Mediæval art chiefly religious--Innovations of Naturalism,
Classicism, and Paganism--character and tendencies of
Christian painting ill understood in England--influence of
St. Francis--Mariolatry.
In order to comprehend the peculiar tendency which painting assumed
in Umbria, it will be necessary briefly to examine the principles
and history of what is now generally known under the denomination of
CHRISTIAN ART.[*102] Until after the revival of European
civilisation, painting had scarcely any other direction than
religious purposes. For household furniture and decoration, its
luxuries were unheard of; the delineation of nature in portraits
and landscapes was unknown. But pictorial representations had
been employed for embellishment of churches from the recognition
of Christianity by the Emperors of the West, and they had assumed
a conventional character, derived chiefly from rude tracings in
which the uncultivated limners of an outcast sect had long before
depicted Christ, his Mother, and his apostles, for the solace of
those whose proscribed creed drove them to worship in the catacombs.
When these delineations, originally cherished as emblems of faith,
had been employed as the adjuncts, and eventually perverted into
the objects of devotion, they acquired a sacred character which
it was the tendency of ever-spreading superstition continually to
exaggerate. They became, in fact, the originals of those pictures
which in subsequent ages were adopted as part and portion of the
Roman worship; and forms, which they derived perhaps from the
fancy or caprice of their inventors, came to be the received types
to which all orthodox painters were bound to adhere.[*103] The
means adopted for repeating them were enlarged or narrowed by
various circumstances; the success with which they were imitated
fluctuated with the advance or decline of taste. But whether traced
upon the tablets of ivory diptychs, or blazoned in the pages of
illuminated missals; whether depicted on perishable ceilings,
or fixed in unfading mosaics; whether degraded by the unskilful
daubing and spiritless mechanism of Byzantine artists,[*104] or
refined by the holier feeling and improved handling of the Sienese
and Umbrian schools,--the original types might still be traced.
Indeed, those traditionary forms were as little subjected to
modification by painters as the dogmas of faith were open to the
doubts of commentators. Heterodoxy on either point was liable to
severe denunciation, and pictorial novelties were interdicted by
the Church, not as absolutely wrong, but as liable to abuse from
the eccentricities of human fancy.[105] It was in Spain, the
land of suspicion and priestcraft, that such jealousy was chiefly
entertained, and the censorship of the fine arts there became in the
sixteenth century a special duty of the Holy Office.
[Footnote *102: I have not deleted these pages partly because it has
been thought better to give the whole text as nearly as possible as
Dennistoun wrote it, and partly too because they serve to show that
Dennistoun was in advance of the general taste of his day in England.
But, of course, the whole of our knowledge about Italian art has
been revolutionized since he wrote. It is almost hopeless to try to
annotate these pages. To begin with, the author is dealing with a
subject of which even to-day we know very little. And then Urbino
seems to have had almost nothing to do with the rise of the Umbrian
school of painting. The reader must therefore accept with care every
statement which follows.]
[Footnote *103: This is true in a sense, but the work in the
catacombs and the mosaics (III. cent.) in S. Maria Maggiore, for
instance, are based on classic models, and are often very excellent
and beautiful.]
[Footnote *104: The Byzantine work was not always "unskilful," only
its intention seems to have been rather decorative than realistic,
yet in _S. Maria Antigua_, for instance, we can see the models were
classical.]
[Footnote 105: A large picture of the Glorification of the Madonna,
long placed in the Belle Arti at Florence, was painted by Sandro
Botticelli for Matteo Palmieri, who, in his Dantesque poem entitled
_La Città della Vita_, has advanced a theory that, in Lucifer's
rebellion, a certain number of angels assumed a neutral attitude,
as a punishment for which they were doomed to a term of trial in
the quality of human souls. Although never printed, this work was
solemnly condemned by the Inquisition after the author's death,
and the picture, which had been composed under his own direction,
fell under similar suspicion of heresy. On a rigid examination, the
censors having discovered a sort of fullness in the draped bosoms
of some angels, pronounced them females, and for this breach of
orthodoxy denounced the painting. It was accordingly covered up,
and the chapel where it hung in S. Pietro Maggiore was for a time
interdicted; but, having escaped destruction, it was offered for
sale a few years ago by the heirs of Palmieri. The opportunity
for procuring for our national collection a most interesting and
characteristic example of early art was as usual lost; but it was
brought to England by Mr. Samuel Woodburn in 1846, and has now found
a resting-place at Hamilton Palace, in one of the few collections of
art which contain nothing common-place or displeasing.[*B]]
[Footnote *B: This picture, now in the National Gallery [No. 1126] is
by Botticini, not Botticelli.]
With the aid of authorities thus deduced through an unbroken chain
from primitive times,--to conceive and embody abstractions "which
eye hath not seen nor ear heard," was reckoned no rash meddling
with sacred mysteries. On the contrary, the subjects almost
exclusively selected for the exercise of Christian art, belonged to
the fundamental doctrines of Christian faith, to the traditional
dogmas of the Church, to the legendary lives of the Saviour and of
saints, or to the dramatic sufferings of early martyrs. Such were
the transfiguration, the passion, the ascension of our Lord; the
conception, the coronation, and the _cintola_ of the Madonna[106];
the birth and marriage of the Blessed Virgin; the miracles performed
by popular saints, the martyrdoms in which they sealed their
testimony. The choice, and occasionally the treatment, of these
topics was modified to meet the spiritual exigences of the period,
or the circumstances of the place, but ever in subservience to
conventional standards derived from remote tradition. Thus we detect,
in works of the Byzantine period, rigid forms, harsh outlines,
soulless faces; in the schools of Siena and Umbria, pure figures lit
up by angelic expressions; in the followers of Giotto, a tendency to
varied movement and dramatic composition.
