set by Leonardo and Michael Angelo; and are come now, not quite at
random, to the lyric and elegiac loveliness of Andrea del Sarto. To
praise him would need sweeter and purer speech than this of ours. His
art is to me as the Tuscan April in its temperate days, fresh and tender
and clear, but lulled and kindled by such air and light as fills the
life of the growing year with fire. At Florence only can one trace and
tell how great a painter and how various he was. There only, but surely
there, can the influence and pressure of the things of time on his
immortal spirit be understood; how much of him was killed or changed,
how much of him could not be. There are the first-fruits of his
flowering manhood, when the bright and buoyant genius in him had free
play and large delight in its handiwork; when the fresh interest of
invention was still his, and the dramatic sense, the pleasure in the
play of life, the power of motion and variety; before the old strength
of sight and of flight had passed from weary wing and clouding eye, the
old pride and energy of enjoyment had gone out of hand and heart. How
the change fell upon him, and how it wrought, any one may see who
compares his later with his earlier works, with the series, for
instance, of outlines representing the story of St. John Baptist in the
desolate little cloister of Lo Scalzo. In these mural designs there is
such exultation and exuberance of young power, of fresh passion and
imagination, that only by the innate grace can one recognize the hand of
the master whom hitherto we know by the works of his after life, when
the gift of grace had survived the gift of invention. This and all other
gifts it did survive; all pleasure of life and power of mind, all the
conscience of the man, his will, his character, his troubles, his
triumphs, his sin and honour, heart-break and shame. All these his charm
of touch, his sweetness of execution, his "Elysian beauty, melancholy
grace," outlived, and blossomed in their dust. Turn from that cloistral
series to those later pictures, painted when he was "faultless" and
nothing more; and seeing all the growth and all the gain, all the change
and all the loss, one to whom the second was unknown would feel and
foreknow his story and his sorrow. In the cloister, what life and
fullness of growing and strengthening genius, what joyous sense of its
growth and the fair field before it, what dramatic delight in character
and action! where St. John preaches in the wilderness and the few first
listeners are gathered together at his feet, old people and poor,
soul-stricken, silent--women with worn still faces, and a spirit in
their tired aged eyes that feeds heartily and hungrily on his words--all
the haggard funereal group filled from the fountain of his faith with
gradual fire and white-heat of soul; or where Salome dances before
Herod, an incarnate figure of music, grave and graceful, light and
glad, the song of a bird made flesh, with perfect poise of her sweet
slight body from the maiden face to the melodious feet; no tyrannous or
treacherous goddess of deadly beauty, but a simple virgin, with the cold
charm of girlhood and the mobile charm of childhood; as indifferent and
innocent when she stands before Herodias and when she receives the
severed head of John with her slender and steady hands; a pure bright
animal, knowing nothing of man, and of life nothing but instinct and
motion. In her mother's mature and conscious beauty there is visible the
voluptuous will of a harlot and a queen; but, for herself, she has
neither malice nor pity; her beauty is a maiden force of nature, capable
of bloodshed without bloodguiltiness; the King hangs upon the music of
her movement, the rhythm of leaping life in her fair fleet limbs, as one
who listens to a tune, subdued by the rapture of sound, absorbed in
purity of passion. I know not where the subject has been touched with
such fine and keen imagination as here. The time came when another than
Salome was to dance before the eyes of the painter; and she required of
him the head of no man, but his own soul; and he paid the forfeit into
her hands. With the coming of that time upon him came the change upon
his heart and hand; "the work of an imperious whorish woman." Those
words, set by the prophet as a brand upon the fallen forehead of the
chosen bride, come back to mind as one studies in her husband's pictures
the full calm lineaments, the large and serene beauty of Lucrezia del
Fede; a predominant and placid beauty, placid and implacable, not to be
pleaded with or fought against. Voluptuous always and slothful, subtle
at times no doubt and sweet beyond measure, full of heavy beauty and
warm, slow grace, her features bear no sign of possible love or
conscience. Seen side by side with his clear sad face, hers tells more
of the story than any written record, even though two poets of our age
have taken it up. In the feverish and feeble melodrama of Alfred de
