discomfited by the look of bad weather, and more in myself, as I thought
over this closing lecture, wondering how far you thought I had been
talking idly to you, instead of teaching you to draw, through this term,
I stopped before Messrs. Wyatt's window; caught--as it was intended
every one should be--by this display of wonderful things. And I was very
unhappy as I looked, for it seemed to me you could not but think the
little I could show you how to do quite valueless; while here were
produced, by mysteries of craft which you might expect me at once to
explain, brilliant water-colours in purple and gold, and photographs of
sea-waves, and chromolithotints of beautiful young ladies, and
exquisitely finished engravings of all sorts of interesting scenes, and
sublime personages: patriots, saints, martyrs, penitents, and who not!
and what not! all depicted with a dexterity which it has cost the
workmen their life's best energy to learn, and requires great cleverness
thus to apply. While, in your room for study, there are only ugly
photographs of Dürers and Holbeins, and my rude outlines from leaves,
and you scarcely ever hear me say anything in praise of that delightful
and elaborate modern art at all.
218. So I bought this Madonna,[J] which was the prettiest thing I saw:
and it will enable me to tell you why this modern art is, indeed, so
little to be studied, even at its best. I think you will all like the
plate, and you ought to like it; but observe in what its beauty
consists. First, in very exquisite line engraving: against that I have
nothing to say, feeling the greatest respect for the industry and skill
it requires. Next, in a grace and severity of action which we all are
ready to praise; but this is not the painter's own bestowing; the trick
of it is learned from Memling and Van Eyck, and other men of the
northern religious school. The covering of the robe with jewels is
pleasing to you; but that is learned from Angelico and John Bellini; and
if you will compare the jewel-painting in the John Bellini (Standard No.
5), you will find this false and formal in comparison. Then the face is
much dignified by having a crown set on it--which is copied from the
ordinary thirteenth century form, and ill done. The face itself is
studied from a young German mother's, and is only by the painter's want
of skill made conventional in expression, and formal in feature. It
would have been wiser and more difficult to have painted her as Raphael
or Reynolds would, with true personal resemblance, perfected in
expression.
[J] Now, Ref. 104.
219. Nevertheless, in its derivative way, this is very lovely. But I
wish you to observe that it is derivative in all things. The dress is
derivative; the action, derivative: above all, the conception is
derivative altogether, from that great age of Christian chivalry, which,
in art and thought alike, surpassed the Greek chivalry, because it added
to their enthusiasm of patriotism the enthusiasm of imaginative love,
sanctified by this ruling vision of the Madonna, as at once perfect maid
and perfect mother.
And your study of the art of the middle ages must begin in your
understanding how the men of them looked on Love as the source of all
honour, as of life; and how, from the least thing to the greatest, the
honouring of father and mother, the noble esteem of children, and the
sincere respect for race, and for the courtesies and prides that graced
and crowned its purity, were the sources of all their virtue, and all
their joy.
220. From the least things, I say, to the greatest. I am to speak to-day
of one of, apparently, the least things; which is, indeed, one of the
greatest. How much of the dignity of this Madonna, do you suppose,
depends on the manner she bears her dress, her crown, her jewels, and
her sceptre?
In peasant and prince alike, you will find that, ultimately, character
is truly heralded in dress; and that splendour in dress is as necessary
to man as colour to birds and flowers, but splendour with more meaning.
Splendour observe, however, in the true Latin sense of the word;
_brightness_ of colour; not gaudiness: what I have been telling you of
colour in pictures will apply equally to colour in dress: vulgarity
consists in the insolence and discord of it, not in brightness.
221. For peasant and prince alike, in healthy national order, brightness
of dress and beautiful arrangement of it are needful. No indication of
moral decline is more sure than the squalor of dress among the lower
orders, and the fear or shame of the higher classes to bear their proper
insignia.
Such fear and shame are singularly expressed, here in Oxford, at this
hour. The nobleman ceases to wear the golden tassel in his cap, so
accepting, and publicly heralding his acceptance of, the popular opinion
of him that he has ceased to _be_ a nobleman, or noteworthy person.[K]
And the members of the University, generally, shrink from wearing their
academical dress, so accepting, and publicly heralding their acceptance
of, the popular opinion that everybody else may be as good scholars as
they. On the other hand, I see continually in the streets young men in
bright costumes of blue and white; in such evidently proud heraldry
proclaiming their conviction that the chief object of residence in
Oxford is learning to row; the rowing itself being, I imagine, not for
real boat service, but for purposes of display.
