THE WINGS OF THE LION.
§ 1. Such being the heroic spirit of Greek religion and art, we may now
with ease trace the relations between it and that which animated the
Italian, and chiefly the Venetian, schools.
Observe, all the nobleness, as well as the faults, of the Greek art were
dependent on its making the most of this present life. It might do so in
the Anacreontic temper--[Greek: Ti Pleiadessi, kamoi]; "What have I to
do with the Pleiads?" or in the defiant or the trustful endurance of
fate;--but its dominion was in this world.
Florentine art was essentially Christian, ascetic, expectant of a better
world, and antagonistic, therefore, to the Greek temper. So that the
Greek element, once forced upon it, destroyed it. There was absolute
incompatibility between them. Florentine art, also, could not produce
landscape. It despised the rock, the tree, the vital air itself,
aspiring to breathe empyreal air.
Venetian art began with the same aim and under the same restrictions.
Both are healthy in the youth of art. Heavenly aim and severe law for
boyhood; earthly work and fair freedom for manhood.
§ 2. The Venetians began, I repeat, with asceticism; always, however,
delighting in more massive and deep color than other religious painters.
They are especially fond of saints who have been cardinals, because of
their red hats, and they sunburn all their hermits into splendid russet
brown.
They differed from the Pisans in having no Maremma between them and the
sea; from the Romans, in continually quarrelling with the Pope; and from
the Florentines in having no gardens.
They had another kind of garden, deep-furrowed, with blossom in white
wreaths--fruitless. Perpetual May therein, and singing of wild, nestless
birds. And they had no Maremma to separate them from this garden of
theirs. The destiny of Pisa was changed, in all probability, by the ten
miles of marsh-land and poisonous air between it and the beach. The
Genoese energy was feverish; too much heat reflected from their torrid
Apennine. But the Venetian had his free horizon, his salt breeze, and
sandy Lido-shore; sloped far and flat,--ridged sometimes under the
Tramontane winds with half a mile's breadth of rollers;--sea and sand
shrivelled up together in one yellow careering field of fall and roar.
§ 3. They were, also, we said, always quarrelling with the Pope. Their
religious liberty came, like their bodily health, from that
wave-training; for it is one notable effect of a life passed on
shipboard to destroy weak beliefs in appointed forms of religion. A
sailor may be grossly superstitious, but his superstitions will be
connected with amulets and omens, not cast in systems. He must accustom
himself, if he prays at all, to pray anywhere and anyhow. Candlesticks
and incense not being portable into the maintop, he perceives those
decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails
must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day, and it
is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had
of the breakers, it appears, if at all, and they give it plenary and
brief, without listening to confession.
Whereupon our religious opinions become vague, but our religious
confidences strong; and the end of it all is that we perceive the Pope
to be on the other side of the Apennines, and able, indeed, to sell
indulgences, but not winds, for any money. Whereas, God and the sea are
with us, and we must even trust them both, and take what they shall
send.
§ 4. Then, farther. This ocean-work is wholly adverse to any morbid
conditions of sentiment. Reverie, above all things, is forbidden by
Scylla and Charybdis. By the dogs and the depths, no dreaming! The first
thing required of us is presence of mind. Neither love, nor poetry, nor
piety, must ever so take up our thoughts as to make us slow or unready.
In sweet Val d'Arno it is permissible enough to dream among the
orange-blossoms, and forget the day in twilight of ilex. But along the
avenues of the Adrian waves there can be no careless walking.
Vigilance, might and day, required of us, besides learning of many
practical lessons in severe and humble dexterities. It is enough for the
Florentine to know how to use his sword and to ride. We Venetians, also,
must be able to use our swords, and on ground which is none of the
steadiest; but, besides, we must be able to do nearly everything that
hands can turn to--rudders, and yards, and cables, all needing workmanly
handling and workmanly knowledge, from captain as well as from men. To
drive a nail, lash a spear, reef a sail--rude work this for noble hands;
but to be done sometimes, and done well, on pain of death. All which not
only takes mean pride out of us, and puts nobler pride of power in its
stead; but it tends partly to soothe, partly to chasten, partly to
employ and direct, the hot Italian temper, and make us every way
greater, calmer, and happier.