Musset there is no touch of tragedy, hardly a shadow of passionate and
piteous truth; in Mr. Browning's noblest poem--his noblest it seems to
me--the whole tragedy is distilled into the right words, the whole man
raised up and reclothed with flesh. One point only is but lightly
touched upon--missed it could not be by an eye so sharp and skilful--the
effect upon his art of the poisonous solvent of love. How his life was
corroded by it and his soul burnt into dead ashes, we are shown in full;
but we are not shown in full what as a painter he was before, what as a
painter he might have been without it. This is what I think the works of
his youth and age, seen near together as at Florence, make manifest to
any loving and studious eye. In those later works, the inevitable and
fatal figure of the woman recurs with little diversity or change. She
has grown into his art, and made it even as herself; rich, monotonous in
beauty, calm, complete, without heart or spirit. But his has not been
always "the low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand" it was then. He had
started on his way towards another goal than that. Nothing now is left
him to live for but his faultless hand and her faultless face--still and
full, suggestive of no change in the steady deep-lidded eyes and heavy
lovely lips without love or pudency or pity. Here among his sketches we
find it again and ever the same, crowned and clothed only with the
glory and the joy and the majesty of the flesh. When the luxurious and
subtle sense which serves the woman for a soul looks forth and speaks
plainest from those eyes and lips, she is sovereign and stately still;
there is in her beauty nothing common or unclean. We cannot but see her
for what she is; but her majestic face makes no appeal for homage or
forgiveness.
_Essays and Studies_ (London, 1875).
[Illustration: THE DANCE OF THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS.
_Andrea del Sarto._]
ADORATION OF THE MAGI
(_GENTILE DA FABRIANO_)
F.A. GRUYER
At the beginning of the Fifteenth Century, Gentile da Fabriano[4]
painted an _Adoration of the Magi_,[5] in which the faithful
representation of contemporary scenes is again found. The Virgin,
completely enveloped in a large blue cloak, is seated in front of the
stable, with her head piously inclined towards her Son whom she is
regarding with tender gaze. St. Joseph is at her side and behind her are
two young women who are holding and admiring the gifts offered to the
Saviour. The infant Jesus has laid his hand on the head of the oldest of
the Magi, who, prostrated, kisses his feet with devotion. The two other
Kings are much younger than the first one. They are presenting their
offerings to the Son of God, and are about to lay their crowns before
him. Then follows the retinue of these Magi; and in this throng, where
may be counted at least seventy figures on foot and on horseback, of all
ranks, of all ages, and of all sizes, it is easy to recognize a trace of
those popular festivals instituted in the preceding century. Despite
some slight Oriental disguises, one may easily recognize the bearing,
the general features, and the costumes of the Italy of the first years
of the Fifteenth Century. Gentile was also pleased to add to the "superb
chargers" mentioned by Lattuda, all kinds of animals, especially the
apes that the Milanese loved to include in their pompous processions.
Finally, in the background of this picture he has painted the embattled
walls of a Guelph city with two massive gates; the one through which the
Magi have entered, the other through which they will take their
departure. Is there anything here, either in the foreground or the
background that suggests Jerusalem? Do you not notice rather a
resemblance to the fortifications of Milan, with the Porta Romana and
the Porta San-Lorenzo?
[Illustration: ADORATION OF THE MAGI.
_Fabriano_.]
After having painted the frescoes of the Cathedral of Orvieto, Gentile
lived for a long time in the north of Italy, particularly in Venice. It
is very likely that while there, closer to the Orient and more
especially nearer to Milan, he painted his _Adoration of the Magi_. We
may then certainly consider this as a faithful portrayal of one of those
public ceremonials, which without doubt he had witnessed, and in which
he had most likely participated. Only, ignoring the passions and
violence of the period, he left everywhere in this painting the imprint
of his own gentle and tender nature. We know that Michael Angelo
remarked of Gentile that his name was in perfect harmony with the tone
of his works. None of them can more thoroughly convince us of the
justice of this observation than this picture. From the Virgin herself
to the most humble of the servants of the Magi, and indeed even to the
animals, that beautiful soul which had for its servant a talent replete
with delicacy and suavity may be traced.[6]
_Les Vierges de Raphaël_ (Paris, 1869).