[Footnote 106: The Gospel account of St. Thomas's doubtings finds a
counterpart in the Roman legend of the Madonna, after her interment,
being seen by him during her corporeal transit to heaven; whereupon,
his wonted caution having led him to "ask for a sign," she dropped
him her girdle or _cintola_, which he carried to the other apostles
in proof of his marvellous tale; and the fact of her assumption was
verified by their opening her tomb and finding it empty.]
There is yet another reason for what to the uninitiated may seem
monstrosities. The old masters had not generally to represent men
and women in human form, but either prophets, saints, and martyrs,
whom it was their business to embody, not in their "mortal coil,"
but in the purer substance of those who had put on immortality; or
the Mother of Christ, exalted by mariolatry almost to a parity with
her Son; or the "Ancient of Days,"--the personages of the Triune
Divinity with their attendant heavenly host, whom to figure at all
was a questionable licence, and who, if impersonated, ought surely
to seem other than the sons and daughters of men. Of such themes
no conception could be adequate, no approximation otherwise than
disappointing; and those who were called upon to deal with them
usually preferred painting images suggested by their own earnest
devotional thoughts, to the more difficult task of idealising human
models. Addressing themselves to the spirit rather than to the eye,
they sought to delineate features with nought of "the earth, earthy,"
expressions purified from grovelling interests and mundane ties.
How much this religious art depended for its due maintenance upon
the personal character of those whose business it was to embody and
transmit to a new generation its lofty inspirations, can scarcely
require demonstration. That they were men of holy minds is apparent
from their works. Some, by long poring over the mystic incarnations
which they sought to represent; others, by deep study of the pious
narratives selected for their pencils; many, by the abstraction of
monastic seclusion, brought their souls to that pitch of devotional
enthusiasm, which their pictures portray far better than words can
describe. The biographies that remain of the early painters of Italy
fully bear out this fact; and of many instances that might be given
we shall select three from various places and periods.
Of the early Bolognese school, Vitale and his pupil Lippo di Dalmasio
were each designed _delle Madonne_, from their formally devoting
themselves to the exclusive representation of her
"Who so above all mothers shone,
The mother of the Blessed One."
So far indeed did the latter of these carry enthusiastic mysticism,
that he never resumed his labours without purifying his imagination
and sanctifying his thoughts by a vigil of austere fasting, and by
taking the blessed sacrament in the morning. In like manner did one
of his comrades gain the appellation of Simon of the crucifixes. A
century later, Gentile Bellini painted three of his noblest works for
a confraternity in Venice, who possessed a relic of the True Cross,
and chose for his subject various miracles ascribed to its influence.
Refusing all remuneration, he affixed this touching record of his
pious motives: "The work of Gentile Bellini, a knight of Venice,
instigated by affection for the Cross, 1496." Similar anecdotes might
be quoted of Giovanni da Fiesole, better known in Italy as Beato
Angelico, whose life and pencil may well be termed seraphic, and to
whom we shall again have occasion to allude; while parallel cases
of a later date are found in Spain, where religion, and religious
fervour, influenced by the self-mortification of dark fanatics and
dismal ascetics, generally assumed less attractive forms.
A Christian ideal was thus the aim of the early masters; and
most surviving works of the Umbrian and Sienese schools carry in
themselves ample evidence of intensely serious sentiment animating
their authors. But to those who have not enjoyed opportunities of
observing this peculiar characteristic of a style of art almost
unknown in England, it may be acceptable to trace the same spirit
in a language legible by eyes unaccustomed to the delicacies of
pictorial expression. This confirmation is found in the rules
adopted by guilds of painters, incorporated in different towns of
Italy, which are upon this point more important, as proving how
entirely devotional feeling was systematised, instead of being left
to the accident of individual inspiration. The statutes of the
Sienese fraternity, confirmed in 1357, are thus prefaced: "Let the
beginning, middle, and end of our words and actions be in the name of
God Almighty, and of his Mother, our Lady the Virgin Mary! Whereas
we, by the grace of God, being those who make manifest to rude and
unlettered men the marvellous things effected by, and in virtue of,
our holy faith; and our creed consisting chiefly in the worship and
belief of one God in Trinity, and of God omnipotent, omniscient, and
infinite in love and compassion; and as nothing, however unimportant,
can have beginning or end without these three necessary ingredients,
power, knowledge, and right good-will; and as in God only consists
all high perfection; let us therefore anxiously invoke the aid of
divine grace, in order that we may attain to a good beginning and
ending of all our undertakings, whether of word or work, prefacing
all in the name and to the honour of the MOST HOLY TRINITY.
And since spiritual things are, and should be, far preferable and
more precious than temporal, let us commence by regulating the fête
of our patron, the venerable and glorious St Luke," &c. Several
subsequent rules relate to the observance of other festivals, whereof
fifty-seven are enjoined to be strictly kept without working, a
number which, added to Sundays and Easter holidays, monopolises for
sacred purposes nearly a third of the year.[107] The Florentine
statutes, dated about twenty years earlier, direct that all who come
to enrol themselves in the Company of painters, whether men or
women, shall be penitent and confessed, or at least shall purpose
to confess themselves at the earliest opportunity; that they shall
daily repeat five paternosters, and as many aves, and shall take the
sacrament at least once a year.[108] Nor let these be regarded as
mere unmeaning phrases, or as the vapid lip-service of a formalist
faith. The ceremonial observances of an age in which the Roman
Church was indeed Catholic cannot fairly be judged by a Protestant
standard, yet few, who have seen with intelligence the productions of
those painters, will doubt that they were men of piety and prayer.
