thought of painting it. He knew that to paint the sun was as impossible
as to stop it; and he was no trickster, trying to find out ways of
seeming to do what he did not. I can paint a rose,--yes; and I will. I
can't paint a red-hot coal; and I won't try to, nor seem to. This was
just as natural and certain a process of thinking with _him_, as the
honesty of it, and true science, were impossible to the false painters
of the Sixteenth Century.
Nevertheless, what his art can honestly do to make you feel as much as
he wants you to feel, about this fire, he will do; and that studiously.
That the fire be _luminous_ or not, is no matter just now. But that the
fire is _hot_, he would have you to know. Now, will you notice what
colours he has used in the whole picture. First, the blue background,
necessary to unite it with the other three subjects, is reduced to the
smallest possible space. St. Francis must be in grey, for that is his
dress; also the attendant of one of the Magi is in grey; but so warm,
that, if you saw it by itself, you would call it brown. The shadow
behind the throne, which Giotto knows he _can_ paint, and therefore
does, is grey also. The rest of the picture[21] in at least six-sevenths
of its area--is either crimson, gold, orange, purple, or white, all as
warm as Giotto could paint them; and set off by minute spaces only of
intense black,--the Soldan's fillet at the shoulders, his eyes, beard,
and the points necessary in the golden pattern behind. And the whole
picture is one glow.
A single glance round at the other subjects will convince you of the
special character in this; but you will recognize also that the four
upper subjects in which St. Francis's life and zeal are shown, are all
in comparatively warm colours, while the two lower ones--of the death,
and the visions after it--have been kept as definitely sad and cold.
Necessarily, you might think, being full of monks' dresses. Not so. Was
there any need for Giotto to have put the priest at the foot of the dead
body, with the black banner stooped over it in the shape of a grave?
Might he not, had he chosen, in either fresco, have made the celestial
visions brighter? Might not St. Francis have appeared in the centre of a
celestial glory to the dreaming Pope, or his soul been seen of the poor
monk, rising through more radiant clouds? Look, however, how radiant,
in the small space allowed out of the blue, they are in reality. You
cannot anywhere see a lovelier piece of Giottesque colour, though here
you have to mourn over the smallness of the piece, and its isolation.
For the face of St. Francis himself is repainted, and all the blue sky;
but the clouds and four sustaining angels are hardly retouched at all,
and their iridescent and exquisitely graceful wings are left with really
very tender and delicate care by the restorer of the sky. And no one but
Giotto or Turner could have painted them.
For in all his use of opalescent and warm colour, Giotto is exactly like
Turner, as, in his swift expressional power, he is like Gainsborough.
All the other Italian religious painters work out their expression with
toil; he only can give it with a touch. All the other great Italian
colourists see only the beauty of colour, but Giotto also its
brightness. And none of the others, except Tintoret, understood to the
full its symbolic power; but with those--Giotto and Tintoret--there is
always, not only a colour harmony, but a colour secret. It is not merely
to make the picture glow, but to remind you that St. Francis preaches to
a fire-worshipping king, that Giotto covers the wall with purple and
scarlet;--and above, in the dispute at Assisi, the angry father is
dressed in red, varying like passion; and the robe with which his
protector embraces St. Francis, blue, symbolizing the peace of Heaven.
Of course certain conventional colours were traditionally employed by
all painters; but only Giotto and Tintoret invent a symbolism of their
own for every picture. Thus in Tintoret's picture of the fall of the
manna, the figure of God the Father is entirely robed in white, contrary
to all received custom; in that of Moses striking the rock, it is
surrounded by a rainbow. Of Giotto's symbolism in colour at Assisi I
have given account elsewhere.[22]
You are not to think, therefore, the difference between the colour of
the upper and lower frescos unintentional. The life of St. Francis was
always full of joy and triumph. His death, in great suffering,
weariness, and extreme humility. The tradition of him reverses that of
Elijah: living, he is seen in the chariot of fire; dying, he submits to
more than the common sorrow of death.
