religion of hope which was inclosed in the husk of mediæval Christianity,
and it was made the theme of many variations. Before it had ceased to
be a symbol of worship, it was offering a nucleus for the expression of
a more varied human hope and interest. The Holy Family in the hands of
painters and sculptors, and the humbler class of designers which sprang
into notice with the introduction of printing and engraving, becomes more
and more emblematic of a pure and happy domestic group. Joseph is more
frequently introduced, and John Baptist appears as a playmate of the
child Jesus; sometimes they are seen walking in companionship. Certain
incidents in later life are symbolically prefigured in the realistic
treatment of homely scenes, as in the Madonna by Giulio Romano, where
the child stands in a basin, while the young S. John pours water upon
him, Mary washes him, S. Elizabeth stands by holding a towel, and S.
Joseph watches the scene,—an evident prefigurement of the baptism in
the Jordan. Or again, Mary, seated, holds the infant Christ between her
knees; Elizabeth leans over the back of the chair; Joseph rests on his
staff behind the Virgin; the little S. John and an angel present grapes,
while four other angels are gathering and bringing them. By such a scene
Ippolito Andreasi would remind people that Jesus is the true vine.
II
The recognition of childhood as the heart of the family is discoverable
even more emphatically in the art of the northern people, among whom
domestic life always had greater respect. It may seem a trivial reason,
but I suspect nature holds the family more closely together in cold
countries, which compel much indoor and fireside life, than in lands
which tempt to vagrancy. At any rate, the fact remains that the Germanic
peoples have been home-cultivating. It did not need the Roman Tacitus to
find this out, but his testimony helps us to believe that the disposition
was a radical one, which Christianity reinforced rather than implanted.
Lord Lindsay makes the pregnant observation, “Our Saviour’s benediction
of the little children as a subject [is] from first to last Teutonic,—I
scarcely recollect a single Italian instance of it;”[30] and in the
revival of religious art, at which Overbeck and Cornelius assisted, this
and similar subjects, by their frequency, mark a differentiation from art
south of the Alps, whose traditions, nevertheless, the German school was
consciously following.
Although of a period subsequent to the Renaissance, an excellent
illustration of the religious representation of the childhood of Jesus in
northern art is contained in a series of twelve prints executed in the
Netherlands, and described in detail by Mrs. Jameson.[31] The series is
entitled The Infancy of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the
title-page is surrounded by a border composed of musical instruments,
spinning-wheels, distaffs, and other implements of female industry,
intermixed with all kinds of masons’ and carpenters’ tools. In the first
of the prints, the figure of Christ is seen in a glory, surrounded by
cherubim. In the second, the Virgin is seated on the hill of Sion; the
infant in her lap, with outspread arms, looks up to a choir of angels,
and is singing with them. In the third, Jesus slumbering in his cradle is
rocked by two angels, while Mary sits by, engaged in needlework. Beneath
is a lullaby in Latin which has been translated:—
“Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling,
Mother sits beside thee, smiling,
Sleep my darling, tenderly!
If thou sleep not, mother mourneth
Singing as her wheel she turneth,
Come soft slumber, balmily!”
The fourth shows the interior of a carpenter’s shop: Joseph is plying
his work, while Joachim stands near him; the Virgin is measuring linen,
and S. Anna looks on; two angels are at play with the infant Christ,
who is blowing soap-bubbles. In the fifth picture, Mary prepares the
family meal, while Joseph is in the background chopping wood; more in
front, Jesus sweeps together the chips, and two angels gather them. In
the sixth, Mary is seen reeling off a skein of thread; Joseph is squaring
a plank; Jesus is picking up chips, again assisted by two angels. The
seventh shows Mary seated at her spinning-wheel; Joseph, aided by Jesus,
is sawing through a large beam, the two angels standing by. The eighth
is somewhat similar: Mary holds her distaff, while Joseph saws a beam on
which Jesus stands, and the two angels help in the work. In the ninth
print, Joseph is busy building the framework of a house, assisted by
one of the angels; Jesus is boring with a large gimlet, the other angel
helping him; and Mary winds thread. In the next, Joseph is at work
roofing the house; Jesus, in company with the angels, carries a beam up
the ladder; while below, in front, Mary is carding wool or flax. The
eleventh transfers the work, with an apparent adaptation to Holland, to
the building of a boat, where Joseph is helped by Jesus, who holds a
hammer and chisel, still attended by the angels; the Virgin is knitting
a stocking, and the newly built house is seen in the background. In the
last of the series, Joseph is erecting a fence round a garden; Jesus,
with the help of the angels, is fastening the palings together; while
Mary is weaving garlands of roses.
