Observe that camelot (camelet) from _kamaelotae_, camel's skin, is a
stuff made of silk and camel's hair originally, afterwards of silk and
wool. At Florence, the camel's hair would always have reference to the
Baptist, who, as you know, in Lippi's picture, wears the camel's
skin itself, made into a Florentine dress, such as Villani has just
described, "col tassello sopra," with the hood above. Do you see how
important the word "Capulet" is becoming to us, in its main idea?
68. Not in private nor domestic art, therefore, I repeat to you, but
in useful magnificence of public art, these citizens expressed their
pride:--and that public art divided itself into two branches--civil,
occupied upon ethic subjects of sculpture and painting; and religious,
occupied upon scriptural or traditional histories, in treatment of
which, nevertheless, the nascent power and liberality of thought were
apparent, not only in continual amplification and illustration of
scriptural story by the artist's own invention, but in the acceptance
of profane mythology, as part of the Scripture, or tradition, given by
Divine inspiration.
69. Nevertheless, for the provision of things necessary in domestic
life, there developed itself, together with the group of inventive
artists exercising these nobler functions, a vast body of craftsmen,
and, literally, _man_ufacturers, workers by hand, who associated
themselves, as chance, tradition, or the accessibility of material
directed, in towns which thenceforward occupied a leading position in
commerce, as producers of a staple of excellent, or perhaps inimitable,
quality; and the linen or cambric of Cambray, the lace of Mechlin,
the wool of Worstead, and the steel of Milan, implied the tranquil and
hereditary skill of multitudes, living in wealthy industry, and humble
honour.
70. Among these artisans, the weaver, the ironsmith, the goldsmith, the
carpenter, and the mason necessarily took the principal rank, and on
their occupations the more refined arts were wholesomely based, so that
the five businesses may be more completely expressed thus:
The weaver and embroiderer,
The ironsmith and armourer,
The goldsmith and jeweller,
The carpenter and engineer,
The stonecutter and painter.
You have only once to turn over the leaves of Lionardo's sketch book,
in the Ambrosian Library, to see how carpentry is connected with
engineering,--the architect was always a stonecutter, and the
stonecutter not often practically separate, as yet, from the painter,
and never so in general conception of function. You recollect, at a much
later period, Kent's description of Cornwall's steward:
"KENT. You cowardly rascal!--nature disclaims in thee, a tailor made
thee!
CORNWALL. Thou art a strange fellow--a tailor make a man?
KENT. Ay, sir; a stonecutter, or a painter, could not have made him so
ill; though they had been but two hours at the trade."
71. You may consider then this group of artizans with the merchants, as
now forming in each town an important Tiers Etat, or Third State of
the people, occupied in service, first, of the ecclesiastics, who
in monastic bodies inhabited the cloisters round each church; and,
secondly, of the knights, who, with their retainers, occupied, each
family their own fort, in allied defence of their appertaining streets.
72. A Third Estate, indeed; but adverse alike to both the others, to
Montague as to Capulet, when they become disturbers of the public peace;
and having a pride of its own,--hereditary still, but consisting in
the inheritance of skill and knowledge rather than of blood,--which
expressed the sense of such inheritance by taking its name habitually
from the master rather than the sire; and which, in its natural
antagonism to dignities won only by violence, or recorded only by
heraldry, you may think of generally as the race whose bearing is the
Apron, instead of the shield.
73. When, however, these two, or in perfect subdivision three, bodies
of men, lived in harmony,--the knights remaining true to the State, the
clergy to their faith, and the workmen to their craft,--conditions of
national force were arrived at, under which all the great art of the
middle ages was accomplished. The pride of the knights, the avarice of
the priests, and the gradual abasement of character in the craftsman,
changing him from a citizen able to wield either tools in peace or
weapons in war, to a dull tradesman, forced to pay mercenary troops to
defend his shop door, are the direct causes of common ruin towards the
close of the sixteenth century.
74. But the deep underlying cause of the decline in national character
itself, was the exhaustion of the Christian faith. None of its practical
claims were avouched either by reason or experience; and the imagination
grew weary of sustaining them in despite of both. Men could not, as
their powers of reflection became developed, steadily conceive that the
sins of a life might be done away with, by finishing it with Mary's name
on the lips; nor could tradition of miracle for ever resist the personal
discovery, made by each rude disciple by himself, that he might pray to
all the saints for a twelvemonth together, and yet not get what he asked
for.