A vestige of the same holy feeling hung over artists, even after it
had ceased to animate their efforts; the forms survived, when the
spirit had fled. Thus, "On Tuesday morning, the 11th of June 1573,
at eleven in the forenoon, Giorgio Vasari began to paint the cupola
of the cathedral at Florence; and, before commencing, he had a Mass
of the Holy Spirit celebrated at the altar of the sacrament, after
hearing which he entered upon the work."[109] Vasari was a religious
man; but the favourite painter of a dissolute court could scarcely be
a religious artist, nor could the pupil of Michael Angelo appreciate
the quiet pathos or feel the gentle fervour of earlier and more
spiritualised times.
[Footnote 107: _Carteggio d'Artisti_, II., p. 1.]
[Footnote 108: _Carteggio d'Artisti_, II., p. 33.]
[Footnote 109: _Ibid._, III., p. 352.]
In Spain, where art was always in the especial service of the
priesthood, and not unfrequently subservient to priestcraft, religion
was a requisite of painters to a much later date. The rules of the
academy established at Seville by Murillo, in 1658, imposed upon each
pupil an ejaculatory testimony of his faith in, and devotion for,
the blessed sacrament and immaculate conception.[110] But whilst the
piety of the Sienese and Florentine guilds was an inherent sentiment
of their age, willingly adopted by professional etiquette, that of
the Iberian artists in the sixteenth century was regulated by the
Inquisition, and savoured of its origin. The former was joyous as the
bright thoughts of youthful enthusiasm springing in a land of beauty;
the latter shadowed the grave and sombre temperament of the nation
by austerities congenial to the Holy Office. Hence the religious
paintings of Spain, appealing to the spectator's terrors rather than
to his sympathies, revelled in the horrible, eschewing as a snare
those lovely forms which in Italy were encouraged as conducive to
devotion.
[Footnote 110: STIRLING'S _Annals of the Artists of Spain_,
p. 848.]
Yet, if the genius of early painters was hampered, and the effect
of their creations impaired, by prescribed symbols and conventional
rules, they were not without countervailing advantages. A limited
range of forms did not always imply poverty of ideas, nor was
simplicity inconsistent with sublimity. Those, accordingly, who look
with intelligence upon pictures, which, to the casual glance of an
uninformed spectator, are mere rude and monstrous representations,
will often recognise in them a grandeur of sentiment, and a majesty
of expression, altogether wanting in more matured productions,
wherein truth to nature is manifested through unimportant
accessories, or combined with trivial details. Familiarity is
notoriously conducive to contempt; and to associate the grander
themes and dogmas of holy writ with multiplied adjuncts skilfully
borrowed from ordinary life, is to detract from the awe and mystery
whereof they ought to be especially suggestive.
But here it may be well to premise that, our observations upon
Christian art being purely æsthetical, it forms no part of our plan
to analyse its influences in a doctrinal view, or to discuss the
Roman system of teaching religion to the laity, by attracting them
to devotional observances through pictures and sculpture, to the
exclusion of the holy scriptures; still less to raise any controversy
regarding the incidents or tenets thus usually inculcated. We,
therefore, pause not to inquire how far the Roman legends--often
beautifully suggestive of truth, but how frequently redolent of fatal
error!--have originated in art, or been corrupted by its creations.
One danger of teaching by pictures is obvious; for where the eye
is offered but a few detached scenes, without full explanation of
their attendant circumstances and connecting links, very imperfect
impressions and false conclusions may result. Under such a system,
figurative representation will often be literally interpreted,
symbols will be mistaken for facts, dreams for realities; and thus
have the fertile imaginations of artists and commentators mutually
reacted upon each other, until historical and spiritual truth is
lost in a maze of allegory and fable, and error has been indelibly
ingrafted upon popular faith. The dim allegories of early art have
accordingly been overlaid by crude inventions, or obscured by gross
ignorance and enthusiastic mysticism. Religious truth being thus
misstated, or its symbols misread, those who thirsted for the waters
of life were repelled by tainted streams, and hungry souls were
mocked by stones for bread. It ought, however, to be constantly borne
in mind that we are dealing with times when the authority of Rome was
absolute throughout Europe; and that, whatever may now be alleged
against the dogmas or legends embodied by early artists, they were
then universally received. For our purpose they ought, therefore,
to be examined by the light then enjoyed, not by that shed upon
them in after times of gospel freedom. Neither ought we to forget
the impressionable qualities of a southern people, when disposed to
question the tendencies of religious instruction through the senses
and the imagination. And, granting that it is well to employ such
means, the mute eloquence of an altar-picture, or a reliquary, though
less startling than impassioned pulpit appeals, less thrilling than
choral voices sustained by the organ's impressive diapason, had the
advantages of being accessible at all hours to devout visitors, and
of demanding from them no sustained attention.