§ 5. Moreover, it tends to induce in us great respect for the whole
human body; for its limbs, as much as for its tongue or its wit. Policy
and eloquence are well; and, indeed, we Venetians can be politic enough,
and can speak melodiously when we choose; but to put the helm up at the
right moment is the beginning of all cunning--and for that we need arm
and eye;--not tongue. And with this respect for the body as such, comes
also the sailor's preference of massive beauty in bodily form. The
landsmen, among their roses and orange-blossoms, and chequered shadows
of twisted vine, may well please themselves with pale faces, and finely
drawn eyebrows, and fantastic braiding of hair. But from the sweeping
glory of the sea we learn to love another kind of beauty;
broad-breasted; level-browed, like the horizon;--thighed and shouldered
like the billows;--footed like their stealing foam;--bathed in cloud of
golden hair, like their sunsets.
§ 6. Such were the physical influences constantly in operation on the
Venetians; their painters, however, were partly prepared for their work
by others in their infancy. Associations connected with early life among
mountains softened and deepened the teaching of the sea; and the
wildness of form of the Tyrolese Alps gave greater strength and
grotesqueness to their imaginations than the Greek painters could have
found among the cliffs of the Ægean. Thus far, however, the influences
on both are nearly similar. The Greek sea was indeed less bleak, and
the Greek hills less grand; but the difference was in degree rather than
in the nature of their power. The moral influences at work on the two
races were far more sharply opposed.
§ 7. Evil, as we saw, had been fronted by the Greek, and thrust out of
his path. Once conquered, if he thought of it more, it was
involuntarily, as we remember a painful dream, yet with a secret dread
that the dream might return and continue for ever. But the teaching of
the church in the middle ages had made the contemplation of evil one of
the duties of men. As sin, it was to be duly thought upon, that it might
be confessed. As suffering, endured joyfully, in hope of future reward.
Hence conditions of bodily distemper which an Athenian would have looked
upon with the severest contempt and aversion, were in the Christian
church regarded always with pity, and often with respect; while the
partial practice of celibacy by the clergy, and by those over whom they
had influence,--together with the whole system of conventual penance and
pathetic ritual (with the vicious reactionary tendencies necessarily
following), introduced calamitous conditions both of body and soul,
which added largely to the pagan's simple list of elements of evil, and
introduced the most complicated states of mental suffering and
decrepitude.
§ 8. Therefore the Christian painters differed from the Greek in two
main points. They had been taught a faith which put an end to restless
questioning and discouragement. All was at last to be well--and their
best genius might be peacefully given to imagining the glories of heaven
and the happiness of its redeemed. But on the other hand, though
suffering was to cease in heaven, it was to be not only endured, but
honored upon earth. And from the Crucifixion, down to a beggar's
lameness, all the tortures and maladies of men were to be made, at least
in part, the subjects of art. The Venetian was, therefore, in his inner
mind, less serious than the Greek: in his superficial temper, sadder. In
his heart there was none of the deep horror which vexed the soul of
Æschylus or Homer. His Pallas-shield was the shield of Faith, not the
shield of the Gorgon. All was at last to issue happily; in sweetest
harpings and seven-fold circles of light. But for the present he had to
dwell with the maimed and the blind, and to revere Lazarus more than
Achilles.
§ 9. This reference to a future world has a morbid influence on all
their conclusions. For the earth and all its natural elements are
despised. They are to pass away like a scroll. Man, the immortal, is
alone revered; his work and presence are all that can be noble or
desirable. Men, and fair architecture, temples and courts such as may be
in a celestial city, or the clouds and angels of Paradise; these are
what we must paint when we want beautiful things. But the sea, the
mountains, the forests, are all adverse to us,--a desolation. The ground
that was cursed for our sake;--the sea that executed judgment on all our
race, and rages against us still, though bridled;--storm-demons churning
it into foam in nightly glare on Lido, and hissing from it against our
palaces. Nature is but a terror, or a temptation. She is for hermits,
martyrs, murderers,--for St. Jerome, and St. Mary of Egypt, and the
Magdalen in the desert, and monk Peter, falling before the sword.
§ 10. But the worst point we have to note respecting the spirit of
Venetian landscape is its pride.
It was observed in the course of the third volume how the mediæval
temper had rejected agricultural pursuits, and whatever pleasures could
come of them.
