The Stones of Venice, Volume 3 (of 3)
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Title: The Stones of Venice, Volume 3 (of 3)
Author: John Ruskin
Release date: December 31, 2009 [eBook #30756]
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The Complete Works of John Ruskin
Volume IX
STONES OF VENICE
VOLUME III
[Illustration:
THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH]
Library Edition
The Complete Works of John Ruskin
STONES OF VENICE
VOLUME III
Giotto
Lectures on Architecture
Harbours of England
A Joy Forever
National Library Association
New York Chicago
THE
STONES OF VENICE
VOLUME III.
THE FALL
CONTENTS.
THIRD, OR RENAISSANCE, PERIOD.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Early Renaissance, 1
CHAPTER II.
Roman Renaissance, 32
CHAPTER III.
Grotesque Renaissance, 112
CHAPTER IV.
Conclusion, 166
APPENDIX.
1. Architect of the Ducal Palace, 199
2. Theology of Spenser, 205
3. Austrian Government in Italy, 209
4. Date of the Palaces of the Byzantine
Renaissance, 211
5. Renaissance Side of Ducal Palace, 212
6. Character of the Doge Michele Morosini, 213
7. Modern Education, 214
8. Early Venetian Marriages, 222
9. Character of the Venetian Aristocracy, 223
10. Final Appendix, 224
INDICES.
I. Personal Index, 263
II. Local Index, 268
III. Topical Index, 271
IV. Venetian Index, 287
LIST OF PLATES.
Facing Page
PLATE 1. Temperance and Intemperance in Ornament, 6
" 2. Gothic Capitals, 8
" 3. Noble and Ignoble Grotesque, 125
" 4. Mosaic of Olive Tree and Flowers, 179
" 5. Byzantine Bases, 225
" 6. Byzantine Jambs, 229
" 7. Gothic Jambs, 230
" 8. Byzantine Archivolts, 244
" 9. Gothic Archivolts, 245
" 10. Cornices, 248
" 11. Tracery Bars, 252
" 12. Capitals of Fondaco de Turchi, 304
THE
STONES OF VENICE.
THIRD, OR RENAISSANCE, PERIOD.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY RENAISSANCE.
§ I. I trust that the reader has been enabled, by the preceding
chapters, to form some conception of the magnificence of the streets of
Venice during the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Yet
by all this magnificence she was not supremely distinguished above the
other cities of the middle ages. Her early edifices have been preserved
to our times by the circuit of her waves; while continual recurrences of
ruin have defaced the glory of her sister cities. But such fragments as
are still left in their lonely squares, and in the corners of their
streets, so far from being inferior to the buildings of Venice, are even
more rich, more finished, more admirable in invention, more exuberant in
beauty. And although, in the North of Europe, civilization was less
advanced, and the knowledge of the arts was more confined to the
ecclesiastical orders, so that, for domestic architecture, the period of
perfection must be there placed much later than in Italy, and considered
as extending to the middle of the fifteenth century; yet, as each city
reached a certain point in civilization, its streets became decorated
with the same magnificence, varied only in style according to the
materials at hand, and temper of the people. And I am not aware of any
town of wealth and importance in the middle ages, in which some proof
does not exist, that, at its period of greatest energy and prosperity,
its streets were inwrought with rich sculpture, and even (though in
this, as before noticed, Venice always stood supreme) glowing with color
and with gold. Now, therefore, let the reader,--forming for himself as
vivid and real a conception as he is able, either of a group of Venetian
palaces in the fourteenth century, or, if he likes better, of one of the
more fantastic but even richer street scenes of Rouen, Antwerp, Cologne,
or Nuremberg, and keeping this gorgeous image before him,--go out into
any thoroughfare, representative, in a general and characteristic way,
of the feeling for domestic architecture in modern times; let him, for
instance, if in London, walk once up and down Harley Street, or Baker
Street, or Gower Street; and then, looking upon this picture and on
this, set himself to consider (for this is to be the subject of our
following and final inquiry) what have been the causes which have
induced so vast a change in the European mind.
§ II. Renaissance architecture is the school which has conducted men's
inventive and constructive faculties from the Grand Canal to Gower
Street; from the marble shaft, and the lancet arch, and the wreathed
leafage, and the glowing and melting harmony of gold and azure, to the
square cavity in the brick wall. We have now to consider the causes and
the steps of this change; and, as we endeavored above to investigate the
nature of Gothic, here to investigate also the nature of Renaissance.
§ III. Although Renaissance architecture assumes very different forms
among different nations, it may be conveniently referred to three
heads:--Early Renaissance, consisting of the first corruptions
introduced into the Gothic schools: Central or Roman Renaissance, which
is the perfectly formed style: and Grotesque Renaissance, which is the
corruption of the Renaissance itself.
§ IV. Now, in order to do full justice to the adverse cause, we will
consider the abstract _nature_ of the school with reference only to its
best or central examples. The forms of building which must be classed
generally under the term _early_ Renaissance are, in many cases, only
the extravagances and corruptions of the languid Gothic, for whose
errors the classical principle is in no wise answerable. It was stated
in the second chapter of the "Seven Lamps," that, unless luxury had
enervated and subtlety falsified the Gothic forms, Roman traditions
could not have prevailed against them; and, although these enervated and
false conditions are almost instantly colored by the classical
influence, it would be utterly unfair to lay to the charge of that
influence the first debasement of the earlier schools, which had lost
the strength of their system before they could be struck by the plague.
§ V. The manner, however, of the debasement of all schools of art, so
far as it is natural, is in all ages the same; luxuriance of ornament,
refinement of execution, and idle subtleties of fancy, taking the place
of true thought and firm handling: and I do not intend to delay the
reader long by the Gothic sick-bed, for our task is not so much to watch
the wasting of fever in the features of the expiring king, as to trace
the character of that Hazael who dipped the cloth in water, and laid it
upon his face, Nevertheless, it is necessary to the completeness of our
view of the architecture of Venice, as well as to our understanding of
the manner in which the Central Renaissance obtained its universal
dominion, that we glance briefly at the principal forms into which
Venetian Gothic first declined. They are two in number: one the
corruption of the Gothic itself; the other a partial return to Byzantine
forms; for the Venetian mind having carried the Gothic to a point at
which it was dissatisfied, tried to retrace its steps, fell back first
upon Byzantine types, and through them passed to the first Roman. But in
thus retracing its steps, it does not recover its own lost energy. It
revisits the places through which it had passed in the morning light,
but it is now with wearied limbs, and under the gloomy shadows of
evening.
§ VI. It has just been said that the two principal causes of natural
decline in any school, are over-luxuriance and over-refinement. The
corrupt Gothic of Venice furnishes us with a curious instance of the
one, and the corrupt Byzantine of the other. We shall examine them in
succession.
Now, observe, first, I do not mean by _luxuriance_ of ornament,
_quantity_ of ornament. In the best Gothic in the world there is hardly
an inch of stone left unsculptured. But I mean that character of
extravagance in the ornament itself which shows that it was addressed to
jaded faculties; a violence and coarseness in curvature, a depth of
shadow, a lusciousness in arrangement of line, evidently arising out of
an incapability of feeling the true beauty of chaste form and restrained
power. I do not know any character of design which may be more easily
recognized at a glance than this over-lusciousness; and yet it seems to
me that at the present day there is nothing so little understood as the
essential difference between chasteness and extravagance, whether in
color, shade, or lines. We speak loosely and inaccurately of
"overcharged" ornament, with an obscure feeling that there is indeed
something in visible Form which is correspondent to Intemperance in
moral habits; but without any distinct detection of the character which
offends us, far less with any understanding of the most important lesson
which there can be no doubt was intended to be conveyed by the
universality of this ornamental law.
§ VII. In a word, then, the safeguard of highest beauty, in all visible
work, is exactly that which is also the safeguard of conduct in the
soul,--Temperance, in the broadest sense; the Temperance which we have
seen sitting on an equal throne with Justice amidst the Four Cardinal
Virtues, and, wanting which, there is not any other virtue which may not
lead us into desperate error. Now, observe: Temperance, in the nobler
sense, does not mean a subdued and imperfect energy; it does not mean a
stopping short in any good thing, as in Love or in Faith; but it means
the power which governs the most intense energy, and prevents its acting
in any way but as it ought. And with respect to things in which there
may be excess, it does not mean imperfect enjoyment of them; but the
regulation of their quantity, so that the enjoyment of them shall be
greatest. For instance, in the matter we have at present in hand,
temperance in color does not mean imperfect or dull enjoyment of color;
but it means that government of color which shall bring the utmost
possible enjoyment out of all hues. A bad colorist does not _love_
beautiful color better than the best colorist does, nor half so much.
But he indulges in it to excess; he uses it in large masses, and
unsubdued; and then it is a law of Nature, a law as universal as that of
gravitation, that he shall not be able to enjoy it so much as if he had
used it in less quantity. His eye is jaded and satiated, and the blue
and red have life in them no more. He tries to paint them bluer and
redder, in vain: all the blue has become grey, and gets greyer the more
he adds to it; all his crimson has become brown, and gets more sere and
autumnal the more he deepens it. But the great painter is sternly
temperate in his work; he loves the vivid color with all his heart; but
for a long time he does not allow himself anything like it, nothing but
sober browns and dull greys, and colors that have no conceivable beauty
in them; but these by his government become lovely: and after bringing
out of them all the life and power they possess, and enjoying them to
the uttermost,--cautiously, and as the crown of the work, and the
consummation of its music, he permits the momentary crimson and azure,
and the whole canvas is in a flame.
§ VIII. Again, in curvature, which is the cause of loveliness in all
form; the bad designer does not enjoy it more than the great designer,
but he indulges in it till his eye is satiated, and he cannot obtain
enough of it to touch his jaded feeling for grace. But the great and
temperate designer does not allow himself any violent curves; he works
much with lines in which the curvature, though always existing, is long
before it is perceived. He dwells on all these subdued curvatures to the
uttermost, and opposes them with still severer lines to bring them out
in fuller sweetness; and, at last, he allows himself a momentary curve
of energy, and all the work is, in an instant, full of life and grace.
The curves drawn in Plate VII. of the first volume, were chosen entirely
to show this character of dignity and restraint, as it appears in the
lines of nature, together with the perpetual changefulness of the
degrees of curvature in one and the same line; but although the purpose
of that plate was carefully explained in the chapter which it
illustrates, as well as in the passages of "Modern Painters" therein
referred to (vol. ii. pp. 43, 79), so little are we now in the habit of
considering the character of abstract lines, that it was thought by many
persons that this plate only illustrated Hogarth's reversed line of
beauty, even although the curve of the salvia leaf, which was the one
taken from that plate for future use, in architecture, was not a
reversed or serpentine curve at all. I shall now, however, I hope, be
able to show my meaning better.
§ IX. Fig. 1 in Plate I., opposite, is a piece of ornamentation from a
Norman-French manuscript of the thirteenth century, and fig. 2 from an
Italian one of the fifteenth. Observe in the first its stern moderation
in curvature; the gradually united lines _nearly straight_, though none
quite straight, used for its main limb, and contrasted with the bold but
simple offshoots of its leaves, and the noble spiral from which it
shoots, these in their turn opposed by the sharp trefoils and thorny
cusps. And see what a reserve of resource there is in the whole; how
easy it would have been to make the curves more palpable and the foliage
more rich, and how the noble hand has stayed itself, and refused to
grant one wave of motion more.
[Illustration: Plate I.
TEMPERANCE AND INTEMPERANCE.
IN CURVATURE.]
§ X. Then observe the other example, in which, while the same idea is
continually repeated, excitement and interest are sought for by means of
violent and continual curvatures wholly unrestrained, and rolling hither
and thither in confused wantonness. Compare the character of the
separate lines in these two examples carefully, and be assured that
wherever this redundant and luxurious curvature shows itself in
ornamentation, it is a sign of jaded energy and failing invention. Do
not confuse it with fulness or richness. Wealth is not necessarily
wantonness: a Gothic moulding may be buried half a foot deep in thorns
and leaves, and yet will be chaste in every line; and a late Renaissance
moulding may be utterly barren and poverty-stricken, and yet will show
the disposition to luxury in every line.
§ XI. Plate XX., in the second volume, though prepared for the special
illustration of the notices of capitals, becomes peculiarly interesting
when considered in relation to the points at present under
consideration. The four leaves in the upper row are Byzantine; the two
middle rows are transitional, all but fig. 11, which is of the formed
Gothic; fig. 12 is perfect Gothic of the finest time (Ducal Palace,
oldest part), fig. 13 is Gothic beginning to decline, fig. 14 is
Renaissance Gothic in complete corruption.
Now observe, first, the Gothic naturalism advancing gradually from the
Byzantine severity; how from the sharp, hard, formalized conventionality
of the upper series the leaves gradually expand into more free and
flexible animation, until in fig. 12 we have the perfect living leaf as
if fresh gathered out of the dew. And then, in the last two examples and
partly in fig. 11, observe how the forms which can advance no longer in
animation, advance, or rather decline, into luxury and effeminacy as the
strength of the school expires.
§ XII. In the second place, note that the Byzantine and Gothic schools,
however differing in degree of life, are both alike in _temperance_,
though the temperance of the Gothic is the nobler, because it consists
with entire animation. Observe how severe and subtle the curvatures are
in all the leaves from fig. 1 to fig. 12, except only in fig. 11; and
observe especially the firmness and strength obtained by the close
approximation to the straight line in the lateral ribs of the leaf, fig.
12. The longer the eye rests on these temperate curvatures the more it
will enjoy them, but it will assuredly in the end be wearied by the
morbid exaggeration of the last example.
[Illustration: Plate II.
GOTHIC CAPITALS.]
§ XIII. Finally, observe--and this is very important--how one and the
same character in the work may be a sign of totally different states of
mind, and therefore in one case bad, and in the other good. The
examples, fig. 3. and fig. 12., are both equally pure in line; but one
is subdivided in the extreme, the other broad in the extreme, and both
are beautiful. The Byzantine mind delighted in the delicacy of
subdivision which nature shows in the fern-leaf or parsley-leaf; and so,
also, often the Gothic mind, much enjoying the oak, thorn, and thistle.
But the builder of the Ducal Palace used great breadth in his foliage,
in order to harmonize with the broad surface of his mighty wall, and
delighted in this breadth as nature delights in the sweeping freshness
of the dock-leaf or water-lily. Both breadth and subdivision are thus
noble, when they are contemplated or conceived by a mind in health; and
both become ignoble, when conceived by a mind jaded and satiated. The
subdivision in fig. 13 as compared with the type, fig. 12, which it was
intended to improve, is the sign, not of a mind which loved intricacy,
but of one which could not relish simplicity, which had not strength
enough to enjoy the broad masses of the earlier leaves, and cut them to
pieces idly, like a child tearing the book which, in its weariness, it
cannot read. And on the other hand, we shall continually find, in other
examples of work of the same period, an unwholesome breadth or
heaviness, which results from the mind having no longer any care for
refinement or precision, nor taking any delight in delicate forms, but
making all things blunted, cumbrous, and dead, losing at the same time
the sense of the elasticity and spring of natural curves. It is as if
the soul of man, itself severed from the root of its health, and about
to fall into corruption, lost the perception of life in all things
around it; and could no more distinguish the wave of the strong
branches, full of muscular strength and sanguine circulation, from the
lax bending of a broken cord, nor the sinuousness of the edge of the
leaf, crushed into deep folds by the expansion of its living growth,
from the wrinkled contraction of its decay.[1] Thus, in morals, there
is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is
most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity,
and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from
thought, which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding from dulness and
mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base. Now, in the various
forms assumed by the later Gothic of Venice, there are one or two
features which, under other circumstances, would not have been signs of
decline; but, in the particular manner of their occurrence here,
indicate the fatal weariness of decay. Of all these features the most
distinctive are its crockets and finials.
§ XIV. There is not to be found a single crocket or finial upon any part
of the Ducal Palace built during the fourteenth century; and although
they occur on contemporary, and on some much earlier, buildings, they
either indicate detached examples of schools not properly Venetian, or
are signs of incipient decline.
The reason of this is, that the finial is properly the ornament of
gabled architecture; it is the compliance, in the minor features of the
building, with the spirit of its towers, ridged roof, and spires.
Venetian building is not gabled, but horizontal in its roots and general
masses; therefore the finial is a feature contradictory to its spirit,
and adopted only in that search for morbid excitement which is the
infallible indication of decline. When it occurs earlier, it is on
fragments of true gabled architecture, as, for instance, on the porch of
the Carmini.
In proportion to the unjustifiableness of its introduction was the
extravagance of the form it assumed; becoming, sometimes, a tuft at the
top of the ogee windows, half as high as the arch itself, and
consisting, in the richest examples, of a human figure, half emergent
out of a cup of leafage, as, for instance, in the small archway of the
Campo San Zaccaria: while the crockets, as being at the side of the
arch, and not so strictly connected with its balance and symmetry,
appear to consider themselves at greater liberty even than the finials,
and fling themselves, hither and thither, in the wildest contortions.
Fig. 4. in Plate I, is the outline of one, carved in stone, from the
later Gothic of St. Mark's; fig. 3. a crocket from the fine Veronese
Gothic; in order to enable the reader to discern the Renaissance
character better by comparison with the examples of curvature above
them, taken from the manuscripts. And not content with this exuberance
in the external ornaments of the arch, the finial interferes with its
traceries. The increased intricacy of these, as such, being a natural
process in the developement of Gothic, would have been no evil; but they
are corrupted by the enrichment of the finial at the point of the
cusp,--corrupted, that is to say, in Venice: for at Verona the finial,
in the form of a fleur-de-lis, appears long previously at the cusp
point, with exquisite effect; and in our own best Northern Gothic it is
often used beautifully in this place, as in the window from Salisbury,
Plate XII. (Vol. II.), fig. 2. But in Venice, such a treatment of it was
utterly contrary to the severe spirit of the ancient traceries; and the
adoption of a leafy finial at the extremity of the cusps in the door of
San Stefano, as opposed to the simple ball which terminates those of the
Ducal Palace, is an unmistakable indication of a tendency to decline.
In like manner, the enrichment and complication of the jamb mouldings,
which, in other schools, might and did take place in the healthiest
periods, are, at Venice, signs of decline, owing to the entire
inconsistency of such mouldings with the ancient love of the single
square jamb and archivolt. The process of enrichment in them is shown by
the successive examples given in Plate VII., below. They are numbered,
and explained in the Appendix.
§ XV. The date at which this corrupt form of Gothic first prevailed over
the early simplicity of the Venetian types can be determined in an
instant, on the steps of the choir of the Church of St. John and Paul.
On our left hand, as we enter, is the tomb of the Doge Marco Cornaro,
who died in 1367. It is rich and fully developed Gothic, with crockets
and finials, but not yet attaining any extravagant developement.
Opposite to it is that of the Doge Andrea Morosini, who died in 1382.
Its Gothic is voluptuous, and over-wrought; the crockets are bold and
florid, and the enormous finial represents a statue of St. Michael.
There is no excuse for the antiquaries who, having this tomb before
them, could have attributed the severe architecture of the Ducal Palace
to a later date; for every one of the Renaissance errors is here in
complete developement, though not so grossly as entirely to destroy the
loveliness of the Gothic forms. In the Porta della Carta, 1423, the vice
reaches its climax.