There is, however, much more than a difference in colour between the
upper and lower frescos. There is a difference in manner which I cannot
account for; and above all, a very singular difference in
skill,--indicating, it seems to me, that the two lower were done long
before the others, and afterwards united and harmonized with them. It is
of no interest to the general reader to pursue this question; but one
point he can notice quickly, that the lower frescos depend much on a
mere black or brown outline of the features, while the faces above are
evenly and completely painted in the most accomplished Venetian
manner:--and another, respecting the management of the draperies,
contains much interest for us.
Giotto never succeeded, to the very end of his days, in representing a
figure lying down, and at ease. It is one of the most curious points in
all his character. Just the thing which he could study from nature
without the smallest hindrance, is the thing he never can paint; while
subtleties of form and gesture, which depend absolutely on their
momentariness, and actions in which no model can stay for an instant he
seizes with infallible accuracy.
Not only has the sleeping Pope, in the right hand lower fresco, his head
laid uncomfortably on his pillow, but all the clothes on him are in
awkward angles, even Giotto's instinct for lines of drapery failing him
altogether when he has to lay it on a reposing figure. But look at the
folds of the Soldan's robe over his knees. None could be more beautiful
or right; and it is to me wholly inconceivable that the two paintings
should be within even twenty years of each other in date--the skill in
the upper one is so supremely greater. We shall find, however, more than
mere truth in its casts of drapery, if we examine them.
They are so simply right, in the figure of the Soldan, that we do not
think of them;--we see him only, not his dress. But we see dress first,
in the figures of the discomfited Magi. Very fully draped personages
these, indeed,--with trains, it appears four yards long, and bearers of
them.
The one nearest the Soldan has done his devoir as bravely as he could;
would fain go up to the fire, but cannot; is forced to shield his face,
though he has not turned back. Giotto gives him full sweeping breadth of
fold; what dignity he can;--a man faithful to his profession, at all
events.
The next one has no such courage. Collapsed altogether, he has nothing
more to say for himself or his creed. Giotto hangs the cloak upon him in
Ghirlandajo's fashion, as from a peg, but with ludicrous narrowness of
fold. Literally, he is a "shut-up" Magus--closed like a fan. He turns
his head away, hopelessly. And the last Magus shows nothing but his
back, disappearing through the door.
Opposed to them, in a modern work, you would have had a St. Francis
standing as high as he could in his sandals, contemptuous, denunciatory;
magnificently showing the Magi the door. No such thing, says Giotto. A
somewhat mean man; disappointing even in presence--even in feature; I do
not understand his gesture, pointing to his forehead--perhaps meaning,
"my life, or my head, upon the truth of this." The attendant monk behind
him is terror-struck; but will follow his master. The dark Moorish
servants of the Magi show no emotion--will arrange their masters' trains
as usual, and decorously sustain their retreat.
Lastly, for the Soldan himself. In a modern work, you would assuredly
have had him staring at St. Francis with his eyebrows up, or frowning
thunderously at the Magi, with them bent as far down as they would go.
Neither of these aspects does he bear according to Giotto. A perfect
gentleman and king, he looks on his Magi with quiet eyes of decision; he
is much the noblest person in the room--though an infidel, the true hero
of the scene, far more so than St. Francis. It is evidently the Soldan
whom Giotto wants you to think of mainly, in this picture of Christian
missionary work.
He does not altogether take the view of the Heathen which you would get
in an Exeter Hall meeting. Does not expatiate on their ignorance, their
blackness, or their nakedness. Does not at all think of the Florentine
Islington and Pentonville, as inhabited by persons in every respect
superior to the Kings of the East; nor does he imagine every other
religion but his own to be log-worship. Probably the people who really
worship logs--whether in Persia or Pentonville--will be left to worship
logs to their hearts' content, thinks Giotto. But to those who worship
_God_, and who have obeyed the laws of heaven written in their hearts,
and numbered the stars of it visible to them,--to these, a nearer star
may rise; and a higher God be revealed.
You are to note, therefore, that Giotto's Soldan is the type of all
noblest religion and law, in countries where the name of Christ has not
been preached. There was no doubt what king or people should be chosen:
the country of the three Magi had already been indicated by the miracle
of Bethlehem; and the religion and morality of Zoroaster were the
purest, and in spirit the oldest, in the heathen world. Therefore, when
Dante in the nineteenth and twentieth books of the Paradise, gives his
final interpretation of the law of human and divine justice in relation
to the gospel of Christ--the lower and enslaved body of the heathen
being represented by St. Philip's convert ("Christians like these the
Ethiop shall condemn")--the noblest state of heathenism is at once
chosen, as by Giotto: "What may the _Persians_ say unto _your_ kings?"