At Venice this negation had reached its extreme. Though the Florentines
and Romans had no delight in farming, they had in gardening. The
Venetian possessed, and cared for, neither fields nor pastures. Being
delivered, to his loss, from all the wholesome labors of tillage, he was
also shut out from the sweet wonders and charities of the earth, and
from the pleasant natural history of the year. Birds and beasts, and
times and seasons, all unknown to him. No swallow chattered at his
window,[1] nor, nested under his golden roofs, claimed the sacredness of
his mercy;[2] no Pythagorean fowl taught him the blessings of the
poor,[3] nor did the grave spirit of poverty rise at his side to set
forth the delicate grace and honor of lowly life.[4] No humble thoughts
of grasshopper sire had he, like the Athenian; no gratitude for gifts of
olive; no childish care for figs, any more than thistles. The rich
Venetian feast had no need of the figtree spoon.[5] Dramas about birds,
and wasps, and frogs, would have passed unheeded by his proud fancy;
carol or murmur of them had fallen unrecognized on ears accustomed only
to grave syllables of war-tried men, and wash of songless wave.
§ 11. No simple joy was possible to him. Only stateliness and power;
high intercourse with kingly and beautiful humanity, proud thoughts, or
splendid pleasures; throned sensualities, and ennobled appetites. But of
innocent, childish, helpful, holy pleasures, he had none. As in the
classical landscape, nearly all rural labor is banished from the
Titianesque: there is one bold etching of a landscape, with grand
ploughing in the foreground, but this is only a caprice; the customary
Venetian background is without sign of laborious rural life. We find
indeed often a shepherd with his flock, sometimes a woman spinning, but
no division of fields, no growing crops nor nestling villages. In the
numerous drawings and woodcuts variously connected with or
representative of Venetian work, a watermill is a frequent object, a
river constant, generally the sea. But the prevailing idea in all the
great pictures I have seen, is that of mountainous land with wild but
graceful forest, and rolling or horizontal clouds. The mountains are
dark blue; the clouds glowing or soft gray, always massive; the light,
deep, clear, melancholy; the foliage, neither intricate nor graceful,
but compact and sweeping (with undulated trunks), dividing much into
horizontal flakes, like the clouds; the ground rocky and broken somewhat
monotonously, but richly green with wild herbage; here and there a
flower, by preference white or blue, rarely yellow, still more rarely
red.
§ 12. It was stated that this heroic landscape of theirs was peopled by
spiritual beings of the highest order. And in this rested the dominion
of the Venetians over all later schools. They were the _last believing_
school of Italy. Although, as I said above, always quarrelling with the
Pope, there is all the more evidence of an earnest faith in their
religion. People who trusted the Madonna less, flattered the Pope more.
But down to Tintoret's time, the Roman Catholic religion was still real
and sincere at Venice; and though faith in it was compatible with much
which to us appears criminal or absurd, the religion itself was
entirely sincere.
§ 13. Perhaps when you see one of Titian's splendidly passionate
subjects, or find Veronese making the marriage in Cana one blaze of
worldly pomp, you imagine that Titian must have been a sensualist, and
Veronese an unbeliever.
Put the idea from you at once, and be assured of this for ever;--it will
guide you through many a labyrinth of life, as well as of
painting,--that of an evil tree, men never gather good fruit--good of
any sort or kind;--even good sensualism.
Let us look to this calmly. We have seen what physical advantage the
Venetian had, in his sea and sky; also what moral disadvantage he had,
in scorn of the poor; now finally, let us see with what power he was
invested, which men since his time have never recovered more.
§ 14. "Neither of a bramble bush, gather they grapes."
The great saying has twofold help for us. Be assured, first, that if it
were bramble from which you gathered them, these are not grapes in your
hand, though they look like grapes. Or if these are indeed grapes, it
was no bramble you gathered them from, though it looked like one.
It is difficult for persons, accustomed to receive, without questioning,
the modern English idea of religion, to understand the temper of the
Venetian Catholics. I do not enter into examination of our own feelings;
but I have to note this one significant point of difference between us.
§ 15. An English gentleman, desiring his portrait, gives probably to the
painter a choice of several actions, in any of which he is willing to be
represented. As for instance, riding his best horse, shooting with his
favorite pointer, manifesting himself in his robes of state on some
great public occasion, meditating in his study, playing with his
children, or visiting his tenants; in any of these or other such
circumstances, he will give the artist free leave to paint him. But in
one important action he would shrink even from the suggestion of being
drawn. He will assuredly not let himself be painted praying.
Strangely, this is the action, which of all others, a Venetian desires
to be painted in. If they want a noble and complete portrait, they
nearly always choose to be painted on their knees.