FOOTNOTES:
[4] One of the founders of the Roman School.
[5] This painting is in the gallery of the Accademia delle Belle Arti,
Florence. At its base on one side one may read: OPVS: GENTILIS, DE:
FABRIANO; and on the other side: MCCCC.X.X.III: MENSIS: MAII.
[6] In a predella below this picture may be seen _The Adoration of the
Shepherds_ and _The Flight into Egypt_. Gentile da Fabriano also painted
an _Adoration of the Magi_ at San-Domenico, Perugia. This second picture
is of less value than the one at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in
Florence.
PORTRAIT OF GEORG GISZE
(_HOLBEIN_)
ANTONY VALABRÈGUE
When Holbein returned to London towards the end of 1531, leaving Basle,
where he had worked for nearly three years, he found himself immediately
occupied with several portraits of the merchants of the Hanseatic
League. During his first sojourn in England, he had painted the
chancellor, Sir Thomas More, his protector and friend, and he had traced
the features of several members of the aristocracy. On his return,
circumstances for his gaining access to the court were less favourable.
Henry VIII. was obeying his own good pleasure and satisfying all his
caprices, and the chancellor was holding aloof, and could not exert his
influence. Holbein did not now possess the title of Painter to the King,
consequently he had to consider himself happy in obtaining the favour of
his compatriots.
The German merchants had formed themselves into a powerful association;
they found themselves united in a kind of city, which went by the name
of Stahlhof. There they had their Guildhall, their Bourse, the place
where their affairs were managed and which contained their stores of
merchandise, and their counting-houses. It was a separate quarter, where
each one could also have his own dwelling.
The company was opulent; the industry of the members of the Hanseatic
League was chiefly in iron and the precious metals; among them were
armourers, watch-makers, and goldsmiths. In the Stahlhof, called in
English the Steelyard, and which the founders themselves had designated
the Palace of Steel, was to be noted a certain opulence and pursuit of
comfort which is to be found in all ages. After having finished their
business, the merchants formed a social circle of their own. They had a
festival-hall of their own, and they could walk about in spacious
gardens which extended along the banks of the Thames.
Among these representatives of high finance a painter might find a
choice _clientèle_ that would never care about the price of an order. We
know that Holbein painted the portraits of many of these rich merchants,
for to-day we find these canvases, whose authenticity has been
established, in Museums and important collections. We may therefore
suppose that the German merchants appreciated Holbein at his true value;
doubtless they disputed the honour of having their features reproduced
by a master of such remarkable talent.
The portrait of Georg Gisze, which is before our readers, is certainly
the finest work of this series. When we saw this masterly work in the
Museum of Berlin, to which it belongs, it left an indelible impression
upon us which we still feel at this distance. It is incontestably a
masterpiece from every point of view; in the Gallery there is but one
other picture of the same kind which may be compared to it, a painting
which suggests a parallel in a single detail,--_The Man with the Pinks_,
by Van Eyck.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF GEORG GISZE.
_Holbein._]
Holbein has represented Georg Gisze in his mercantile office, at a
table, holding a letter which he is about to open, and surrounded by
small objects, articles for which he has use in his business and in his
every-day life. This man appears before us in a marvellous pose, among
these material surroundings and in this professional scene. Observe his
calm attitude and his almost placid physiognomy: we notice, however, the
firm and decided air of a wealthy and elegant merchant. And, at the same
time, we are sure that the type represented here is not of sudden
growth: everything about him reveals intelligence.
Georg Gisze is young; the painter has told us his name and his age in an
inscription on the wall: he is thirty-four. We do not lack information
about him. We like him under that air of youthful seriousness; we see
upon his face that dawning gravity in which the blossom of feeling
already exists, but its plenitude and maturity are still to come. And in
attentively examining our personage we are struck with his reflective
and searching glance. We seem to have a glimpse in him of an undefined
melancholy. This expression surprises us in this man, who ought to be
happy at living and who lacks no pleasures that Fortune can procure.