§ XVI. Against this degraded Gothic, then, came up the Renaissance
armies; and their first assault was in the requirement of universal
perfection. For the first time since the destruction of Rome, the world
had seen, in the work of the greatest artists of the fifteenth
century,--in the painting of Ghirlandajo, Masaccio, Francia, Perugino,
Pinturicchio, and Bellini; in the sculpture of Mino da Fiesole, of
Ghiberti, and Verrocchio,--a perfection of execution and fulness of
knowledge which cast all previous art into the shade, and which, being
in the work of those men united with all that was great in that of
former days, did indeed justify the utmost enthusiasm with which their
efforts were, or could be, regarded. But when this perfection had once
been exhibited in anything, it was required in everything; the world
could no longer be satisfied with less exquisite execution, or less
disciplined knowledge. The first thing that it demanded in all work was,
that it should be done in a consummate and learned way; and men
altogether forgot that it was possible to consummate what was
contemptible, and to know what was useless. Imperatively requiring
dexterity of touch, they gradually forgot to look for tenderness of
feeling; imperatively requiring accuracy of knowledge, they gradually
forgot to ask for originality of thought. The thought and the feeling
which they despised departed from them, and they were left to
felicitate themselves on their small science and their neat fingering.
This is the history of the first attack of the Renaissance upon the
Gothic schools, and of its rapid results, more fatal and immediate in
architecture than in any other art, because there the demand for
perfection was less reasonable, and less consistent with the
capabilities of the workman; being utterly opposed to that rudeness or
savageness on which, as we saw above, the nobility of the elder schools
in great part depends. But inasmuch as the innovations were founded on
some of the most beautiful examples of art, and headed by some of the
greatest men that the world ever saw, and as the Gothic with which they
interfered was corrupt and valueless, the first appearance of the
Renaissance feeling had the appearance of a healthy movement. A new
energy replaced whatever weariness or dulness had affected the Gothic
mind; an exquisite taste and refinement, aided by extended knowledge,
furnished the first models of the new school; and over the whole of
Italy a style arose, generally now known as cinque-cento, which in
sculpture and painting, as I just stated, produced the noblest masters
which the world ever saw, headed by Michael Angelo, Raphael, and
Leonardo; but which failed of doing the same in architecture, because,
as we have seen above, perfection is therein not possible, and failed
more totally than it would otherwise have done, because the classical
enthusiasm had destroyed the best types of architectural form.
§ XVII. For, observe here very carefully, the Renaissance principle, as
it consisted in a demand for universal perfection, is quite distinct
from the Renaissance principle as it consists in a demand for classical
and Roman _forms_ of perfection. And if I had space to follow out the
subject as I should desire, I would first endeavor to ascertain what
might have been the course of the art of Europe if no manuscripts of
classical authors had been recovered, and no remains of classical
architecture left, in the fifteenth century; so that the executive
perfection to which the efforts of all great men had tended for five
hundred years, and which now at last was reached, might have been
allowed to develope itself in its own natural and proper form, in
connexion with the architectural structure of earlier schools. This
refinement and perfection had indeed its own perils, and the history of
later Italy, as she sank into pleasure and thence into corruption, would
probably have been the same whether she had ever learned again to write
pure Latin or not. Still the inquiry into the probable cause of the
enervation which might naturally have followed the highest exertion of
her energies, is a totally distinct one from that into the particular
form given to this enervation by her classical learning; and it is
matter of considerable regret to me that I cannot treat these two
subjects separately: I must be content with marking them for separation
in the mind of the reader.
§ XVIII. The effect, then, of the sudden enthusiasm for classical
literature, which gained strength during every hour of the fifteenth
century, was, as far as respected architecture, to do away with the
entire system of Gothic science. The pointed arch, the shadowy vault,
the clustered shaft, the heaven-pointing spire, were all swept away; and
no structure was any longer permitted but that of the plain cross-beam
from pillar to pillar, over the round arch, with square or circular
shafts, and a low-gabled roof and pediment: two elements of noble form,
which had fortunately existed in Rome, were, however, for that reason,
still permitted; the cupola, and, internally, the waggon vault.
§ XIX. These changes in form were all of them unfortunate; and it is
almost impossible to do justice to the occasionally exquisite
ornamentation of the fifteenth century, on account of its being placed
upon edifices of the cold and meagre Roman outline. There is, as far as
I know, only one Gothic building in Europe, the Duomo of Florence, in
which, though the ornament be of a much earlier school, it is yet so
exquisitely finished as to enable us to imagine what might have been the
effect of the perfect workmanship of the Renaissance, coming out of the
hands of men like Verrocchio and Ghiberti, had it been employed on the
magnificent framework of Gothic structure. This is the question which,
as I shall note in the concluding chapter, we ought to set ourselves
practically to solve in modern times.
§ XX. The changes effected in form, however, were the least part of the
evil principles of the Renaissance. As I have just said, its main
mistake, in its early stages, was the unwholesome demand for
_perfection_, at any cost. I hope enough has been advanced, in the
chapter on the Nature of Gothic, to show the reader that perfection is
_not_ to be had from the general workman, but at the cost of
everything,--of his whole life, thought, and energy. And Renaissance
Europe thought this a small price to pay for manipulative perfection.
Men like Verrocchio and Ghiberti were not to be had every day, nor in
every place; and to require from the common workman execution or
knowledge like theirs, was to require him to become their copyist. Their
strength was great enough to enable them to join science with invention,
method with emotion, finish with fire; but, in them, the invention and
the fire were first, while Europe saw in them only the method and the
finish. This was new to the minds of men, and they pursued it to the
neglect of everything else. "This," they cried, "we must have in all our
work henceforward:" and they were obeyed. The lower workman secured
method and finish, and lost, in exchange for them, his soul.
§ XXI. Now, therefore, do not let me be misunderstood when I speak
generally of the evil spirit of the Renaissance. The reader may look
through all I have written, from first to last, and he will not find one
word but of the most profound reverence for those mighty men who could
wear the Renaissance armor of proof, and yet not feel it encumber their
living limbs,[2]--Leonardo and Michael Angelo, Ghirlandajo and Masaccio,
Titian and Tintoret. But I speak of the Renaissance as an evil time,
because, when it saw those men go burning forth into the battle, it
mistook their armor for their strength: and forthwith encumbered with
the painful panoply every stripling who ought to have gone forth only
with his own choice of three smooth stones out of the brook.
§ XXII. This, then, the reader must always keep in mind when he is
examining for himself any examples of cinque-cento work. When it has
been done by a truly great man, whose life and strength could not be
oppressed, and who turned to good account the whole science of his day,
nothing is more exquisite. I do not believe, for instance, that there is
a more glorious work of sculpture existing in the world than that
equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleone, by Verrocchio, of which, I
hope, before these pages are printed, there will be a cast in England.
But when the cinque-cento work has been done by those meaner men, who,
in the Gothic times, though in a rough way, would yet have found some
means of speaking out what was in their hearts, it is utterly
inanimate,--a base and helpless copy of more accomplished models; or, if
not this, a mere accumulation of technical skill, in gaining which the
workman had surrendered all other powers that were in him.
There is, therefore, of course, an infinite gradation in the art of the
period, from the Sistine Chapel down to modern upholstery; but, for the
most part, since in architecture the workman must be of an inferior
order, it will be found that this cinque-cento painting and higher
religious sculpture is noble, while the cinque-cento architecture, with
its subordinate sculpture, is universally bad; sometimes, however,
assuming forms, in which the consummate refinement almost atones for the
loss of force.
§ XXIII. This is especially the case with that second branch of the
Renaissance which, as above noticed, was engrafted at Venice on the
Byzantine types. So soon as the classical enthusiasm required the
banishment of Gothic forms, it was natural that the Venetian mind should
turn back with affection to the Byzantine models in which the round
arches and simple shafts, necessitated by recent law, were presented
under a form consecrated by the usage of their ancestors. And,
accordingly, the first distinct school of architecture[3] which arose
under the new dynasty, was one in which the method of inlaying marble,
and the general forms of shaft and arch, were adopted from the buildings
of the twelfth century, and applied with the utmost possible refinements
of modern skill. Both at Verona and Venice the resulting architecture is
exceedingly beautiful. At Verona it is, indeed, less Byzantine, but
possesses a character of richness and tenderness almost peculiar to that
city. At Venice it is more severe, but yet adorned with sculpture which,
for sharpness of touch and delicacy of minute form, cannot be rivalled,
and rendered especially brilliant and beautiful by the introduction of
those inlaid circles of colored marble, serpentine, and porphyry, by
which Phillippe de Commynes was so much struck on his first entrance
into the city. The two most refined buildings in this style in Venice
are, the small Church of the Miracoli, and the Scuola di San Marco
beside the Church of St. John and St. Paul. The noblest is the Rio
Façade of the Ducal Palace. The Casa Dario, and Casa Manzoni, on the
Grand Canal, are exquisite examples of the school, as applied to
domestic architecture; and, in the reach of the canal between the Casa
Foscari and the Rialto, there are several palaces, of which the Casa
Contarini (called "delle Figure") is the principal, belonging to the
same group, though somewhat later, and remarkable for the association of
the Byzantine principles of color with the severest lines of the Roman
pediment, gradually superseding the round arch. The precision of
chiselling and delicacy of proportion in the ornament and general lines
of these palaces cannot be too highly praised; and I believe that the
traveller in Venice, in general, gives them rather too little attention
than too much. But while I would ask him to stay his gondola beside each
of them long enough to examine their every line, I must also warn him to
observe, most carefully, the peculiar feebleness and want of soul in the
conception of their ornament, which mark them as belonging to a period
of decline; as well as the absurd mode of introduction of their pieces
of colored marble: these, instead of being simply and naturally inserted
in the masonry, are placed in small circular or oblong frames of
sculpture, like mirrors or pictures, and are represented as suspended by
ribands against the wall; a pair of wings being generally fastened on to
the circular tablets, as if to relieve the ribands and knots from their
weight, and the whole series tied under the chin of a little cherub at
the top, who is nailed against the façade like a hawk on a barn door.
But chiefly let him notice, in the Casa Contarini delle Figure, one most
strange incident, seeming to have been permitted, like the choice of the
subjects at the three angles of the Ducal Palace, in order to teach us,
by a single lesson, the true nature of the style in which it occurs. In
the intervals of the windows of the first story, certain shields and
torches are attached, in the form of trophies, to the stems of two trees
whose boughs have been cut off, and only one or two of their faded
leaves left, scarcely observable, but delicately sculptured here and
there, beneath the insertions of the severed boughs.
It is as if the workman had intended to leave us an image of the
expiring naturalism of the Gothic school. I had not seen this sculpture
when I wrote the passage referring to its period, in the first volume of
this work (Chap. XX. § XXXI.):--"Autumn came,--the leaves were
shed,--and the eye was directed to the extremities of the delicate
branches. _The Renaissance frosts came, and all perished!_"
§ XXIV. And the hues of this autumn of the early Renaissance are the
last which appear in architecture. The winter which succeeded was
colorless as it was cold; and although the Venetian painters struggled
long against its influence, the numbness of the architecture prevailed
over them at last, and the exteriors of all the latter palaces were
built only in barren stone. As at this point of our inquiry, therefore,
we must bid farewell to color, I have reserved for this place the
continuation of the history of chromatic decoration, from the Byzantine
period, when we left it in the fifth chapter of the second volume, down
to its final close.
§ XXV. It was above stated, that the principal difference in general
form and treatment between the Byzantine and Gothic palaces was the
contraction of the marble facing into the narrow spaces between the
windows, leaving large fields of brick wall perfectly bare. The reason
for this appears to have been, that the Gothic builders were no longer
satisfied with the faint and delicate hues of the veined marble; they
wished for some more forcible and piquant mode of decoration,
corresponding more completely with the gradually advancing splendor of
chivalric costume and heraldic device. What I have said above of the
simple habits of life of the thirteenth century, in no wise refers
either to costumes of state, or of military service; and any
illumination of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries (the great
period being, it seems to me, from 1250 to 1350), while it shows a
peculiar majesty and simplicity in the fall of the robes (often worn
over the chain armor), indicates, at the same time, an exquisite
brilliancy of color and power of design in the hems and borders, as well
as in the armorial bearings with which they are charged; and while, as
we have seen, a peculiar simplicity is found also in the _forms_ of the
architecture, corresponding to that of the folds of the robes, its
_colors_ were constantly increasing in brilliancy and decision,
corresponding to those of the quartering of the shield, and of the
embroidery of the mantle.
§ XXVI. Whether, indeed, derived from the quarterings of the knights'
shields, or from what other source, I know not; but there is one
magnificent attribute of the coloring of the late twelfth, the whole
thirteenth, and the early fourteenth century, which I do not find
definitely in any previous work, nor afterwards in general art, though
constantly, and necessarily, in that of great colorists, namely, the
union of one color with another by reciprocal interference: that is to
say, if a mass of red is to be set beside a mass of blue, a piece of the
red will be carried into the blue, and a piece of the blue carried into
the red; sometimes in nearly equal portions, as in a shield divided into
four quarters, of which the uppermost on one side will be of the same
color as the lowermost on the other; sometimes in smaller fragments,
but, in the periods above named, always definitely and grandly, though
in a thousand various ways. And I call it a magnificent principle, for
it is an eternal and universal one, not in art only,[4] but in human
life. It is the great principle of Brotherhood, not by equality, nor by
likeness, but by giving and receiving; the souls that are unlike, and
the nations that are unlike, and the natures that are unlike, being
bound into one noble whole by each receiving something from, and of, the
others' gifts and the others' glory. I have not space to follow out this
thought,--it is of infinite extent and application,--but I note it for
the reader's pursuit, because I have long believed, and the whole second
volume of "Modern Painters" was written to prove, that in whatever has
been made by the Deity externally delightful to the human sense of
beauty, there is some type of God's nature or of God's laws; nor are any
of His laws, in one sense, greater than the appointment that the most
lovely and perfect unity shall be obtained by the taking of one nature
into another. I trespass upon too high ground; and yet I cannot fully
show the reader the extent of this law, but by leading him thus far. And
it is just because it is so vast and so awful a law, that it has rule
over the smallest things; and there is not a vein of color on the
lightest leaf which the spring winds are at this moment unfolding in the
fields around us, but it is an illustration of an ordainment to which
the earth and its creatures owe their continuance, and their Redemption.
§ XXVII. It is perfectly inconceivable, until it has been made a subject
of special inquiry, how perpetually Nature employs this principle in the
distribution of her light and shade; how by the most extraordinary
adaptations, apparently accidental, but always in exactly the right
place, she contrives to bring darkness into light, and light into
darkness; and that so sharply and decisively, that at the very instant
when one object changes from light to dark, the thing relieved upon it
will change from dark to light, and yet so subtly that the eye will not
detect the transition till it looks for it. The secret of a great part
of the grandeur in all the noblest compositions is the doing of this
delicately in _degree_, and broadly in _mass_; in color it may be done
much more decisively than in light and shade, and, according to the
simplicity of the work, with greater frankness of confession, until, in
purely decorative art, as in the illumination, glass-painting, and
heraldry of the great periods, we find it reduced to segmental accuracy.
Its greatest masters, in high art, are Tintoret, Veronese, and Turner.
§ XXVIII. Together with this great principle of quartering is introduced
another, also of very high value as far as regards the delight of the
eye, though not of so profound meaning. As soon as color began to be
used in broad and opposed fields, it was perceived that the mass of it
destroyed its brilliancy, and it was _tempered_ by chequering it with
some other color or colors in smaller quantities, mingled with minute
portions of pure white. The two moral principles of which this is the
type, are those of Temperance and Purity; the one requiring the fulness
of the color to be subdued, and the other that it shall be subdued
without losing either its own purity or that of the colors with which it
is associated.
§ XXIX. Hence arose the universal and admirable system of the diapered
or chequered background of early ornamental art. They are completely
developed in the thirteenth century, and extend through the whole of
the fourteenth gradually yielding to landscape, and other pictorial
backgrounds, as the designers lost perception of the purpose of their
art, and of the value of color. The chromatic decoration of the Gothic
palaces of Venice was of course founded on these two great principles,
which prevailed constantly wherever the true chivalric and Gothic spirit
possessed any influence. The windows, with their intermediate spaces of
marble, were considered as the objects to be relieved, and variously
quartered with vigorous color. The whole space of the brick wall was
considered as a background; it was covered with stucco, and painted in
fresco, with diaper patterns.
§ XXX. What? the reader asks in some surprise,--Stucco! and in the great
Gothic period? Even so, but _not stucco to imitate stone_. Herein lies
all the difference; it is stucco confessed and understood, and laid on
the bricks precisely as gesso is laid on canvas, in order to form them
into a ground for receiving color from the human hand,--color which, if
well laid on, might render the brick wall more precious than if it had
been built of emeralds. Whenever we wish to paint, we may prepare our
paper as we choose; the value of the ground in no wise adds to the value
of the picture. A Tintoret on beaten gold would be of no more value than
a Tintoret on coarse canvas; the gold would merely be wasted. All that
we have to do is to make the ground as good and fit for the color as
possible, by whatever means.
§ XXXI. I am not sure if I am right in applying the term "stucco" to the
ground of fresco; but this is of no consequence; the reader will
understand that it was white, and that the whole wall of the palace was
considered as the page of a book to be illuminated: but he will
understand also that the sea winds are bad librarians; that, when once
the painted stucco began to fade or to fall, the unsightliness of the
defaced color would necessitate its immediate restoration; and that
therefore, of all the chromatic decoration of the Gothic palaces, there
is hardly a fragment left.
Happily, in the pictures of Gentile Bellini, the fresco coloring of the
Gothic palaces is recorded, as it still remained in his time; not with
rigid accuracy, but quite distinctly enough to enable us, by comparing
it with the existing colored designs in the manuscripts and glass of the
period, to ascertain precisely what it must have been.
§ XXXII. The walls were generally covered with chequers of very warm
color, a russet inclining to scarlet, more or less relieved with white,
black, and grey; as still seen in the only example which, having been
executed in marble, has been perfectly preserved, the front of the Ducal
Palace. This, however, owing to the nature of its materials, was a
peculiarly simple example; the ground is white, crossed with double bars
of pale red, and in the centre of each chequer there is a cross,
alternately black with a red centre and red with a black centre where
the arms cross. In painted work the grounds would be, of course, as
varied and complicated as those of manuscripts; but I only know of one
example left, on the Casa Sagredo, where, on some fragments of stucco, a
very early chequer background is traceable, composed of crimson
quatrefoils interlaced, with cherubim stretching their wings filling the
intervals. A small portion of this ground is seen beside the window
taken from the palace, Vol. II. Plate XIII. fig. 1.
§ XXXIII. It ought to be especially noticed, that, in all chequered
patterns employed in the colored designs of these noble periods, the
greatest care is taken to mark that they are _grounds_ of design rather
than designs themselves. Modern architects, in such minor imitations as
they are beginning to attempt, endeavor to dispose the parts in the
patterns so as to occupy certain symmetrical positions with respect to
the parts of the architecture. A Gothic builder never does this: he cuts
his ground into pieces of the shape he requires with utter
remorselessness, and places his windows or doors upon it with no regard
whatever to the lines in which they cut the pattern: and, in
illuminations of manuscripts, the chequer itself is constantly changed
in the most subtle and arbitrary way, wherever there is the least chance
of its regularity attracting the eye, and making it of importance. So
_intentional_ is this, that a diaper pattern is often set obliquely to
the vertical lines of the designs, for fear it should appear in any way
connected with them.
§ XXXIV. On these russet or crimson backgrounds the entire space of the
series of windows was relieved, for the most part, as a subdued white
field of alabaster; and on this delicate and veined white were set the
circular disks of purple and green. The arms of the family were of
course blazoned in their own proper colors, but I think generally on a
pure azure ground; the blue color is still left behind the shields in
the Casa Priuli and one or two more of the palaces which are unrestored,
and the blue ground was used also to relieve the sculptures of religious
subject. Finally, all the mouldings, capitals, cornices, cusps, and
traceries, were either entirely gilded or profusely touched with gold.
The whole front of a Gothic palace in Venice may, therefore, be simply
described as a field of subdued russet, quartered with broad sculptured
masses of white and gold; these latter being relieved by smaller inlaid
fragments of blue, purple, and deep green.