Here is a reproduction of the childhood of the Saviour in the terms of
a homely Netherland family life, the naturalistic treatment diversified
by the use of angelic machinery. The prints were a part of the apparatus
used by the priests in educating the people. However such instruction may
have fallen short of the highest truths of Christianity, its recognition
of the simple duties of life and its enforcement of these by the example
of the Son of Man make us slow to regard such interposition of the church
as remote from the spirit of Christ. If, as is quite possible, these
prints were employed by the Jesuits, then their significance becomes
doubly noticeable. In that vigorous attempt by Loyola and his order to
maintain an organic Christian unity against the apparent disruption of
Christianity, such a mode as this would find a place as serving to
emphasize that connection between the church and the family which the
Jesuits instinctively felt to be essential to the supremacy of the former.
III
Whatever light the treatment of the Madonna subject may throw upon the
ages in which it is uppermost in men’s thoughts, the common judgment is
sound which looks for the most significance in the works of Raphael.
Even those who turn severely away from him, and seek for purer art in
his predecessors, must needs use his name as one of epochal consequence.
So many forces of the age meet in Raphael, who was peculiarly open to
influences, that no other painter can so well be chosen as an exponent
of the idea of the time; and as one passes in review the successive
Madonnas, one may not only detect the influence of Perugino, of Leonardo,
of Michelangelo, and other masters, but may see the ripening of a mind,
upon which fell the spirit of the age, busy with other things than
painting.
Of the early Madonnas of Raphael, it is noticeable how many present the
Virgin engaged in reading a book, while the child is occupied in other
ways, sometimes even seeking to interrupt the mother and disengage her
attention. Thus in one in the Berlin museum, which is formal, though
unaffected, Mary reads a book, while the child plays with a goldfinch; in
the Madonna in the Casa Connestabile, at Perugia, the child plays with
the leaves of the book; in the Madonna del Cardellino, the little S. John
presents a goldfinch to Jesus, and the mother looks away from her book to
observe the children; in that at Berlin, which is from the Casa Colonna,
the child is held on the mother’s knee in a somewhat struggling attitude,
and has his left hand upon the top of her dress, near her neck, his right
upon her shoulder, while the mother, with a look of maternal tenderness,
holds the book aside. In the middle period of Raphael’s work this motive
appears once at least in the St. Petersburg Madonna, which is a quiet
landscape-scene, where the child is in the Madonna’s lap: she holds a
book, which she has just been reading; the little S. John kneels before
his divine companion with infantine grace, and offers him a cross, which
he receives with a look of tender love; the Madonna’s eyes are directed
to the prophetic play of the children with a deep, earnest expression.
The use of the book is presumably to denote the Madonna’s piety; and
in the earlier pictures she is not only the object of adoration to the
worshipper, who sees her in her earthly form, yet endowed with sinless
grace, but the object also of interest to the child, who sees in her
the mother. This reciprocal relation of mother and child is sometimes
expressed with great force, as in the Madonna della Casa Tempi, in the
Pinacothek at Munich, where the Virgin, who is standing, tenderly presses
the child’s head against her face, while he appears to whisper words of
endearment. In these and other of the earlier Madonnas of Raphael, there
is an enthusiasm, and a dreamy sentiment which seems to seek expression
chiefly through the representation of holy womanhood, the child being a
part of the interpretation of the mother. The mystic solemnity of the
subject is relieved by a lightness of touch, which was the irrepressible
assertion of a strong human feeling.
Later, in what is called his middle period, a cheerfulness and happy
contemplation of life pervade Raphael’s work, as in the Bridgewater
Madonna, where the child, stretched in the mother’s lap, looks up with a
graceful and lively action, and fixes his eyes upon her in deep thought,
while she looks back with maternal, reverent joy. The Madonna of the
Chair illustrates the same general sentiment, where the mother appears
as a beautiful and blooming woman, looking out of the picture in the
tranquil enjoyment of motherly love; the child, full and strong in form,
leans upon her bosom in a child’s careless attitude, the picture of trust
and content.