* * * * *
Such was Christian art in Italy during the fourteenth century, when
it was destined to undergo very considerable modifications. As yet
it had been exercised almost exclusively for decorating churches
and monastic buildings with extensive works intended to nourish or
revive devotion in the masses who resorted to them. In ages when the
intelligence capable of ordering these works was almost limited to
convents, and when it was only from such representations that the
unlettered eye could convey impressions to the mind of the laity,
Christian paintings were an effective adjunct to Christian preaching
and devotional exercises. But, as the dark cloud began to roll away
before the dawn of modern cultivation, mankind awoke to new wants. No
longer content with the pittance of religious knowledge which their
spiritual guides doled out to them, they sought to secure a store for
their own uncontrolled use. Those who could vanquish the difficulties
of reading, found in their office-books a continuation of the church
services; the less educated placed by their bed, or in their domestic
chapel, a small devotional picture, as a substitute for the larger
representations which invoked them to holy feelings in the house
of God. Thus there arose a general desire for objects of sacred
art. The privilege assumed by all who wished for such, of ordering
them in conformity with their individual feelings or superstitions,
quickly introduced greater latitudinarianism as to the selection
and treatment of the subjects. The demand so created exceeded the
productive powers of such painters as had been regularly initiated
into the language of form, according to the settled conventionalities
of their sanctified profession. The chain of pictorial tradition was
snapped, when a host of new competitors entered the field, free from
its trammels. But the public taste had been too long and thoroughly
imbued with a uniform class of religious compositions to relish any
great innovations; and although historical painting began to find
a place in the palace-halls of the princes and republics of Italy,
works commissioned by private persons continued almost exclusively of
a sacred cast. Thus for a time was the new path little frequented.
Artists felt their way with caution, unaware of the direction
whither it might lead them; timid of their own powers, doubtful of
their influence on the public. They contented themselves at first
with enlarging the range of subjects, or with varying the pose of
the actors. Fearing to abandon traditional types, they ventured not
beyond the addition of accessories, such as architecture, landscape,
animals, fruits, and flowers, or a disposal of the draperies with
greater freedom and attention to truth. But, the further they
departed from received forms, the more willingly did their genius
pluck by the way those graceful aids and appliances which spontaneous
nature offered in a land of beauty; and every new combination which
that awakened genius inspired, induced, and to a certain extent
authorised, fresh novelties.
The modifications thus introduced have been distinguished in modern
phrase by the term naturalism, in contradistinction to those
traditional forms and spiritualised countenances which constitute
the mysticism of mediæval art. It would lead us too far from
our subject to trace the progress of naturalism from such early
symptoms as we have indicated, until portraits, at first interponed
as donors of the picture, or as spectators of its incident, were
habitually selected as models for the most sacred personages. That
the adaptation of nature to the highest purposes of art, by skilful
selection and by judicious idealisation, is the noblest object which
pictorial genius can keep in view for its inventions will scarcely
be contested. But another consideration, inherent in the axioms of
the mystic school, was too often lost sight of by the naturalists.
The portraiture of criminal or even vulgar life, in deeply religious
works, is an outrage upon all holy feeling, whether in the example of
Alexander VI., who commanded Pinturicchio to introduce into one of
the Vatican frescoes his own portrait, kneeling before the ascending
Redeemer;[111] or in the case of those painters in Rome whose
favourite model for the Saviour has of late years been a cobbler,
hence known in the streets by the blasphemous name of Jesus Christ.
[Footnote 111: Roscoe, who wrote without an opportunity of seeing
these paintings, describes this Pope as kneeling in his pontificals
before the Madonna, in whom is portrayed his mistress, Julia Farnese.
In this palpable blunder he has been followed by Rio and others. It
would be curious to discover on what authority Gordon, in his life
of Borgia, states that a likeness of La Vanosia, another of his
mistresses, hung for Madonna-worship in the church of the Popolo at
Rome. The circumstance coming from such a quarter is questionable; at
all events, it is no longer true. Alexander kneels before the Risen,
not the Ascending Christ. *Roscoe followed Vasari.]
To the naturalism which became gradually prevalent in most Italian
schools after the beginning of the fourteenth century, there was,
in the fifteenth, added another principle of antagonism to mystic
feeling. In purist nomenclature it has been denominated paganism, but
it seems to consist of paganism and classicism. By the former is to
be understood that fashion for the philosophy, morality, literature,
and mythology of ancient Greece and Rome, which, introduced from
the recovered authors of antiquity, was assiduously cultivated by
the Medici in their lettered but sceptical court, until it left a
stamp on the literature and art of Italy not yet effaced. Under its
influence, the vernacular language was neglected, or cramped into
obsolete models; dead tongues monopolised students; the doctrines of
Aristotle and Plato divided men, clouding their faith, and warping
their morals from Christian standards; the beauty of holiness
yielded before an ideal of form; and that unction which had purified
the conceptions and guided the pencils of devotional painters,
evaporated as they strove to master the technical excellences of the
new manner. To the maxims and principles of revived pagan antiquity,
the philosophic Schlegel has traced the selfish policy and morals of
Italian tyrants and communities; but it seems easier to detect their
fatal tendency in painting and sculpture than upon statecraft and
manners.