§ XXXV. Now, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, when painting
and architecture were thus united, two processes of change went on
simultaneously to the beginning of the seventeenth. The merely
decorative chequerings on the walls yielded gradually to more elaborate
paintings of figure-subject; first small and quaint, and then enlarging
into enormous pictures filled by figures generally colossal. As these
paintings became of greater merit and importance, the architecture with
which they were associated was less studied; and at last a style was
introduced in which the framework of the building was little more
interesting than that of a Manchester factory, but the whole space of
its walls was covered with the most precious fresco paintings. Such
edifices are of course no longer to be considered as forming an
architectural school; they were merely large preparations of artists'
panels; and Titian, Giorgione, and Veronese no more conferred merit on
the later architecture of Venice, as such, by painting on its façades,
than Landseer or Watts could confer merit on that of London by first
whitewashing and then painting its brick streets from one end to the
other.
§ XXXVI. Contemporarily with this change in the relative values of the
color decoration and the stone-work, one equally important was taking
place in the opposite direction, but of course in another group of
buildings. For in proportion as the architect felt himself thrust aside
or forgotten in one edifice, he endeavored to make himself principal in
another; and, in retaliation for the painter's entire usurpation of
certain fields of design, succeeded in excluding him totally from those
in which his own influence was predominant. Or, more accurately
speaking, the architects began to be too proud to receive assistance
from the colorists; and these latter sought for ground which the
architect had abandoned, for the unrestrained display of their own
skill. And thus, while one series of edifices is continually becoming
feebler in design and richer in superimposed paintings, another, that of
which we have so often spoken as the earliest or Byzantine Renaissance,
fragment by fragment rejects the pictorial decoration; supplies its
place first with marbles, and then, as the latter are felt by the
architect, daily increasing in arrogance and deepening in coldness, to
be too bright for his dignity, he casts even these aside one by one: and
when the last porphyry circle has vanished from the façade, we find two
palaces standing side by side, one built, so far as mere masonry goes,
with consummate care and skill, but without the slightest vestige of
color in any part of it; the other utterly without any claim to interest
in its architectural form, but covered from top to bottom with paintings
by Veronese. At this period, then, we bid farewell to color, leaving the
painters to their own peculiar field; and only regretting that they
waste their noblest work on walls, from which in a couple of centuries,
if not before, the greater part of their labor must be effaced. On the
other hand, the architecture whose decline we are tracing, has now
assumed an entirely new condition, that of the Central or True
Renaissance, whose nature we are to examine in the next chapter.
§ XXXVII. But before leaving these last palaces over which the Byzantine
influence extended itself, there is one more lesson to be learned from
them of much importance to us. Though in many respects debased in style,
they are consummate in workmanship, and unstained in honor; there is no
imperfection in them, and no dishonesty. That there is absolutely _no_
imperfection, is indeed, as we have seen above, a proof of their being
wanting in the highest qualities of architecture; but, as lessons in
masonry, they have their value, and may well be studied for the
excellence they display in methods of levelling stones, for the
precision of their inlaying, and other such qualities, which in them are
indeed too principal, yet very instructive in their particular way.
§ XXXVIII. For instance, in the inlaid design of the dove with the olive
branch, from the Casa Trevisan (Vol. I. Plate XX. p. 369), it is
impossible for anything to go beyond the precision with which the olive
leaves are cut out of the white marble; and, in some wreaths of laurel
below, the rippled edge of each leaf is as finely and easily drawn, as
if by a delicate pencil. No Florentine table is more exquisitely
finished than the façade of this entire palace; and as ideals of an
executive perfection, which, though we must not turn aside from our main
path to reach it, may yet with much advantage be kept in our sight and
memory, these palaces are most notable amidst the architecture of
Europe. The Rio Façade of the Ducal Palace, though very sparing in
color, is yet, as an example of finished masonry in a vast building, one
of the finest things, not only in Venice, but in the world. It differs
from other work of the Byzantine Renaissance, in being on a very large
scale; and it still retains one pure Gothic character, which adds not a
little to its nobleness, that of perpetual variety. There is hardly one
window of it, or one panel, that is like another; and this continual
change so increases its apparent size by confusing the eye, that, though
presenting no bold features, or striking masses of any kind, there are
few things in Italy more impressive than the vision of it overhead, as
the gondola glides from beneath the Bridge of Sighs. And lastly (unless
we are to blame these buildings for some pieces of very childish
perspective), they are magnificently honest, as well as perfect. I do
not remember even any gilding upon them; all is pure marble, and of the
finest kind.[5]
And therefore, in finally leaving the Ducal Palace,[6] let us take with
us one more lesson, the last which we shall receive from the Stones of
Venice, except in the form of a warning.
§ XXXIX. The school of architecture which we have just been examining
is, as we have seen above, redeemed from severe condemnation by its
careful and noble use of inlaid marbles as a means of color. From that
time forward, this art has been unknown, or despised; the frescoes of
the swift and daring Venetian painters long contended with the inlaid
marbles, outvying them with color, indeed more glorious than theirs, but
fugitive as the hues of woods in autumn; and, at last, as the art itself
of painting in this mighty manner failed from among men,[7] the modern
decorative system established itself, which united the meaninglessness
of the veined marble with the evanescence of the fresco, and completed
the harmony by falsehood.
§ XL. Since first, in the second chapter of the "Seven Lamps," I
endeavored to show the culpableness, as well as the baseness, of our
common modes of decoration by painted imitation of various woods or
marbles, the subject has been discussed in various architectural works,
and is evidently becoming one of daily increasing interest. When it is
considered how many persons there are whose means of livelihood consist
altogether in these spurious arts, and how difficult it is, even for the
most candid, to admit a conviction contrary both to their interests and
to their inveterate habits of practice and thought, it is rather a
matter of wonder, that the cause of Truth should have found even a few
maintainers, than that it should have encountered a host of adversaries.
It has, however, been defended repeatedly by architects themselves, and
so successfully, that I believe, so far as the desirableness of this or
that method of ornamentation is to be measured by the fact of its simple
honesty or dishonesty, there is little need to add anything to what has
been already urged upon the subject. But there are some points connected
with the practice of imitating marble, which I have been unable to touch
upon until now, and by the consideration of which we may be enabled to
see something of the _policy_ of honesty in this matter, without in the
least abandoning the higher ground of principle.
§ XLI. Consider, then, first, what marble seems to have been made for.
Over the greater part of the surface of the world, we find that a rock
has been providentially distributed, in a manner particularly pointing
it out as intended for the service of man. Not altogether a common rock,
it is yet rare enough to command a certain degree of interest and
attention wherever it is found; but not so rare as to preclude its use
for any purpose to which it is fitted. It is exactly of the consistence
which is best adapted for sculpture: that is to say, neither hard nor
brittle, nor flaky nor splintery, but uniform, and delicately, yet not
ignobly, soft,--exactly soft enough to allow the sculptor to work it
without force, and trace on it the finest lines of finished form; and
yet so hard as never to betray the touch or moulder away beneath the
steel; and so admirably crystallized, and of such permanent elements,
that no rains dissolve it, no time changes it, no atmosphere decomposes
it: once shaped, it is shaped for ever, unless subjected to actual
violence or attrition. This rock, then, is prepared by Nature for the
sculptor and architect, just as paper is prepared by the manufacturer
for the artist, with as great--nay, with greater--care, and more perfect
adaptation of the material to the requirements. And of this marble
paper, some is white and some colored; but more is colored than white,
because the white is evidently meant for sculpture, and the colored for
the covering of large surfaces.
§ XLII. Now, if we would take Nature at her word, and use this precious
paper which she has taken so much care to provide for us (it is a long
process, the making of that paper; the pulp of it needing the subtlest
possible solution, and the pressing of it--for it is all
hot-pressed--having to be done under the saw, or under something at
least as heavy); if, I say, we use it as Nature would have us, consider
what advantages would follow. The colors of marble are mingled for us
just as if on a prepared palette. They are of all shades and hues
(except bad ones), some being united and even, some broken, mixed, and
interrupted, in order to supply, as far as possible, the want of the
painter's power of breaking and mingling the color with the brush. But
there is more in the colors than this delicacy of adaptation. There is
history in them. By the manner in which they are arranged in every piece
of marble, they record the means by which that marble has been produced,
and the successive changes through which it has passed. And in all their
veins and zones, and flame-like stainings, or broken and disconnected
lines, they write various legends, never untrue, of the former political
state of the mountain kingdom to which they belonged, of its infirmities
and fortitudes, convulsions and consolidations, from the beginning of
time.
Now, if we were never in the habit of seeing anything but real marbles,
this language of theirs would soon begin to be understood; that is to
say, even the least observant of us would recognize such and such stones
as forming a peculiar class, and would begin to inquire where they came
from, and, at last, take some feeble interest in the main question, Why
they were only to be found in that or the other place, and how they
came to make a part of this mountain, and not of that? And in a little
while, it would not be possible to stand for a moment at a shop door,
leaning against the pillars of it, without remembering or questioning of
something well worth the memory or the inquiry, touching the hills of
Italy, or Greece, or Africa, or Spain; and we should be led on from
knowledge to knowledge, until even the unsculptured walls of our streets
became to us volumes as precious as those of our libraries.
§ XLIII. But the moment we admit imitation of marble, this source of
knowledge is destroyed. None of us can be at the pains to go through the
work of verification. If we knew that every colored stone we saw was
natural, certain questions, conclusions, interests, would force
themselves upon us without any effort of our own; but we have none of us
time to stop in the midst of our daily business, to touch and pore over,
and decide with painful minuteness of investigation, whether such and
such a pillar be stucco or stone. And the whole field of this knowledge,
which Nature intended us to possess when we were children, is hopelessly
shut out from us. Worse than shut out, for the mass of coarse imitations
confuses our knowledge acquired from other sources; and our memory of
the marbles we have perhaps once or twice carefully examined, is
disturbed and distorted by the inaccuracy of the imitations which are
brought before us continually.
§ XLIV. But it will be said, that it is too expensive to employ real
marbles in ordinary cases. It may be so: yet not always more expensive
than the fitting windows with enormous plate glass, and decorating them
with elaborate stucco mouldings and other useless sources of expenditure
in modern building; nay, not always in the end more expensive than the
frequent repainting of the dingy pillars, which a little water dashed
against them would refresh from day to day, if they were of true stone.
But, granting that it be so, in that very costliness, checking their
common use in certain localities, is part of the interest of marbles,
considered as history. Where they are not found, Nature has supplied
other materials,--clay for brick, or forest for timber,--in the working
of which she intends other characters of the human mind to be developed,
and by the proper use of which certain local advantages will assuredly
be attained, while the delightfulness and meaning of the precious
marbles will be felt more forcibly in the districts where they occur, or
on the occasions when they may be procured.
§ XLV. It can hardly be necessary to add, that, as the imitation of
marbles interferes with and checks the knowledge of geography and
geology, so the imitation of wood interferes with that of botany; and
that our acquaintance with the nature, uses, and manner of growth of the
timber trees of our own and of foreign countries, would probably, in the
majority of cases, become accurate and extensive, without any labor or
sacrifice of time, were not all inquiry checked, and all observation
betrayed, by the wretched labors of the "Grainer."
§ XLVI. But this is not all. As the practice of imitation retards
knowledge, so also it retards art.
There is not a meaner occupation for the human mind than the imitation
of the stains and striæ of marble and wood. When engaged in any easy and
simple mechanical occupation, there is still some liberty for the mind
to leave the literal work; and the clash of the loom or the activity of
the fingers will not always prevent the thoughts from some happy
expatiation in their own domains. But the grainer must think of what he
is doing; and veritable attention and care, and occasionally
considerable skill, are consumed in the doing of a more absolute nothing
than I can name in any other department of painful idleness. I know not
anything so humiliating as to see a human being, with arms and limbs
complete, and apparently a head, and assuredly a soul, yet into the
hands of which when you have put a brush and pallet, it cannot do
anything with them but imitate a piece of wood. It cannot color, it has
no ideas of color; it cannot draw, it has no ideas of form; it cannot
caricature, it has no ideas of humor. It is incapable of anything beyond
knots. All its achievement, the entire result of the daily application
of its imagination and immortality, is to be such a piece of texture as
the sun and dew are sucking up out of the muddy ground, and weaving
together, far more finely, in millions of millions of growing branches,
over every rood of waste woodland and shady hill.
§ XLVII. But what is to be done, the reader asks, with men who are
capable of nothing else than this? Nay, they may be capable of
everything else, for all we know, and what we are to do with them I will
try to say in the next chapter; but meanwhile one word more touching the
higher principles of action in this matter, from which we have descended
to those of expediency. I trust that some day the language of Types will
be more read and understood by us than it has been for centuries; and
when this language, a better one than either Greek or Latin, is again
recognized amongst us, we shall find, or remember, that as the other
visible elements of the universe--its air, its water, and its flame--set
forth, in their pure energies, the life-giving, purifying, and
sanctifying influences of the Deity upon His creatures, so the earth, in
its purity, sets forth His eternity and His TRUTH. I have dwelt above on
the historical language of stones; let us not forget this, which is
their theological language; and, as we would not wantonly pollute the
fresh waters when they issue forth in their clear glory from the rock,
nor stay the mountain winds into pestilential stagnancy, nor mock the
sunbeams with artificial and ineffective light; so let us not by our own
base and barren falsehoods, replace the crystalline strength and burning
color of the earth from which we were born, and to which we must return;
the earth which, like our own bodies, though dust in its degradation, is
full of splendor when God's hand gathers its atoms; and which was for
ever sanctified by Him, as the symbol no less of His love than of His
truth, when He bade the high priest bear the names of the Children of
Israel on the clear stones of the Breastplate of Judgment.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] There is a curious instance of this in the modern imitations of
the Gothic capitals of the Casa d' Oro, employed in its
restorations. The old capitals look like clusters of leaves, the
modern ones like kneaded masses of dough with holes in them.
[2] Not that even these men were able to wear it altogether without
harm, as we shall see in the next chapter.
[3] Appendix 4, "Date of Palaces of Byzantine Renaissance."
[4] In the various works which Mr. Prout has written on light and
shade, no principle will be found insisted on more strongly than
this carrying of the dark into the light, and _vice versa_. It is
curious to find the untaught instinct of a merely picturesque artist
in the nineteenth century, fixing itself so intensely on a principle
which regulated the entire sacred composition of the thirteenth. I
say "untaught" instinct, for Mr. Prout was, throughout his life, the
discoverer of his own principles; fortunately so, considering what
principles were taught in his time, but unfortunately in the
abstract, for there were gifts in him, which, had there been any
wholesome influences to cherish them, might have made him one of the
greatest men of his age. He was great, under all adverse
circumstances, but the mere wreck of what he might have been, if,
after the rough training noticed in my pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism,
as having fitted him for his great function in the world, he had met
with a teacher who could have appreciated his powers, and directed
them.
[5] There may, however, be a kind of dishonesty even in the use of
marble, if it is attempted to make the marble look like something
else. See the final or Venetian Index under head "Scalzi."
[6] Appendix 5, "Renaissance Side of Ducal Palace."
[7] We have, as far as I _know_, at present among us, only one
painter, G. F. Watts, who is capable of design in color on a large
scale. He stands alone among our artists of the old school, in his
perception of the value of breadth in distant masses, and in the
vigor of invention by which such breadth must be sustained; and his
power of expression and depth of thought are not less remarkable
than his bold conception of color effect. Very probably some of the
Pre-Raphaelites have the gift also; I am nearly certain that Rosetti
has it, and I think also Millais; but the experiment has yet to be
tried. I wish it could be made in Mr. Hope's church in Margaret
Street.
CHAPTER II.
ROMAN RENAISSANCE.
§ I. Of all the buildings in Venice, later in date than the final
additions to the Ducal Palace, the noblest is, beyond all question, that
which, having been condemned by its proprietor, not many years ago, to
be pulled down and sold for the value of its materials, was rescued by
the Austrian government, and appropriated--the government officers
having no other use for it--to the business of the Post-Office; though
still known to the gondolier by its ancient name, the Casa Grimani. It
is composed of three stories of the Corinthian order, at once simple,
delicate, and sublime; but on so colossal a scale, that the
three-storied palaces on its right and left only reach to the cornice
which marks the level of its first floor. Yet it is not at first
perceived to be so vast; and it is only when some expedient is employed
to hide it from the eye, that by the sudden dwarfing of the whole reach
of the Grand Canal, which it commands, we become aware that it is to the
majesty of the Casa Grimani that the Rialto itself, and the whole group
of neighboring buildings, owe the greater part of their impressiveness.
Nor is the finish of its details less notable than the grandeur of their
scale. There is not an erring line, nor a mistaken proportion,
throughout its noble front; and the exceeding fineness of the chiselling
gives an appearance of lightness to the vast blocks of stone out of
whose perfect union that front is composed. The decoration is sparing,
but delicate: the first story only simpler than the rest, in that it has
pilasters instead of shafts, but all with Corinthian capitals, rich in
leafage, and fruited delicately; the rest of the walls flat and smooth,
and the mouldings sharp and shallow, so that the bold shafts look like
crystals of beryl running through a rock of quartz.
§ II. This palace is the principal type at Venice, and one of the best
in Europe, of the central architecture of the Renaissance schools; that
carefully studied and perfectly executed architecture to which those
schools owe their principal claims to our respect, and which became the
model of most of the important works subsequently produced by civilized
nations. I have called it the Roman Renaissance, because it is founded,
both in its principles of superimposition, and in the style of its
ornament, upon the architecture of classic Rome at its best period. The
revival of Latin literature both led to its adoption, and directed its
form; and the most important example of it which exists is the modern
Roman basilica of St. Peter's. It had, at its Renaissance or new birth,
no resemblance either to Greek, Gothic, or Byzantine forms, except in
retaining the use of the round arch, vault, and dome; in the treatment
of all details, it was exclusively Latin; the last links of connexion
with mediæval tradition having been broken by its builders in their
enthusiasm for classical art, and the forms of true Greek or Athenian
architecture being still unknown to them. The study of these noble Greek
forms has induced various modifications of the Renaissance in our own
times; but the conditions which are found most applicable to the uses of
modern life are still Roman, and the entire style may most fitly be
expressed by the term "Roman Renaissance."
§ III. It is this style, in its purity and fullest form,--represented by
such buildings as the Casa Grimani at Venice (built by San Micheli), the
Town Hall at Vicenza (by Palladio), St. Peter's at Rome (by Michael
Angelo), St. Paul's and Whitehall in London (by Wren and Inigo
Jones),--which is the true antagonist of the Gothic school. The
intermediate, or corrupt conditions of it, though multiplied over
Europe, are no longer admired by architects, or made the subjects of
their study; but the finished work of this central school is still, in
most cases, the model set before the student of the nineteenth century,
as opposed to those Gothic, Romanesque, or Byzantine forms which have
long been considered barbarous, and are so still by most of the leading
men of the day. That they are, on the contrary, most noble and
beautiful, and that the antagonistic Renaissance is, in the main,
unworthy and unadmirable, whatever perfection of a certain kind it may
possess, it was my principal purpose to show, when I first undertook the
labor of this work. It has been attempted already to put before the
reader the various elements which unite in the Nature of Gothic, and to
enable him thus to judge, not merely of the beauty of the forms which
that system has produced already, but of its future applicability to the
wants of mankind, and endless power over their hearts. I would now
endeavor, in like manner, to set before the reader the Nature of
Renaissance, and thus to enable him to compare the two styles under the
same light, and with the same enlarged view of their relations to the
intellect, and capacities for the service, of man.
