certainly did not die with the Venetian painters of 1550, however great
their work; and if there be but "one living painter" who can treat
portrait art like the early Venetians, there are scores of artists who
achieve signal success by other methods of treatment.
At all events, these three men, Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson, worked
with the conviction that art is service. With Victor Hugo, Canova could
have said: "Genius is not made for genius; it is made for men.... Let
him have wings for the infinite provided he has feet for the earth, and
that, after having been seen flying, he is seen walking. After he has
been seen an archangel, let him be still more a brother.... To be the
servant of God in the march of progress--such is the law which regulates
the growth of genius."
They worked and taught by this creed. Thorwaldsen, on first arriving in
Rome, wandered for three years, it is said, among the statues of gods
and heroes, like a man in a dream. The atmosphere of the earlier day
when Titian was employed by the king of Portugal and Raphael by the Pope
to create works of great public importance still lingered and exerted
over Thorwaldsen, and over all artists susceptible to its subtle
influence, a peculiar spell. Its power was revealed in his subsequent
works--the "Christ;" the sculptured groups for tombs in St. Peter's and
in other churches; the poetic reliefs symbolizing "Day" and "Night;"
"Ganymede Watering the Eagle;" the "Three Graces," "Hebe," and many
others.
Among Canova's works his immortal masterpiece is the monumental memorial
group for the tomb of Pope Clement XIII in St. Peter's. The Pope is
represented as kneeling in prayer. The modelling of the entire figure is
instinct with expression. The fine and beautiful hands express reverence
and trust. The countenance is pervaded with that peace only known to the
soul that is in complete harmony with the divine power. The Holy Father
has taken the tiara from his head and it lies before him on the
cushion on which he kneels. Although the entire portrayal of the figure
reveals that devotion expressed in the solemn and searching words of the
church service, "And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord,
ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and living
sacrifice unto thee,"--although it is the very utmost rendering of the
soul to God, it is yet the deliberate, the joyful, the living acceptance
of divine love and no mere trance of ecstasy. No more wonderful figure
in all the range of sculpture has been created than the Clement XIII of
Canova.
[Illustration: "THE GENIUS OF DEATH,"
DETAIL FROM TOMB OF CLEMENT XIII,
ST. PETER'S, ROME
Antonio Canova
_Page 43_]
The group is completed by two symbolic figures representing Religion and
Death. The former is personified as a female figure holding a cross; the
latter sits with his torch reversed. Grief, but not hopeless and
despairing sorrow, is portrayed; it is the grief companioned by faith
which ever sees
"The stars shine through the cypress trees."
The base of the monument represents a chapel guarded by lions.
Pistolesi, the great Italian authority on the sculpture of St. Peter's
and the Vatican galleries, notes that the lions typify the firmness and
the force and the courage, "_la fortezza dell'anima_," that so signally
characterized Clement XIII. There is probably no sacred monument in the
realm of all modern art which can equal this creation in its delicacy,
its lofty beauty, and the noble message that it conveys.
The oldest art school, the Accademia di San Luca, founded in 1507 by
Sixtus, when he called to Rome all the leading artists of Europe to
assist in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, is an organization that
magically links the present with the days of Canova, Thorwaldsen, and
Gibson, as it linked them, also, with the remote and historic past. The
father of the present custodian of the Academy knew Thorwaldsen well.
The grandfather of the gifted Italian sculptor, Tadolini (who has
recently completed the tomb for Pope Leo XIII, placed in the Basilica of
San Giovanni Laterano), modelled the bust of Thorwaldsen, and in one
gallery hangs the great Danish sculptor's portrait, painted by himself.