§ 16. "Hypocrisy," you say; and "that they might be seen of men." If we
examine ourselves, or any one else, who will give trustworthy answer on
this point, so as to ascertain, to the best of our judgment, what the
feeling is, which would make a modern English person dislike to be
painted praying, we shall not find it, I believe, to be excess of
sincerity. Whatever we find it to be, the opposite Venetian feeling is
certainly not hypocrisy. It is often conventionalism, implying as little
devotion in the person represented, as regular attendance at church does
with us. But that it is not hypocrisy, you may ascertain by one simple
consideration (supposing you not to have enough knowledge of the
expression of sincere persons to judge by the portraits themselves). The
Venetians, when they desired to deceive, were much too subtle to attempt
it clumsily. If they assumed the mask of religion, the mask must have
been of some use. The persons whom it deceived must, therefore, have
been religious, and, being so, have believed in the Venetians'
sincerity. If therefore, among other contemporary nations with whom they
had intercourse, we can find any, more religious than they, who were
duped, or even influenced, by their external religiousness, we might
have some ground for suspecting that religiousness to be assumed. But if
we can find no one likely to have been deceived, we must believe the
Venetian to have been, in reality, what there was no advantage in
seeming.
§ 17. I leave the matter to your examination, forewarning you,
confidently, that you will discover by severest evidence, that the
Venetian religion was true. Not only true, but one of the main motives
of their lives. In the field of investigation to which we are here
limited, I will collect some of the evidence of this.
For one profane picture by great Venetians, you will find ten of sacred
subjects; and those, also, including their grandest, most labored, and
most beloved works. Tintoret's power culminates in two great religious
pictures: the Crucifixion, and the Paradise. Titian's in the Assumption,
the Peter Martyr, and Presentation of the Virgin. Veronese's in the
Marriage in Cana. John Bellini and Basaiti never, so far as I remember,
painted any other than sacred subjects. By the Palmas, Vincenzo, Catena,
and Bonifazio, I remember no profane subject of importance.
§ 18. There is, moreover, one distinction of the very highest import
between the treatment of sacred subjects by Venetian painters and by all
others.
Throughout the rest of Italy, piety had become abstract, and opposed
theoretically to worldly life; hence the Florentine and Umbrian painters
generally separated their saints from living men. They delighted in
imagining scenes of spiritual perfectness;--Paradises, and companies of
the redeemed at the judgment;--glorified meetings of martyrs;--madonnas
surrounded by circles of angels. If, which was rare, definite
portraitures of living men were introduced, these real characters formed
a kind of chorus or attendant company, taking no part in the action. At
Venice all this was reversed, and so boldly as at first to shock, with
its seeming irreverence, a spectator accustomed to the formalities and
abstractions of the so-called sacred schools. The madonnas are no more
seated apart on their thrones, the saints no more breathe celestial air.
They are on our own plain ground--nay, here in our houses with us. All
kind of worldly business going on in their presence, fearlessly; our own
friends and respected acquaintances, with all their mortal faults, and
in their mortal flesh, looking at them face to face unalarmed: nay, our
dearest children playing with their pet dogs at Christ's very feet.
I once myself thought this irreverent. How foolishly! As if children
whom He loved _could_ play anywhere else.
§ 19. The picture most illustrative of this feeling is perhaps that at
Dresden, of Veronese's family, painted by himself.
He wishes to represent them as happy and honored. The best happiness and
highest honor he can imagine for them is that they should be presented
to the Madonna, to whom, therefore, they are being brought by the three
virtues--Faith, Hope, and Charity.
The Virgin stands in a recess behind two marble shafts, such as may be
seen in any house belonging to an old family in Venice. She places the
boy Christ on the edge of a balustrade before her. At her side are St.
John the Baptist, and St. Jerome. This group occupies the left side of
the picture. The pillars, seen sideways, divide it from the group formed
by the Virtues, with the wife and children of Veronese. He himself
stands a little behind, his hands clasped in prayer.