§ IV. It will not be necessary for me to enter at length into any
examination of its external form. It uses, whether for its roofs of
aperture or roofs proper, the low gable or circular arch: but it differs
from Romanesque work in attaching great importance to the horizontal
lintel or architrave _above_ the arch; transferring the energy of the
principal shafts to the supporting of this horizontal beam, and thus
rendering the arch a subordinate, if not altogether a superfluous,
feature. The type of this arrangement has been given already at _c_,
Fig. XXXVI., p. 145, Vol. I.: and I might insist at length upon the
absurdity of a construction in which the shorter shaft, which has the
real weight of wall to carry, is split into two by the taller one, which
has nothing to carry at all,--that taller one being strengthened,
nevertheless, as if the whole weight of the building bore upon it; and
on the ungracefulness, never conquered in any Palladian work, of the two
half-capitals glued, as it were, against the slippery round sides of the
central shaft. But it is not the form of this architecture against which
I would plead. Its defects are shared by many of the noblest forms of
earlier building, and might have been entirely atoned for by excellence
of spirit. But it is the moral nature of it which is corrupt, and which
it must, therefore, be our principal business to examine and expose.
§ V. The moral, or immoral, elements which unite to form the spirit of
Central Renaissance architecture are, I believe, in the main,
two,--Pride and Infidelity; but the pride resolves itself into three
main branches,--Pride of Science, Pride of State, and Pride of System:
and thus we have four separate mental conditions which must be examined
successively.
§ VI. 1. PRIDE OF SCIENCE. It would have been more charitable, but more
confusing, to have added another element to our list, namely the _Love_
of Science; but the love is included in the pride, and is usually so
very subordinate an element that it does not deserve equality of
nomenclature. But, whether pursued in pride or in affection (how far by
either we shall see presently), the first notable characteristic of the
Renaissance central school is its introduction of accurate knowledge
into all its work, so far as it possesses such knowledge; and its
evident conviction, that such science is necessary to the excellence of
the work, and is the first thing to be expressed therein. So that all
the forms introduced, even in its minor ornament, are studied with the
utmost care; the anatomy of all animal structure is thoroughly
understood and elaborately expressed, and the whole of the execution
skilful and practised in the highest degree. Perspective, linear and
aerial, perfect drawing and accurate light and shade in painting, and
true anatomy in all representations of the human form, drawn or
sculptured, are the first requirements in all the work of this school.
§ VII. Now, first considering all this in the most charitable light, as
pursued from a real love of truth, and not from vanity, it would, of
course, have been all excellent and admirable, had it been regarded as
the aid of art, and not as its essence. But the grand mistake of the
Renaissance schools lay in supposing that science and art are the same
things, and that to advance in the one was necessarily to perfect the
other. Whereas they are, in reality, things not only different, but so
opposed, that to advance in the one is, in ninety-nine cases out of the
hundred, to retrograde in the other. This is the point to which I would
at present especially bespeak the reader's attention.
§ VIII. Science and art are commonly distinguished by the nature of
their actions; the one as knowing, the other as changing, producing, or
creating. But there is a still more important distinction in the nature
of the things they deal with. Science deals exclusively with things as
they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect
the human senses and human soul.[8] Her work is to portray the
appearance of things, and to deepen the natural impressions which they
produce upon living creatures. The work of science is to substitute
facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions. Both,
observe, are equally concerned with truth; the one with truth of aspect,
the other with truth of essence. Art does not represent things falsely,
but truly as they appear to mankind. Science studies the relations of
things to each other: but art studies only their relations to man; and
it requires of everything which is submitted to it imperatively this,
and only this,--what that thing is to the human eyes and human heart,
what it has to say to men, and what it can become to them: a field of
question just as much vaster than that of science, as the soul is larger
than the material creation.
§ IX. Take a single instance. Science informs us that the sun is
ninety-five millions of miles distant from, and 111 times broader than,
the earth; that we and all the planets revolve round it; and that it
revolves on its own axis in 25 days, 14 hours and 4 minutes. With all
this, art has nothing whatsoever to do. It has no care to know anything
of this kind. But the things which it does care to know, are these: that
in the heavens God hath set a tabernacle for the sun, "which is as a
bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to
run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his
circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat
thereof."
§ X. This, then, being the kind of truth with which art is exclusively
concerned, how is such truth as this to be ascertained and accumulated?
Evidently, and only, by perception and feeling. Never either by
reasoning, or report. Nothing must come between Nature and the artist's
sight; nothing between God and the artist's soul. Neither calculation
nor hearsay,--be it the most subtle of calculations, or the wisest of
sayings,--may be allowed to come between the universe, and the witness
which art bears to its visible nature. The whole value of that witness
depends on its being _eye_-witness; the whole genuineness,
acceptableness, and dominion of it depend on the personal assurance of
the man who utters it. All its victory depends on the veracity of the
one preceding word, "Vidi."
The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing and
feeling creature; to be an instrument of such tenderness and
sensitiveness, that no shadow, no hue, no line, no instantaneous and
evanescent expression of the visible things around him, nor any of the
emotions which they are capable of conveying to the spirit which has
been given him, shall either be left unrecorded, or fade from the book
of record. It is not his business either to think, to judge, to argue,
or to know. His place is neither in the closet, nor on the bench, nor at
the bar, nor in the library. They are for other men and other work. He
may think, in a by-way; reason, now and then, when he has nothing better
to do; know, such fragments of knowledge as he can gather without
stooping, or reach without pains; but none of these things are to be his
care. The work of his life is to be twofold only: to see, to feel.
§ XI. Nay, but, the reader perhaps pleads with me, one of the great uses
of knowledge is to open the eyes; to make things perceivable which,
never would have been seen, unless first they had been known.
Not so. This could only be said or believed by those who do not know
what the perceptive faculty of a great artist is, in comparison with
that of other men. There is no great painter, no great workman in any
art, but he sees more with the glance of a moment than he could learn by
the labor of a thousand hours. God has made every man fit for his work;
He has given to the man whom he means for a student, the reflective,
logical, sequential faculties; and to the man whom He means for an
artist, the perceptive, sensitive, retentive faculties. And neither of
these men, so far from being able to do the other's work, can even
comprehend the way in which it is done. The student has no understanding
of the vision, nor the painter of the process; but chiefly the student
has no idea of the colossal grasp of the true painter's vision and
sensibility.
The labor of the whole Geological Society, for the last fifty years, has
but now arrived at the ascertainment of those truths respecting mountain
form which Turner saw and expressed with a few strokes of a camel's hair
pencil fifty years ago, when he was a boy. The knowledge of all the laws
of the planetary system, and of all the curves of the motion of
projectiles, would never enable the man of science to draw a waterfall
or a wave; and all the members of Surgeons' Hall helping each other
could not at this moment see, or represent, the natural movement of a
human body in vigorous action, as a poor dyer's son did two hundred
years ago.[9]
§ XII. But surely, it is still insisted, granting this peculiar faculty
to the painter, he will still see more as he knows more, and the more
knowledge he obtains, therefore, the better. No; not even so. It is
indeed true, that, here and there, a piece of knowledge will enable the
eye to detect a truth which might otherwise have escaped it; as, for
instance, in watching a sunrise, the knowledge of the true nature of the
orb may lead the painter to feel more profoundly, and express more
fully, the distance between the bars of cloud that cross it, and the
sphere of flame that lifts itself slowly beyond them into the infinite
heaven. But, for one visible truth to which knowledge thus opens the
eyes, it seals them to a thousand: that is to say, if the knowledge
occur to the mind so as to occupy its powers of contemplation at the
moment when the sight work is to be done, the mind retires inward, fixes
itself upon the known fact, and forgets the passing visible ones; and a
_moment_ of such forgetfulness loses more to the painter than a day's
thought can gain. This is no new or strange assertion. Every person
accustomed to careful reflection of any kind, knows that its natural
operation is to close his eyes to the external world. While he is
thinking deeply, he neither sees nor feels, even though naturally he may
possess strong powers of sight and emotion. He who, having journeyed all
day beside the Leman Lake, asked of his companions, at evening, where it
was,[10] probably was not wanting in sensibility; but he was generally a
thinker, not a perceiver. And this instance is only an extreme one of
the effect which, in all cases, knowledge, becoming a subject of
reflection, produces upon the sensitive faculties. It must be but poor
and lifeless knowledge, if it has no tendency to force itself forward,
and become ground for reflection, in despite of the succession of
external objects. It will not obey their succession. The first that
comes gives it food enough for its day's work; it is its habit, its
duty, to cast the rest aside, and fasten upon that. The first thing that
a thinking and knowing man sees in the course of the day, he will not
easily quit. It is not his way to quit anything without getting to the
bottom of it, if possible. But the artist is bound to receive all things
on the broad, white, lucid field of his soul, not to grasp at one. For
instance, as the knowing and thinking man watches the sunrise, he sees
something in the color of a ray, or the change of a cloud, that is new
to him; and this he follows out forthwith into a labyrinth of optical
and pneumatical laws, perceiving no more clouds nor rays all the
morning. But the painter must catch all the rays, all the colors that
come, and see them all truly, all in their real relations and
succession; therefore, everything that occupies room in his mind he must
cast aside for the time, as completely as may be. The thoughtful man is
gone far away to seek; but the perceiving man must sit still, and open
his heart to receive. The thoughtful man is knitting and sharpening
himself into a two-edged sword, wherewith to pierce. The perceiving man
is stretching himself into a four-cornered sheet wherewith to catch. And
all the breadth to which he can expand himself, and all the white
emptiness into which he can blanch himself, will not be enough to
receive what God has to give him.
§ XIII. What, then, it will be indignantly asked, is an utterly ignorant
and unthinking man likely to make the best artist? No, not so neither.
Knowledge is good for him so long as he can keep it utterly, servilely,
subordinate to his own divine work, and trample it under his feet, and
out of his way, the moment it is likely to entangle him.
And in this respect, observe, there is an enormous difference between
knowledge and education. An artist need not be a _learned_ man, in all
probability it will be a disadvantage to him to become so; but he ought,
if possible, always to be an _educated_ man: that is, one who has
understanding of his own uses and duties in the world, and therefore of
the general nature of the things done and existing in the world; and who
has so trained himself, or been trained, as to turn to the best and most
courteous account whatever faculties or knowledge he has. The mind of an
educated man is greater than the knowledge it possesses; it is like the
vault of heaven, encompassing the earth which lives and flourishes
beneath it: but the mind of an educated and learned man is like a
caoutchouc band, with an everlasting spirit of contraction in it,
fastening together papers which it cannot open, and keeps others from
opening.
Half our artists are ruined for want of education, and by the possession
of knowledge; the best that I have known have been educated, and
illiterate. The ideal of an artist, however, is not that he should be
illiterate, but well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred,
both in heart and in bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best
society, _and should keep out of it_.[11]
§ XIV. There are, indeed, some kinds of knowledge with which an artist
ought to be thoroughly furnished; those, for instance, which enable him
to express himself; for this knowledge relieves instead of encumbering
his mind, and permits it to attend to its purposes instead of wearying
itself about means. The whole mystery of manipulation and manufacture
should be familiar to the painter from a child. He should know the
chemistry of all colors and materials whatsoever, and should prepare all
his colors himself, in a little laboratory of his own. Limiting his
chemistry to this one object, the amount of practical science necessary
for it, and such accidental discoveries as might fall in his way in the
course of his work, of better colors or better methods of preparing
them, would be an infinite refreshment to his mind; a minor subject of
interest to which it might turn when jaded with comfortless labor, or
exhausted with feverish invention, and yet which would never interfere
with its higher functions, when it chose to address itself to them. Even
a considerable amount of manual labor, sturdy color-grinding and
canvas-stretching, would be advantageous; though this kind of work ought
to be in great part done by pupils. For it is one of the conditions of
perfect knowledge in these matters, that every great master should have
a certain number of pupils, to whom he is to impart all the knowledge of
materials and means which he himself possesses, as soon as possible; so
that, at any rate, by the time they are fifteen years old, they may know
all that he knows himself in this kind; that is to say, all that the
world of artists know, and his own discoveries besides, and so never be
troubled about methods any more. Not that the knowledge even of his own
particular methods is to be of purpose confined to himself and his
pupils, but that necessarily it must be so in some degree; for only
those who see him at work daily can understand his small and
multitudinous ways of practice. These cannot verbally be explained to
everybody, nor is it needful that they should, only let them be
concealed from nobody who cares to see them; in which case, of course,
his attendant scholars will know them best. But all that can be made
public in matters of this kind should be so with all speed, every artist
throwing his discovery into the common stock, and the whole body of
artists taking such pains in this department of science as that there
shall be no unsettled questions about any known material or method: that
it shall be an entirely ascertained and indisputable matter which is the
best white, and which the best brown; which the strongest canvas, and
safest varnish; and which the shortest and most perfect way of doing
everything known up to that time: and if any one discovers a better, he
is to make it public forthwith. All of them taking care to embarrass
themselves with no theories or reasons for anything, but to work
empirically only: it not being in any wise their business to know
whether light moves in rays or in waves; or whether the blue rays of the
spectrum move slower or faster than the rest; but simply to know how
many minutes and seconds such and such a powder must be calcined, to
give the brightest blue.
§ XV. Now it is perhaps the most exquisite absurdity of the whole
Renaissance system, that while it has encumbered the artist with every
species of knowledge that is of no use to him, this one precious and
necessary knowledge it has utterly lost. There is not, I believe, at
this moment, a single question which could be put respecting pigments
and methods, on which the body of living artists would agree in their
answers. The lives of artists are passed in fruitless experiments;
fruitless, because undirected by experience and uncommunicated in their
results. Every man has methods of his own, which he knows to be
insufficient, and yet jealously conceals from his fellow-workmen: every
colorman has materials of his own, to which it is rare that the artist
can trust: and in the very front of the majestic advance of chemical
science, the empirical science of the artist has been annihilated, and
the days which should have led us to higher perfection are passed in
guessing at, or in mourning over, lost processes; while the so-called
Dark ages, possessing no more knowledge of chemistry than a village
herbalist does now, discovered, established, and put into daily practice
such methods of operation as have made their work, at this day, the
despair of all who look upon it.
§ XVI. And yet even this, to the painter, the safest of sciences, and in
some degree necessary, has its temptations, and capabilities of abuse.
For the simplest means are always enough for a great man; and when once
he has obtained a few ordinary colors, which he is sure will stand, and
a white surface that will not darken nor moulder, nor rend, he is master
of the world, and of his fellow-men. And, indeed, as if in these times
we were bent on furnishing examples of every species of opposite error,
while we have suffered the traditions to escape us of the simple methods
of doing simple things, which are enough for all the arts, and to all
the ages, we have set ourselves to discover fantastic modes of doing
fantastic things,--new mixtures and manipulations of metal, and
porcelain, and leather, and paper, and every conceivable condition of
false substance and cheap work, to our own infinitely multiplied
confusion,--blinding ourselves daily more and more to the great,
changeless, and inevitable truth, that there is but one goodness in art;
and that is one which the chemist cannot prepare, nor the merchant
cheapen, for it comes only of a rare human hand, and rare human soul.
§ XVII. Within its due limits, however, here is one branch of science
which the artist may pursue; and, within limits still more strict,
another also, namely, the science of the appearances of things as they
have been ascertained and registered by his fellow-men. For no day
passes but some visible fact is pointed out to us by others, which,
without their help, we should not have noticed; and the accumulation and
generalization of visible facts have formed, in the succession of ages,
the sciences of light and shade, and perspective, linear and aerial: so
that the artist is now at once put in possession of certain truths
respecting the appearances of things, which, so pointed out to him, any
man may in a few days understand and acknowledge; but which, without
aid, he could not probably discover in his lifetime. I say, probably
could not, because the time which the history of art shows us to have
been actually occupied in the discovery and systematization of such
truth, is no measure of the time _necessary_ for such discovery. The
lengthened period which elapsed between the earliest and the perfect
developement of the science of light (if I may so call it) was not
occupied in the actual effort to ascertain its laws, but in _acquiring
the disposition to make that effort_. It did not take five centuries to
find out the appearance of natural objects; but it took five centuries
to make people care about representing them. An artist of the twelfth
century did not desire to represent nature. His work was symbolical and
ornamental. So long as it was intelligible and lovely, he had no care to
make it like nature. As, for instance, when an old painter represented
the glory round a saint's head by a burnished plate of pure gold, he had
no intention of imitating an effect of light. He meant to tell the
spectator that the figure so decorated was a saint, and to produce
splendor of effect by the golden circle. It was no matter to him what
light was like. So soon as it entered into his intention to represent
the appearance of light, he was not long in discovering the natural
facts necessary for his purpose.
§ XVIII. But, this being fully allowed, it is still true that the
accumulation of facts now known respecting visible phenomena, is greater
than any man could hope to gather for himself, and that it is well for
him to be made acquainted with them; provided always, that he receive
them only at their true value, and do not suffer himself to be misled by
them. I say, at their true value; that is, an exceedingly small one. All
the information which men can receive from the accumulated experience of
others, is of no use but to enable them more quickly and accurately to
see for themselves. It will in no wise take the place of this personal
sight. Nothing can be done well in art, except by vision. Scientific
principles and experiences are helps to the eye, as a microscope is; and
they are of exactly as much use _without_ the eye. No science of
perspective, or of anything else, will enable us to draw the simplest
natural line accurately, unless we see it and feel it. Science is soon
at her wits' end. All the professors of perspective in Europe, could
not, by perspective, draw the line of curve of a sea beach; nay, could
not outline one pool of the quiet water left among the sand. The eye and
hand can do it, nothing else. All the rules of aerial perspective that
ever were written, will not tell me how sharply the pines on the
hill-top are drawn at this moment on the sky. I shall know if I see
them, and love them; not till then. I may study the laws of atmospheric
gradation for fourscore years and ten, and I shall not be able to draw
so much as a brick-kiln through its own smoke, unless I look at it; and
that in an entirely humble and unscientific manner, ready to see all
that the smoke, my master, is ready to show me, and expecting to see
nothing more.
§ XIX. So that all the knowledge a man has must be held cheap, and
neither trusted nor respected, the moment he comes face to face with
Nature. If it help him, well; if not, but, on the contrary, thrust
itself upon him in an impertinent and contradictory temper, and venture
to set itself in the slightest degree in opposition to, or comparison
with, his sight, let it be disgraced forthwith. And the slave is less
likely to take too much upon herself, if she has not been bought for a
high price. All the knowledge an artist needs, will, in these days, come
to him almost without his seeking; if he has far to look for it, he may
be sure he does not want it. Prout became Prout, without knowing a
single rule of perspective to the end of his days; and all the
perspective in the Encyclopædia will never produce us another Prout.
§ XX. And observe, also, knowledge is not only very often unnecessary,
but it is often _untrustworthy_. It is inaccurate, and betrays us where
the eye would have been true to us. Let us take the single instance of
the knowledge of aerial perspective, of which the moderns are so proud,
and see how it betrays us in various ways. First by the conceit of it,
which often prevents our enjoying work in which higher and better things
were thought of than effects of mist. The other day I showed a line
impression of Albert Durer's "St. Hubert" to a modern engraver, who had
never seen it nor any other of Albert Durer's works. He looked at it for
a minute contemptuously, then turned away: "Ah, I see that man did not
know much about aerial perspective!" All the glorious work and thought
of the mighty master, all the redundant landscape, the living
vegetation, the magnificent truth of line, were dead letters to him,
because he happened to have been taught one particular piece of
knowledge which Durer despised.
§ XXI. But not only in the conceit of it, but in the inaccuracy of it,
this science betrays us. Aerial perspective, as given by the modern
artist, is, in nine cases out of ten, a gross and ridiculous
exaggeration, as is demonstrable in a moment. The effect of air in
altering the hue and depth of color is of course great in the exact
proportion of the volume of air between the observer and the object. It
is not violent within the first few yards, and then diminished
gradually, but it is equal for each foot of interposing air. Now in a
clear day, and clear climate, such as that generally presupposed in a
work of fine color, objects are completely visible at a distance of ten
miles; visible in light and shade, with gradations between the two.