[K] "Another stride that has been taken appears in the perishing of
heraldry. Whilst the privileges of nobility are passing to the
middle class, the badge is discredited, and the titles of
lordship are getting musty and cumbersome. I wonder that sensible
men have not been already impatient of them. They belong, with
wigs, powder, and scarlet coats, to an earlier age, and may be
advantageously consigned, with paint and tattoo, to the
dignitaries of Australia and Polynesia."--R.W. EMERSON (English
Traits).
222. All dress is thus heraldic; a soldier's dress only more definitely
so, in proclaiming the thing he means to die as well as to live for; but
all is heraldic, from the beggar's rag to the king's diadem; it may be
involuntarily, it may be, insolently; but when the characters of men are
determined, and wise, their dress becomes heraldic reverently, and in
order. "Togam e tugurio proferre uxorem Raciliam jubet;" and Edie
Ochiltree's blue gown is as honourably heraldic as a knight's ermine.
223. The beginning of heraldry, and of all beautiful dress, is, however,
simply in the wearing of the skins of slain animals. You may discredit,
as much as you choose, the literal meaning of that earliest statement,
"Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skin,
and clothed them:" but the figurative meaning of it only becomes the
stronger. For if you think of the skins of animals as giving the four
great materials of dress--leather, fur, wool, and down, you will see in
this verse the summary of what has ever since taken place in the method
of the providence of the Maker of Man and beast, for the clothing of
the naked creature who was to rule over the rest.
224. The first practical and savage use of such dress was that the skin
of the head of the beast became a covering for the head of its slayer;
the skin of its body his coat; the skin of the fore legs was knotted in
front, and the skin of the hind legs and tail became tassels, the jags
of the cut edges forming a kind of fringe here and there.
You have thus the first conception of a helmet with the mane of the
animal for its crest or plume, and the first conception of a cuirass
variously fringed, striped, or spotted; in complete accoutrement for
war, you have to add spear, (or arrow), and shield. The spear is
properly a beam of wood, iron pointed; the shield a disk of leather,
iron fronted.
And armed strength for conflict is symbolized for all future time by the
Greeks, under the two types of Heracles and Athena; the one with the low
lion's crest and the arrow, the other with the high horse's crest, and
the spear; one with the lion-skin, the other with the goat-skin;--both
with the round shield.
225. The nebris of Dionusos and leopard-skin of the priests of Egypt
relate to astronomy, not war; and the interest in their spots and bars,
as variously symbolic, together with real pleasure in their
grotesqueness, greatly modified the entire system of Egyptian
colour-decoration. On the earliest Greek vases, also, the spots and bars
of the animals are carried out in spots or chequers upon the ground,
(sometimes representing flowers), and the delight in "divers colours of
needlework," and in fantasy of embroidery, gradually refine and illumine
the design of Eastern dress. But only the patterns derived from the
colours of animals become classical in heraldry under the general name
of "furres," one of them "vaire" or verrey ("the variegated fur,")
rudely figuring the material composed of the skins of small animals sewn
together, alternately head to tail; the other, ermine, peculiarly
honourable, from the costliness, to southern nations, of the fur it
represents.
226. The name of the principal heraldic colour has a similar origin: the
"rams' skins dyed red" which were used for the curtains of the Jewish
tabernacle, were always one of the principal articles of commerce
between the east and west: in mediæval Latin they were called "gulae,"
and in the French plural "gules," so that to be dressed in "gules" came
gradually to mean being dressed in the particular red of those skins,
which was a full soft scarlet, not dazzling, but warm and glowing. It is
used, in opposition to darker purple, in large masses in the fresco
painting of later Rome;--is the dominant colour of ornamental writing in
the middle ages (giving us the ecclesiastical term "rubric"), and
asserts itself finally, and most nobly, in the fresco paintings of
Ghirlandajo and Luini. I have tried to represent very closely the tint
of it Luini has given to St. Catherine's mantle, in my study in your
schools. Titian keeps it also as the keynote of his frescoes; so also
Tintoret; but Raphael, Correggio, and Michael Angelo, all substituted
orange for it in opposition to purple; and the entire scheme of colour
in the Vatican frescoes is of orange and purple, broken by green and
white, on a ground of grey. This orange and purple opposition in meaner
hands became gaudy and feeble, and the system of mediæval colour was at
last totally destroyed by it; the orange remaining to this day the
favourite, and most distinctive, hue in bad glass painting.