§ 20. His wife kneels full in front, a strong Venetian woman, well
advanced in years. She has brought up her children in fear of God, and
is not afraid to meet the Virgin's eyes. She gazes steadfastly on them;
her proud head and gentle, self-possessed face are relieved in one broad
mass of shadow against a space of light, formed by the white robes of
Faith, who stands beside her,--guardian, and companion. Perhaps a
somewhat disappointing Faith at the first sight, for her face is not in
any way exalted or refined. Veronese knew that Faith had to companion
simple and slow-hearted people perhaps oftener than able or refined
people--does not therefore insist on her being severely intellectual, or
looking as if she were always in the best company. So she is only
distinguished by her pure white (not bright white) dress, her delicate
hand, her golden hair drifted in light ripples across her breast, from
which the white robes fall nearly in the shape of a shield--the shield
of Faith. A little behind her stands Hope; she also, at first, not to
most people a recognizable Hope. We usually paint Hope as young, and
joyous. Veronese knows better. That young hope is vain hope--passing
away in rain of tears; but the Hope of Veronese is aged, assured,
remaining when all else had been taken away. "For tribulation worketh
patience, and patience experience, and experience hope;" and _that_ hope
maketh not ashamed.
She has a black veil on her head.
Then again, in the front, is Charity, red-robed; stout in the arms,--a
servant of all work, she; but small-headed, not being specially given to
thinking; soft-eyed, her hair braided brightly, her lips rich red,
sweet-blossoming. She has got some work to do even now, for a nephew of
Veronese's is doubtful about coming forward, and looks very humbly and
penitently towards the Virgin--his life perhaps not having been quite so
exemplary as might at present be wished. Faith reaches her small white
hand lightly back to him, lays the tips of her fingers on his; but
Charity takes firm hold of him by the wrist from behind, and will push
him on presently, if he still hangs back.
§ 21. In front of the mother kneel her two eldest children, a girl of
about sixteen, and a boy a year or two younger. They are both wrapt in
adoration--the boy's being the deepest. Nearer us, at their left side,
is a younger boy, about nine years old--a black-eyed fellow, full of
life--and evidently his father's darling (for Veronese has put him full
in light in the front; and given him a beautiful white silken jacket,
barred with black, that nobody may ever miss seeing him to the end of
time). He is a little shy about being presented to the Madonna, and for
the present has got behind the pillar, blushing, but opening his black
eyes wide; he is just summoning courage to peep round, and see if she
looks kind. A still younger child, about six years old, is really
frightened, and has run back to his mother, catching hold of her dress
at the waist. She throws her right arm round him and over him, with
exquisite instinctive action, not moving her eyes from the Madonna's
face. Last of all, the youngest child, perhaps about three years old, is
neither frightened nor interested, but finds the ceremony tedious, and
is trying to coax the dog to play with him; but the dog, which is one of
the little curly, short-nosed, fringy-pawed things, which all Venetian
ladies petted, will not now be coaxed. For the dog is the last link in
the chain of lowering feeling, and takes his doggish views of the
matter. He cannot understand, first, how the Madonna got into the house;
nor, secondly, why she is allowed to stay, disturbing the family, and
taking all their attention from his dogship. And he is walking away,
much offended.
§ 22. The dog is thus constantly introduced by the Venetians in order to
give the fullest contrast to the highest tones of human thought and
feeling. I shall examine this point presently farther, in speaking of
pastoral landscape and animal painting; but at present we will merely
compare the use of the same mode of expression in Veronese's
Presentation of the Queen of Sheba.
§ 23. This picture is at Turin, and is of quite inestimable value. It is
hung high; and the really principal figure--the Solomon, being in the
shade, can hardly be seen, but is painted with Veronese's utmost
tenderness, in the bloom of perfect youth, his hair golden, short,
crisply curled. He is seated high on his lion throne; two elders on each
side beneath him, the whole group forming a tower of solemn shade. I
have alluded, elsewhere, to the principle on which all the best
composers act, of supporting these lofty groups by some vigorous mass of
foundation. This column of noble shade is curiously sustained. A
falconer leans forward from the left-hand side, bearing on his wrist a
snow-white falcon, its wings spread, and brilliantly relieved against
the purple robe of one of the elders. It touches with its wings one of
the golden lions of the throne, on which the light also flashes
strongly; thus forming, together with it, the lion and eagle symbol,
which is the type of Christ throughout mediæval work. In order to show
the meaning of this symbol, and that Solomon is typically invested with
the Christian royalty, one of the elders, by a bold anachronism, holds a
jewel in his hand of the shape of a cross, with which he (by accident of
gesture) points to Solomon; his other hand is laid on an open book.