Compare also Milton,--
"At the Soldan's chair,
Defied the best of Paynim chivalry."
_Mornings in Florence_ (Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1875).
FOOTNOTES:
[21] The floor has been repainted; but though its grey is now heavy and
cold, it cannot kill the splendour of the rest.
[22] _Fors Clavigera_ for September, 1874.
LILITH
(_ROSSETTI_)
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
"Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve),
That, ere the snake's her sweet tongue could deceive,
And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
And, subtly by herself contemplative,
Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave,
Till heart and body and life are in its hold.
"The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft-shed sleep shall snare?
Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling golden hair."
_Dante Gabriel Rossetti._
It is well-known that the painter of whom I now propose to speak has
never suffered exclusion or acceptance at the hand of any academy. To
such acceptance or such rejection all other men of any note have been
and may be liable. It is not less well known that his work must always
hold its place as second in significance and value to no work done by
any painter of his time. Among the many great works of Mr. D.G.
Rossetti, I know of none greater than his two latest. These are types of
sensual beauty and spiritual, the siren and the sibyl. The one is a
woman of the type of Adam's first wife; she is a living Lilith with
ample splendour of redundant hair;
"She excels
All women in the magic of her locks;
And when she winds them round a young man's neck
She will not ever set him free again."
[Illustration: LILITH.
_Rossetti_.]
Clothed in soft white garments, she draws out through a comb the heavy
mass of hair like thick spun gold to fullest length; her head leans back
half sleepily, superb and satiate with its own beauty; the eyes are
languid, without love in them or hate; the sweet luxurious mouth has the
patience of pleasure fulfilled and complete, the warm repose of passion
sure of its delight. Outside, as seen in the glimmering mirror, there is
full summer; the deep and glowing leaves have drunk in the whole
strength of the sun. The sleepy splendour of the picture is a fit
raiment for the idea incarnate of faultless fleshly beauty and peril of
pleasure unavoidable. For this serene and sublime sorceress there is no
life but of the body; with spirit (if spirit there be) she can dispense.
Were it worth her while for any word to divide those terrible tender
lips, she too might say with the hero of the most perfect and exquisite
book of modern times--_Mademoiselle de Maupin--"Je trouve la terre aussi
belle que le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est la
vertu."_ Of evil desire or evil impulse she has nothing; and nothing of
good. She is indifferent, equable, magnetic; she charms and draws down
the souls of men by pure force of absorption, in no wise wilful or
malignant; outside herself she cannot live, she cannot even see: and
because of this she attracts and subdues all men at once in body and in
spirit. Beyond the mirror she cares not to look, and could not.
_"Ma mia suora Rahel mai non si smaga,
Dal suo miraglio, e siede tutto 'l giorno."_
So, rapt in no spiritual contemplation, she will sit to all time,
passive and perfect: the outer light of a sweet spring day flooding and
filling the massive gold of her hair. By the reflection in a deep mirror
of fervent foliage from without, the chief chord of stronger colour is
touched in this picture; next in brilliance and force of relief is the
heap of curling and tumbling hair on which the sunshine strikes; the
face and head of the siren are withdrawn from the full stroke of the
light.
_Essays and Studies_ (London, 1875).
ADORATION OF THE MAGI
(_DÜRER_)
MORIZ THAUSING
Italy, that beautiful enchantress, whose irresistible charms have caused
many of Germany's greatest men to forget their native land, and array
themselves beneath her colours, did not fail to exercise over Dürer, in
the course of the year and more that he spent beyond the Alps, that
subtle influence which elevates the understanding and expands the mind.