227. The forms of dress, however, derived from the skins of animals are
of much more importance than the colours. Of these the principal is the
crest, which is properly the mane of lion or horse. The skin of the
horse was neither tough, nor of convenient size for wearing; but the
classical Greek helmet is only an adaptation of the outline of its head,
with the mane floating behind: many Etruscan helmets have ears also,
while in mediæval armour, light plates, cut into the shape of wings of
birds, are often placed on each side of the crest, which then becomes
not the mane of the animal merely, but the image of the entire creature
which the warrior desires to be renowned for having slain.
228. The Heraldic meaning of the crest is accordingly, first, that the
Knight asserts himself to have prevailed over the animal it represents;
and to be stronger than such a creature would be, therefore, against his
human enemies. Hence, gradually, he considers himself invested with the
power and character of the slain creature itself; and, as it were, to
have taken from it, for his spoil, not its skin only but its strength.
The crest, therefore, is the heraldic indication of personality, and is
properly to be distinguished from the bearing on the shield, because
that indicated race; but the crest, personal character and valour.
229. I have traced the practical truth which is the foundation of this
idea of the transmitted strength of the slain creature becoming the
inheritance of its victor, in the account given of the coins of
Camarina, in "The Queen of the Air." But it is strange and sad to
reflect how much misery has resulted, in the history of man, from the
imaginative excuse for cruelty afforded by the adopted character of
savage animals; and how many wolves, bears, lions, and eagles, have been
national symbols, instead of gentler creatures. Even the heraldic symbol
of Christ is in Italy oftener the lion than the lamb: and among the
innumerable painters of his Desert Prophet, only Filippo Lippi
understood the full meaning of the raiment of camel's hair, and made him
wear the camel's skin, as Heracles the Lion's.
230. Although the crest is thus essentially an expression of personal
character, it practically becomes hereditary; and the sign on shield and
helmet is commonly the same. But the shield has a system of bearings
peculiar to itself, to which I wish especially to direct your attention
to-day.
Our word 'shield' and the German 'schild' mean 'the covering thing,'
that behind which you are sheltered, but you must be careful to
distinguish it from the word shell, which means properly a scale or
plate, developed like a fish's scale, for the protection of the body.
There are properly only two kinds of shields, one round and the other
square, passing into oval and oblong; the round one being for use in
free action, the square one for adjustment to ground or walls; but, on
horseback, the lower part of the shield must be tapered off, in order to
fall conveniently on the left side of the horse.
And, therefore, practically you have two great forms of shield; the
Greek round one, for fighting on foot, or in the chariot, and the Gothic
pointed one, for fighting on horseback. The oblong one for motionless
defence is, however, almost always given to the mythic figure of
Fortitude, and the bearings of the Greek and Gothic shields are always
designed with reference to the supposed figures of the circle and
square.
The Greek word for the round shield is aspis.' I have no doubt, merely
a modification, of 'apsis,' the potter's wheel; the proper word for the
Gothic shield is 'ecu,' from the Latin 'scutum,' meaning a shield
covered with leather. From 'ecu' you have 'ecuyer;'--from scutum
'scutiger,' both passing into our English 'squire.'
231. The aspis of the Greeks might be much heavier than the Gothic
shield, because a Greek never rode fully armed; his object was to allow
both to his horse and to himself the most perfect command of limb
compatible with protection; if, therefore, he was in full armour, and
wanted his horse to carry him, he put a board upon wheels, and stood on
that, harnessing sometimes to it four horses of the highest breed
abreast. Of all hitherto practised exertions of manual dexterity, the
driving thus at full speed over rough ground, standing in the chariot,
is, as far as I know, the greatest ever attained by general military
discipline.