§ 24. The group opposite, of which the queen forms the centre, is also
painted with Veronese's highest skill; but contains no point of interest
bearing on our present subject, except its connection by a chain of
descending emotion. The Queen is wholly oppressed and subdued; kneeling,
and nearly fainting, she looks up to Solomon with tears in her eyes; he,
startled by fear for her, stoops forward from the throne, opening his
right hand, as if to support her, so as almost to drop the sceptre. At
her side her first maid of honor is kneeling also, but does not care
about Solomon; and is gathering up her dress that it may not be crushed;
and looking back to encourage a negro girl, who, carrying two toy-birds,
made of enamel and jewels, for presenting to the King, is frightened at
seeing her Queen fainting, and does not know what she ought to do; while
lastly, the Queen's dog, another of the little fringy-paws, is wholly
unabashed by Solomon's presence, or anybody else's; and stands with his
fore legs well apart, right in front of his mistress, thinking everybody
has lost their wits; and barking violently at one of the attendants, who
has set down a golden vase disrespectfully near him.
§ 25. Throughout these designs I want the reader to notice the purpose
of representing things as they were likely to have occurred, down to
trivial, or even ludicrous detail--the nobleness of all that was
intended to be noble being so great that nothing could detract from it.
A farther instance, however, and a prettier one, of this familiar
realization, occurs in a Holy Family, by Veronese, at Brussels. The
Madonna has laid the infant Christ on a projecting base of pillar, and
stands behind, looking down on him. St. Catherine, having knelt down in
front, the child turns round to receive her--so suddenly, and so far,
that any other child must have fallen over the edge of the stone. St.
Catherine, terrified, thinking he is really going to fall, stretches out
her arms to catch him. But the Madonna looking down, only smiles, "He
will not fall."
§ 26. A more touching instance of this realization occurs, however, in
the treatment of the saint Veronica (in the Ascent to Calvary), at
Dresden. Most painters merely represent her as one of the gentle,
weeping, attendant women; and show her giving the handkerchief as though
these women had been allowed to approach Christ without any difficulty.
But in Veronese's conception, she has to break through the executioners
to him. She is not weeping; and the expression of pity, though intense,
is overborne by that of resolution. She is determined to reach Christ;
has set her teeth close, and thrusts aside one of the executioners, who
strikes fiercely at her with a heavy doubled cord.
§ 27. These instances are enough to explain the general character of the
mind of Veronese, capable of tragic power to the utmost, if he chooses
to exert it in that direction, but, by habitual preference, exquisitely
graceful and playful; religious without severity, and winningly noble;
delighting in slight, sweet, every-day incident, but hiding deep
meanings underneath it; rarely painting a gloomy subject, and never a
base one.
§ 28. I have, in other places, entered enough into the examination of
the great religious mind of Tintoret; supposing then that he was
distinguished from Titian chiefly by this character. But in this I was
mistaken; the religion of Titian is like that of Shakspere--occult
behind his magnificent equity. It is not possible, however, within the
limits of this work, to give any just account of the mind of Titian: nor
shall I attempt it; but will only explain some of those more strange and
apparently inconsistent attributes of it, which might otherwise prevent
the reader from getting clue to its real tone. The first of these is its
occasional coarseness in choice of type of feature.
§ 29. In the second volume I had to speak of Titian's Magdalen, in the
Pitti Palace, as treated basely, and that in strong terms, "the
disgusting Magdalen of the Pitti."
Truly she is so as compared with the received types of the Magdalen. A
stout, redfaced woman, dull, and coarse of feature, with much of the
animal in even her expression of repentance--her eyes strained, and
inflamed with weeping. I ought, however, to have remembered another
picture of the Magdalen by Titian (Mr. Rogers's, now in the National
Gallery), in which she is just as refined, as in the Pitti Palace she is
gross; and had I done so, I should have seen Titian's meaning. It had
been the fashion before his time to make the Magdalen always young and
beautiful; her, if no one else, even the rudest painters flattered; her
repentance was not thought perfect unless she had lustrous hair and
lovely lips. Titian first dared to doubt the romantic fable, and reject
the narrowness of sentimental faith. He saw that it was possible for
plain women to love no less than beautiful ones; and for stout persons
to repent as well as those more delicately made. It seemed to him that
the Magdalen would have received her pardon not the less quickly because
her wit was none of the readiest; and would not have been regarded with
less compassion by her Master because her eyes were swollen, or her
dress disordered. It is just because he has set himself sternly to
enforce this lesson that the picture is so painful: the only instance,
so far as I remember, of Titian's painting a woman markedly and entirely
belonging to the lowest class.