The first director of San Luca was Federigo Zuccaro. In the early years
of the nineteenth century this Academy was a vital centre of art life,
and it is still a school that draws students, although the visitor who
does not loiter and linger in his Rome may fail to know of this most
alluring place. The San Luca is in the Via Bonella, one of the old,
dark, narrow, and gloomy streets of the oldest part of Rome,--a short
street of hardly more than two blocks, running between the Via
Alessandra and the Forum. Hawthorne vividly pictures all this old Rome
when he speaks of the "narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so
uncomfortably paved with little squares of lava that to tread over them
is a penitential pilgrimage; so indescribably ugly, moreover; so cold,
so alley-like, into which the sun never falls and where a chill wind
forces its deadly breath into our lungs; the immense seven-storied,
yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary in
domestic life seems magnified and multiplied; those staircases which
ascend from a ground floor of cook shops and cobblers' stalls, stables
and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and
ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists just beneath the unattainable
sky: ... in which the visitor becomes sick at heart of Italian
trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had till
then endured;" the city "crushed down in spirit by the desolation of her
ruin and the hopelessness of her future;" one recalls these words when
passing through the unspeakable gloom and horror and desolation and
squalor of ancient Rome. In these surroundings one's cab stops at "No.
44," and ringing the bell the door is open, whether by super-normal
agency or by some invisible terrestrial manipulation one is unable to
determine; but in the semi-darkness of the narrow hall he discerns
before him a flight of steep stairs, and, as no other vista opens, he
reasons that, by the law of exclusion, this must be the appointed way.
Along the wall are seen, here and there, some antique casts from
Trajan's Column, and reliefs from Canova and Thorwaldsen. The galleries
above hold only a small and a comparatively unimportant collection of
pictures. There are marines from Vernet and Claude Lorraine; a "Venus
Crowned by the Graces" from Rubens; Giulio Romano's copy of Raphael's
"Galatea,"--the original of which (in the Villa Farnesina) represents
Galatea surrounded by Nymphs, Cupids, and Tritons, being carried in a
shell across the sea. There is a Cupid, and also the "Fortuna" of Guido
Reni,--the latter a figure of ineffable grace floating in the air. One
of Raphael's early works representing "St. Luke Painting the Madonna" is
here. There are several works by Titian, but these have less than would
be expected of the glory usually associated with his name; and a Vandyke
representing the Virgin and Child, with two angels playing, the one on a
lute, the other on the violin.
[Illustration: "LA FORTUNA," ACCADEMIA DI SAN LUCA, ROME
Guido Reni
_Page 47_]
One salon filled with portraits of artists is especially interesting,
and that of Thorwaldsen is so feminine in its costume and the parting of
the hair, that it is almost inevitably mistaken for that of a woman.
Guido's graceful "Fortuna" is represented as a female figure flying
through the air, her long hair streaming in the wind, and the picture
recalls to one the Greek legend of Opportunity, as told by Kainos. The
legend runs:--
"'Of what town is thy sculptor?'
"'Of Lukzon.'
"'What is his name?'
"'Lysippos.'
"'And thine?'
"'Opportunity, controller of all things.'
"'But why standest thou on tiptoe?'
"'I am always running.'
"'Why, then, hast thou wings on both feet?'
"'I fly like the wind.'
"'But wherefore bearest thou a razor in thy right hand?'
"'As a sign to men that I am sharper than any steel.'
"'And why wearest thou thy hair long in front?'
"'That I may be seized by him who approaches me.'
"'By Zeus! And thou art bald behind?'
"'Because once I have passed with my winged feet no one may seize
me then.'"
From one landing, on the steep narrow staircase of San Luca, opens the
Biblioteca Sarti, an art library of some fifteen thousand volumes. The
sculpture gallery is now closed and can only be entered by special
permission. This is the more to be regretted as it contains the
principal collections in Rome of the original casts of the works of
Thorwaldsen and Canova.
The latter-day artists who have been setting up their Lares and Penates
in Rome at various periods during the early and into the later years of
the nineteenth century have found the Eternal City in strong contrast
with its twentieth-century aspects, however it may have differed from
the Rome of the Popes. The earlier American artists to seek the
Seven-hilled City were painters; and Allston, Copley, and Stuart had
already distinguished themselves in pictorial art before America had
produced any sculptor who could read his title clear to fame. It is to
Hiram Powers (born in Vermont in 1805) that America must look as her
first sculptor, chronologically considered, closely followed by Thomas
Crawford, who was but eight years his junior, and by Horatio Greenough,
who was also born in the same year as Powers, and who preceded him in
Italy, but whose work has less artistic value. Mr. Greenough has left a
colossal (if not an artistic) monument to his gifts in stately shaft
marking Bunker Hill which he designed. Problematic in their claim to
artistic excellence as are his "Washington"--a seated figure in the
grounds of the Capitol in Washington--and his group in relief called
"The Rescue" in the portico of the Capitol, his name lives by his
personality as a man of liberal culture and noble character, if not by
his actual rank in art. First of the American group in Italy, he was
followed by Powers, who sought the ineffable beauty and enchantment of
Florence in 1837. Horatio Greenough died in comparatively early life,
leaving perhaps the most interesting of his works in a relief (purchased
by Professor George Ticknor, the distinguished historian of Spain)
"representing in touching beauty and expression a sculptor in an
attitude of dejection and discouragement before his work, while a hand
from above pours oil into his dying lamp, an allegory illustrative of
the struggles of genius and the relief which timely patronage may extend
to it."