Classicism, as here used, means that innovation of antique taste in
art which arose out of renewed interest in the picturesque ruins of
Rome, in her mighty recollections, in the excavation of her precious
sculptures, and which imparted to pictorial representations sometimes
a hard and plastic treatment, sometimes ornamental architecture,
bas-reliefs, or grotesques. By paganism a blighting poison was
infused through the spirit of art, while classicism has often
ennobled the work and enriched its details, without injury to its
sentiment. To schools such as those of Florence and Padua, wherein
nature or classic imitation prevailed, there belonged the materialism
of facts, the severity of definite forms.[*112] These qualities
obtained favour from men of mundane pursuits and literary tastes;
from citizens greedy after gainful commerce and devoted to political
intrigue; or from princes who patronised, and pedants who deciphered,
long forgotten, but at length reviving lore. The "new manner," as
it was called, had, in Michael Angelo, a supporter whose mighty
genius lent to its solecisms an irresistible charm. Yet against such
innovations protests were long occasionally recorded. An anonymous
writer, in 1549, mentions a _Pietà_, said to have been designed
by "Michael Angelo Buonarroti, that inventor of filthy trash, who
adheres to art without devotion. Indeed, all the modern painters and
sculptors, following the like Lutheran [that is, impious] caprices
now-a-days, neither paint nor model for consecrated churches anything
but figures that distract one's faith and devotion; but I hope that
God will one day send his saints to cast down such idolatries."[113]
In a land where mythology had slowly been supplanted by revelation,
especially in a city successively the capital of paganism and
Christianity, these influences were necessarily in frequent
antagonism, or in forced and unseemly juxtaposition. Whilst art
thus lost in sentiment, it gained in vigour; and although classic
taste and the study of antique sculpture unquestionably tarnished
its mystical purity, may they not have preserved it from the fate
of religious painting in Spain, which, debarred by the Inquisition
from access to nude models, and elevated by no refined standard,
oscillated between the extremes of gloomy asceticism and grovelling
vulgarity? The paganism of the Medici and Michael Angelo scared away
the seraphic visions of monastic limners, but it also rescued Italy
from religious prudery, and saved men from addressing their orisons
to squalid beggars.[*114]
[Footnote *112: For instance, in the work of Botticelli, I suppose,
or Verrocchio, or Mantegna?]
[Footnote 113: GAYE, _Carteggio_, II., 500.]
[Footnote *114: Can this be an allusion to S. Francesco of Assisi?]
The brief sketch which we have thus introduced of the progress
and tendency of Christian art, may be fittingly concluded by the
definition of it supplied by Baron v. Rumohr, one of the laborious,
learned, and felicitous expositors of mediæval art whom the reviving
taste of later times produced. "It is consecrated to religion alone;
its object is sometimes to induce the mind to the contemplation of
sacred subjects, sometimes to regulate the passions, by awakening
those sentiments of peace and benevolence which are peculiar to
practical Christianity." To narrate its extinction in the sixteenth
century, speedily followed by the decline of all that was noblest in
artistic genius, is a task on which we are not now called to enter.
We approached the subject because, in the mountains of Umbria, that
mystic school long maintained its chief seat; because there its
types sank deepest into the popular mind; and because it reached its
culminating point of perfection and glory in RAFFAELE of
URBINO.
We are fully and painfully aware how opposed some of these views
are to the received criticism and popular practice of art in
England; but it were beyond our purpose to inquire into the many
causes which combine to render our countrymen averse from the
impartial study, as well as to the even partial adoption of them.
Hogarth, the incarnation of our national taste in painting, saw in
those spiritualised cherubim which usually minister to the holiest
compositions of the Umbrian school, only "an infant's head with a
pair of duck's wings under its chin, supposed always to be flying
about and singing psalms."[115] The form conveyed by the eye, and the
description of it traced by the pen, are here in accurate unison.
Alas! how hopelessly blinded the writer's mental vision. As directly
opposed to such grovelling views, and contrasting spiritual with
material perceptions of art, it may not be out of place here to cite
a passage from Savonarola, whose stern genius gladly invoked the muse
of painting to aid his moral and political reformations. "Creatures
are beautiful in proportion as they participate in and approximate
the beauty of their creator; and perfection of bodily form is
relative to beauty of mind. Bring hither two women equally perfect in
person; let one be a saint, the other a sinner. You shall find that
the saint will be more generally loved than the sinner, and that on
her all eyes will be directed."
[Footnote 115: Our reference to this quotation (made long ago) has
been mislaid, but it appears perfectly consistent with Hogarth's
habitual train of ideas, and quaint rendering of them. See
IRELAND'S _Hogarth Illustrated_, I., p. lxix.; II., p. 194,
195; III., p. 226-40. NICHOL'S _Anecdotes of Hogarth_, p.
137. In his plate of Enthusiasm Delineated, he has actually appended
a pair of duck's legs to a cherub.]
These quotations illustrate two extremes,--ribald vulgarity on
the one hand, and transcendental mysticism on the other, between
which the standard of sound criticism may be sought. It would be
as unreasonable to suppose Hogarth capable of comprehending or
appreciating the fervid conceptions of Christian art, as to look
for sympathy from Savonarola, with his pot-house personifications.
Each of those styles has its peculiar merit, which cannot fairly be
considered with reference to the other: they differ in this among
many respects,--that whilst English caricatures and Dutch familiar
scenes are addressed to the most uncultivated minds, Umbrian or
Sienese paintings can be understood only after long examination and
elevated thought. The former, therefore, gratify the unintelligent
many, the latter delight an enlightened few.
The difficulty of justly appreciating this branch of æsthetics is
greater among ourselves than is generally imagined, as our best
authorities have entirely misled us, from themselves overlooking
its true bent. More alive to the naturalism and technical merits
of painting than to subtleties of feeling and expression, they are
neither conscious of the aims nor aware of the principles of purist
art. They look for perfection where only pathos should be sought.