It is true that to do anything perfectly well is about equally
difficult; and I suppose that in a chariot race, a tournament, or a
modern game at cricket, the manual art of the most highly-trained men
would be almost equally fine; still, practically, in Gothic chivalry,
the knight trusted more to his weight and less to his skill than a
Greek did; nor could a horse's pace under armour ever render precision
of aim so difficult as at unarmed speed.
232. Another great difference of a parallel kind exists in the knight's
body armour. A Greek never hopes to turn a lance by his cuirass, nor to
be invulnerable except by enchantment, in his body-armour, because he
will not have it cumbrous enough to impede his movements; but he makes
his shield, if possible, strong enough to stop a lance, and carries it
as he would a piece of wall: a Gothic knight, on the contrary,
endeavoured to make his coat armour invulnerable, and carried the shield
merely to ward thrusts on the left side, never large enough to encumber
the arm that held the reins. All fine design in Gothic heraldry is
founded, therefore, on the form of a short, but pointed shield, convex
enough to throw the point of a spear aside easily; a form roughly
extending from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the
fifteenth century, but of which the most beautiful types are towards the
end of the thirteenth.
233. The difference in method of device between the Gothic and classic
shields resulted partly from this essential difference in form. The
pointed shield, having definitely two sides, like a pointed arch, and a
determined position, naturally suggested an arrangement of bearings
definitely on one side or the other, or above, or below the centre,
while the Greek shield had its boss, or its main bearing, in the centre
always, with subordinate decoration round. Farther, the Gothic fineness
of colour-instinct seized at once on this division of parts as an
opportunity for inlaying or counterchanging colours; and finally, the
respect for race, carried out by registry of the remotest branches of
noble families, compelled the Gothic heralds of later times to use these
methods of dividing or quartering in continually redoubled complexity.
234. Essentially, therefore, as distinguished from the classic shield,
the Gothic one is particoloured beneath its definite bearings, or
rather, bi-coloured; for the tinctures are never more than two in the
main design of them; and the specific methods of arrangement of these
two masses of colour have deeper and more ancient heraldic significance
than, with few exceptions, their superimposed bearings. I have arranged
the twelve principal ones[L] in the 7th of your rudimentary exercises,
and they will be entirely fixed in your minds by once drawing it.
[L] Charges which "doe peculiarly belong to this art, and are of
ordinary use therein, in regard whereof they are called
'ordinaries.'"--See GUILLIM, sect. ii. chap. iii. (Ed. 1638.)
"They have also the title of honourable ordinaries in that the
court armour is much honoured thereby." The French call them
"pièces honorables."
235. Observe respecting them.
1. The Chiefe; a bar of colour across the upper part of the shield,
signifies authority or chief-dom, as the source of all order, power, and
peace.
2. The cross, as an ordinary, distinguished from the cross as a bearing,
consists simply of two bars dividing the shield into four quarters; and,
I believe, that it does not in this form stand properly as a symbol of
Christian faith, but only as one of Christian patience and fortitude.
The cross as a symbol of faith is terminated within the field.
3. The Fesse, a horizontal bar across the middle of the shield,
represents the knight's girdle, or anything that binds and secures, or
continues. The word is a corruption of fascia. Sir Francis Drake
received for arms from Queen Elizabeth a Fesse waved between two
pole-stars, where it stands for the waved surface of the sea, and
partly, also, to signify that Sir Francis put a girdle round the earth;
and the family of Drummond carries three diminutive Fesses, or bars,
waved, because their ancestor brought Queen Margaret safe through many
storms.
4. The Bend, an oblique bar descending from right to left of the holder
of the shield, represents the sword belt. The Latin balteus and balteum
are, I believe, the origin of the word. They become bendellus and
bendellum; then bandeau and bande. Benda is the word used for the riband
round the neck of St. Etheldreda, in the account of her death quoted by
Du Cange. I believe, also, the fesse stands often for the cross-bar of
the castle gate, and the bend for its very useful diagonal bar: this is
only a conjecture, but I believe as likely to be true as the idea,
certainly admitted in heraldry, that the bend sometimes stands for a
scaling ladder: so also the next four most important ordinaries have all
an architectural significance.