Mr. Powers passed his entire life in Florence. His work attracted great
attention and inspired ardent appreciation. In portrait busts Powers was
especially successful; and his "Greek Slave," his "Fisher Boy," "Il
Penseroso," and "Proserpine" impressed the art-loving public of the time
as marked by strong artistic power and as entitled to permanent rank in
sculpture.
Mr. Crawford died young; but his name lives in the majestic bronze
statue of "Beethoven" which is in the beautiful white and gold interior
of Symphony Hall, in Boston; and his "Orpheus" and some other works
claim high appreciation. Writing of Crawford, Mr. Hillard said:--
"Crawford's career was distinguished by energy, resolution, and
self-reliance. While yet a youth, he formed the determination to
make himself an artist; and with this view went to Rome--alone,
unfriended, and unknown--and there began a life of toil and
renunciation; resisting the approaches alike of indolence and
despondency. His strength of character and force of will would have
earned distinction for powers inferior to his. Nothing was given to
self-indulgence; nothing to vague dreams; nothing to unmanly
despair. He did not wait for the work that he would have, but
labored cheerfully upon that which he could have. Success came
gradually, but surely; and his powers as surely proved themselves
to be more than equal to the demand made upon them."
On the death of Mr. Crawford, Thomas William Parsons wrote a memorial
poem in which this stanza occurs:--
"O Rome! what memories awake,
When Crawford's name is said,
Of days and friends for whose dear sake
That path of Hades unto me
Will have no more of dread
Than his own Orpheus felt, seeking Eurydice!
O Crawford! husband, father, brother
Are in that name, that little word!
Let me no more my sorrow smother;
Grief stirs me, and I must be stirred."
Thomas Ball, who went in early manhood to Florence, where he remained
until when nearly at the age of fourscore he returned to his native
land, still continues, at the age of eighty-five, to pursue the art he
loves. He has created works, as his equestrian statue of "Washington" in
the Public Gardens and his "Lincoln Freeing the Slave" in Park Square,
both in Boston; his great Washington Memorial group in Methuen,
Massachusetts; his "Christ Blessing Little Children," and many other
historic and ideal sculptures, that seem endowed with his beautiful and
winning spirit as well as with his rare gifts. Larkin G. Mead chose
Florence rather than Rome for his home and work. His noble "River God,"
placed at the head of the Mississippi near St. Paul, as well as other
interesting creations, link his name with that of his native land.
Randolph Rogers, a man of genius; Rinehart, Paul Akers, and Thompson all
died before the full maturity of their powers; Akers at the early age of
thirty-six, leaving, as his bride of a year, the poet, Elizabeth Akers
Allen, who, under the _nom de plume_ of "Florence Percy," has endeared
herself to all lovers of lyric art. In a monograph on Paul Akers,
written after his death, the writer says of his studio in Rome:--
"Linked with this studio is Hawthorne's tale of 'The Marble Faun,'
as Kenyon's studio was none other than Paul Akers's. Though
Hawthorne in his romance saw fit to lay the scene in the rooms once
occupied by Canova, it was in the Via del Crecie that he wove the
thread of his Italian romance.
"Paul Akers's growing reputation and increase of work ere long made
it necessary for him to seek a more commodious studio, and he took
rooms once occupied by the famous Canova. Here he had made under
his supervision copies in marble of many of the famous works of the
Vatican and the Capitol. The largest collection of these was a
commission from Mr. Edward King of Newport, and among them were
busts of Ariadne, Demosthenes, and Cicero, and a facsimile of the
'Dying Gladiator' which Mr. King presented to the Redwood Library
of Newport.