This is a state of mind which is indicated to us, moreover, by a motto
traced above his name on one of the walls of his office: _Nulla sine
mærore voluptas_. Why this thought? Is it purely emblematic, or does it
contain an allusion to some private matter? We are led to believe that
it is intended as a complementary explanation, that it was placed upon
the picture because it was in sympathy with a train of ideas special to
the model. Perhaps it recalls some domestic sorrow, the lively grief
left by an absent one, or by some eternal separation. A moral mystery,
which seems to us very attractive, hovers around Georg Gisze.
He has long fair hair confined beneath a black cap; his smooth-shaven
face is rather thin. He wears a rich costume, a pourpoint of cerise silk
with puffed sleeves, and, over this pourpoint, a cloak of black wool
lined with fur. The table on which he is leaning is covered with a
Persian rug, and, beside the various objects scattered upon it, you
notice a bunch of carnations in an artistically wrought Venetian glass.
These carnations, like the motto, awake in us an image, a poetical
reminiscence. Sentiment, Germanic in its essence, mingled with dreams
and vague ideals, is introduced into this merchant's office.
The master has fully displayed with supreme power, and with all the
resources of his art, the colours of the costume, the paleness of the
face, and the freshness of the flesh standing out from the background of
green panels. He has played with all the various tones of the
accessories, book and registers, inkstand, watch, and scales for
weighing the gold. Every detail, with no link missing, contributes to
form the perfect harmony of the whole.
We cannot too greatly admire the singular clearness and extraordinary
precision with which the artist has placed in relief every detail that
can make a figure live and render a work essentially eloquent.[7]
People have tried to make out that Georg Gisze was a merchant of Basle.
He would then have been of the race connected most closely with the
Master's life. This opinion has been discussed by Woltmann, Holbein's
historian. The superscriptions on the sufficiently numerous letters,
which are reproduced in this painting, must be especially noticed; they
are written in an ancient dialect which seems rather to be that of
central Germany.[8]
Jouin, _Chefs-d'oeuvre: Peinture, Sculpture, Architecture_
(Paris, 1895-97).
FOOTNOTES:
[7] In one corner of the picture is found this inscription with its
Latin distich:
Imaginem Georgii Gysenii
Ista refert vultus, quâ cernis Imago Georgi
Sic oculos vivos, sic habet ille genas.
Anno ætatis suæ XXXIII.
Anno dom. 1532.
[8] We read on one of these letters: _Dem erszamen Jergen Gisze to
Lunden in Engelant, mynem broder to handen._
PARADISE
(_TINTORET_)
JOHN RUSKIN
The chief reason why we all know the _Last Judgment_ of Michael Angelo,
and not the _Paradise_ of Tintoret, is the same love of sensation which
makes us read the _Inferno_ of Dante, and not his _Paradise_; and the
choice, believe me, is our fault, not his; some farther evil influence
is due to the fact that Michael Angelo had invested all his figures with
picturesque and palpable elements of effect, while Tintoret has only
made them lovely in themselves and has been content that they should
deserve, not demand, your attention.
You are accustomed to think the figures of Michael Angelo
sublime--because they are dark, and colossal, and involved, and
mysterious--because, in a word, they look sometimes like shadows, and
sometimes like mountains, and sometimes like spectres, but never like
human beings. Believe me, yet once more, in what I told you long
since--man can invent nothing nobler than humanity. He cannot raise his
form into anything better than God made it, by giving it either the
flight of birds or strength of beasts, by enveloping it in mist, or
heaping it into multitude. Your pilgrim must look like a pilgrim in a
straw hat, or you will not make him into one with cockle and nimbus;
an angel must look like an angel on the ground, as well as in the
air; and the much-denounced pre-Raphaelite faith that a saint cannot
look saintly unless he has thin legs, is not more absurd than Michael
Angelo's, that a Sibyl cannot look Sibylline unless she has thick ones.
[Illustration: PARADISE.
_Tintoret._]
All that shadowing, storming, and coiling of his, when you look into it,
is mere stage decoration, and that of a vulgar kind. Light is, in
reality, more awful than darkness--modesty more majestic than strength;
and there is truer sublimity in the sweet joy of a child, or the sweet
virtue of a maiden, than in the strength of Antæus, or thunder-clouds of
Ætna.
