey city
in Canaletto’s pictures. Sometimes it is “A State Regatta” (938) which
he paints, and we see the windows and balconies all decked with
tapestries and velvets; sometimes it is “The Grand Canal” (1058), one of
the waterways of Venice, filled with the market people coming in boats
that are laden with purple grapes and figs, scarlet gourds and crimson
fish baskets flaming in the morning sun. The painted sails above and the
sunburnt tanned limbs of the fisher folk glow. All the elements of
colour are here as we see them to-day, but in Canaletto’s pictures much
is grey and colourless.
Guido Reni (1575–1642), who was a pupil of the Carraccis, was a native
of Bologna. His father was a musician, and it was intended he should
follow the same career, but he preferred painting. There is something
very effeminate in his art. His “Magdalene” (177) is an example of his
curious overladen style.
Carlo Dolci (1616–1686), the son of a Florentine painter, is
sentimental, affected, pretty in art. There is a painful smoothness in
his compositions, there is nothing broad in his brush work.
Sassoferrato (1605–1685), who is a follower of the Carracci, has a
certain sweetness and dignity, but lacks originality. “The Virgin and
Child” (740) is a good example of his art. There is in his Madonnas no
stamp of the glorious inspiration of the great masters.
Salvatore Rosa’s (1615–1673) “Landscape with figures” (1206) is a dark
picture. It reflects the sad and interesting mind of the painter.
Salvatore’s life was the record of a disordered mind, full of
contradictory impulses—baseness, courage, ambition, and despair. His
pictures seem to be the work of a dark and tortuous spirit. It is said
that he once joined a band of brigands in the Abruzzi, and that he
sought there the solitude of the hills. Withered trees, dark abysses,
rocks that seemed thrown up by a mighty earthquake were his favourite
subjects. He had no religion: he said that he despised wealth and death.
The thought of that strange man painting these gloomy and mysterious
landscapes, these blasted trees, and nightmare vegetation, haunts our
imagination. His dark and terrible pictures image the awful fancies of
his mind.
But I shall not keep you long over this room. All the pictures are
painful to look at. When we think of the glorious art of Italy—the
exquisiteness of Botticelli, the holiness of Fra Angelico, the visions
of Titian, the noble frenzy of Tintoretto, the rugged splendour of
Michael Angelo, the infinite grace of Raphael, of Leonardo da Vinci, of
Andrea del Sarto, the splendour of the line and colour of Paolo
Veronese, we feel the sadness of decay in the smoothness of Guido Reni,
of Carlo Dolci, in the chaotic ruggedness of Salvatore Rosa, in the
absence of light of Canaletto’s Venice—all showing contempt for what is
natural and simple.