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Title: The Stones of Venice, Volume 3 (of 3)
Author: Ruskin, John
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Stones of Venice, Volume 3 (of 3)" ***
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Transcriber's note:
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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 ghastly
figures in bronze, half corpse, half skeleton, carrying tablets on which
is written the eulogium: but in large letters graven in gold, the
following words are the first and last that strike the eye; the first
two phrases, one on each side, on tablets in the lower story, the last
under the portrait statue above:
VIXIT ANNOS LXX. DEVIXIT ANNO MDCLIX.
"HIC REVIXIT ANNO MDCLXIX."
We have here, at last, the horrible images of death in violent contrast
with the defiant monument, which pretends to bring the resurrection
down to earth, "Hic revixit;" and it seems impossible for false taste
and base feeling to sink lower. Yet even this monument is surpassed by
one in St. John and Paul.
§ LXXXIII. But before we pass to this, the last with which I shall
burden the reader's attention, let us for a moment, and that we may feel
the contrast more forcibly, return to a tomb of the early times.
In a dark niche in the outer wall of the outer corridor of St.
Mark's--not even in the church, observe, but in the atrium or porch of
it, and on the north side of the church,--is a solid sarcophagus of
white marble, raised only about two feet from the ground on four stunted
square pillars. Its lid is a mere slab of stone; on its extremities are
sculptured two crosses; in front of it are two rows of rude figures, the
uppermost representing Christ with the Apostles: the lower row is of six
figures only, alternately male and female, holding up their hands in the
usual attitude of benediction; the sixth is smaller than the rest, and
the midmost of the other five has a glory round its head. I cannot tell
the meaning of these figures, but between them are suspended censers
attached to crosses; a most beautiful symbolic expression of Christ's
mediatorial function. The whole is surrounded by a rude wreath of vine
leaves, proceeding out of the foot of a cross.
On the bar of marble which separates the two rows of figures are
inscribed these words:
"Here lies the Lord Marin Morosini, Duke."
It is the tomb of the Doge Marino Morosini, who reigned from 1249 to
1252.
§ LXXXIV. From before this rude and solemn sepulchre let us pass to the
southern aisle of the church of St. John and Paul; and there, towering
from the pavement to the vaulting of the church, behold a mass of
marble, sixty or seventy feet in height, of mingled yellow and white,
the yellow carved into the form of an enormous curtain, with ropes,
fringes, and tassels, sustained by cherubs; in front of which, in the
now usual stage attitudes, advance the statues of the Doge Bertuccio
Valier, his son the Doge Silvester Falier, and his son's wife,
Elizabeth. The statues of the Doges, though mean and Polonius-like, are
partly redeemed by the Ducal robes; but that of the Dogaressa is a
consummation of grossness, vanity, and ugliness,--the figure of a large
and wrinkled woman, with elaborate curls in stiff projection round her
face, covered from her shoulders to her feet with ruffs, furs, lace,
jewels, and embroidery. Beneath and around are scattered Virtues,
Victories, Fames, genii,--the entire company of the monumental stage
assembled, as before a drop scene,--executed by various sculptors, and
deserving attentive study as exhibiting every condition of false taste
and feeble conception. The Victory in the centre is peculiarly
interesting; the lion by which she is accompanied, springing on a
dragon, has been intended to look terrible, but the incapable sculptor
could not conceive any form of dreadfulness, could not even make the
lion look angry. It looks only lachrymose; and its lifted forepaws,
there being no spring nor motion in its body, give it the appearance of
a dog begging. The inscriptions under the two principal statues are as
follows:
"Bertucius Valier, Duke,
Great in wisdom and eloquence,
Greater in his Hellespontic victory,
Greatest in the Prince his son.
Died in the year 1658."
"Elisabeth Quirina,
The wife of Silvester,
Distinguished by Roman virtue,
By Venetian piety,
And by the Ducal crown,
Died 1708."
The writers of this age were generally anxious to make the world aware
that they understood the degrees of comparison, and a large number of
epitaphs are principally constructed with this object (compare, in the
Latin, that of the Bishop of Paphos, given above): but the latter of
these epitaphs is also interesting from its mention, in an age now
altogether given up to the pursuit of worldly honor, of that "Venetian
piety" which once truly distinguished the city from all others; and of
which some form and shadow, remaining still, served to point an epitaph,
and to feed more cunningly and speciously the pride which could not be
satiated with the sumptuousness of the sepulchre.
§ LXXXV. Thus far, then, of the second element of the Renaissance spirit,
the Pride of State; nor need we go farther to learn the reason of the
fall of Venice. She was already likened in her thoughts, and was
therefore to be likened in her ruin, to the Virgin of Babylon. The Pride
of State and the Pride of Knowledge were no new passions: the sentence
against them had gone forth from everlasting. "Thou saidst, I shall be a
lady for ever; so that thou didst not lay these things to thine heart ...
_Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee_; and thou hast
said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me. Therefore shall evil
come upon thee ...; thy merchants from thy youth, they shall wander every
one to his quarter; none shall save thee."[21]
§ LXXXVI. III. PRIDE OF SYSTEM. I might have illustrated these evil
principles from a thousand other sources, but I have not time to pursue
the subject farther, and must pass to the third element above named, the
Pride of System. It need not detain us so long as either of the others,
for it is at once more palpable and less dangerous. The manner in which
the pride of the fifteenth century corrupted the sources of knowledge,
and diminished the majesty, while it multiplied the trappings, of state,
is in general little observed; but the reader is probably already well
and sufficiently aware of the curious tendency to formulization and
system which, under the name of philosophy, encumbered the minds of the
Renaissance schoolmen. As it was above stated, grammar became the first
of sciences; and whatever subject had to be treated, the first aim of
the philosopher was to subject its principles to a code of laws, in the
observation of which the merit of the speaker, thinker, or worker, in
or on that subject, was thereafter to consist; so that the whole mind of
the world was occupied by the exclusive study of Restraints. The sound
of the forging of fetters was heard from sea to sea. The doctors of all
the arts and sciences set themselves daily to the invention of new
varieties of cages and manacles; they themselves wore, instead of gowns,
a chain mail, whose purpose was not so much to avert the weapon of the
adversary as to restrain the motions of the wearer; and all the acts,
thoughts, and workings of mankind,--poetry, painting, architecture, and
philosophy,--were reduced by them merely to so many different forms of
fetter-dance.
§ LXXXVII. Now, I am very sure that no reader who has given any
attention to the former portions of this work, or the tendency of what
else I have written, more especially the last chapter of the "Seven
Lamps," will suppose me to underrate the importance, or dispute the
authority, of law. It has been necessary for me to allege these again
and again, nor can they ever be too often or too energetically alleged,
against the vast masses of men who now disturb or retard the advance of
civilization; heady and high-minded, despisers of discipline, and
refusers of correction. But law, so far as it can be reduced to form and
system, and is not written upon the heart,--as it is, in a Divine
loyalty, upon the hearts of the great hierarchies who serve and wait
about the throne of the Eternal Lawgiver,--this lower and formally
expressible law has, I say, two objects. It is either for the definition
and restraint of sin, or the guidance of simplicity; it either explains,
forbids, and punishes wickedness, or it guides the movements and actions
both of lifeless things and of the more simple and untaught among
responsible agents. And so long, therefore, as sin and foolishness are
in the world, so long it will be necessary for men to submit themselves
painfully to this lower law, in proportion to their need of being
corrected, and to the degree of childishness or simplicity by which they
approach more nearly to the condition of the unthinking and inanimate
things which are governed by law altogether; yet yielding, in the manner
of their submission to it, a singular lesson to the pride of
man,--being obedient more perfectly in proportion to their
greatness.[22] But, so far as men become good and wise, and rise above
the state of children, so far they become emancipated from this written
law, and invested with the perfect freedom which consists in the fulness
and joyfulness of compliance with a higher and unwritten law; a law so
universal, so subtle, so glorious, that nothing but the heart can keep
it.
§ LXXXVIII. Now pride opposes itself to the observance of this Divine
law in two opposite ways: either by brute resistance, which is the way
of the rabble and its leaders, denying or defying law altogether; or by
formal compliance, which is the way of the Pharisee, exalting himself
while he pretends to obedience, and making void the infinite and
spiritual commandment by the finite and lettered commandment. And it is
easy to know which law we are obeying: for any law which we magnify and
keep through pride, is always the law of the letter; but that which we
love and keep through humility, is the law of the Spirit: And the letter
killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.
§ LXXXIX. In the appliance of this universal principle to what we have
at present in hand, it is to be noted, that all written or writable law
respecting the arts is for the childish and ignorant: that in the
beginning of teaching, it is possible to say that this or that must or
must not be done; and laws of color and shade may be taught, as laws of
harmony are to the young scholar in music. But the moment a man begins
to be anything deserving the name of an artist, all this teachable law
has become a matter of course with him; and if, thenceforth, he boast
himself anywise in the law, or pretend that he lives and works by it, it
is a sure sign that he is merely tithing cummin, and that there is no
true art nor religion in him. For the true artist has that inspiration
in him which is above all law, or rather, which is continually working
out such magnificent and perfect obedience to supreme law, as can in no
wise be rendered by line and rule. There are more laws perceived and
fulfilled in the single stroke of a great workman, than could be written
in a volume. His science is inexpressibly subtle, directly taught him by
his Maker, not in any wise communicable or imitable.[23] Neither can any
written or definitely observable laws enable us to do any great thing.