Now, though in nearly all his greater pictures, Tintoret is entirely
carried away by his sympathy with Michael Angelo, and conquers him in
his own field;--outflies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude,
outwits him in fancy, and outflames him in rage,--he can be just as
gentle as he is strong: and that _Paradise_, though it is the largest
picture in the world, without any question, is also the thoughtfullest,
and most precious.
The Thoughtfullest!--it would be saying but little, as far as Michael
Angelo is concerned.
For consider it of yourselves. You have heard, from your youth up (and
all educated persons have heard for three centuries), of this _Last
Judgment_ of his, as the most sublime picture in existence.
The subject of it is one which should certainly be interesting to you in
one of two ways.
If you never expect to be judged for any of your own doings, and the
tradition of the coming of Christ is to you as an idle tale--still,
think what a wonderful tale it would be, were it well told. You are at
liberty, disbelieving it, to range the fields--Elysian and Tartarean, of
all imagination. You may play with it, since it is false; and what a
play would it not be, well written? Do you think the tragedy, or the
miracle play, or the infinitely Divina Commedia of the Judgment of the
astonished living who were dead;--the undeceiving of the sight of every
human soul, understanding in an instant all the shallow and depth of
past life and future,--face to face with both,--and with God:--this
apocalypse to all intellect, and completion to all passion, this minute
and individual drama of the perfected history of separate spirits, and
of their finally accomplished affections!--think you, I say, all this
was well told by mere heaps of dark bodies curled and convulsed in
space, and fall as of a crowd from a scaffolding, in writhed concretions
of muscular pain?
But take it the other way. Suppose you believe, be it never so dimly or
feebly, in some kind of Judgment that is to be;--that you admit even the
faint contingency of retribution, and can imagine, with vivacity enough
to fear, that in this life, at all events, if not in another--there may
be for you a Visitation of God, and a questioning--What hast thou done?
The picture, if it is a good one, should have a deeper interest, surely
on _this_ postulate? Thrilling enough, as a mere imagination of what is
never to be--now, as a conjecture of what _is_ to be, held the best that
in eighteen centuries of Christianity has for men's eyes been
made;--Think of it so!
And then, tell me, whether you yourselves, or any one you have known,
did ever at any time receive from this picture any, the smallest vital
thought, warning, quickening, or help? It may have appalled, or
impressed you for a time, as a thunder-cloud might: but has it ever
taught you anything--chastised in you anything--confirmed a
purpose--fortified a resistance--purified a passion? I know that for
you, it has done none of these things; and I know also that, for others,
it has done very different things. In every vain and proud designer who
has since lived, that dark carnality of Michael Angelo's has fostered
insolent science, and fleshly imagination. Daubers and blockheads think
themselves painters, and are received by the public as such, if they
know how to foreshorten bones and decipher entrails; and men with
capacity of art either shrink away (the best of them always do) into
petty felicities and innocencies of genre painting--landscapes, cattle,
family breakfasts, village schoolings, and the like; or else, if they
have the full sensuous art-faculty that would have made true painters of
them, being taught from their youth up, to look for and learn the body
instead of the spirit, have learned it and taught it to such purpose,
that at this hour, when I speak to you, the rooms of the Royal Academy
of England, receiving also what of best can be sent there by the masters
of France, contain _not one_ picture honourable to the arts of their
age; and contain many which are shameful in their record of its manners.
Of that, hereafter. I will close to-day by giving you some brief account
of the scheme of Tintoret's _Paradise_, in justification that it is the
thoughtfullest as well as mightiest picture in the world.
In the highest centre is Christ, leaning on the globe of the earth,
which is of dark crystal. Christ is crowned with a glory as of the sun,
and all the picture is lighted by that glory, descending through circle
beneath circle of cloud, and of flying or throned spirits.
The Madonna, beneath Christ, and at some interval from Him, kneels to
Him. She is crowned with the Seven stars, and kneels on a cloud of
angels, whose wings change into ruby fire where they are near her.