75. The Reformation succeeded in proclaiming that existing Christianity
was a lie; but substituted no theory of it which could be more
rationally or credibly sustained; and ever since, the religion of
educated persons throughout Europe has been dishonest or ineffectual;
it is only among the labouring peasantry that the grace of a pure
Catholicism, and the patient simplicities of the Puritan, maintain their
imaginative dignity, or assert their practical use.
76. The existence of the nobler arts, however, involves the
harmonious life and vital faith of the three classes whom we have
just distinguished; and that condition exists, more or less disturbed,
indeed, by the vices inherent in each class, yet, on the whole,
energetically and productively, during the twelfth, thirteenth,
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. But our present subject being
Architecture only, I will limit your attention altogether to the state
of society in the great age of architecture, the thirteenth century.
A great age in all ways; but most notably so in the correspondence
it presented, up to a just and honourable point, with the utilitarian
energy of our own days.
77. The increase of wealth, the safety of industry, and the conception
of more convenient furniture of life, to which we must attribute the
rise of the entire artist class, were accompanied, in that century, by
much enlargement in the conception of useful public works: and--not by
_private_ enterprise,--that idle persons might get dividends out of the
public pocket,--but by _public_ enterprise,--each citizen paying down
at once his share of what was necessary to accomplish the benefit to the
State,--great architectural and engineering efforts were made for
the common service. Common, observe; but not, in our present sense,
republican. One of the most ludicrous sentences ever written in the
blindness of party spirit is that of Sismondi, in which he declares,
thinking of these public works only, that 'the architecture of the
thirteenth century is entirely republican.' The architecture of
the thirteenth century is, in the mass of it, simply baronial or
ecclesiastical; it is of castles, palaces, or churches; but it is true
that splendid civic works were also accomplished by the vigour of the
newly risen popular power.
"The canal named Naviglio Graude, which brings the waters of the Ticino
to Milan, traversing a distance of thirty miles, was undertaken in 1179,
recommended in 1257, and, soon after, happily terminated; in it still
consists the wealth of a vast extent of Lombardy. At the same time the
town of Milan rebuilt its walls, which were three miles round, and
had sixteen marble gates, of magnificence which might have graced the
capital of all Italy. The Genovese, in 1276 and 1283, built their two
splendid docks, and the great wall of their quay; and in 1295 finished
the noble aqueduct which brings pure and abundant waters to their city
from a great distance among their mountains. There is not a single town
in Italy which at the same time did not undertake works of this kind;
and while these larger undertakings were in progress, stone bridges were
built across the rivers, the streets and piazzas were paved with
large slabs of stone, and every free government recognized the duty of
providing for the convenience of the citizens." [1]
[Footnote 1: Simondi, vol ii. chap. 10.]
78. The necessary consequence of this enthusiasm in useful building, was
the formation of a vast body of craftsmen and architects; corresponding
in importance to that which the railway, with its associated industry,
has developed in modern times, but entirely different in personal
character, and relation to the body politic.
Their personal character was founded on the accurate knowledge of their
business in all respects; the ease and pleasure of unaffected invention;
and the true sense of power to do everything better than it had ever
been yet done, coupled with general contentment in life, and in its
vigour and skill.
It is impossible to overrate the difference between such a condition
of mind, and that of the modern artist, who either does not know his
business at all, or knows it only to recognize his own inferiority to
every former workman of distinction.
79. Again: the political relation of these artificers to the State was
that of a caste entirely separate from the noblesse; [1] paid for their
daily work what was just, and competing with each other to supply the
best article they could for the money. And it is, again, impossible to
overrate the difference between such a social condition, and that of the
artists of to-day, struggling to occupy a position of equality in wealth
with the noblesse,--paid irregular and monstrous prices by an entirely
ignorant and selfish public; and competing with each other to supply the
worst article they can for the money.
[Footnote 1: The giving of knighthood to Jacopo della Quercia for his
lifelong service to Siena was not the elevation of a dexterous workman,
but grace to a faithful citizen.]