The works of Raphael’s third period, and those executed by his pupils
in a spirit and with a touch which leave them sometimes hardly
distinguishable from the master’s, show a profounder penetration of
life, and at the same time a firmer, more reasonable apprehension
of the divinity which lies inclosed in the subject. Mary is now
something more than a young man’s dream of virginal purity and maternal
tenderness,—she is also the blessed among women; the infant Christ is
not only the innocent, playful child, but the prophetic soul, conscious
of his divinity and his destiny. These characteristics pervade both
the treatment which regards them as historic personages and that which
invests them with adorable attributes as having their throne in heaven.
The Holy Family is interpreted in a large, serious, and dignified manner,
and in the exalted, worshipped Madonna there is a like vision of things
eternal seen through the human form.
To illustrate this an example may be taken of each class. The Madonna
del Passegio, in the Bridgewater gallery, is a well-known composition,
which represents the Madonna and child walking through a field; Joseph
is in advance, and has turned to look for the others. They have been
stopped by the infant S. John Baptist, clad in a rough skin, who presses
eagerly forward to kiss Jesus. The mother places a restraining hand upon
the shoulders of S. John, and half withdraws the child Jesus from his
embrace. A classic grace marks Jesus, who looks steadfastly into the
eyes of the impassioned John. The three figures in the principal group
are conceived in a noble manner: S. John, prophesying in his face the
discovery of the Lamb of God; Mary, looking down with a sweet gravity
which marks the holy children, and would separate Jesus as something more
than human from too close fellowship with John; Jesus himself, a picture
of glorious childhood, with a far-reaching look in his eye, as he gently
thrusts back the mother with one hand, and with the other lays hold of
the cross which John bears.
On the other hand, an example of the treatment of the adorable Madonna
is that of San Sisto, in the Dresden gallery. It is not necessary to
dwell on the details of a picture which rises at once to every one’s
mind. The circumstance of innumerable angels’ heads, of the attendant S.
Sixtus and S. Barbara, the sweep of cloud and drapery, the suggestion
of depths below and of heights above, of heaven itself listening at the
Madonna’s feet,—all these translate the mother and babe with ineffable
sweetness and dignity into a heavenly place, and make them the centre
of the spiritual universe. Yet in all this Raphael has rested his art
in no elaborate use of celestial machinery. He has taken the simple,
elemental relation, and invested it with its eternal properties. He gives
not a supernatural and transcendent mother and child, but a glorified
humanity. Therefore it is that this picture, and with it the other great
Madonnas of Raphael, may be taken entirely away from altar and sanctuary,
and placed in the shrine of the household. The universality of the
appeal is seen in the unhesitating adoption of the Sistine Madonna as an
expression of religious art by those who are even antagonistic to the
church which called it forth.
IV
The concentration of Raphael’s genius to so large an extent upon the
subject of the Madonna was not a mere accident of the time, nor, when
classic forms were renewing their power, was it a solecism. The spirit of
the Renaissance entered profoundly into Raphael’s work, and determined
powerfully the direction which it took. When he was engaged upon purely
classic themes, it is interesting to see how frequently he turned to the
forms of children. His decorative work is rich with the suggestion which
they bring. One may observe the graceful figures issuing from the midst
of flower and leaf; above all, one may note how repeatedly he presents
the myth of Amor, and recurs to the Amorini, types of childhood under a
purely naturalistic conception.
The child Jesus and the child Amor appear side by side in the creations
of Raphael’s genius. In the great Renaissance, of which he was so
consummate an exponent, the ancient classic world and the Christian met
in these two types of childhood: the one a childhood of the air, unmixed
with good or evil; the other a childhood of heaven and earth, proleptic
of earthly conflict, proleptic also of heavenly triumph. The coincidence
is not of chance. The new world into which men were looking was not, as
some thought, to be in the submersion of Christianity and a return to
Paganism, nor, as others, in a stern asceticism, which should render
Christianity an exclusive church, standing aloof from the world as from
a thing wholly evil. There was to be room for truth and love to dwell
together, and the symbol of this union was the child. Raphael’s Christ
child drew into its features a classic loveliness; his Amor took on a
Christ-like purity and truthfulness.