Burnet, a recent and valuable writer, considers Barry "one of those
noble minds ruined by a close adherence to the dry manner of the
early masters," an analogy which cannot but surprise those who
compare the respective works of those thus brought unconsciously into
contrast. Even Sir Joshua Reynolds was not exempt from prejudice on
this point, for he sneers at the first manner of Raffaele as "dry
and insipid," and avers that until Masaccio, art was so barbarous,
"that every figure appeared to stand upon his toes." There is but one
explanation applicable to assertions thus inconsistent at once with
fact and with sound criticism, in a writer so candid and generally
so careful. Living in an age devoid of Catholic feeling (we employ
the phrase in an æsthetic sense), which classed in the same category
of contempt all painting before Michael Angelo, and speaking of
"an excellence addressed to a faculty which he did not possess,"
he assumed, without observation or inquiry, that "the simplicity
of the early masters would be better named penury, as it proceeds
from mere want,--from want of knowledge, want of resources, want
of abilities to be otherwise; that it was the offspring, not of
choice, but of necessity." No argument is required to convince those
who have impartially studied these masters, that a condemnation so
sweeping is erroneous. In our day, the number of such persons is
happily increasing, but there are still many impediments to a candid
appreciation of the subject. So long as art was the handmaid of
religion, its professors were ranked almost with those who ministered
in the temple, and interpreted the records of inspiration. In absence
of priests, their works became guides to popular devotion, and
consequently were addressed to spectators who came to worship, not
to criticise; whose credulous enthusiasm was nourished by yearnings
of the heart, not by the cold judgment of the eye. How different the
test applied by men who look upon such paintings as popish dogmas
which it is a duty to repudiate, it may be to ridicule! How futile
the perhaps more common error of trying them by the matured rules
of pictorial execution, apart from their object and intention!
Connoisseurship in painting, especially in England, has indeed too
long consisted in a mere appreciation of its technical difficulties,
and perception of their successful treatment. For it was not until
Raffaele had attained grace, and Michael Angelo had mastered
design,--until Correggio had blended light and shade into happy
effect, and Titian had taught the gorgeous hues of his palette to
mingle in harmony, that such perfections were looked for, or reduced
to a standard. Why, then, apply such standard to works already old
ere it had been adopted? The very imperfections of general treatment,
the absence of linear perspective and anatomical detail, tended to
develop what should be chiefly sought and most valued in these early
productions; for the artist's time was thus free to elaborate the
heads and extremities, until he gave them that grace and expression
which constitutes their interest and their charm.
There are, however, no longer wanting writers in England, as well as
in Germany, France, and Italy, to appreciate their lofty motives,
and solemn feelings, and gentle forms. In the words of Ruskin,
whose earnest and true thoughts are often most happily expressed,
"the early efforts of Cimabue and Giotto are the burning messages
of prophecy, delivered by the stammering lips of infants," but they
are unintelligible to "the multitude, always awake to the lowest
pleasures which art can bestow, and dead to the highest," for
their beauties "can only be studied or accepted in the particular
feeling that produced them." Under the modest title of _Sketches_
Lord Lindsay has enriched our literature with the best history of
Christian art as yet produced. He has brought to his task that
sincerity of purpose, veneration for sacred things, and lively
sense of beauty, which impart a charm to all he puts forth; and he
has peculiarly qualified himself for its successful performance,
by an anxious study of preceding writers, by a faithful, often
toilsome, examination of monuments, even in the more obscure sites
of Italy, and by a candour and accuracy of criticism seldom attained
on topics singularly liable to prejudice. Public intelligence and
taste must improve under such direction, notwithstanding passing
sneers at "his narrow notions of admiring the faded and soulless
attempts at painting of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,"
or sapient conclusions that "the antiquities and curiosities of
the early Italian painters would only infect our school with a
retrograding mania of disfiguring art, and returning to the decrepit
littleness of a period warped and tortured by monkish legends and
prejudices."[116] In order to be comprehended, such "curiosities"
must not only be seen, but studied maturely: both are in this country
alike impracticable. When Wilkie first entered Italy, he found
nothing to rank them above Chinese or Hindoo paintings,[*117] and
could not discern the majestic simplicity ascribed to the primitive
masters. Yet, ere six weeks had passed, he recorded the conviction
"that the only art pure and unsophisticated, and that is worth study
and consideration by an artist, or that has the true object of art in
view, is to be found in the works of those masters who revived and
improved the art, and those who ultimately brought it to perfection.
These alone seem to have addressed themselves to the common sense of
mankind. From Giotto to Michael Angelo, expression and sentiment seem
the first thing thought of, whilst those who followed seem to have
allowed technicalities to get the better of them, until, simplicity
giving way to intricacy, they seem to have painted more for the
artist and the connoisseur than for the untutored apprehensions of
ordinary men." So, too, in writing to Mr. Phillips, R.A., he
says, "respect for primitive simplicity and expression is perhaps the
best advice for any school."[118]
[Footnote 116: _Art Union_, January and April, 1847. We have read
with regret, in a periodical justly entitled to great weight,
criticisms so at variance with its wonted candour and good sense.]
[Footnote *117: Evidently Chinese and Japanese art were not
understood in England in 1859.]
[Footnote 118: CUNNINGHAM'S _Life of Wilkie_, II., pp. 197,
506.]
Neither are religious innovations a necessary accompaniment of
such tastes among ourselves, as is too generally supposed. The
present reaction in favour of Romanist views, prevalent in England
among a class of persons, many of whom are distinguished by high
and cultivated intellect, as well as by youthful enthusiasm, takes
naturally an æsthetic as well as theological direction. The faith
and discipline, which they labour to revive, having borrowed some
winning illustrations and much imposing pageantry from painting,
sculpture, and architecture, their neophytes gladly avail themselves
of accessories so attractive. Nor can it be doubted that the same
qualities which render such persons impressionable to popish
observances, predispose them to admire or imitate works of devotional
art. Yet there is no compulsory connection between these tendencies.
Conversion to pantheism is not a requisite for appreciating the
Belvidere Apollo or the Medicean Venus; and a serious Christian may
surely appreciate the feeling of the early masters, without bowing
the knee to their Madonnas,--may admire the
"Prelibations, foretastes high,"
of Fra Angelico's pencil, whilst demurring to the miracles he has so
charmingly portrayed.