I never saw anything so impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in
any country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a
"harmony in pink and white" (or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish,
and which had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub--it
had no pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two
hundred and fifty guineas.
80. In order to complete your broad view of the elements of social
power in the thirteenth century, you have now farther to understand the
position of the country people, who maintained by their labour these
three classes, whose action you can discern, and whose history you can
read; while, of those who maintained them, there is no history,
except of the annual ravage of their fields by contending cities or
nobles;--and, finally, that of the higher body of merchants, whose
influence was already beginning to counterpoise the prestige of noblesse
in Florence, and who themselves constituted no small portion of the
noblesse of Venice.
The food-producing country was for the most part still possessed by
the nobles; some by the ecclesiastics; but a portion, I do not know how
large, was in the hands of peasant proprietors, of whom Sismondi gives
this, to my mind, completely pleasant and satisfactory, though, to his,
very painful, account:--
"They took no interest in public affairs; they had assemblies of their
commune at the village in which the church of their parish was situated,
and to which they retreated to defend themselves in case of war; they
had also magistrates of their own choice; but all their interests
appeared to them enclosed in the circle of their own commonality; they
did not meddle with general politics, and held it for their point of
honour to remain faithful, through all revolutions, to the State of
which they formed a part, obeying, without hesitation, its chiefs,
whoever they were, and by whatever title they occupied their places."
81. Of the inferior agricultural labourers, employed on the farms of the
nobles and richer ecclesiastics, I find nowhere due notice, nor does any
historian seriously examine their manner of life. Liable to every form
of robbery and oppression, I yet regard their state as not only morally
but physically happier than that of riotous soldiery, or the lower class
of artizans, and as the safeguard of every civilized nation, through
all its worst vicissitudes of folly and crime. Nature has mercifully
appointed that seed must be sown, and sheep folded, whatever lances
break, or religions fail; and at this hour, while the streets of
Florence and Verona are full of idle politicians, loud of tongue,
useless of hand and treacherous of heart, there still may be seen in
their market-places, standing, each by his heap of pulse or maize, the
grey-haired labourers, silent, serviceable, honourable, keeping faith,
untouched by change, to their country and to Heaven. [1]
[Footnote 1: Compare "Sesame and Lilies," sec. 38, p. 58. (P. 86 of the
small edition of 1882.)]
82. It is extremely difficult to determine in what degree the feelings
or intelligence of this class influenced the architectural design of the
thirteenth century;--how far afield the cathedral tower was intended
to give delight, and to what simplicity of rustic conception Quercia or
Ghiberti appealed by the fascination of their Scripture history. You may
at least conceive, at this date, a healthy animation in all men's minds,
and the children of the vineyard and sheepcote crowding the city on its
festa days, and receiving impulse to busier, if not nobler, education,
in its splendour. [1]
[Footnote 1: Of detached abbeys, see note on Education of Joan of Arc,
"Sesame and Lilies," sec. 82, p. 106. (P. 158 of the small edition of
1882.)]
83. The great class of the merchants is more difficult to define; but
you may regard them generally as the examples of whatever modes of life
might be consistent with peace and justice, in the economy of transfer,
as opposed to the military license of pillage.
They represent the gradual ascendancy of foresight, prudence, and order
in society, and the first ideas of advantageous national intercourse.
Their body is therefore composed of the most intelligent and temperate
natures of the time,--uniting themselves, not directly for the purpose
of making money, but to obtain stability for equal institutions,
security of property, and pacific relations with neighbouring states.
Their guilds form the only representatives of true national
council, unaffected, as the landed proprietors were, by merely local
circumstances and accidents.
84. The strength of this order, when its own conduct was upright, and
its opposition to the military body was not in avaricious cowardice,
but in the resolve to compel justice and to secure peace, can only
be understood by you after an examination of the great changes in the
government of Florence during the thirteenth century, which, among other
minor achievements interesting to us, led to that destruction of the
Tower of the Death-watch, so ingeniously accomplished by Niccola Pisano.
This change, and its results, will be the subject of my next lecture.
I must to-day sum, and in some farther degree make clear, the facts
already laid before you.