5. The Pale, an upright bar dividing the shield in half, is simply an
upright piece of timber in a palisade. It signifies either defence or
enclosure.
6. The Pile, a wedge-shaped space of colour with the point downwards,
represents what we still call a pile; a piece of timber driven into
moist ground to secure the foundation of any building.
7. The Canton, a square space of colour in either of the upper corners
of the shield, signifies the corner-stone of a building. The origin and
various use of this word are very interesting. The Greek κανθόs, used
by Aristotle for the corner of the eyes, becomes canto,
and then cantonus. The French coin (corner), is usually derived from the
Latin cuneus; but I have no doubt it is one corruption of canton: the
mediæval-Latin cantonus is either an angle or recess, or a four-square
corner-stone. The heraldic canton is the corner-stone of a building, and
the French cantonnier is a road-mender, because the essential thing in
repairing a road is to get its corner or edge firm.
8. The Chevron, a band bent at an angle (properly a right angle), with
its point upwards, represents the gable or roof of a house. Thus the
four last-named ordinaries represent the four essentials of a fixed
habitation: the pale, its enclosure within a given space of ground; the
pile, its foundation; the canton, its wall, and the chevron its roof.
9. The Orle, a narrow band following the outline of the shield midway
between its edge and centre, is a more definite expression of enclosure
or fortification by moat or rampart. The relations of this word, no less
than that of the canton, are singular, and worth remembering. Du Cange
quotes under it an order of the municipality of Piacenza, that always,
in the custom-house where the salt-tax was taken, "a great orled disk"
should be kept; "dischus magnus orlatus," _i.e._, a large plate, with a
rim, in which every day fresh salt should be placed. Then note that the
word disk is used in the Middle Ages, either for a plate, or a table,
(the "holy disk" is the patina of the sacrament), but most generally for
a table, whence you get the old German disch; our dish, the French
disner, diner; and our dinner. The disk cut out into a ring becomes a
quoit, which is the simplest form of orle. The word 'orle' itself comes,
I believe, from ora, in old Latin, which took a diminutive, orula; or
perhaps the 'l' was put in merely to distinguish, to the ear, a
margined thing, 'orlatus,' from a gilded thing, 'auratus.' It stands for
the hem of a robe, or the fillet of a crown, as well as for any margin;
and it is given as an ordinary to such as have afforded protection and
defence, because it defends what is within it. Reduced to a narrow band,
it becomes a 'Tressure.' If you have a sovereign of 1860 to 1870 in your
pocket, and look at the right hand upper corner of the Queen's arms, you
will see the Scottish Lion within the tressure decorated with
fleur-de-lys, which Scotland bears in memory of her treaty with
Charlemagne.
10. The Gyron, a triangular space of colour with its point in the centre
of the shield, derives its name from the old Latin gyro, a fold, "pars
vestis quâ laxior fit, et in superiori parte contracta, in largiorem
formam in imo se explicat." The heraldic 'gyron,' however, also has a
collateral reference to, and root in, the word 'gremium,' bosom or lap;
and it signifies properly the chief fold or fall of the dress either
over the bosom, or between the knees; and has whatever symbolic
expression may be attributed to that fold, as a sign of kindness or
protection. The influence of the lines taken by softly falling drapery
in giving gentleness to the action of figures was always felt by the
Gothic artists as one of the chief elements of design; and the two
constantly repeated figures of Christ holding souls in the 'gremium' of
His robe, and of the Madonna casting hers over suppliants, gave an
inevitably recognised association to them.
11. The Flasque, a space of colour terminated by a curved line on each
flank of the shield, derives its name from the Latin flecto, and is the
bearing of honour given for successful embassy. It must be counted among
the ordinaries, but is of rare occurrence in what groups of authentic
bearings I have examined.
12. The Saltire, from salir, represents the securest form of machine for
mounting walls; it has partly the same significance as the ladder of the
Scaligers, but, being properly an ordinary, and not a bearing, has the
wider general meaning of successful ascent, not that of mere local
attack. As a bearing, it is the St. Andrew's Cross.