There is another observation of Wilkie's which merits our notice:
"Could their system serve, which I think it may, as the border
minstrelsy did Sir Walter Scott, it would be to any student a most
admirable groundwork for a new style of art." This somewhat hasty
hint must be cautiously received. The very absence of technical
excellence interests us in the formal compositions and flat
surfaces of the early masters. We feel that movement and distance,
foreshortening and relief, symmetry and contrast, tone and effect,
are scarcely wanted, where "a truth of actuality is fearlessly
sacrificed to a truth of feeling." We are forced to admit that men
who regarded form but as the vehicle of expression, attained a severe
grandeur, a noble repose, very different from exaggerated action.
Archaisms of style are, however, ill suited to our times. Originally
significant, they are now an affectation--the offspring of penury or
perverted taste, rather than of spiritual purity. So must they seem
in modern productions, affectedly divested of the artificial means
and improved methods which centuries of progress have developed, by
artists who forget their academic studies and neglect the contour of
the living model, without attaining the old inspiration. The spirit
which animated devotional limners being long dead, any imitation
of their style must be mechanical--a reproduction of its mannerism
after its motives are extinct. Whilst, therefore, I endeavour to
point out the merits of the old religious limners, it is with no
wish to see their manner revived. Among a generation whose faith
has been remodelled, whose social and intellectual habits have been
entirely revolutionised, the restoration of purist painting would be
a mockery. But it should not, therefore, be forbidden us to study
and sympathise with forms which, though rigid and monotonous, were
sufficient to express the simple faith of early times, and in which
earnestness compensates the absence of skill, and fervour the lack of
power.
During the early years of the thirteenth century, there appeared on
the lofty Apennines of Central Italy, one of those mysterious beings
who, with few gifts of nature, are born to sway mankind; whose brief
and eccentric career has left behind a brilliant halo, that no lapse
of time is likely to dim. Giovanni Bernardoni, better known as St.
Francis of Assisi, by his eloquence, his austerities, and all the
appliances of religious enthusiasm, quickly gathered among the fervid
spirits of his native mountains a numerous following of devoted
disciples. In a less judicious church, he might, as a field-preacher,
have become a most dangerous schismatic; but, with that foresight
and knowledge of human nature which have generally distinguished the
Romish hierarchy, the sectarian leader was welcomed as a missionary,
"seraphic all in fervency," and in due time canonised into a saint,
whilst his poverty-professing sect was recognised as an order, and
became one of the most influential pillars of the Papacy.
It was
"On the hard rock
'Twixt Arno and the Tiber, he from Christ
Took the last signet."
From the desolate fastnesses of Lavernia, which witnessed his ascetic
life and ecstatic visions, to the fertile slopes of Assisi, where
his bones found repose from self-inflicted hardships, the people
rallied round him while alive, and revered him when dead. Nor did the
religious revival which his preaching and example there effected pass
away. Acknowledged by popes, favoured by princes, his order rapidly
spread. In every considerable town convents of begging friars were
established and endowed. Still, it was in his mountain-land that
his doctrines took deepest root, among a race of simple men, reared
amid the sublime combinations of Alpine and forest scenery, familiar
from their days of dreamy youth with hills and glades, caverns and
precipices, shady grottoes and solitary cells. The visionary tales
of his marvellous life, penetrating the devotional character of the
inhabitants, became favourite themes of popular superstition.
"A spirit hung,
Beautiful region! o'er thy towns and farms;
And emanations were perceived, and acts
Of immortality, in nature's course
Exemplified by mysteries, that were felt
As bonds on grave philosopher imposed,
And armed warrior; and in every grove
A gay or pensive tenderness prevailed."[119]
[Footnote 119: WORDSWORTH'S _Excursion_.]
Assisi in particular was the focus of the new faith. To its shrine
flocked pilgrims laden with riches, which the saint taught them
to despise. This influx of treasure had the usual destination of
monastic wealth, being chiefly dedicated to the decoration of its
sanctuary. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the best
artists in Italy competed for its embellishment, and even now it
is there that the student of mediæval art ought most to seek for
enlightenment.
With the legends of St. Francis thus indelibly stamped on the
inhabitants, and with the finest specimens of religious painting
preserved at Assisi, it need scarcely be matter of surprise that
devotional art, which we have endeavoured to describe, should have
found in Umbria a fostering soil, even after it had been elsewhere
supplanted by naturalist and pagan novelties; for the feelings which
it breathed were those of mystery and sentiment--its beauty was
sanctified and impalpable. By a people so trained, its traditional
types were received with the fervour of faith; while to the limited
range of its themes the miraculous adventures of the saint were
a welcome supplement. The romantic character of these incidents
borrowed from the picturesque features of the country a new but
fitting element of pictorial effect, and for the first time nature
was introduced to embellish without demeaning religious painting. But
let us hear Rio, the eloquent elucidator of sacred art, upon this
subject. "To the Umbrian school belongs the glory of having followed
out the leading aim of Christian art without pause, and without
yielding to the seductions of example or the distractions of clamour.
It would seem that a peculiar blessing belongs to the spots rendered
specially holy by the sainted Francis of Assisi, and that the odour
of his sanctity has preserved the fine arts from degradation in that
mountain district, where so many pious painters have successively
contributed to ornament his tomb. From thence rose to heaven, like
a sweet incense, prayers whose fervour and purity ensured their
efficacy: from thence, too, in other times, there descended, like
beneficent dew upon the more corrupt cities of the plain, penitential
inspirations that spread into almost every part of Italy."
