DECADENCE OF ART AND CONSEQUENT CHANGES
Decadence of art and consequent change in the artistic _milieu_--
Byzantine art--Its new views do not seem to favour old ways--
Art patronage and collectomania tend to disappear--The medieval
period--Character of the collections--No imitators but a few
forgers.
The change affecting the world with the decadence of the Roman Empire
was logically bound to stamp the successive course of art with the
inevitable downfall of past glory. With the Christian era a new society
had arisen and also a new art, entirely symbolic, no more satisfied
with the early plagarisms, apparently lisping a new tongue but ready to
dispel all pagan sentiment in art, to establish the elements of a new
expression and purpose more in harmony with the reborn civilization.
With an art that Taine considers “after five centuries to be unable
to represent man except seated or standing erect,” symbolic and
calligraphic at the same time, there seemed to be no room for amateurs
and collectors of the old type.
There may have been sporadic cases, though Constantine’s severe censure
of all the cults of the past doubtlessly made it a daring act at that
time to profess worship for old traditions in art. Collectomania very
likely became a thing of the past. There must have been dealers in
art and antiques, as we can gather from the Digest, and transactions
between artists and clients, as can be seen from a clause of the
Justinian laws, but nothing like there were in the ancient Roman world
that had been dispersed by the new civilization.
This clause Justinian was forced to add to a law on artistic property,
as judges had so lost all sense of art appreciation that in a dispute
between a painter and the man who had furnished the board on which the
work was painted, they decided that the painting belonged to the one
who owned the board. Justinian was forced to do justice by stating that
if a quarrel arose between the artist and the one who furnished the
board the owner of the work was the artist, as the value of the board
could not be compared with the artistic one. “Think,” he concludes, “of
comparing the value of the work of Apelles or Parrhasius with the price
of a board of very small value.”
The time for lovers of art, for private speculations and the all but
consequent faking, and all the characteristic figures of an art market
had disappeared.
In the early medieval period there seems to have been no scope for
faking and forgery. The collector, if the type then existing is
entitled to the name, was like nothing that had been seen before or
has since appeared. The objects treasured generally had more intrinsic
value than real artistic merit. A collection represented a simple form
of banking, a sound and good investment taking the place of what the
French call “personal property.”
With such views, goldsmiths’ work, studded and ornamented with precious
stones, or rich embroideries in gold, naturally had the preference.
Articles of virtu then had a solid value, and while suitable for
princely display, could be turned into money at any moment. The craze
for manuscripts, rare penmanship, and early illuminated parchments may
represent an exception, but only, apparently, as such objects--apart
from their rarity, skill and supreme patience in miniature work--were
of such an established value as to be regarded like precious gems.
The medieval collections of art and precious things give a true
expression of those unsafe and uncertain times and were in harmony
with the erratic career of the monarchs and potentates whose peculiar
mode of life often necessitated the packing of the whole museum into
a coffer and dragging it with them in their pilgrimages, wars, etc.
This not only in some way explains the preference given to goldsmiths’
work but the fact that the dimensions of sculpture had to be reduced,
and painting, when not for church decoration, was mostly restricted to
miniatures, illumination, and designs for tapestries and embroideries.
Clovis, the “Most Christian King,” as Pope Anastasius called him, is
supposed to have been an eager collector of rare and precious objects.
Tradition claims that a saint one day broke one of his rarest cups of
jasper all studded with precious stones, and seeing Clovis’ sorrow at
such a loss, picked up the fragments and praying over them, performed
a miracle, handing to the monarch the cup restored to one piece as
before. Clotaire, the son of Clovis, had in his mansion at Braine a
secret room with chests full of jewellery and precious vases.
Chilperic had a real ambition to collect rare objects of virtu. For
this purpose he sent everywhere for all that might be worthy of his
collection. Gregory of Tours tells us that he had a Jew as adviser, a
man called Priseus.
It is said that when Chilperic exhibited at Nogent-sur-Marne the
presents offered him by the Emperor Tiberius II, to show that they
did not surpass in splendour the best pieces of his own treasure,
he exhibited close to them one of his precious cups, a golden vase
studded with rare stones and weighing fifty pounds. Twenty years
later, between 560 and 580, Saint Radegond, the daughter of the king
of Thuringia, received the poet and canon Fortunatus in her convent
of Poitiers and gave him a dinner with the table covered in roses and
the richest ornamented silver plates and precious jasper cups. Such a
treat inspired the poet with one of his fine Latin poems. Dagobert was
not only an enlightened collector of precious things but so extremely
fond of artistic “vaisselle” that when Sisinande, a Gothic king, wished
to induce the Frankish monarch to join him in his political schemes he
promised Dagobert a fine gold plate weighing five pounds “and more
precious still for the beauty of the workmanship.”
After a long lapse of time, in which the only museums of the art of
the time seem to have been the churches, under Charlemagne and his
successors private collections of treasures, art and fine pieces of
work again seem to acquire importance. The Bibliothèque Nationale of
Paris owns an _Évangéliaire_ of rare artistic value, illuminated by a
monk named Godescal of the year 781.
The Bible and Psalter of Charles the Bald are said to have been the
work of the monks of Saint-Martin de Tours, and are considered a marvel
of illumination. Together with these books, now kept in the Librairie
Nationale of Paris, Charles presented to the Church of Saint Denis a
famous cup known in his time as Ptolemy’s cup, a fine work carved from
a piece of precious sardonyx. In the will of this monarch’s brother,
the Marquis of Friuli, a document dated 870, there is, among other
legacies, the enumeration of arms studded with precious stones, clothes
in silk and gold embroideries, silver vases and ivory cups, finely
chiselled, and a library in which among other notable works are the
writings of Saint Basil, Saint Isidore and Saint Cyprian. From this
time forward a collection of rare things and precious jewels is quite a
necessary apanage of kings and princes, but as we have said, it mostly
consisted of small objects in which art almost invariably seems to
have played a secondary rôle, and in considering the art it is often
hard to know whether to admire more the miniaturist’s patience or his
workmanship.
Later on the cult of pagan art seems to have been revived by the
Emperor Frederick II, the son of Barbarossa, but even at this time the
case is somewhat of an exception.
Under patrons of art who were as a rule absolute monarchs or iron
rulers and all-powerful princes, fakery would have played a dangerous
and most sorrowful part, nor was there any inducement to indulge in
any of the trickery that had characterized the world of lovers of art
during the Roman decadence. A risky game at any time, it might have
entailed one of those exemplary punishments which characterized the
ferocious Middle Ages.
Coin counterfeiting was naturally the least artistic form of deceit,
and being a less hazardous venture seems to have tempted ability in
all ages. It represents a link between more proficient periods of art
swindling.
Some of these early fakers certainly planted the seed from which sprang
the arch-deceivers and clever medallists of the Renaissance.
There lies Romena, where I falsified
The alloy that is with the Baptist stamped
For which on earth I left my body burned.
These words Dante puts into the mouth of Mastro Adamo da Brescia, a
skilful counterfeiter of coins whom he met in hell. Adamo was burned at
the stake near the castle of Romena in the Casentino, for having cast,
by order of the Count of Romena, the golden florin of the Florentine
Republic.
About this time counterfeit coining tempted the most diverse classes of
people. It had a long list of devotees, including even a king of France
who honoured the Republic of Florence with not a few of his swindling
specimens of the golden florin. Marostica, a village in the Venetian
domains, challenged and defeated the powerful Republic of the lagoon by
flooding the Venetian market with the most deceptive samples of false
coinage.