Leslie, in his Handbook for Young Painters, makes a very sensible
reflection upon Raphael’s children, as distinguished from the
unchildlike children of Francia, for example. “A fault of many painters,”
he says, “in their representations of childhood is, that they make it
taking an interest in what can only concern more advanced periods of
life. But Raphael’s children, unless the subject requires it should be
otherwise, are as we see them generally in nature, wholly unconcerned
with the incidents that occupy the attention of their elders. Thus the
boy, in the cartoon of the Beautiful Gate, pulls the girdle of his
grandfather, who is entirely absorbed in what S. Peter is saying to the
cripple. The child, impatient of delay, wants the old man to move on.
In the Sacrifice at Lystra, also, the two beautiful boys placed at the
altar, to officiate at the ceremony, are too young to comprehend the
meaning of what is going on about them. One is engrossed with the pipes
on which he is playing, and the attention of the other is attracted by a
ram brought for sacrifice. The quiet simplicity of these sweet children
has an indescribably charming effect in this picture, where every other
figure is under the influence of an excitement they alone do not partake
in. Children, in the works of inferior painters, are often nothing else
than little actors; but what I have noticed of Raphael’s children is
true, in many instances, of the children in the pictures of Rembrandt,
Jan Steen, Hogarth, and other great painters, who, like Raphael, looked
to nature for their incidents.”
There was one artist of this time who looked to nature not merely for
the incidents of childhood, but for the soul of childhood itself. It is
impossible to regard the work of Luca della Robbia, especially in that
ware which receives his name, without perceiving that here was a man who
saw children and rejoiced in their young lives with a simple, ingenuous
delight. The very spirit which led this artist to seek for expression in
homely forms of material, to domesticate art, as it were, was one which
would make him quick to seize upon, not the incidents alone, but the
graces, of childhood. Nor is it straining a point to say that the purity
of his color was one with the purity of this sympathy with childhood. The
Renaissance as a witness to a new occupation of the world by humanity
finds its finest expression in the hope which springs in the lovely
figures of Luca della Robbia.
It is significant of this Renaissance—it is significant, I think we
shall find, of every great new birth in the world—that it turns its
face toward childhood, and looks into that image for the profoundest
realization of its hopes and dreams. In the attitude of men toward
childhood we may discover the near or far realization of that supreme
hope and confidence with which the great head of the human family saw,
in the vision of a child, the new heaven and the new earth. It was when
his disciples were reasoning among themselves which of them should be
the greatest that Jesus took a child, and set him by him, and said unto
them, “Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me.” The
reception of the Christ by men, from that day to this, has been marked
by successive throes of humanity, and in each great movement there has
been a new apprehension of childhood, a new recognition of the meaning
involved in the pregnant words of the Saviour. Such a recognition lies in
the children of Raphael and of Luca della Robbia. There may have been no
express intimation on their part of the connection between their works
and the great prophecy, but it is often for later generations to read
more clearly the presence of a thought by means of light thrown back upon
it. The course of Christianity since the Renaissance supplies such a
light.
VI
IN ENGLISH LITERATURE AND ART
I
To hunt through English literature and art for representations of
childhood would seem to be like looking for the persons of children in
any place where people congregate. How could there be any conspicuous
absence, except under conditions which necessarily exclude the very
young? Yet it is impossible to follow the stream of English literature,
with this pursuit in mind, without becoming aware that at one point in
its course there is a marked access of this force of childhood. There is,
to be sure, a fallacy lurking in the customary study of the development
of literature. We fall into the way of thinking of that literature as an
organism proceeding from simpler to more complex forms; we are attent
upon the transition of one epoch into another; we come to regard each
period as essentially anticipatory of the succeeding period. We make the
same mistake often in our regard of historical sequence, looking at all
past periods simply and exclusively with reference to the present stand
from which we take our observations. A too keen sensibility to the logic
which requires time for its conclusion, a too feeble sense of the logic
which dwells in the relation between the seen and the unseen,—these stand
in the way of a clear perception of the forces immanent in literature and
life.
The distinction is worth bearing in mind when one surveys English
literature with the purpose of recognizing the child in it. There are
certain elemental facts and truths of which old and new cannot be
predicated. The vision of helpless childhood is no modern discovery; it
is no ancient revelation. The child at play was seen by Homer and by
Cowper, and the latter did not derive his apprehension from any study of
the former. The humanism which underlies all literature is independent
of circumstances for its perception of the great moving forces of life;
it is independent of the great changes in human history; even so great a
change as the advent of Christianity could not interfere with the normal
expression of elemental facts in life.