Since these pages were written I have met with a passage in the
introduction of Boni's Italian translation of the work just quoted,
which I subjoin, at the risk of some repetition, as a fair specimen
of the ideas on Christian art now entertained by many on the
Continent, but as yet little known to English literature.
"On the Umbrian mountains, by Assisi, slept, in the peace of Heaven,
St. Francis, who left such sweet odour of sanctity in the middle
ages. Round his tomb assembled, from every part of Christendom,
pilgrims to pay their vows. With their offertories there was erected
over his grave a magnificent temple, which became the point of
concourse to all painters animated by Christian feeling, who thus
displayed their gratitude to the Almighty for their endowment of
genius, who in that solitude laid in a new store of inspiration,
and who, after leaving on these walls a testimony of their powers,
returned home joyful and enriched. Cimabue, among the first that
raised a holy war against the Byzantine mannerism,[*120] there
painted the most beautiful of his Madonnas; his pupil, the shepherd
of Bondone, there traced those simple histories which established
his superiority; thither sped the artists of Siena, Perugia, Arezzo,
and the best of the Florentines,--the beatified Fiesole, of angelic
life and works, Benozzo Gozzoli, Orcagna, Perugino, and, finally,
Raffaele, the greatest of painters.
[Footnote *120: Cimabue raising a holy war against Byzantine
mannerism is an amusing spectacle. All we know of him was that his
pupil was a great painter. Whether or no he painted at Assisi it is
impossible to say.]
"Thus was there formed in the shadow of that sanctuary a truly
Christian school, which sought its types of beauty in the heavens;
or, when it laid the scene of its compositions here below, selected
their subjects from the sainted ones of the earth. Its delight was
to represent, now the Virgin-Mother kneeling before her Son, or
seated caressing or holding him up for the veneration of patriarchs
and saints; now the life of Christ, his preaching, his sufferings,
his triumph; or, again, to embody the touching legends told in these
simple times, or the martyrs crucified by early tyrants, or an
anchorite's devotion in a lonely cave, or some beatified soul borne
away on seraph's wings; or a religious procession, the miracle of a
preacher, the solemnity of a sacrament: but ever, images of solace
and of hope, cherubs singing and making melody, maidens contemplating
with smiles the opening heavens, the scenes begun on earth but
continued far beyond the clouds, where the Madonna and the Saviour
are seen, radiant with serene exultation, beholding the concourse of
suppliant faithful beneath."
But lest, in quoting from writers zealously devoted to the Roman
Creed, we may seem to admit that such sympathies belong not to
Protestant breasts, it will be well to appeal to one whose pen
has, with no common success, combated the usages wherein popery
most startles those whose faith is based on the Reformation. "I
never looked at the pictures of one of these men that it did not
instantaneously affect me, alluring me into a sort of dream or
reverie, while my imagination was called into very lively activity.
It is not that their drawing is good; for, on the other hand,
it is often stiff, awkward, and unnatural. Nor is it that their
imagination, as exhibited in grouping their figures or embodying
the story to be represented, was correct or natural; for often
it is most absurd and grotesque. But still there is palpably the
embodiment of an idea; an idea pure, holy, exquisite, and too much
so to seem capable of expression by the ordinary powers either of
language or of the pencil. Yet the idea is there. And it must have
had a mysterious and wondrous power on the imagination of these men,
it must have thoroughly mastered and possessed them, or they never
could have developed such an exquisite ideal of calm, peaceful, meek,
heavenly holiness, as stands out so constantly and so pre-eminently
in their paintings." In noticing the cavils of connoisseurs upon
these paintings this author happily observes, that they were "looking
for earthly creatures and found heavenly ones; and, expecting unholy
expressions, were disappointed at finding none but the holy."[121]
[Footnote 121: REV. M.H. SEYMOUR'S _Pilgrimage to Rome_, a
work remarkable for accurate observation of facts, and the candid
tone of its strictures.]
We may here remark, in passing, the nearly coeval introduction of a
class of themes which, though innovating upon the purity of Catholic
faith, were admirably adapted to develop the mystic tendencies of
devotional painting. It was about the thirteenth century that the
Madonna acquired the unfortunately paramount place in the Romish
worship she has since been permitted to hold. Her history became a
favourite topic of Franciscan and other popular preachers, at once
facile and fascinating. Not content with describing the scriptural
events of her life, they adopted traditions regarding her birth,
marriage, and death; or the more abstruse and questionable legends
of her miraculous conception, her assumption, exaltation, and her
coronation as queen of heaven, and the _cintola_ or girdle by which
she drew up souls from limbo. It would be quite foreign to the
matter in hand were we to examine the orthodoxy of these devotional
novelties, or their influence upon the social estimate of the
female character. Enough to observe that they speedily enriched
Christian art in all its branches, but chiefly in Umbria, where, in
accordance with the prevailing popular taste, such of them as partook
of dogmatic mystery gained a preference over more real or scenic
incidents. The early Giottists were wont to close their dramatic
delineations of her earthly history with a peaceful death, its only
artistic licence being the transit of her soul in the shape of a
swaddled babe. But the Madonna-worship of this more spiritual school
was satisfied with nothing short of her translation in the body,
direct to realms of bliss from amid a concourse of adoring disciples.
In like manner, the old Byzantine painters inscribed over her image
one uniform epigraph, "the Mother of God"; whilst the devotional
masters delighted to seat her beyond the skies, where her blessed
Son placed a diadem upon her brows as the queen of heaven. It hence
became an established practice of the latter to depict her charms,
not after the mould in which nature cast fair but frail humanity, but
to clothe them in abstract and purer beauty appropriate to one whom,
though incarnate, they were taught to regard as divine.