He thought, as did Goethe after him, with a sort of shudder, of his
return to cloudy skies, and of the less easy nature of the life which
awaited him at home. But, though he enjoyed himself very much at Venice,
and gave in willingly in many external things to the prevailing taste
there, the essential nature of his art remained untouched by foreign
influences, and he returned to Nuremberg unitalianized, and true to his
original principles. The fame which his works enjoyed in Italy only
encouraged him to continue in the path he had already chosen. Perhaps
the exuberance of life displayed in Venetian painting inspired him, even
under the altered circumstances of his home life, with the determination
to devote all his energies to large easel pictures. To the _Adoration of
the Magi_ in 1504, and the _Feast of the Rosary_ in 1506, succeeded the
_Adam and Eve_ in 1507, the _Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Saints_ in
1508, the _Assumption of the Virgin_ in 1509, and the All Saints picture
or _Adoration of the Trinity_ of 1511. Dürer was at the height of his
power when he created these masterpieces, small, indeed, in number, but
remarkable for their conception, composition, and entire execution by
his own hand. To complete a large picture to his satisfaction, Dürer
required the same time as Schiller did for a tragedy, viz., a whole
year....
It was in the year 1504 that Dürer finished the first great picture,
which, from its excellent state of preservation, must have been entirely
executed with the greatest care by his own hand, even to the most minute
detail. This picture is the _Adoration of the Magi_, now in the Tribune
of the Uffizi at Florence. Mary sits on the left, looking like the
happiest of German mothers, with the enchantingly naïve Infant on her
knees; the three Wise Men from the East, in magnificent dresses
glittering with gold, approach, deeply moved, and with various emotions
depicted on their countenances, while the whole creation around seems to
share their joyous greeting, even to the flowers and herbs, and to the
great stag-beetle and two white butterflies, which are introduced after
the manner of Wolgemut. The sunny green on copse and mountain throws up
the group better than the conventional nimbus could have done. The
fair-haired Virgin, draped entirely in blue with a white veil, recalls
vividly the same figure in the Paumgärtner altarpiece. Aërial and linear
perspective are still imperfect, but the technical treatment of the
figures is as finished as in Dürer's best pictures of the later period.
The outlines are sharp, the colours very liquid, laid on without
doubt in tempera, and covered with oil glazes; the whole tone
exceedingly fresh, clear, and brilliant. If it was Barbari's fine work
which incited Dürer to this delicate and careful method of execution, he
has certainly far surpassed the Venetian, not only in form and ideas,
but also in the solidity of his technique. This technique is undoubtedly
of Northern origin, as is also the harmony of colour, which Dürer here
realizes, and does not soon again abandon. It must not be forgotten,
however, that the difference between this technique and that practised
by Giovanni Bellini is one of degree and not of principle; judging at
least by the unfinished painting of Giovanni's in the Uffizi, in which
the design is sketched either with the pencil or brush, and the colours
then laid on in tempera, and afterwards repeatedly covered with oil
glazes. Dürer appears to have owed the opportunity of producing this his
first masterpiece in painting to a commission from the Elector Frederick
of Saxony. Christian II. presented it to the Emperor Rudolph II. in
1603, and in the last century it was sent from the imperial gallery, in
exchange for the _Presentation in the Temple_, by Fra Bartolomeo, to
Florence, where it now shines as a gem of German art amongst the
renowned pictures in the Tribune of the Uffizi.
[Illustration: ADORATION OF THE MAGI.
_Dürer._]
_The Life and Works of Albert Dürer_, translated from the German
and edited by Fred. A. Eaton (London, 1882).
MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE
(_HOGARTH_)
AUSTIN DOBSON
Nevertheless, if the main circumstances of the painter's career should
still remain unaltered, there must always be a side of his work which
will continue to need interpretation. In addition to painting the faults
and follies of his time, he was pre-eminently the pictorial chronicler
of its fashions and its furniture. The follies endure; but the fashions
pass away. In our day--a day which has witnessed the demolition of
Northumberland House, the disappearance of Temple Bar, and the removal
of we know not what other time-honoured and venerated landmarks--much in
Hogarth's plates must seem as obscure as the cartouches on Cleopatra's
Needle. Much more is speedily becoming so; and without some guidance the
student will scarcely venture into that dark and doubtful rookery of
tortuous streets and unnumbered houses--the London of the Eighteenth
Century.
[Illustration: MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE.