85. We have seen that the inhabitants of every great Italian state may
be divided, and that very stringently, into the five classes of knights,
priests, merchants, artists, and peasants. No distinction exists between
artist and artizan, except that of higher genius or better conduct; the
best artist is assuredly also the best artizan; and the simplest workman
uses his invention and emotion as well as his fingers. The entire body
of artists is under the orders (as shopmen are under the orders of their
customers), of the knights, priests, and merchants,--the knights for the
most part demanding only fine goldsmiths' work, stout armour, and rude
architecture; the priests commanding both the finest architecture
and painting, and the richest kinds of decorative dress and
jewellery,--while the merchants directed works of public use, and were
the best judges of artistic skill. The competition for the Baptistery
gates of Florence is before the guild of merchants; nor is their award
disputed, even in thought, by any of the candidates.
86. This is surely a fact to be taken much to heart by our present
communities of Liverpool and Manchester. They probably suppose, in their
modesty, that lords and clergymen are the proper judges of art, and
merchants can only, in the modern phrase, 'know what they like,' or
follow humbly the guidance of their golden-crested or flat-capped
superiors. But in the great ages of art, neither knight nor pope shows
signs of true power of criticism. The artists crouch before them, or
quarrel with them, according to their own tempers. To the merchants they
submit silently, as to just and capable judges. And look what men these
are, who submit. Donatello, Ghiberti, Quercia, Luca! If men like these
submit to the merchant, who shall rebel?
87. But the still franker, and surer, judgment of innocent pleasure was
awarded them by all classes alike: and the interest of the public was
the _final _rule of right,--that public being always eager to see, and
earnest to learn. For the stories told by their artists formed, they
fully believed, a Book of Life; and every man of real genius took up his
function of illustrating the scheme of human morality and salvation,
as naturally, and faithfully, as an English mother of to-day giving her
children their first lessons in the Bible. In this endeavour to teach
they almost unawares taught themselves; the question "How shall I
represent this most clearly?" became to themselves, presently, "How was
this most likely to have happened?" and habits of fresh and accurate
thought thus quickly enlivened the formalities of the Greek pictorial
theology; formalities themselves beneficent, because restraining by
their severity and mystery the wantonness of the newer life. Foolish
modern critics have seen nothing in the Byzantine school but a
barbarism to be conquered and forgotten. But that school brought to the
art-scholars of the thirteenth century, laws which had been serviceable
to Phidias, and symbols which had been beautiful to Homer: and methods
and habits of pictorial scholarship which gave a refinement of manner
to the work of the simplest craftsman, and became an education to
the higher artists which no discipline of literature can now bestow,
developed themselves in the effort to decipher, and the impulse to
re-interpret, the Eleusinian divinity of Byzantine tradition.
88. The words I have just used, "pictorial scholarship," and "pictorial
theology," remind me how strange it must appear to you that in this
sketch of the intellectual state of Italy in the thirteenth century I
have taken no note of literature itself, nor of the fine art of Music
with which it was associated in minstrelsy. The corruption of the
meaning of the word "clerk," from "a chosen person" to "a learned one,"
partly indicates the position of literature in the war between the
golden crest and scarlet cap; but in the higher ranks, literature and
music became the grace of the noble's life, or the occupation of the
monk's, without forming any separate class, or exercising any
materially visible political power. Masons or butchers might establish
a government,--but never troubadours: and though a good knight held his
education to be imperfect unless he could write a sonnet and sing it,
he did not esteem his castle to be at the mercy of the "editor" of a
manuscript. He might indeed owe his life to the fidelity of a minstrel,
or be guided in his policy by the wit of a clown; but he was not the
slave of sensual music, or vulgar literature, and never allowed his
Saturday reviewer to appear at table without the cock's comb.
89. On the other hand, what was noblest in thought or saying was in
those times as little attended to as it is now. I do not feel sure that,
even in after times, the poem of Dante has had any political effect
on Italy; but at all events, in his life, even at Verona, where he was
treated most kindly, he had not half so much influence with Can Grande
as the rough Count of Castelbarco, not one of whose words was ever
written, or now remains; and whose portrait, by no means that of a man
of literary genius, almost disfigures, by its plainness, the otherwise
grave and perfect beauty of his tomb.