Wherein, then, lies the difference between an antique and a modern
apprehension of childhood? For what may one look in a survey of English
literature that he would not find in Greek or Roman authors? Is there
any development of human thought in relation to childhood to be traced
in a literature which has reflected the mind of the centuries since the
Renaissance? The most aggressive type of modern Christianity, at any rate
the most free type, is to be found amongst English-speaking people; and
if Christianity has in any way modified the course of thought regarding
the child, the effect will certainly be seen in English literature and
art.
* * * * *
A recollection of ballad literature, without critical inquiry of the
comparative age of the writings, brings to light the familiar and
frequent incident of cruelty to children in some form: of the secret
putting away of babes, as in the affecting ballad of the Queen’s
Marie; of the cold and heartless murder, as in the Cruel Mother, and
in the tragic tale of The Child’s Last Will, where a sudden dramatic
and revealing turn is given, after the child has willed its various
possessions, in the lines,—
“‘What wish leav’st thou thy step-mother
Little daughter dear?’
‘Of hell the bitter sorrow
Sweet step-mother mine
For ah, all! I am so ill, ah!’
“‘What wish leav’st thou thy old nurse
Little daughter dear?’
‘For her I wish the same pangs
Sweet step-mother mine
For ah, ah! I am so ill, ah!’”
That grewsome story of Lamkin, with its dripping of blood in almost
every stanza, gets half its curdling power from the slow torture of the
sensibilities, as the babe is slain and then rocked in its cradle, and
the mother, summoned by its cries, meets her own fate at the hands of the
treacherous nurse and Lamkin, whose name is a piece of bald irony:—
“Then Lamkin’s ta’en a sharp knife
That hang down by his gaire,
And he has gi’en the bonny babe
A deep wound and a sair.
“Then Lamkin he rocked,
And the fause nourice sang
Till frae ilkae bore o’ the cradle
The red blood out sprang.
“Then out it spak the ladie
As she stood on the stair,
‘What ails my bairn, nourice,
That he’s greeting sae sair?
“‘O still my bairn, nourice
O still him wi’ the pap!’
‘He winna still, lady,
For this nor for that.’
“‘O still my bairn, nourice;
O still him wi’ the wand!’
‘He winna still, lady,
For a’ his father’s land.’
“‘O still my bairn, nourice,
Oh still him wi’ the bell!’
‘He winna still, lady,
Till ye come down yoursel.’
“O the firsten step she steppit,
She steppit on a stane;
But the neisten step she steppit,
She met him, Lamkin.”
Another early and significant illustration is found in the popular story
of Hugh of Lincoln; but instead of turning to the ballad of that name,
one may better have recourse to Chaucer’s version as contained in the
Canterbury tale of the Prioress. In the prologue to this tale appear
the words of Scripture, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” in
a paraphrase, and the Prioress turns to the Virgin, beseeching her to
give words for the telling of the piteous tale. The story of Hugh of
Lincoln—that in the reign of Henry III., the Jews of Lincoln stole a
boy of eight years, named Hugh, tortured and crucified him—was received
with great credit, for it concentrated the venomous enmity with which
Christians regarded the Jews, and by a refinement of cruelty pictured
the Jews in a solitary instance as behaving in a Christian-like
manner. Chaucer tells the story with exquisite pathos, lingering upon
the childish ways of Hugh, and preparing the tears of his readers by
picturing the little boy as a miniature saint. It can scarcely be called
a picture of artless childhood; for though touches here and there bring
out the prattler, Chaucer appears to have meant that his readers should
be especially impressed by the piety of this “litel clergeoun,” or
chorister boy:—
“A litel clergeoun, seven yeer of age,
That day by day to scole was his wone;
And eek also, whereas he saugh thymage
Of Cristes mooder, he hadde in usage,
As hym was taught, to knele adoun and seye
His _Ave Marie_, as he goth by the weye.”
And so we are told of the little fellow eager to learn the Alma
Redemptoris of his elders, and conning it as he went to and from school,
his way leading through the Jews’ quarter:—
“As I have seyd, thurgh-out the Jewerie
This litel child, as he cam to and fro,
Ful murily wolde he synge and crie
O _Alma redemptoris_ evere-mo
The swetnesse hath his herte perced so
Of Cristes mooder, that to hire to preye
He kan nat stynte of syngyng by the weye.”