§ 30. It may perhaps appear more difficult to account for the
alternation of Titian's great religious pictures with others devoted
wholly to the expression of sensual qualities, or to exulting and bright
representation of heathen deities.
The Venetian mind, we have said, and Titian's especially, as the central
type of it, was wholly realist, universal, and manly.
In this breadth and realism, the painter saw that sensual passion in man
was, not only a fact, but a Divine fact; the human creature, though the
highest of the animals, was, nevertheless, a perfect animal, and his
happiness, health, and nobleness depended on the due power of every
animal passion, as well as the cultivation of every spiritual tendency.
He thought that every feeling of the mind and heart, as well as every
form of the body, deserved painting. Also to a painter's true and highly
trained instinct, the human body is the loveliest of all objects. I do
not stay to trace the reasons why, at Venice, the female body could be
found in more perfect beauty than the male; but so it was, and it
becomes the principal subject therefore, both with Giorgione and Titian.
They painted it fearlessly, with all right and natural qualities; never,
however, representing it as exercising any overpowering attractive
influence on man; but only on the Faun or Satyr.
Yet they did this so majestically that I am perfectly certain no
untouched Venetian picture ever yet excited one base thought (otherwise
than in base persons anything may do so); while in the greatest studies
of the female body by the Venetians, all other characters are overborne
by majesty, and the form becomes as pure as that of a Greek statue.
§ 31. There is no need, I should think, to point out how this
contemplation of the entire personal nature was reconcilable with the
severest conceptions of religious duty and faith.
But the fond introduction of heathen gods may appear less explicable.
On examination, however, it will be found, that these deities are never
painted with any heart-reverence or affection. They are introduced for
the most part symbolically (Bacchus and Venus oftenest, as incarnations
of the spirit of revelry and beauty), of course always conceived with
deep imaginative truth, much resembling the mode of Keats's conception;
but never so as to withdraw any of the deep devotion referred to the
objects of Christian faith.
In all its roots of power, and modes of work;--in its belief, its
breadth, and its judgment, I find the Venetian mind perfect.
How, then, did its art so swiftly pass away? How become, what it became
unquestionably, one of the chief causes of the corruption of the mind of
Italy, and of her subsequent decline in moral and political power?
§ 32. By reason of one great, one fatal fault;--recklessness in aim.
Wholly noble in its sources, it was wholly unworthy in its purposes.
Separate and strong, like Samson, chosen from its youth, and with the
spirit of God visibly resting on it,--like him, it warred in careless
strength, and wantoned in untimely pleasure. No Venetian painter ever
worked with any aim beyond that of delighting the eye, or expressing
fancies agreeable to himself or flattering to his nation. They could not
be either unless they were religious. But he did not desire the
religion. He desired the delight.
The Assumption is a noble picture, because Titian believed in the
Madonna. But he did not paint it to make any one else believe in her. He
painted it because he enjoyed rich masses of red and blue, and faces
flushed with sunlight.
Tintoret's Paradise is a noble picture, because he believed in Paradise.
But he did not paint it to make any one think of heaven; but to form a
beautiful termination for the hall of the greater council.
Other men used their effete faiths and mean faculties with a high moral
purpose. The Venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest
faculty, to gild the shadows of an ante-chamber, or heighten the
splendors of a holiday.
§ 33. Strange, and lamentable as this carelessness may appear, I find it
to be almost the law with the great workers. Weak and vain men have
acute consciences, and labor under a profound sense of responsibility.
The strong men, sternly disdainful of themselves, do what they can, too
often merely as it pleases them at the moment, reckless what comes of
it.
I know not how far in humility, or how far in bitter and hopeless
levity, the great Venetians gave their art to be blasted by the
sea-winds or wasted by the worm. I know not whether in sorrowful
obedience, or in wanton compliance, they fostered the folly, and
enriched the luxury of their age. This only I know, that in proportion
to the greatness of their power was the shame of its desecration and the
suddenness of its fall. The enchanter's spell, woven by centuries of
toil, was broken in the weakness of a moment; and swiftly, and utterly,
as a rainbow vanishes, the radiance and the strength faded from the
wings of the Lion.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Anacreon, Ode 12th.
[2] Herod, i. 59.
[3] Lucian (Micyllus).
[4] Aristophanes, Plutus.
[5] Hippias Major, 208.