_Hogarth._]
Were it not beyond the reasonable compass of a methodical memoir, it
would be a pleasant task to loiter for a while in that vanished London
of Hogarth, of Fielding, of Garrick;--that London of Rocque's famous map
of 1746, when "cits" had their country-boxes and "gazebos" at Islington
and Hackney, and fine gentlemen their villas at _Marybone_ and
_Chelsey_; when duels were fought in the "fields" behind the British
Museum, and there was a windmill at the bottom of Rathbone Place. We
should find the Thames swarming with noisy watermen, and the streets
with thick-calved Irish chairmen; we should see the old dusky oil-lamps
lighted feebly with the oil that dribbled on the Rake when he went to
Court; and the great creaking sign-boards that obscured the sky, and
occasionally toppled on the heads of his Majesty's lieges beneath. We
should note the sluggish kennels and the ill-paved streets; and rejoice
in the additional facilities afforded for foot-passengers at the "new
Buildings near _Hanover_ Square." We might watch King George II. yawning
in his Chapel Royal of St. James's, or follow Queen Caroline of Anspach
in her walk on Constitution Hill. Or we might turn into the Mall, which
is filled on summer evenings with a _Beau-Monde_ of cinnamon-coloured
coats and pink _négligés_. But the tour of Covent Garden (with its
column and dial in the centre) would take at least a chapter, and the
pilgrimage of Leicester Fields another. We should certainly assist at
the Lord Mayor's Show; and we might, like better folks before us, be
hopelessly engulfed in that westward-faring crowd, which, after due
warning from the belfry of St. Sepulchre's, swept down the old Tyburn
Road on "Execution Day" to see the last of Laurence Shirley, Earl
Ferrers, or the highwayman James M'Lean. It is well, perhaps, that our
limits are definitely restricted.
Moreover, much that we could do imperfectly with the pen, Hogarth has
done imperishably with the graver. Essentially metropolitan in his
tastes, there is little notable in the London of his day of which he has
not left us some pictorial idea. He has painted the Green Park, the
Mall, and Rosamond's Pond. He has shown us Covent Garden and St. James's
Street; Cheapside and Charing Cross; Tottenham-Court Road and Hog-Lane,
St. Giles. He has shown us Bridewell, Bedlam, and the Fleet Prison.
Through a window in one print we see the houses on old London Bridge; in
another it is Temple Bar, surmounted by the blackened and ghastly relics
of Jacobite traitors. He takes us to a cock-fight in Bird Cage Walk, to
a dissection in Surgeons' Hall. He gives us reception-rooms in Arlington
Street, counting-houses in St. Mary Axe, sky-parlours in Porridge
Island, and night-cellars in Blood-Bowl Alley. He reproduces the
decorations of the Rose Tavern or of the Turk's Head Bagnio as
scrupulously as the monsters at Dr. Misaubin's museum in St. Martin's
Lane, or the cobweb over the poor-box in Mary-le-bone Old Church. The
pictures on the walls, the Chinese nondescripts on the shelves, the
tables and chairs, the pipes and punch-bowls, nay, the very tobacco and
snuff, have all their distinctive physiognomy and prototypes. He gives
us, unromanced and unidealized, "the form and pressure," the absolute
details and accessories, the actual _mise-en-scène_, of the time in
which he lived.[23]
But he has done much more than this. He has peopled his canvas with its
_dramatis personæ_,--with vivid portraits of the more strongly-marked
actors in that cynical and sensual, brave and boastful, corrupt and
patriotic age. Not, be it understood, with its Wolfes and Johnsons,--he
was a humourist and a satirist, and goodness was no game for his
pencil,--rather with its Lovats and Chartres, its Sarah Malcolms and its
Shebbeares. He was a moralist after the manner of eighteenth-century
morality, not savage like Swift, not ironical like Fielding, not
tender-hearted at times like Johnson and Goldsmith; but unrelenting,
uncompromising, uncompassionate. He drew vice and its consequences in a
thoroughly literal and business-like way, neither sparing nor
extenuating its details, wholly insensible to its seductions, incapable
of flattering it even for a moment, preoccupied simply with catching its
precise contortion of pleasure or of pain. In all his delineations, as
in that famous design of Prud'hon's, we see Justice and Vengeance
following hard upon the criminal....