* * * * *
"During his first winter in Rome he was permitted by the
authorities to make a cast of a mutilated bust of Cicero which had
long lain in the Vatican. A critic writing from Rome in 1857 says
of this bust of Cicero: 'Mr. Akers obtained permission to take a
cast from it; he then restored the eye, brow, and ears, and
modelled a neck and bust for it in accordance with the temperament
shown by the nervous and rather thin face. He has succeeded
admirably. It is the very head of the Vatican, yet without the
scars of envious time, and sits gracefully on human shoulders,
instead of being rolled awkwardly back upon a shelf.' This bust is
unlike the portrait which so long passed for Cicero's, but has been
identified by means of a medal which was struck by the Magnesians
in honor of the great orator during his consulate, and is now the
authorized portrait of Cicero. The finest of Paul Akers's creations
executed during his stay in Rome are 'St. Elizabeth of Hungary,'
which represents the princess at the moment the roses have fallen
to the ground; 'Una and the Lion,' an illustration of the line in
Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,'--
'Still while she slept he kept both watch and ward;'
the head of Milton and the 'Pearl Diver.' The 'Pearl Diver,' now
owned by the city of Portland, represents a youth stretched upon a
sea-worn rock and wrapped in eternal sleep. The arms are thrown
above the head, and about the waist is a net containing
pearl-bearing shells for which he has risked his life. There is no
trace of suffering; all is subdued to beauty. It is death
represented as the ancients conceived it, the act of the
torch-reverting god. This youth, who has lost his life at the
moment when all that for which he had dared was within his grasp,
suggests Paul Akers's own untimely death on the eve of his
triumph."
It was from his Roman studio that Mr. Akers wrote to a friend:--
"Yesterday Browning called. He looked a long time at my Milton, and
said it was Milton, the man-angel. He praised the wealth of hair
which I had given the head, and then said that Mrs. Browning had a
lock of Milton's hair, the only one now in existence. This was
given her by Leigh Hunt, just before his death, who had the records
proving it to be genuine. The hair was, he said, like mine. He
invited me to visit him in Florence, where he would show me the
first edition of Milton's poems, marked to indicate the peculiar
accent which the poet sometimes adopted, a knowledge of which makes
clear somewhat that otherwise seems discordant. Milton was so great
a musician that there could have been no fault in sound in his
compositions. He looked over my books; said my edition of Shelley
was one which he had corrected for the press, not from a knowledge
of the original MS., but from his internal evidence that so it must
have been; said Poe was a wonderful man; spoke of Tennyson in the
warmest terms. Took up a copy of his own poems published in the
United States, and remarked that it was better than the English
edition, yet had some awful blunders, and wished me to allow him to
correct a copy for me. My head of the 'Drowned Girl' caught his eye
and interested him. I told him that I had thought of Hood's 'Bridge
of Sighs.' He then said that Hood wrote that on his deathbed, and
read it to him before any one else had seen it. Hood was doubtful
whether it was worth publishing. To-morrow Mrs. Browning is to
come; she has been quite ill since she came to Rome, and I have
seen her but once. I derive much comfort from the friendship of
Charlotte Cushman. She has just gone from here. She has frequent
breakfast parties; I have attended but one. Mr. and Mrs. James T.
Fields, Wild, the painter, and myself were the guests. Fields I
like much."
The first works of Mr. Akers were two portrait busts, of Longfellow and
of Samuel Appleton. Of his bust of Milton, Hawthorne in the "Marble
Faun" has said:--
"In another style, there was the grand, calm head of Milton, not
copied from any one bust or picture, yet more authentic than any
of them, because all known representations of the poet had been
profoundly studied and solved in the artist's mind. The bust over
the tomb in Greyfriar's Church, the original miniatures and
pictures wherever to be found, had mingled each its special truth
in this one work--wherein likewise by long perusal and deep love of
'Paradise Lost,' the 'Comus,' the 'Lycidas,' and 'L'Allegro,' the
sculptor had succeeded even better than he knew in spiritualizing
his marble with the poet's mighty genius. And this was a great
thing to have achieved, such a length of time after the dry bones
and dust of Milton were like those of any other dead man."