Take, then, the faintest possible hue of shadow, or of any color, and
the most violent and positive possible, and set them side by side. The
interval between them is greater than the real difference (for objects
may often be seen clearly much farther than ten miles, I have seen Mont
Blanc at 120) caused by the ten miles of intervening air between any
given hue of the nearest, and most distant, objects; but let us assume
it, in courtesy to the masters of aerial perspective, to be the real
difference. Then roughly estimating a mile at less than it really is,
also in courtesy to them, or at 5000 feet, we have this difference
between tints produced by 50,000 feet of air. Then, ten feet of air
will produce the 5000th part of this difference. Let the reader take the
two extreme tints, and carefully gradate the one into the other. Let him
divide this gradated shadow or color into 5000 successive parts; and the
difference in depth between one of these parts and the next is the exact
amount of aerial perspective between one object, and another, ten feet
behind it, on a clear day.
§ XXII. Now, in Millais' "Huguenot," the figures were standing about
three feet from the wall behind them; and the wise world of critics,
which could find no other fault with the picture, professed to have its
eyes hurt by the want of an aerial perspective, which, had it been
accurately given (as, indeed, I believe it was), would have amounted to
the 10/3-5000th, or less than the 15,000th part of the depth of any
given color. It would be interesting to see a picture painted by the
critics, upon this scientific principle. The aerial perspective usually
represented is entirely conventional and ridiculous; a mere struggle on
the part of the pretendedly well-informed, but really ignorant, artist,
to express distances by mist which he cannot by drawing.
It is curious that the critical world is just as much offended by the
true _presence_ of aerial perspective, over distances of fifty miles,
and with definite purpose of representing mist, in the works of Turner,
as by the true _absence_ of aerial perspective, over distances of three
feet, and in clear weather, in those of Millais.
§ XXIII. "Well but," still answers the reader, "this kind of error may
here and there be occasioned by too much respect for undigested
knowledge; but, on the whole, the gain is greater than the loss, and the
fact is, that a picture of the Renaissance period, or by a modern
master, does indeed represent nature more faithfully than one wrought in
the ignorance of old times." No, not one whit; for the most part less
faithfully. Indeed, the outside of nature is more truly drawn; the
material commonplace, which can be systematized, catalogued, and taught
to all pains-taking mankind,--forms of ribs and scapulæ,[12] of eyebrows
and lips, and curls of hair. Whatever can be measured and handled,
dissected and demonstrated,--in a word, whatever is of the body
only,--that the schools of knowledge do resolutely and courageously
possess themselves of, and portray. But whatever is immeasurable,
intangible, indivisible, and of the spirit, that the schools of
knowledge do as certainly lose, and blot out of their sight, that is to
say, all that is worth art's possessing or recording at all; for
whatever can be arrested, measured, and systematized, we can contemplate
as much as we will in nature herself. But what we want art to do for us
is to stay what is fleeting, and to enlighten what is incomprehensible,
to incorporate the things that have no measure, and immortalize the
things that have no duration. The dimly seen, momentary glance, the
flitting shadow of faint emotion, the imperfect lines of fading thought,
and all that by and through such things as these is recorded on the
features of man, and all that in man's person and actions, and in the
great natural world, is infinite and wonderful; having in it that spirit
and power which man may witness, but not weigh; conceive, but not
comprehend; love, but not limit; and imagine, but not define;--this, the
beginning and the end of the aim of all noble art, we have, in the
ancient art, by perception; and we have _not_, in the newer art, by
knowledge. Giotto gives it us, Orcagna gives it us. Angelico, Memmi,
Pisano, it matters not who,--all simple and unlearned men, in their
measure and manner,--give it us; and the learned men that followed them
give it us not, and we, in our supreme learning, own ourselves at this
day farther from it than ever.
§ XXIV. "Nay," but it is still answered, "this is because we have not
yet brought our knowledge into right use, but have been seeking to
accumulate it, rather than to apply it wisely to the ends of art. Let us
now do this, and we may achieve all that was done by that elder ignorant
art, and infinitely more." No, not so; for as soon as we try to put our
knowledge to good use, we shall find that we have much more than we can
use, and that what more we have is an encumbrance. All our errors in
this respect arise from a gross misconception as to the true nature of
knowledge itself. We talk of learned and ignorant men, as if there were
a certain quantity of knowledge, which to possess was to be learned, and
which not to possess was to be ignorant; instead of considering that
knowledge is infinite, and that the man most learned in human estimation
is just as far from knowing anything as he ought to know it, as the
unlettered peasant. Men are merely on a lower or higher stage of an
eminence, whose summit is God's throne, infinitely above all; and there
is just as much reason for the wisest as for the simplest man being
discontented with his position, as respects the real quantity of
knowledge he possesses. And, for both of them, the only true reasons for
contentment with the sum of knowledge they possess are these: that it is
the kind of knowledge they need for their duty and happiness in life;
that all they have is tested and certain, so far as it is in their
power; that all they have is well in order, and within reach when they
need it; that it has not cost too much time in the getting; that none of
it, once got, has been lost; and that there is not too much to be easily
taken care of.
§ XXV. Consider these requirements a little, and the evils that result
in our education and polity from neglecting them. Knowledge is mental
food, and is exactly to the spirit what food is to the body (except that
the spirit needs several sorts of food, of which knowledge is only one),
and it is liable to the same kind of misuses. It may be mixed and
disguised by art, till it becomes unwholesome; it may be refined,
sweetened, and made palatable, until it has lost all its power of
nourishment; and, even of its best kind, it may be eaten to surfeiting,
and minister to disease and death.
§ XXVI. Therefore, with respect to knowledge, we are to reason and act
exactly as with respect to food. We no more live to know, than we live
to eat. We live to contemplate, enjoy, act, adore; and we may know all
that is to be known in this world, and what Satan knows in the other,
without being able to do any of these. We are to ask, therefore, first,
is the knowledge we would have fit food for us, good and simple, not
artificial and decorated? and secondly, how much of it will enable us
best for our work; and will leave our hearts light, and our eyes clear?
For no more than that is to be eaten without the old Eve-sin.
§ XXVII. Observe, also, the difference between tasting knowledge, and
hoarding it. In this respect it is also like food; since, in some
measure, the knowledge of all men is laid up in granaries, for future
use; much of it is at any given moment dormant, not fed upon or enjoyed,
but in store. And by all it is to be remembered, that knowledge in this
form may be kept without air till it rots, or in such unthreshed
disorder that it is of no use; and that, however good or orderly, it is
still only in being tasted that it becomes of use; and that men may
easily starve in their own granaries, men of science, perhaps, most of
all, for they are likely to seek accumulation of their store, rather
than nourishment from it. Yet let it not be thought that I would
undervalue them. The good and great among them are like Joseph, to whom
all nations sought to buy corn; or like the sower going forth to sow
beside all waters, sending forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass:
only let us remember that this is not all men's work. We are not
intended to be all keepers of granaries, nor all to be measured by the
filling of a storehouse; but many, nay, most of us, are to receive day
by day our daily bread, and shall be as well nourished and as fit for
our labor, and often, also, fit for nobler and more divine labor, in
feeding from the barrel of meal that does not waste, and from the cruse
of oil that does not fail, than if our barns were filled with plenty,
and our presses bursting out with new wine.
§ XXVIII. It is for each man to find his own measure in this matter; in
great part, also, for others to find it for him, while he is yet a
youth. And the desperate evil of the whole Renaissance system is, that
all idea of measure is therein forgotten, that knowledge is thought the
one and the only good, and it is never inquired whether men are vivified
by it or paralyzed. Let us leave figures. The reader may not believe the
analogy I have been pressing so far; but let him consider the subject in
itself, let him examine the effect of knowledge in his own heart, and
see whether the trees of knowledge and of life are one now, any more
than in Paradise. He must feel that the real animating power of
knowledge is only in the moment of its being first received, when it
fills us with wonder and joy; a joy for which, observe, the previous
ignorance is just as necessary as the present knowledge. That man is
always happy who is in the presence of something which he cannot know to
the full, which he is always going on to know. This is the necessary
condition of a finite creature with divinely rooted and divinely
directed intelligence; this, therefore, its happy state,--but observe, a
state, not of triumph or joy in what it knows, but of joy rather in the
continual discovery of new ignorance, continual self-abasement,
continual astonishment. Once thoroughly our own, the knowledge ceases to
give us pleasure. It may be practically useful to us, it may be good for
others, or good for usury to obtain more; but, in itself, once let it be
thoroughly familiar, and it is dead. The wonder is gone from it, and all
the fine color which it had when first we drew it up out of the infinite
sea. And what does it matter how much or how little of it we have laid
aside, when our only enjoyment is still in the casting of that deep sea
line? What does it matter? Nay, in one respect, it matters much, and not
to our advantage. For one effect of knowledge is to deaden the force of
the imagination and the original energy of the whole man: under the
weight of his knowledge he cannot move so lightly as in the days of his
simplicity. The pack-horse is furnished for the journey, the war-horse
is armed for war; but the freedom of the field and the lightness of the
limb are lost for both. Knowledge is, at best, the pilgrim's burden or
the soldier's panoply, often a weariness to them both: and the
Renaissance knowledge is like the Renaissance armor of plate, binding
and cramping the human form; while all good knowledge is like the
crusader's chain mail, which throws itself into folds with the body, yet
it is rarely so forged as that the clasps and rivets do not gall us. All
men feel this, though they do not think of it, nor reason out its
consequences. They look back to the days of childhood as of greatest
happiness, because those were the days of greatest wonder, greatest
simplicity, and most vigorous imagination. And the whole difference
between a man of genius and other men, it has been said a thousand
times, and most truly, is that the first remains in great part a child,
seeing with the large eyes of children, in perpetual wonder, not
conscious of much knowledge,--conscious, rather, of infinite ignorance,
and yet infinite power; a fountain of eternal admiration, delight, and
creative force within him meeting the ocean of visible and governable
things around him.
That is what we have to make men, so far as we may. All are to be men of
genius in their degree,--rivulets or rivers, it does not matter, so that
the souls be clear and pure; not dead walls encompassing dead heaps of
things known and numbered, but running waters in the sweet wilderness of
things unnumbered and unknown, conscious only of the living banks, on
which they partly refresh and partly reflect the flowers, and so pass
on.
§ XXIX. Let each man answer for himself how far his knowledge has made
him this, or how far it is loaded upon him as the pyramid is upon the
tomb. Let him consider, also, how much of it has cost him labor and time
that might have been spent in healthy, happy action, beneficial to all
mankind; how many living souls may have been left uncomforted and
unhelped by him, while his own eyes were failing by the midnight lamp;
how many warm sympathies have died within him as he measured lines or
counted letters; how many draughts of ocean air, and steps on
mountain-turf, and openings of the highest heaven he has lost for his
knowledge; how much of that knowledge, so dearly bought, is now
forgotten or despised, leaving only the capacity of wonder less within
him, and, as it happens in a thousand instances, perhaps even also the
capacity of devotion. And let him,--if, after thus dealing with his own
heart, he can say that his knowledge has indeed been fruitful to
him,--yet consider how many there are who have been forced by the
inevitable laws of modern education into toil utterly repugnant to their
natures, and that in the extreme, until the whole strength of the young
soul was sapped away; and then pronounce with fearfulness how far, and
in how many senses, it may indeed be true that the wisdom of this world
is foolishness with God.
§ XXX. Now all this possibility of evil, observe, attaches to knowledge
pursued for the noblest ends, if it be pursued imprudently. I have
assumed, in speaking of its effect both on men generally and on the
artist especially, that it was sought in the true love of it, and with
all honesty and directness of purpose. But this is granting far too much
in its favor. Of knowledge in general, and without qualification, it is
said by the Apostle that "it puffeth up;" and the father of all modern
science, writing directly in its praise, yet asserts this danger even in
more absolute terms, calling it a "venomousness" in the very nature of
knowledge itself.
§ XXXI. There is, indeed, much difference in this respect between the
tendencies of different branches of knowledge; it being a sure rule that
exactly in proportion as they are inferior, nugatory, or limited in
scope, their power of feeding pride is greater. Thus philology, logic,
rhetoric, and the other sciences of the schools, being for the most part
ridiculous and trifling, have so pestilent an effect upon those who are
devoted to them, that their students cannot conceive of any higher
sciences than these, but fancy that all education ends in the knowledge
of words: but the true and great sciences, more especially natural
history, make men gentle and modest in proportion to the largeness of
their apprehension, and just perception of the infiniteness of the
things they can never know. And this, it seems to me, is the principal
lesson we are intended to be caught by the book of Job; for there God
has thrown open to us the heart of a man most just and holy, and
apparently perfect in all things possible to human nature except
humility. For this he is tried: and we are shown that no suffering, no
self-examination, however honest, however stern, no searching out of the
heart by its own bitterness, is enough to convince man of his
nothingness before God; but that the sight of God's creation will do it.
For, when the Deity himself has willed to end the temptation, and to
accomplish in Job that for which it was sent, He does not vouchsafe to
reason with him, still less does He overwhelm him with terror, or
confound him by laying open before his eyes the book of his iniquities.
He opens before him only the arch of the dayspring, and the fountains of
the deep; and amidst the covert of the reeds, and on the heaving waves,
He bids him watch the kings of the children of pride,--"Behold now
Behemoth, which I made with thee:" And the work is done.
§ XXXII. Thus, if, I repeat, there is any one lesson in the whole book
which stands forth more definitely than another, it is this of the holy
and humbling influence of natural science on the human heart. And yet,
even here, it is not the science, but the perception, to which the good
is owing; and the natural sciences may become as harmful as any others,
when they lose themselves in classification and catalogue-making. Still,
the principal danger is with the sciences of words and methods; and it
was exactly into those sciences that the whole energy of men during the
Renaissance period was thrown. They discovered suddenly that the world
for ten centuries had been living in an ungrammatical manner, and they
made it forthwith the end of human existence to be grammatical. And it
mattered thenceforth nothing what was said, or what was done, so only
that it was said with scholarship, and done with system. Falsehood in a
Ciceronian dialect had no opposers; truth in patois no listeners. A
Roman phrase was thought worth any number of Gothic facts. The sciences
ceased at once to be anything more than different kinds of
grammars,--grammar of language, grammar of logic, grammar of ethics,
grammar of art; and the tongue, wit, and invention of the human race
were supposed to have found their utmost and most divine mission in
syntax and syllogism, perspective and five orders.
Of such knowledge as this, nothing but pride could come; and, therefore,
I have called the first mental characteristic of the Renaissance
schools, the "pride" of science. If they had reached any science worth
the name, they might have loved it; but of the paltry knowledge they
possessed, they could only be proud. There was not anything in it
capable of being loved. Anatomy, indeed, then first made a subject of
accurate study, is a true science, but not so attractive as to enlist
the affections strongly on its side: and therefore, like its meaner
sisters, it became merely a ground for pride; and the one main purpose
of the Renaissance artists, in all their work, was to show how much they
knew.
§ XXXIII. There were, of course, noble exceptions; but chiefly belonging
to the earliest periods of the Renaissance, when its teaching had not
yet produced its full effect. Raphael, Leonardo, and Michael Angelo were
all trained in the old school; they all had masters who knew the true
ends of art, and had reached them; masters nearly as great as they were
themselves, but imbued with the old religious and earnest spirit, which
their disciples receiving from them, and drinking at the same time
deeply from all the fountains of knowledge opened in their day, became
the world's wonders. Then the dull wondering world believed that their
greatness rose out of their new knowledge, instead of out of that
ancient religious root, in which to abide was life, from which to be
severed was annihilation. And from that day to this, they have tried to
produce Michael Angelos and Leonardos by teaching the barren sciences,
and still have mourned and marvelled that no more Michael Angelos came;
not perceiving that those great Fathers were only able to receive such
nourishment because they were rooted on the rock of all ages, and that
our scientific teaching, nowadays, is nothing more nor less than the
assiduous watering of trees whose stems are cut through. Nay, I have
even granted too much in saying that those great men were able to
receive pure nourishment from the sciences; for my own conviction is,
and I know it to be shared by most of those who love Raphael
truly,--that he painted best when he knew least. Michael Angelo was
betrayed, again and again, into such vain and offensive exhibition of
his anatomical knowledge as, to this day, renders his higher powers
indiscernible by the greater part of men; and Leonardo fretted his life
away in engineering, so that there is hardly a picture left to bear his
name. But, with respect to all who followed, there can be no question
that the science they possessed was utterly harmful; serving merely to
draw away their hearts at once from the purposes of art and the power of
nature, and to make, out of the canvas and marble, nothing more than
materials for the exhibition of petty dexterity and useless knowledge.
§ XXXIV. It is sometimes amusing to watch the naïve and childish way in
which this vanity is shown. For instance, when perspective was first
invented, the world thought it a mighty discovery, and the greatest men
it had in it were as proud of knowing that retiring lines converge, as
if all the wisdom of Solomon had been compressed into a vanishing point.
And, accordingly, it became nearly impossible for any one to paint a
Nativity, but he must turn the stable and manger into a Corinthian
arcade, in order to show his knowledge of perspective; and half the best
architecture of the time, instead of being adorned with historical
sculpture, as of old, was set forth with bas-relief of minor corridors
and galleries, thrown into perspective.
Now that perspective can be taught to any schoolboy in a week, we can
smile at this vanity. But the fact is, that all pride in knowledge is
precisely as ridiculous, whatever its kind, or whatever its degree.
There is, indeed, nothing of which man has any right to be proud; but
the very last thing of which, with any show of reason, he can make his
boast is his knowledge, except only that infinitely small portion of it
which he has discovered for himself. For what is there to be more proud
of in receiving a piece of knowledge from another person, than in
receiving a piece of money? Beggars should not be proud, whatever kind
of alms they receive. Knowledge is like current coin. A man may have
some right to be proud of possessing it, if he has worked for the gold
of it, and assayed it, and stamped it, so that it may be received of
all men as true; or earned it fairly, being already assayed: but if he
has done none of these things, but only had it thrown in his face by a
passer-by, what cause has he to be proud? And though, in this mendicant
fashion, he had heaped together the wealth of Croesus, would pride any
more, for this, become him, as, in some sort, it becomes the man who has
labored for his fortune, however small? So, if a man tells me the sun is
larger than the earth, have I any cause for pride in knowing it? or, if
any multitude of men tell me any number of things, heaping all their
wealth of knowledge upon me, have I any reason to be proud under the
heap? And is not nearly all the knowledge of which we boast in these
days cast upon us in this dishonorable way; worked for by other men,
proved by them, and then forced upon us, even against our wills, and
beaten into us in our youth, before we have the wit even to know if it
be good or not? (Mark the distinction between knowledge and thought.)
Truly a noble possession to be proud of! Be assured, there is no part of
the furniture of a man's mind which he has a right to exult in, but that
which he has hewn and fashioned for himself. He who has built himself a
hut on a desert heath, and carved his bed, and table, and chair out of
the nearest forest, may have some right to take pride in the appliances
of his narrow chamber, as assuredly he will have joy in them. But the
man who has had a palace built, and adorned, and furnished for him, may,
indeed, have many advantages above the other, but he has no reason to be
proud of his upholsterer's skill; and it is ten to one if he has half
the joy in his couches of ivory that the other will have in his pallet
of pine.