Richard Greenough and the painter, Mr. Haseltine, were prominent figures
among the early American group of the nineteenth-century artists in
Rome. There came Emma Stebbins, who modelled a fine portrait bust of
Charlotte Cushman; and Anne Whitney, whose statues of Samuel Adams and
of Leif Ericson adorn public grounds in Boston; whose life-size statue
of Harriet Martineau is the possession of Wellesley College; and whose
"Chaldean Astronomer," "Lotus-Eater," and "Roma"--a figure personifying
the Rome of Pio Nono--reveal her power in ideal creation.
The name of Harriet Hosmer stands out in brilliant pre-eminence among
those of all women who have followed the plastic art. Her infinite charm
of personality seems to impart itself to her work, and she has the gift
to make friends as well as to call forms out of clay--the success of
friendship being one even more permanently satisfying. In her early life
as a girl hardly more than twenty, she sought Rome, living with art as
her chaperon. Her versatility, her picturesque individuality, and her
imaginative power all combined to win sympathetic recognition. Gibson,
whose guidance was particularly well adapted to develop her gifts,
received her into his own studio and took a deep interest in her work.
It was during the period of her early efforts that Hawthorne was in
Rome, and she is graphically depicted in his notebooks in her boyish cap
at work in the clay. Gibson was an artist, _con amore_, and Miss
Hosmer's joyous abandon to her art captivated his sympathy. "In my art
what do I find?" he questioned; "happiness; love which does not depress
me; difficulties which I do not fear; resolution which never abates;
flights which carry me above the ground; ambition which tramples no one
down." Master and pupil were akin in their unwearied devotion to art. Of
Gibson, whose absence of mind regarding all the details of life made him
almost helpless in travel and affairs, Miss Hosmer used gleefully to say
that he "was a god in his studio, but God help him out of it!" This
glancing sprite of a girl, frightening her friends by her daring and
venturous horseback riding; gravitating by instinct to offer some
generous, tender aid to the sick, the destitute, or the helpless; the
life and light of gay dinners and of social evenings; working from six
in the morning till night in her studio, "with an absence of
pretension," says Mrs. Browning, "and simplicity of manners which accord
rather with the childish dimples in her rosy cheeks than with her broad
forehead and high aims," had the magic gift that merged her visitors and
patrons into enthusiastic friends; and Mrs. Browning has chronicled the
pretty scene when Lady Marion Alford, the daughter of the Earl of
Northumberland, knelt before the girl artist and slipped on her finger
a ring--a precious ruby set with diamonds--as a token of her devotion.
Reading Miss Hosmer's life still further backward, the reader is
transported, as if on some magic carpet, to St. Louis, in the United
States, where a noble and lofty man, Hon. Wayman Crow,--a generous
friend, a liberal patron of the arts, a man of the most refined tastes
and culture, whose great qualities were always used in high
service,--first aided Miss Hosmer to the preliminary studies in her art,
and whose accomplished and lovely daughters (now Mrs. Lucien Carr of
Boston, Mrs. Edwin Cushman of Newport and Rome, and Mrs. Emmons of
Leamington, England) were as a trio of sisters to the young artist. And
"the flowing conditions of life" bear on this lifelong friendship until
a fair young girl, Elise (the daughter of Mrs. Emmons), catches up this
sweet tie and as an accomplished and lovely young woman in Roman
society, when these "flowing conditions" had come down even into the
season of 1906-7, Miss Emmons cherished the fame of Harriet Hosmer and
enjoyed the privilege of a constant correspondence with the
distinguished artist. So the past links itself again with the present;
and who can tell where any story in life begins or ends in the constant
evolutionary progress?
Miss Hosmer's work attracted wide attention. Her majestic statue of
"Zenobia;" the winsome "Puck;" the impressive statue of "Beatrice
Cenci," representing her as she lay in her cell in Castel San Angelo the
night before her execution,--these and other works of hers are of an
interesting character and will hold their permanent rank in sculpture.
Were all the muses present at the christening of William Wetmore
Story--sculptor, musician, poet and painter, jurist and man of letters,
and the friend whose social relationships made life a thing of beauty--
"To winds and waterfalls,
And autumn's sunlit festivals,
To music and to music's thoughts
Inextricably bound"?