§ XXXV. And observe how we feel this, in the kind of respect we pay to
such knowledge as we are indeed capable of estimating the value of. When
it is our own, and new to us, we cannot judge of it; but let it be
another's also, and long familiar to us, and see what value we set on
it. Consider how we regard a schoolboy, fresh from his term's labor. If
he begin to display his newly acquired small knowledge to us, and plume
himself thereupon, how soon do we silence him with contempt! But it is
not so if the schoolboy begins to feel or see anything. In the strivings
of his soul within him he is our equal; in his power of sight and
thought he stands separate from us, and may be a greater than we. We are
ready to hear him forthwith. "You saw that? you felt that? No matter for
your being a child; let us hear."
§ XXXVI. Consider that every generation of men stands in this relation
to its successors. It is as the schoolboy: the knowledge of which it is
proudest will be as the alphabet to those who follow. It had better make
no noise about its knowledge; a time will come when its utmost, in that
kind, will be food for scorn. Poor fools! was that all they knew? and
behold how proud they were! But what we see and feel will never be
mocked at. All men will be thankful to us for telling them that.
"Indeed!" they will say, "they felt that in their day? saw that? Would
God we may be like them, before we go to the home where sight and
thought are not!"
This unhappy and childish pride in knowledge, then, was the first
constituent element of the Renaissance mind, and it was enough, of
itself, to have cast it into swift decline: but it was aided by another
form of pride, which was above called the Pride of State; and which we
have next to examine.
§ XXXVII. II. PRIDE OF STATE. It was noticed in the second volume of
"Modern Painters," p. 122, that the principle which had most power in
retarding the modern school of portraiture was its constant expression
of individual vanity and pride. And the reader cannot fail to have
observed that one of the readiest and commonest ways in which the
painter ministers to this vanity, is by introducing the pedestal or
shaft of a column, or some fragment, however simple, of Renaissance
architecture, in the background of the portrait. And this is not merely
because such architecture is bolder or grander than, in general, that of
the apartments of a private house. No other architecture would produce
the same effect in the same degree. The richest Gothic, the most massive
Norman, would not produce the same sense of exaltation as the simple
and meagre lines of the Renaissance.
§ XXXVIII. And if we think over this matter a little, we shall soon feel
that in those meagre lines there is indeed an expression of aristocracy
in its worst characters; coldness, perfectness of training, incapability
of emotion, want of sympathy with the weakness of lower men, blank,
hopeless, haughty self-sufficiency. All these characters are written in
the Renaissance architecture as plainly as if they were graven on it in
words. For, observe, all other architectures have something in them that
common men can enjoy; some concession to the simplicities of humanity,
some daily bread for the hunger of the multitude. Quaint fancy, rich
ornament, bright color, something that shows a sympathy with men of
ordinary minds and hearts; and this wrought out, at least in the Gothic,
with a rudeness showing that the workman did not mind exposing his own
ignorance if he could please others. But the Renaissance is exactly the
contrary of all this. It is rigid, cold, inhuman; incapable of glowing,
of stooping, of conceding for an instant. Whatever excellence it has is
refined, high-trained, and deeply erudite; a kind which the architect
well knows no common mind can taste. He proclaims it to us aloud. "You
cannot feel my work unless you study Vitruvius. I will give you no gay
color, no pleasant sculpture, nothing to make you happy; for I am a
learned man. All the pleasure you can have in anything I do is in its
proud breeding, its rigid formalism, its perfect finish, its cold
tranquillity. I do not work for the vulgar, only for the men of the
academy and the court."
§ XXXIX. And the instinct of the world felt this in a moment. In the new
precision and accurate law of the classical forms, they perceived
something peculiarly adapted to the setting forth of state in an
appalling manner: Princes delighted in it, and courtiers. The Gothic was
good for God's worship, but this was good for man's worship. The Gothic
had fellowship with all hearts, and was universal, like nature: it could
frame a temple for the prayer of nations, or shrink into the poor man's
winding stair. But here was an architecture that would not shrink, that
had in it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced
in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not
be built of the materials at the poor man's hand; it would not roof
itself with thatch or shingle, and black oak beams; it would not wall
itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small
windows where they were needed; it would not niche itself, wherever
there was room for it, in the street corners. It would be of hewn stone;
it would have its windows and its doors, and its stairs and its pillars,
in lordly order, and of stately size; it would have its wings and its
corridors, and its halls and its gardens, as if all the earth were its
own. And the rugged cottages of the mountaineers, and the fantastic
streets of the laboring burgher were to be thrust out of its way, as of
a lower species.
§ XL. It is to be noted also, that it ministered as much to luxury as to
pride. Not to luxury of the eye, that is a holy luxury; Nature ministers
to that in her painted meadows, and sculptured forests, and gilded
heavens; the Gothic builder ministered to that in his twisted traceries,
and deep-wrought foliage, and burning casements. The dead Renaissance
drew back into its earthliness, out of all that was warm and heavenly;
back into its pride, out of all that was simple and kind; back into its
stateliness, out of all that was impulsive, reverent, and gay. But it
understood the luxury of the body; the terraced and scented and grottoed
garden, with its trickling fountains and slumbrous shades; the spacious
hall and lengthened corridor for the summer heat; the well-closed
windows, and perfect fittings and furniture, for defence against the
cold; and the soft picture, and frescoed wall and roof, covered with the
last lasciviousness of Paganism;--this is understood and possessed to
the full, and still possesses. This is the kind of domestic architecture
on which we pride ourselves, even to this day, as an infinite and
honorable advance from the rough habits of our ancestors; from the time
when the king's floor was strewn with rushes, and the tapestries swayed
before the searching wind in the baron's hall.
§ XLI. Let us hear two stories of those rougher times.
At the debate of King Edwin with his courtiers and priests, whether he
ought to receive the Gospel preached to him by Paulinus, one of his
nobles spoke as follows:
"The present life, O king! weighed with the time that is unknown, seems
to me like this. When you are sitting at a feast with your earls and
thanes in winter time, and the fire is lighted, and the hall is warmed,
and it rains and snows, and the storm is loud without, there comes a
sparrow, and flies through the house. It comes in at one door and goes
out at the other. While it is within, it is not touched by the winter's
storm; but it is but for the twinkling of an eye, for from winter it
comes and to winter it returns. So also this life of man endureth for a
little space; what goes before or what follows after, we know not.
Wherefore, if this new lore bring anything more certain, it is fit that
we should follow it."[13]
That could not have happened in a Renaissance building. The bird could
not have dashed in from the cold into the heat, and from the heat back
again into the storm. It would have had to come up a flight of marble
stairs, and through seven or eight antechambers; and so, if it had ever
made its way into the presence chamber, out again through loggias and
corridors innumerable. And the truth which the bird brought with it,
fresh from heaven, has, in like manner, to make its way to the
Renaissance mind through many antechambers, hardly, and as a despised
thing, if at all.
§ XLII. Hear another story of those early times.
The king of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, at the siege of Asshur, or
Arsur, gave audience to some emirs from Samaria and Naplous. They found
him seated on the ground on a sack of straw. They expressing surprise,
Godfrey answered them: "May not the earth, out of which we came, and
which is to be our dwelling after death, serve us for a seat during
life?"
It is long since such a throne has been set in the reception chambers
of Christendom, or such an answer heard from the lips of a king.
Thus the Renaissance spirit became base both in its abstinence and its
indulgence. Base in its abstinence; curtailing the bright and playful
wealth of form and thought, which filled the architecture of the earlier
ages with sources of delight for their hardy spirit, pure, simple, and
yet rich as the fretwork of flowers and moss, watered by some strong and
stainless mountain stream: and base in its indulgence; as it granted to
the body what it withdrew from the heart, and exhausted, in smoothing
the pavement for the painless feet, and softening the pillow for the
sluggish brain, the powers of art which once had hewn rough ladders into
the clouds of heaven, and set up the stones by which they rested for
houses of God.
§ XLIII. And just in proportion as this courtly sensuality lowered the
real nobleness of the men whom birth or fortune raised above their
fellows, rose their estimate of their own dignity, together with the
insolence and unkindness of its expression, and the grossness of the
flattery with which it was fed. Pride is indeed the first and the last
among the sins of men, and there is no age of the world in which it has
not been unveiled in the power and prosperity of the wicked. But there
was never in any form of slavery, or of feudal supremacy, a
forgetfulness so total of the common majesty of the human soul, and of
the brotherly kindness due from man to man, as in the aristocratic
follies in the Renaissance. I have not space to follow out this most
interesting and extensive subject; but here is a single and very curious
example of the kind of flattery with which architectural teaching was
mingled when addressed to the men of rank of the day.
§ XLIV. In St. Mark's library there is a very curious Latin manuscript
of the twenty-five books of Averulinus, a Florentine architect, upon the
principles of his art. The book was written in or about 1460, and
translated into Latin, and richly illuminated for Corvinus, king of
Hungary, about 1483. I extract from the third book the following passage
on the nature of stones. "As there are three genera of men,--that is to
say, nobles, men of the middle classes, and rustics,--so it appears that
there are of stones. For the marbles and common stones of which we have
spoken above, set forth the rustics. The porphyries and alabasters, and
the other harder stones of mingled quality, represent the middle
classes, if we are to deal in comparisons: and by means of these the
ancients adorned their temples with incrustations and ornaments in a
magnificent manner. And after these come the chalcedonies and
sardonyxes, &c., which are so transparent that there can be seen no spot
in them.[14] Thus men endowed with nobility lead a life in which no spot
can be found."
Canute or Coeur de Lion (I name not Godfrey or St. Louis) would have
dashed their sceptres against the lips of a man who should have dared to
utter to them flattery such as this. But in the fifteenth century it was
rendered and accepted as a matter of course, and the tempers which
delighted in it necessarily took pleasure also in every vulgar or false
means, of taking worldly superiority. And among such false means
largeness of scale in the dwelling-house was of course one of the
easiest and most direct. All persons, however senseless or dull, could
appreciate size: it required some exertion of intelligence to enter into
the spirit of the quaint carving of the Gothic times, but none to
perceive that one heap of stones was higher than another.[15] And
therefore, while in the execution and manner of work the Renaissance
builders zealously vindicated for themselves the attribute of cold and
superior learning, they appealed for such approbation as they needed
from the multitude, to the lowest possible standard of taste; and while
the older workman lavished his labor on the minute niche and narrow
casement, on the doorways no higher than the head, and the contracted
angles of the turreted chamber, the Renaissance builder spared such cost
and toil in his detail, that he might spend it in bringing larger stones
from a distance; and restricted himself to rustication and five orders,
that he might load the ground with colossal piers, and raise an
ambitious barrenness of architecture, as inanimate as it was gigantic,
above the feasts and follies of the powerful or the rich. The Titanic
insanity extended itself also into ecclesiastical design: the principal
church in Italy was built with little idea of any other admirableness
than that which was to result from its being huge; and the religious
impressions of those who enter it are to this day supposed to be
dependent, in a great degree, on their discovering that they cannot span
the thumbs of the statues which sustain the vessels for holy water.
§ XLV. It is easy to understand how an architecture which thus appealed
not less to the lowest instincts of dulness than to the subtlest pride
of learning, rapidly found acceptance with a large body of mankind; and
how the spacious pomp of the new manner of design came to be eagerly
adopted by the luxurious aristocracies, not only of Venice, but of the
other countries of Christendom, now gradually gathering themselves into
that insolent and festering isolation, against which the cry of the poor
sounded hourly in more ominous unison, bursting at last into thunder
(mark where,--first among the planted walks and plashing fountains of
the palace wherein the Renaissance luxury attained its utmost height in
Europe, Versailles); that cry, mingling so much piteousness with its
wrath and indignation, "Our soul is filled with the scornful reproof of
the wealthy, and with the despitefulness of the proud."
§ XLVI. But of all the evidence bearing upon this subject presented by
the various arts of the fifteenth century, none is so interesting or so
conclusive as that deduced from its tombs. For, exactly in proportion as
the pride of life became more insolent, the fear of death became more
servile; and the difference in the manner in which the men of early and
later days adorned the sepulchre, confesses a still greater difference
in their manner of regarding death. To those he came as the comforter
and the friend, rest in his right hand, hope in his left; to these as
the humiliator, the spoiler, and the avenger. And, therefore, we find
the early tombs at once simple and lovely in adornment, severe and
solemn in their expression; confessing the power, and accepting the
peace, of death, openly and joyfully; and in all their symbols marking
that the hope of resurrection lay only in Christ's righteousness; signed
always with this simple utterance of the dead, "I will lay me down in
peace, and take my rest; for it is thou, Lord, only that makest me dwell
in safety." But the tombs of the later ages are a ghastly struggle of
mean pride and miserable terror: the one mustering the statues of the
Virtues about the tomb, disguising the sarcophagus with delicate
sculpture, polishing the false periods of the elaborate epitaph, and
filling with strained animation the features of the portrait statue; and
the other summoning underneath, out of the niche or from behind the
curtain, the frowning skull, or scythed skeleton, or some other more
terrible image of the enemy in whose defiance the whiteness of the
sepulchre had been set to shine above the whiteness of the ashes.
§ XLVII. This change in the feeling with which sepulchral monuments were
designed, from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries, has been common
to the whole of Europe. But, as Venice is in other respects the centre
of the Renaissance system, so also she exhibits this change in the
manner of the sepulchral monument under circumstances peculiarly
calculated to teach us its true character. For the severe guard which,
in earlier times, she put upon every tendency to personal pomp and
ambition, renders the tombs of her ancient monarchs as remarkable for
modesty and simplicity as for their religious feeling; so that, in this
respect, they are separated by a considerable interval from the more
costly monuments erected at the same periods to the kings or nobles of
other European states. In later times, on the other hand, as the piety
of the Venetians diminished, their pride overleaped all limits, and the
tombs which in recent epochs, were erected for men who had lived only to
impoverish or disgrace the state, were as much more magnificent than
those contemporaneously erected for the nobles of Europe, as the
monuments for the great Doges had been humbler. When, in addition to
this, we reflect that the art of sculpture, considered as expressive of
emotion, was at a low ebb in Venice in the twelfth century, and that in
the seventeenth she took the lead in Italy in luxurious work, we shall
at once see the chain of examples through which the change of feeling is
expressed, must present more remarkable extremes here than it can in any
other city; extremes so startling that their impressiveness cannot be
diminished, while their intelligibility is greatly increased, by the
large number of intermediate types which have fortunately been
preserved.
It would, however, too much weary the general reader if, without
illustrations, I were to endeavor to lead him step by step through the
aisles of St. John and Paul; and I shall therefore confine myself to a
slight notice of those features in sepulchral architecture generally
which are especially illustrative of the matter at present in hand, and
point out the order in which, if possible, the traveller should visit
the tombs in Venice, so as to be most deeply impressed with the true
character of the lessons they convey.
§ XLVIII. I have not such an acquaintance with the modes of entombment
or memorial in the earliest ages of Christianity as would justify me in
making any general statement respecting them: but it seems to me that
the perfect type of a Christian tomb was not developed until toward the
thirteenth century, sooner or later according to the civilization of
each country; that perfect type consisting in the raised and perfectly
visible sarcophagus of stone, bearing upon it a recumbent figure, and
the whole covered by a canopy. Before that type was entirely developed,
and in the more ordinary tombs contemporary with it, we find the simple
sarcophagus, often with only a rough block of stone for its lid,
sometimes with a low-gabled lid like a cottage roof, derived from
Egyptian forms, and bearing, either on the sides or the lid, at least a
sculpture of the cross, and sometimes the name of the deceased, and date
of erection of the tomb. In more elaborate examples rich
figure-sculpture is gradually introduced; and in the perfect period the
sarcophagus, even when it does not bear any recumbent figure, has
generally a rich sculpture on its sides representing an angel presenting
the dead, in person and dress as he lived, to Christ or to the Madonna,
with lateral figures, sometimes of saints, sometimes--as in the tombs of
the Dukes of Burgundy at Dijon--of mourners; but in Venice almost always
representing the Annunciation, the angel being placed at one angle of
the sarcophagus, and the Madonna at the other. The canopy, in a very
simple foursquare form, or as an arch over a recess, is added above the
sarcophagus, long before the life-size recumbent figure appears resting
upon it. By the time that the sculptors had acquired skill enough to
give much expression to this figure, the canopy attains an exquisite
symmetry and richness; and, in the most elaborate examples, is
surmounted by a statue, generally small, representing the dead person in
the full strength and pride of life, while the recumbent figure shows
him as he lay in death. And, at this point, the perfect type of the
Gothic tomb is reached.
§ XLIX. Of the simple sarcophagus tomb there are many exquisite examples
both at Venice and Verona; the most interesting in Venice are those
which are set in the recesses of the rude brick front of the Church of
St. John and Paul, ornamented only, for the most part, with two crosses
set in circles, and the legend with the name of the dead, and an "Orate
pro anima" in another circle in the centre. And in this we may note one
great proof of superiority in Italian over English tombs; the latter
being often enriched with quatrefoils, small shafts, and arches, and
other ordinary architectural decorations, which destroy their
seriousness and solemnity, render them little more than ornamental, and
have no religious meaning whatever; while the Italian sarcophagi are
kept massive, smooth, and gloomy,--heavy-lidded dungeons of stone, like
rock-tombs,--but bearing on their surface, sculptured with tender and
narrow lines, the emblem of the cross, not presumptuously nor proudly,
but dimly graven upon their granite, like the hope which the human heart
holds, but hardly perceives in its heaviness.
§ L. Among the tombs in front of the Church of St. John and Paul there
is one which is peculiarly illustrative of the simplicity of these
earlier ages. It is on the left of the entrance, a massy sarcophagus
with low horns as of an altar, placed in a rude recess of the outside
wall, shattered and worn, and here and there entangled among wild grass
and weeds. Yet it is the tomb of two Doges, Jacopo and Lorenzo Tiepolo,
by one of whom nearly the whole ground was given for the erection of the
noble church in front of which his unprotected tomb is wasting away. The
sarcophagus bears an inscription in the centre, describing the acts of
the Doges, of which the letters show that it was added a considerable
period after the erection of the tomb: the original legend is still left
in other letters on its base, to this effect,
"Lord James, died 1251. Lord Laurence, died 1288."
At the two corners of the sarcophagus are two angels bearing censers;
and on its lid two birds, with crosses like crests upon their heads. For
the sake of the traveller in Venice the reader will, I think, pardon me
the momentary irrelevancy of telling the meaning of these symbols.
§ LI. The foundation of the church of St. John and Paul was laid by the
Dominicans about 1234, under the immediate protection of the Senate and
the Doge Giacomo Tiepolo, accorded to them in consequence of a
miraculous vision appearing to the Doge; of which the following account
is given in popular tradition:
"In the year 1226, the Doge Giacomo Tiepolo dreamed a dream; and in his
dream he saw the little oratory of the Dominicans, and, behold, the
ground all around it (now occupied by the church) was covered with
roses of the color of vermilion, and the air was filled with their
fragrance. And in the midst of the roses, there were seen flying to and
fro a crowd of white doves, with golden crosses upon their heads. And
while the Doge looked, and wondered, behold, two angels descended from
heaven with golden censers, and passing through the oratory, and forth
among the flowers, they filled the place with the smoke of their
incense. Then the Doge heard suddenly a clear and loud voice which
proclaimed, 'This is the place that I have chosen for my preachers;' and
having heard it, straightway he awoke and went to the Senate, and
declared to them the vision. Then the Senate decreed that forty paces of
ground should be given to enlarge the monastery; and the Doge Tiepolo
himself made a still larger grant afterwards."
There is nothing miraculous in the occurrence of such a dream as this to
the devout Doge; and the fact, of which there is no doubt, that the
greater part of the land on which the church stands was given by him, is
partly a confirmation of the story. But, whether the sculptures on the
tomb were records of the vision, or the vision a monkish invention from
the sculptures on the tomb, the reader will not, I believe, look upon
its doves and crosses, or rudely carved angels, any more with disdain;
knowing how, in one way or another, they were connected with a point of
deep religious belief.
§ LII. Towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, in Venice, the
recumbent figure begins to appear on the sarcophagus, the first dated
example being also one of the most beautiful; the statue of the prophet
Simeon, sculptured upon the tomb which was to receive his relics in the
church dedicated to him under the name of San Simeone Grande. So soon as
the figure appears, the sarcophagus becomes much more richly sculptured,
but always with definite religious purpose. It is usually divided into
two panels, which are filled with small bas-reliefs of the acts or
martyrdom of the patron saints of the deceased: between them, in the
centre, Christ, or the Virgin and Child, are richly enthroned, under a
curtained canopy; and the two figures representing the Annunciation are
almost always at the angles; the promise of the Birth of Christ being
taken as at once the ground and the type of the promise of eternal life
to all men.
§ LIII. These figures are always in Venice most rudely chiselled; the
progress of figure sculpture being there comparatively tardy. At Verona,
where the great Pisan school had strong influence, the monumental
sculpture is immeasurably finer; and, so early as about the year
1335,[16] the consummate form of the Gothic tomb occurs in the monument
of Can Grande della Scala at Verona. It is set over the portal of the
chapel anciently belonging to the family. The sarcophagus is sculptured
with shallow bas-reliefs, representing (which is rare in the tombs with
which I am acquainted in Italy, unless they are those of saints) the
principal achievements of the warrior's life, especially the siege of
Vicenza and battle of Placenza; these sculptures, however, form little
more than a chased and roughened groundwork for the fully relieved
statues representing the Annunciation, projecting boldly from the front
of the sarcophagus. Above, the Lord of Verona is laid in his long robe
of civil dignity, wearing the simple bonnet, consisting merely of a
fillet bound round the brow, knotted and falling on the shoulder. He is
laid as asleep; his arms crossed upon his body, and his sword by his
side. Above him, a bold arched canopy is sustained by two projecting
shafts, and on the pinnacle of its roof is the statue of the knight on
his war-horse; his helmet, dragon-winged and crested with the dog's
head, tossed back behind his shoulders, and the broad and blazoned
drapery floating back from his horse's breast,--so truly drawn by the
old workman from the life, that it seems to wave in the wind, and the
knight's spear to shake, and his marble horse to be evermore quickening
its pace, and starting into heavier and hastier charge, as the silver
clouds float past behind it in the sky.
§ LIV. Now observe, in this tomb, as much concession is made to the
pride of man as may ever consist with honor, discretion, or dignity. I
do not enter into any question respecting the character of Can Grande,
though there can be little doubt that he was one of the best among the
nobles of his time; but that is not to our purpose. It is not the
question whether his wars were just, or his greatness honorably
achieved; but whether, supposing them to have been so, these facts are
well and gracefully told upon his tomb. And I believe there can be no
hesitation in the admission of its perfect feeling and truth. Though
beautiful, the tomb is so little conspicuous or intrusive, that it
serves only to decorate the portal of the little chapel, and is hardly
regarded by the traveller as he enters. When it is examined, the history
of the acts of the dead is found subdued into dim and minute ornament
upon his coffin; and the principal aim of the monument is to direct the
thoughts to his image as he lies in death, and to the expression of his
hope of resurrection; while, seen as by the memory far away, diminished
in the brightness of the sky, there is set the likeness of his armed
youth, stately, as it stood of old, in the front of battle, and meet to
be thus recorded for us, that we may now be able to remember the dignity
of the frame, of which those who once looked upon it hardly remembered
that it was dust.
§ LV. This, I repeat, is as much as may ever be granted, but this ought
always to be granted, to the honor and the affection of men. The tomb
which stands beside that of Can Grande, nearest it in the little field
of sleep, already shows the traces of erring ambition. It is the tomb of
Mastino the Second, in whose reign began the decline of his family. It
is altogether exquisite as a work of art; and the evidence of a less
wise or noble feeling in its design is found only in this, that the
image of a virtue, Fortitude, as belonging to the dead, is placed on the
extremity of the sarcophagus, opposite to the Crucifixion. But for this
slight circumstance, of which the significance will only be appreciated
as we examine the series of later monuments, the composition of this
monument of Can Mastino would have been as perfect as its decoration is
refined. It consists, like that of Can Grande, of the raised
sarcophagus, bearing the recumbent statue, protected by a noble
foursquare canopy, sculptured with ancient Scripture history. On one
side of the sarcophagus is Christ enthroned, with Can Mastino kneeling
before Him; on the other, Christ is represented in the mystical form,
half-rising from the tomb, meant, I believe, to be at once typical of
His passion and resurrection. The lateral panels are occupied by statues
of saints. At one extremity of the sarcophagus is the Crucifixion; at
the other, a noble statue of Fortitude, with a lion's skin thrown over
her shoulders, its head forming a shield upon her breast, her flowing
hair bound with a narrow fillet, and a three-edged sword in her
gauntleted right hand, drawn back sternly behind her thigh, while, in
her left, she bears high the shield of the Scalas.
§ LVI. Close to this monument is another, the stateliest and most
sumptuous of the three; it first arrests the eye of the stranger, and
long detains it,--a many-pinnacled pile surrounded by niches with
statues of the warrior saints.
It is beautiful, for it still belongs to the noble time, the latter part
of the fourteenth century; but its work is coarser than that of the
other, and its pride may well prepare us to learn that it was built for
himself, in his own lifetime, by the man whose statue crowns it, Can
Signorio della Scala. Now observe, for this is infinitely significant.
Can Mastino II. was feeble and wicked, and began the ruin of his house;
his sarcophagus is the first which bears upon it the image of a virtue,
but he lays claim only to Fortitude. Can Signorio was twice a
fratricide, the last time when he lay upon his death-bed: _his_ tomb
bears upon its gables the images of six virtues,--Faith, Hope, Charity,
Prudence, and (I believe) Justice and Fortitude.
§ LVII. Let us now return to Venice, where, in the second chapel
counting from right to left, at the west end of the Church of the Frari,
there is a very early fourteenth, or perhaps late thirteenth, century
tomb, another exquisite example of the perfect Gothic form. It is a
knight's; but there is no inscription upon it, and his name is unknown.
It consists of a sarcophagus, supported on bold brackets against the
chapel wall, bearing the recumbent figure, protected by a simple canopy
in the form of a pointed arch, pinnacled by the knight's crest; beneath
which the shadowy space is painted dark blue, and strewn with stars. The
statue itself is rudely carved; but its lines, as seen from the intended
distance, are both tender and masterly. The knight is laid in his mail,
only the hands and face being bare. The hauberk and helmet are of
chain-mail, the armor for the limbs of jointed steel; a tunic, fitting
close to the breast, and marking the noble swell of it by two narrow
embroidered lines, is worn over the mail; his dagger is at his right
side; his long cross-belted sword, not seen by the spectator from below,
at his left. His feet rest on a hound (the hound being his crest), which
looks up towards its master. In general, in tombs of this kind, the face
of the statue is slightly turned towards the spectator; in this
monument, on the contrary, it is turned away from him, towards the depth
of the arch: for there, just above the warrior's breast, is carved a
small image of St. Joseph bearing the infant Christ, who looks down upon
the resting figure; and to this image its countenance is turned. The
appearance of the entire tomb is as if the warrior had seen the vision
of Christ in his dying moments, and had fallen back peacefully upon his
pillow, with his eyes still turned to it, and his hands clasped in
prayer.
§ LVIII. On the opposite side of this chapel is another very lovely
tomb, to Duccio degli Alberti, a Florentine ambassador at Venice;
noticeable chiefly as being the first in Venice on which any images of
the Virtues appear. We shall return to it presently, but some account
must first be given of the more important among the other tombs in
Venice belonging to the perfect period. Of these, by far the most
interesting, though not the most elaborate, is that of the great Doge
Francesco Dandolo, whose ashes, it might have been thought, were
honorable enough to have been permitted to rest undisturbed in the
chapter-house of the Frari, where they were first laid. But, as if there
were not room enough, nor waste houses enough in the desolate city to
receive a few convent papers, the monks, wanting an "archivio," have
separated the tomb into three pieces: the canopy, a simple arch
sustained on brackets, still remains on the blank walls of the
desecrated chamber; the sarcophagus has been transported to a kind of
museum of antiquities, established in what was once the cloister of
Santa Maria della Salute; and the painting which filled the lunette
behind it is hung far out of sight, at one end of the sacristy of the
same church. The sarcophagus is completely charged with bas-reliefs: at
its two extremities are the types of St. Mark and St. John; in front, a
noble sculpture of the death of the Virgin; at the angles, angels
holding vases. The whole space is occupied by the sculpture; there are
no spiral shafts or panelled divisions; only a basic plinth below, and
crowning plinth above, the sculpture being raised from a deep concave
field between the two, but, in order to give piquancy and
picturesqueness to the mass of figures, two small trees are introduced
at the head and foot of the Madonna's couch, an oak and a stone pine.
§ LIX. It was said above,[17] in speaking of the frequent disputes of
the Venetians with the Pontifical power, which in their early days they
had so strenuously supported, that "the humiliation of Francesco Dandolo
blotted out the shame of Barbarossa." It is indeed well that the two
events should be remembered together. By the help of the Venetians,
Alexander III. was enabled, in the twelfth century, to put his foot upon
the neck of the emperor Barbarossa, quoting the words of the Psalm,
"Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the adder." A hundred and fifty
years later, the Venetian ambassador, Francesco Dandolo, unable to
obtain even an audience from the Pope, Clement V., to whom he had been
sent to pray for a removal of the sentence of excommunication pronounced
against the republic, concealed himself (according to the common
tradition) beneath the Pontiff's dining-table; and thence coming out as
he sat down to meat, embraced his feet, and obtained, by tearful
entreaties, the removal of the terrible sentence.
I say, "according to the common tradition;" for there are some doubts
cast upon the story by its supplement. Most of the Venetian historians
assert that Francesco Dandolo's surname of "Dog" was given him first on
this occasion, in insult, by the cardinals; and that the Venetians, in
remembrance of the grace which his humiliation had won for them, made it
a title of honor to him and to his race. It has, however, been
proved[18] that the surname was borne by the ancestors of Francesco
Dandolo long before; and the falsity of this seal of the legend renders
also its circumstances doubtful. But the main fact of grievous
humiliation having been undergone, admits of no dispute; the existence
of such a tradition at all is in itself a proof of its truth; it was not
one likely to be either invented or received without foundation: and it
will be well, therefore, that the reader should remember, in connection
with the treatment of Barbarossa at the door of the Church of St.
Mark's, that in the Vatican, one hundred and fifty years later, a
Venetian noble, a future Doge, submitted to a degradation, of which the
current report among his people was, that he had crept on his hands and
knees from beneath the Pontiff's table to his feet, and had been spurned
as a "dog" by the cardinals present.
§ LX. There are two principal conclusions to be drawn from this: the
obvious one respecting the insolence of the Papal dominion in the
thirteenth century; the second, that there were probably most deep piety
and humility in the character of the man who could submit to this
insolence for the sake of a benefit to his country. Probably no motive
would have been strong enough to obtain such a sacrifice from most men,
however unselfish; but it was, without doubt, made easier to Dandolo by
his profound reverence for the Pontifical office; a reverence which,
however _we_ may now esteem those who claimed it, could not but have
been felt by nearly all good and faithful men at the time of which we
are speaking. This is the main point which I wish the reader to remember
as we look at his tomb, this, and the result of it,--that, some years
afterwards, when he was seated on the throne which his piety had saved,
"there were sixty princes' ambassadors in Venice at the same time,
requesting the judgment of the Senate on matters of various concernment,
_so great was the fame of the uncorrupted justice of the Fathers_."[19]
Observe, there are no virtues on this tomb. Nothing but religious
history or symbols; the Death of the Virgin in front, and the types of
St. Mark and St. John at the extremities.
§ LXI. Of the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, in St. Mark's, I have
spoken before. It is one of the first in Venice which presents, in a
canopy, the Pisan idea of angels withdrawing curtains, as of a couch, to
look down upon the dead. The sarcophagus is richly decorated with
flower-work; the usual figures of the Annunciation are at the sides; an
enthroned Madonna in the centre; and two bas-reliefs, one of the
martyrdom of the Doge's patron saint, St. Andrew, occupy the
intermediate spaces. All these tombs have been richly colored; the hair
of the angels has here been gilded, their wings bedropped with silver,
and their garments covered with the most exquisite arabesques. This
tomb, and that of St. Isidore in another chapel of St. Mark's, which was
begun by this very Doge, Andrea Dandolo, and completed after his death
in 1354, are both nearly alike in their treatment, and are, on the
whole, the best existing examples of Venetian monumental sculpture.
§ LXII. Of much ruder workmanship, though still most precious, and
singularly interesting from its quaintness, is a sarcophagus in the
northernmost chapel, beside the choir of St. John and Paul, charged with
two bas-reliefs and many figures, but which bears no inscription. It
has, however, a shield with three dolphins on its brackets; and as at
the feet of the Madonna in its centre there is a small kneeling figure
of a Doge, we know it to be the tomb of the Doge Giovanni Dolfino, who
came to the throne in 1356.
He was chosen Doge while, as provveditore, he was in Treviso, defending
the city against the King of Hungary. The Venetians sent to the
besiegers, praying that their newly elected Doge might be permitted to
pass the Hungarian lines. Their request was refused, the Hungarians
exulting that they held the Doge of Venice prisoner in Treviso. But
Dolfino, with a body of two hundred horse, cut his way through their
lines by night, and reached Mestre (Malghera) in safety, where he was
met by the Senate. His bravery could not avert the misfortunes which
were accumulating on the republic. The Hungarian war was ignominiously
terminated by the surrender of Dalmatia: the Doge's heart was broken,
his eyesight failed him, and he died of the plague four years after he
had ascended the throne.
§ LXIII. It is perhaps on this account, perhaps in consequence of later
injuries, that the tomb has neither effigy nor inscription: that it has
been subjected to some violence is evident from the dentil which once
crowned its leaf-cornice being now broken away, showing the whole front.
But, fortunately, the sculpture of the sarcophagus itself is little
injured.
There are two saints, male and female, at its angles, each in a little
niche; a Christ, enthroned in the centre, the Doge and Dogaressa
kneeling at his feet; in the two intermediate panels, on one side the
Epiphany, on the other the Death of the Virgin; the whole supported, as
well as crowned, by an elaborate leaf-plinth. The figures under the
niches are rudely cut, and of little interest. Not so the central group.
Instead of a niche, the Christ is seated under a square tent, or
tabernacle, formed by curtains running on rods; the idea, of course, as
usual, borrowed from the Pisan one, but here ingeniously applied. The
curtains are opened in front, showing those at the back of the tent,
behind the seated figure; the perspective of the two retiring sides
being very tolerably suggested. Two angels, of half the size of the
seated figure, thrust back the near curtains, and look up reverently to
the Christ; while again, at their feet, about one third of _their_ size,
and half-sheltered, as it seems, by their garments, are the two kneeling
figures of the Doge and Dogaressa, though so small and carefully cut,
full of life. The Christ raising one hand as to bless, and holding a
book upright and open on the knees, does not look either towards them or
to the angels, but forward; and there is a very noticeable effort to
represent Divine abstraction in the countenance: the idea of the three
magnitudes of spiritual being,--the God, the Angel, and the Man,--is
also to be observed, aided as it is by the complete subjection of the
angelic power to the Divine; for the angels are in attitudes of the most
lowly watchfulness of the face of Christ, and appear unconscious of the
presence of the human beings who are nestled in the folds of their
garments.
§ LXIV. With this interesting but modest tomb of one of the kings of
Venice, it is desirable to compare that of one of her senators, of
exactly the same date, which is raised against the western wall of the
Frari, at the end of the north aisle. It bears the following remarkable
inscription:
"ANNO MCCCLX. prima die Julii Sepultura . Domini . Simonii Dandolo .
amador . de . Justisia . e . desiroso . de . acrese . el . ben .
chomum."
The "Amador de Justitia" has perhaps some reference to Simon Dandolo's
having been one of the Giunta who condemned the Doge Faliero. The
sarcophagus is decorated merely by the Annunciation group, and an
enthroned Madonna with a curtain behind her throne, sustained by four
tiny angels, who look over it as they hold it up; but the workmanship of
the figures is more than usually beautiful.
§ LXV. Seven years later, a very noble monument was placed on the north
side of the choir of St. John and Paul, to the Doge Marco Cornaro,
chiefly, with respect to our present subject, noticeable for the absence
of religious imagery from the sarcophagus, which is decorated with
roses only; three very beautiful statues of the Madonna and two saints
are, however, set in the canopy above. Opposite this tomb, though about
fifteen years later in date, is the richest monument of the Gothic
period in Venice; that of the Doge Michele Morosini, who died in 1382.
It consists of a highly florid canopy,--an arch crowned by a gable, with
pinnacles at the flanks, boldly crocketed, and with a huge finial at the
top representing St. Michael,--a medallion of Christ set in the gable;
under the arch, a mosaic, representing the Madonna presenting the Doge
to Christ upon the cross; beneath, as usual, the sarcophagus, with a
most noble recumbent figure of the Doge, his face meagre and severe, and
sharp in its lines, but exquisite in the form of its small and princely
features. The sarcophagus is adorned with elaborate wrinkled leafage,
projecting in front of it into seven brackets, from which the statues
are broken away; but by which, for there can be no doubt that these last
statues represented the theological and cardinal Virtues, we must for a
moment pause.
§ LXVI. It was noticed above, that the tomb of the Florentine
ambassador, Duccio, was the first in Venice which presented images of
the Virtues. Its small lateral statues of Justice and Temperance are
exquisitely beautiful, and were, I have no doubt, executed by a
Florentine sculptor; the whole range of artistical power and religious
feeling being, in Florence, full half a century in advance of that of
Venice. But this is the first truly Venetian tomb which has the Virtues;
and it becomes of importance, therefore, to know what was the character
of Morosini.
The reader must recollect, that I dated the commencement of the fall of
Venice from the death of Carlo Zeno, considering that no state could be
held as in decline, which numbered such a man amongst its citizens.
Carlo Zeno was a candidate for the Ducal bonnet together with Michael
Morosini; and Morosini was chosen. It might be anticipated, therefore,
that there was something more than usually admirable or illustrious in
his character. Yet it is difficult to arrive at a just estimate of it,
as the reader will at once understand by comparing the following
statements:
§ LXVI. 1. "To him (Andrea Contarini) succeeded Morosini, at the age
of seventy-four years; a most learned and prudent man, who also
reformed several laws."--_Sansovino_, Vite de' Principi.
2. "It was generally believed that, if his reign had been longer, he
would have dignified the state by many noble laws and institutes; but
by so much as his reign was full of hope, by as much was it short in
duration, for he died when he had been at the head of the republic
but four months."--_Sabellico_, lib. viii.
3. "He was allowed but a short time to enjoy this high dignity, which
he had so well deserved by his rare virtues, for God called him to
Himself on the 15th of October."--_Muratori_, Annali de' Italia.
4. "Two candidates presented themselves; one was Zeno, the other that
Michael Morosini who, during the war, had tripled his fortune by his
speculations. The suffrages of the electors fell upon him, and he was
proclaimed Doge on the 10th of June."--_Daru_, Histoire de Venise,
lib. x.
5. "The choice of the electors was directed to Michele Morosini, a
noble of illustrious birth, derived from a stock which, coeval with
the republic itself, had produced the conqueror of Tyre, given a
queen to Hungary, and more than one Doge to Venice. The brilliancy of
this descent was tarnished in the present chief representative of the
family by the most base and grovelling avarice; for at that moment,
in the recent war, at which all other Venetians were devoting their
whole fortunes to the service of the state, Morosini sought in the
distresses of his country an opening for his own private enrichment,
and employed his ducats, not in the assistance of the national wants,
but in speculating upon houses which were brought to market at a
price far beneath their real value, and which, upon the return of
peace, insured the purchaser a fourfold profit. 'What matters the
fall of Venice to me, so as I fall not together with her?' was his
selfish and sordid reply to some one who expressed surprise at the
transaction."--_Sketches of Venetian History_. Murray, 1831.
§ LXVIII. The writer of the unpretending little history from which the
last quotation is taken has not given his authority for this statement,
and I could not find it, but believed, from the general accuracy of the
book, that some authority might exist better than Daru's. Under these
circumstances, wishing if possible to ascertain the truth, and to clear
the character of this great Doge from the accusation, if it proved
groundless, I wrote to the Count Carlo Morosini, his descendant, and one
of the few remaining representatives of the ancient noblesse of Venice;
one, also, by whom his great ancestral name is revered, and in whom it
is exalted. His answer appears to me altogether conclusive as to the
utter fallacy of the reports of Daru and the English history. I have
placed his letter in the close of this volume (Appendix 6), in order
that the reader may himself be the judge upon this point; and I should
not have alluded to Daru's report, except for the purpose of
contradicting it, but that it still appears to me impossible that any
modern historian should have gratuitously invented the whole story, and
that, therefore, there must have been a trace in the documents which
Daru himself possessed, of some scandal of this kind raised by
Morosini's enemies, perhaps at the very time of the disputed election
with Carlo Zeno. The occurrence of the Virtues upon his tomb, for the
first time in Venetian monumental work, and so richly and conspicuously
placed, may partly have been in public contradiction of such a floating
rumor. But the face of the statue is a more explicit contradiction
still; it is resolute, thoughtful, serene, and full of beauty; and we
must, therefore, for once, allow the somewhat boastful introduction of
the Virtues to have been perfectly just: though the whole tomb is most
notable, as furnishing not only the exact intermediate condition in
style between the pure Gothic and its final Renaissance corruption, but,
at the same time, the exactly intermediate condition of _feeling_
between the pure calmness of early Christianity, and the boastful pomp
of the Renaissance faithlessness; for here we have still the religious
humility remaining in the mosaic of the canopy, which shows the Doge
kneeling before the cross, while yet this tendency to self-trust is
shown in the surrounding of the coffin by the Virtues.
§ LXIX. The next tomb by the side of which they appear is that of Jacopo
Cavalli, in the same chapel of St. John and Paul which contains the tomb
of the Doge Delfin. It is peculiarly rich in religious imagery, adorned
by boldly cut types of the four evangelists, and of two saints, while,
on projecting brackets in front of it, stood three statues of Faith,
Hope, and Charity, now lost, but drawn in Zanotto's work. It is all rich
in detail, and its sculptor has been proud of it, thus recording his
name below the epitaph:
"QST OPERA DINTALGIO E FATTO IN PIERA,
UNVENICIAN LAFE CHANOME POLO,
NATO DI JACHOMEL CHATAIAPIERA."
This work of sculpture is done in stone;
A Venetian did it, named Paul,
Son of Jachomel the stone-cutter.
Jacopo Cavalli died in 1384. He was a bold and active Veronese soldier,
did the state much service, was therefore ennobled by it, and became the
founder of the house of the Cavalli; but I find no especial reason for
the images of the Virtues, especially that of Charity, appearing at his
tomb, unless it be this: that at the siege of Feltre, in the war against
Leopold of Austria, he refused to assault the city, because the senate
would not grant his soldiers the pillage of the town. The feet of the
recumbent figure, which is in full armor, rest on a dog, and its head on
two lions; and these animals (neither of which form any part of the
knight's bearings) are said by Zanotto to be intended to symbolize his
bravery and fidelity. If, however, the lions are meant to set forth
courage, it is a pity they should have been represented as howling.
§ LXX. We must next pause for an instant beside the tomb of Michael
Steno, now in the northern aisle of St. John and Paul, having been
removed there from the destroyed church of the Servi: first, to note its
remarkable return to the early simplicity, the sarcophagus being
decorated only with two crosses in quatrefoils, though it is of the
fifteenth century, Steno dying in 1413; and, in the second place, to
observe the peculiarity of the epitaph, which eulogises Steno as having
been "amator justitie, pacis, et ubertatis," "a lover of justice, peace,
and plenty." In the epitaphs of this period, the virtues which are made
most account of in public men are those which were most useful to their
country. We have already seen one example in the epitaph on Simon
Dandolo; and similar expressions occur constantly in laudatory mentions
of their later Doges by the Venetian writers. Thus Sansovino of Marco
Cornaro, "Era savio huomo, eloquente, e amava molto la pace e l'
abbondanza della citta;" and of Tomaso Mocenigo, "Huomo oltre modo
desideroso della pace."
Of the tomb of this last-named Doge mention has before been made. Here,
as in Morosini's, the images of the Virtues have no ironical power,
although their great conspicuousness marks the increase of the boastful
feeling in the treatment of monuments. For the rest, this tomb is the
last in Venice which can be considered as belonging to the Gothic
period. Its mouldings are already rudely classical, and it has
meaningless figures in Roman armor at the angles; but its tabernacle
above is still Gothic, and the recumbent figure is very beautiful. It
was carved by two Florentine sculptors in 1423.
§ LXXI. Tomaso Mocenigo was succeeded by the renowned Doge, Francesco
Foscari, under whom, it will be remembered, the last additions were made
to the Gothic Ducal Palace; additions which, in form only, not in
spirit, corresponded to the older portions; since, during his reign, the
transition took place which permits us no longer to consider the
Venetian architecture as Gothic at all. He died in 1457, and his tomb is
the first important example of Renaissance art.
Not, however, a good characteristic example. It is remarkable chiefly as
introducing all the faults of the Renaissance at an early period, when
its merits, such as they are, were yet undeveloped. Its claim to be
rated as a classical composition is altogether destroyed by the remnants
of Gothic feeling which cling to it here and there in their last forms
of degradation; and of which, now that we find them thus corrupted, the
sooner we are rid the better. Thus the sarcophagus is supported by a
species of trefoil arches; the bases of the shafts have still their
spurs; and the whole tomb is covered by a pediment, with crockets and a
pinnacle. We shall find that the perfect Renaissance is at least pure in
its insipidity, and subtle in its vice; but this monument is remarkable
as showing the refuse of one style encumbering the embryo of another,
and all principles of life entangled either in the swaddling clothes or
the shroud.
§ LXXII. With respect to our present purpose, however, it is a monument
of enormous importance. We have to trace, be it remembered, the pride of
state in its gradual intrusion upon the sepulchre; and the consequent
and correlative vanishing of the expressions of religious feeling and
heavenly hope, together with the more and more arrogant setting forth of
the virtues of the dead. Now this tomb is the largest and most costly we
have yet seen; but its means of religious expression are limited to a
single statue of Christ, small and used merely as a pinnacle at the top.
The rest of the composition is as curious as it is vulgar. The conceit,
so often noticed as having been borrowed from the Pisan school, of
angels withdrawing the curtains of the couch to look down upon the dead,
was brought forward with increasing prominence by every succeeding
sculptor; but, as we draw nearer to the Renaissance period, we find that
the _angels_ become of less importance, and the _curtains_ of more. With
the Pisans, the curtains are introduced as a motive for the angels; with
the Renaissance sculptors, the angels are introduced merely as a motive
for the curtains, which become every day more huge and elaborate. In the
monument of Mocenigo, they have already expanded into a tent, with a
pole in the centre of it: and in that of Foscari, for the first time,
the _angels are absent altogether_; while the curtains are arranged in
the form of an enormous French tent-bed, and are sustained at the flanks
by two diminutive figures in Roman armor; substituted for the angels,
merely that the sculptor might _show his knowledge_ of classical
costume. And now observe how often a fault in feeling induces also a
fault in style. In the old tombs, the angels used to stand on or by the
side of the sarcophagus; but their places are here to be occupied by the
Virtues, and therefore, to sustain the diminutive Roman figures at the
necessary height, each has a whole Corinthian pillar to himself, a
pillar whose shaft is eleven feet high, and some three or four feet
round: and because this was not high enough, it is put on a pedestal
four feet and a half high; and has a spurred base besides of its own, a
tall capital, then a huge bracket above the capital, and then another
pedestal above the bracket, and on the top of all the diminutive figure
who has charge of the curtains.
§ LXXIII. Under the canopy, thus arranged, is placed the sarcophagus
with its recumbent figure. The statues of the Virgin and the saints have
disappeared from it. In their stead, its panels are filled with
half-length figures of Faith, Hope, and Charity; while Temperance and
Fortitude are at the Doge's feet, Justice and Prudence at his head,
figures now the size of life, yet nevertheless recognizable only by
their attributes: for, except that Hope raises her eyes, there is no
difference in the character or expression of any of their faces,--they
are nothing more than handsome Venetian women, in rather full and
courtly dresses, and tolerably well thrown into postures for effect from
below. Fortitude could not of course be placed in a graceful one without
some sacrifice of her character, but that was of no consequence in the
eyes of the sculptors of this period, so she leans back languidly, and
nearly overthrows her own column; while Temperance, and Justice opposite
to her, as neither the left hand of the one nor the right hand of the
other could be seen from below, have been _left with one hand each_.
§ LXXIV. Still these figures, coarse and feelingless as they are, have
been worked with care, because the principal effect of the tomb depends
on them. But the effigy of the Doge, of which nothing but the side is
visible, has been utterly neglected; and the ingenuity of the sculptor
is not so great, at the best, as that he can afford to be slovenly.
There is, indeed, nothing in the history of Foscari which would lead us
to expect anything particularly noble in his face; but I trust,
nevertheless, it has been misrepresented by this despicable carver; for
no words are strong enough to express the baseness of the portraiture. A
huge, gross, bony clown's face, with the peculiar sodden and sensual
cunning in it which is seen so often in the countenances of the worst
Romanist priest; a face part of iron and part of clay, with the
immobility of the one, and the foulness of the other, double chinned,
blunt-mouthed, bony-cheeked, with its brows drawn down into meagre lines
and wrinkles over the eyelids; the face of a man incapable either of joy
or sorrow, unless such as may be caused by the indulgence of passion, or
the mortification of pride. Even had he been such a one, a noble workman
would not have written it so legibly on his tomb; and I believe it to be
the image of the carver's own mind that is there hewn in the marble, not
that of the Doge Foscari. For the same mind is visible enough
throughout, the traces of it mingled with those of the evil taste of the
whole time and people. There is not anything so small but it is shown in
some portion of its treatment; for instance, in the placing of the
shields at the back of the great curtain. In earlier times, the shield,
as we have seen, was represented as merely suspended against the tomb by
a thong, or if sustained in any other manner, still its form was simple
and undisguised. Men in those days used their shields in war, and
therefore there was no need to add dignity to their form by external
ornament. That which, through day after day of mortal danger, had borne
back from them the waves of battle, could neither be degraded by
simplicity, nor exalted by decoration. By its rude leathern thong it
seemed to be fastened to their tombs, and the shield of the mighty was
not cast away, though capable of defending its master no more.
§ LXXV. It was otherwise in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The
changed system of warfare was rapidly doing away with the practical
service of the shield; and the chiefs who directed the battle from a
distance, or who passed the greater part of their lives in the
council-chamber, soon came to regard the shield as nothing more than a
field for their armorial bearings. It then became a principal object of
their Pride of State to increase the conspicuousness of these marks of
family distinction by surrounding them with various and fantastic
ornament, generally scroll or flower work, which of course deprived the
shield of all appearance of being intended for a soldier's use. Thus the
shield of the Foscari is introduced in two ways. On the sarcophagus,
the bearings are three times repeated, enclosed in circular disks, which
are sustained each by a couple of naked infants. Above the canopy, two
shields of the usual form are set in the centre of circles filled by a
radiating ornament of shell flutings, which give them the effect of
ventilators; and their circumference is farther adorned by gilt rays,
undulating to represent a glory.
§ LXXVI. We now approach that period of the early Renaissance which was
noticed in the preceding chapter as being at first a very visible
improvement on the corrupted Gothic. The tombs executed during the
period of the Byzantine Renaissance exhibit, in the first place, a
consummate skill in handling the chisel, perfect science of drawing and
anatomy, high appreciation of good classical models, and a grace of
composition and delicacy of ornament derived, I believe, principally
from the great Florentine sculptors. But, together with this science,
they exhibit also, for a short time, some return to the early religious
feeling, forming a school of sculpture which corresponds to that of the
school of the Bellini in painting; and the only wonder is that there
should not have been more workmen in the fifteenth century doing in
marble what Perugino, Francia, and Bellini did on canvas. There are,
indeed, some few, as I have just said, in whom the good and pure temper
shows itself: but the sculptor was necessarily led sooner than the
painter to an exclusive study of classical models, utterly adverse to
the Christian imagination; and he was also deprived of the great
purifying and sacred element of color, besides having much more of
merely mechanical and therefore degrading labor to go through in the
realization of his thought. Hence I do not know any example in sculpture
at this period, at least in Venice, which has not conspicuous faults
(not faults of imperfection, as in early sculpture, but of purpose and
sentiment), staining such beauties as it may possess; and the whole
school soon falls away, and merges into vain pomp and meagre metaphor.
§ LXXVII. The most celebrated monument of this period is that to the
Doge Andrea Vendramin, in the Church of St. John and Paul, sculptured
about 1480, and before alluded to in the first chapter of the first
volume. It has attracted public admiration, partly by its costliness,
partly by the delicacy and precision of its chiselling; being otherwise
a very base and unworthy example of the school, and showing neither
invention nor feeling. It has the Virtues, as usual, dressed like
heathen goddesses, and totally devoid of expression, though graceful and
well studied merely as female figures. The rest of its sculpture is all
of the same kind; perfect in workmanship, and devoid of thought. Its
dragons are covered with marvellous scales, but have no terror nor sting
in them; its birds are perfect in plumage, but have no song in them; its
children lovely of limb, but have no childishness in them.
§ LXXVIII. Of far other workmanship are the tombs of Pietro and Giovanni
Mocenigo, in St. John and Paul, and of Pietro Bernardo in the Frari; in
all which the details are as full of exquisite fancy, as they are
perfect in execution; and in the two former, and several others of
similar feeling, the old religious symbols return; the Madonna is again
seen enthroned under the canopy, and the sarcophagus is decorated with
legends of the saints. But the fatal errors of sentiment are,
nevertheless, always traceable. In the first place, the sculptor is
always seen to be intent upon the exhibition of his skill, more than on
producing any effect on the spectator's mind; elaborate backgrounds of
landscape, with tricks of perspective, imitations of trees, clouds, and
water, and various other unnecessary adjuncts, merely to show how marble
could be subdued; together with useless under-cutting, and over-finish
in subordinate parts, continually exhibiting the same cold vanity and
unexcited precision of mechanism. In the second place, the figures have
all the peculiar tendency to posture-making, which, exhibiting itself
first painfully in Perugino, rapidly destroyed the veracity of
composition in all art. By posture-making I mean, in general, that
action of figures which results from the painter's considering, in the
first place, not how, under the circumstances, they would actually have
walked, or stood, or looked, but how they may most gracefully and
harmoniously walk or stand. In the hands of a great man, posture, like
everything else, becomes noble, even when over-studied, as with Michael
Angelo, who was, perhaps, more than any other, the cause of the
mischief; but, with inferior men, this habit of composing attitudes ends
necessarily in utter lifelessness and abortion. Giotto was, perhaps, of
all painters, the most free from the infection of the poison, always
conceiving an incident naturally, and drawing it unaffectedly; and the
absence of posture-making in the works of the Pre-Raphaelites, as
opposed to the Attitudinarianism of the modern school, has been both one
of their principal virtues, and of the principal causes of outcry
against them.
§ LXXIX. But the most significant change in the treatment of these
tombs, with respect to our immediate object, is in the form of the
sarcophagus. It was above noted, that, exactly in proportion to the
degree of the pride of life expressed in any monument, would be also the
fear of death; and therefore, as these tombs increase in splendor, in
size, and beauty of workmanship, we perceive a gradual desire to _take
away from the definite character of the sarcophagus_. In the earliest
times, as we have seen, it was a gloomy mass of stone; gradually it
became charged with religious sculpture; but never with the slightest
desire to disguise its form, until towards the middle of the fifteenth
century. It then becomes enriched with flower-work and hidden by the
Virtues; and, finally, losing its foursquare form, it is modelled on
graceful types of ancient vases, made as little like a coffin as
possible, and refined away in various elegancies, till it becomes, at
last, a mere pedestal or stage for the portrait statue. This statue, in
the meantime, has been gradually coming back to life, through a curious
series of transitions. The Vendramin monument is one of the last which
shows, or pretends to show, the recumbent figure laid in death. A few
years later, this idea became disagreeable to polite minds; and, lo! the
figures which before had been laid at rest upon the tomb pillow, raised
themselves on their elbows, and began to look round them. The soul of
the sixteenth century dared not contemplate its body in death.
§ LXXX. The reader cannot but remember many instances of this form of
monument, England being peculiarly rich in examples of them; although,
with her, tomb sculpture, after the fourteenth century, is altogether
imitative, and in no degree indicative of the temper of the people. It
was from Italy that the authority for the change was derived; and in
Italy only, therefore, that it is truly correspondent to the change in
the national mind. There are many monuments in Venice of this
semi-animate type, most of them carefully sculptured, and some very
admirable as portraits, and for the casting of the drapery, especially
those in the Church of San Salvador; but I shall only direct the reader
to one, that of Jacopo Pesaro, Bishop of Paphos, in the Church of the
Frari; notable not only as a very skilful piece of sculpture, but for
the epitaph, singularly characteristic of the period, and confirmatory
of all that I have alleged against it:
"James Pesaro, Bishop of Paphos, who conquered the Turks in war,
himself in peace, transported from a noble family among the Venetians
to a nobler among the angels, laid here, expects the noblest crown,
which the just Judge shall give to him in that day. He lived the
years of Plato. He died 24th March, 1547."[20]
The mingled classicism and carnal pride of this epitaph surely need no
comment. The crown is expected as a right from the justice of the judge,
and the nobility of the Venetian family is only a little lower than that
of the angels. The quaint childishness of the "Vixit annos Platonicos"
is also very notable.
§ LXXXI. The statue, however, did not long remain in this partially
recumbent attitude. Even the expression of peace became painful to the
frivolous and thoughtless Italians, and they required the portraiture to
be rendered in a manner that should induce no memory of death. The
statue rose up, and presented itself in front of the tomb, like an actor
upon a stage, surrounded now not merely, or not at all, by the Virtues,
but by allegorical figures of Fame and Victory, by genii and muses, by
personifications of humbled kingdoms and adoring nations, and by every
circumstance of pomp, and symbol of adulation, that flattery could
suggest, or insolence could claim.
§ LXXXII. As of the intermediate monumental type, so also of this, the
last and most gross, there are unfortunately many examples in our own
country; but the most wonderful, by far, are still at Venice. I shall,
however, particularize only two; the first, that of the Doge John
Pesaro, in the Frari. It is to be observed that we have passed over a
considerable interval of time; we are now in the latter half of the
seventeenth century; the progress of corruption has in the meantime been
incessant, and sculpture has here lost its taste and learning as well as
its feeling. The monument is a huge accumulation of theatrical scenery
in marble: four colossal negro caryatides, grinning and horrible, with
faces of black marble and white eyes, sustain the first story of it;
above this, two monsters, long-necked, half dog and half dragon, sustain
an ornamental sarcophagus, on the top of which the full-length statue of
the Doge in robes of state stands forward with its arms expanded, like
an actor courting applause, under a huge canopy of metal, like the roof
of a bed, painted crimson and gold; on each side of him are sitting
figures of genii, and unintelligible personifications gesticulating in
Roman armor; below, between the negro caryatides, are two g
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