It is possible, by measuring and administering quantities of color, to
paint a room wall so that it shall not hurt the eye; but there are no
laws by observing which we can become Titians. It is possible so to
measure and administer syllables, as to construct harmonious verse; but
there are no laws by which we can write Iliads. Out of the poem or the
picture, once produced, men may elicit laws by the volume, and study
them with advantage, to the better understanding of the existing poem or
picture; but no more write or paint another, than by discovering laws of
vegetation they can make a tree to grow. And therefore, wheresoever we
find the system and formality of rules much dwelt upon, and spoken of as
anything else than a help for children, there we may be sure that noble
art is not even understood, far less reached. And thus it was with all
the common and public mind in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The
greater men, indeed, broke through the thorn hedges; and, though much
time was lost by the learned among them in writing Latin verses and
anagrams, and arranging the framework of quaint sonnets and dexterous
syllogisms, still they tore their way through the sapless thicket by
force of intellect or of piety; for it was not possible that, either in
literature or in painting, rules could be received by any strong mind,
so as materially to interfere with its originality: and the crabbed
discipline and exact scholarship became an advantage to the men who
could pass through and despise them; so that in spite of the rules of
the drama we had Shakspeare, and in spite of the rules of art we had
Tintoret,--both of them, to this day, doing perpetual violence to the
vulgar scholarship and dim-eyed proprieties of the multitude.
§ XC. But in architecture it was not so; for that was the art of the
multitude, and was affected by all their errors; and the great men who
entered its field, like Michael Angelo, found expression for all the
best part of their minds in sculpture, and made the architecture merely
its shell. So the simpletons and sophists had their way with it: and the
reader can have no conception of the inanities and puerilities of the
writers, who, with the help of Vitruvius, re-established its "five
orders," determined the proportions of each, and gave the various
recipes for sublimity and beauty, which have been thenceforward followed
to this day, but which may, I believe, in this age of perfect machinery,
be followed out still farther. If, indeed, there are only five perfect
forms of columns and architraves, and there be a fixed proportion to
each, it is certainly possible, with a little ingenuity, so to regulate
a stonecutting machine, as that it shall furnish pillars and friezes to
the size ordered, of any of the five orders, on the most perfect Greek
models, in any quantity; an epitome, also, of Vitruvius, may be made so
simple, as to enable any bricklayer to set them up at their proper
distances, and we may dispense with our architects altogether.
§ XCI. But if this be not so, and there be any truth in the faint
persuasion which still lurks in men's minds that architecture _is_ an
art, and that it requires some gleam of intellect to practise it, then
let the whole system of the orders and their proportions be cast out and
trampled down as the most vain, barbarous, and paltry deception that was
ever stamped on human prejudice; and let us understand this plain truth,
common to all work of man, that, if it be good work, it is not a copy,
nor anything done by rule, but a freshly and divinely imagined thing.
Five orders! There is not a side chapel in any Gothic cathedral but it
has fifty orders, the worst of them better than the best of the Greek
ones, and all new; and a single inventive human soul could create a
thousand orders in an hour.[24] And this would have been discovered even
in the worst times, but that, as I said, the greatest men of the age
found expression for their invention in the other arts, and the best of
those who devoted themselves to architecture were in great part occupied
in adapting the construction of buildings to new necessities, such as
those developed by the invention of gunpowder (introducing a totally new
and most interesting science of fortification, which directed the
ingenuity of Sanmicheli and many others from its proper channel), and
found interest of a meaner kind in the difficulties of reconciling the
obsolete architectural laws they had consented to revive, and the forms
of Roman architecture which they agreed to copy, with the requirements
of the daily life of the sixteenth century.
§ XCII. These, then, were the three principal directions in which the
Renaissance pride manifested itself, and its impulses were rendered
still more fatal by the entrance of another element, inevitably
associated with pride. For, as it is written, "He that trusteth in his
own heart is a fool," so also it is written, "The fool hath said in his
heart, There is no God;" and the self-adulation which influenced not
less the learning of the age than its luxury, led gradually to the
forgetfulness of all things but self, and to an infidelity only the more
fatal because it still retained the form and language of faith.
§ XCIII. IV. INFIDELITY. In noticing the more prominent forms in which
this faithlessness manifested itself, it is necessary to distinguish
justly between that which was the consequence of respect for Paganism,
and that which followed from the corruption of Catholicism. For as the
Roman architecture is not to be made answerable for the primal
corruption of the Gothic, so neither is the Roman philosophy to be made
answerable for the primal corruption of Christianity. Year after year,
as the history of the life of Christ sank back into the depths of time,
and became obscured by the misty atmosphere of the history of the
world,--as intermediate actions and incidents multiplied in number, and
countless changes in men's modes of life, and tones of thought, rendered
it more difficult for them to imagine the facts of distant time,--it
became daily, almost hourly, a greater effort for the faithful heart to
apprehend the entire veracity and vitality of the story of its Redeemer;
and more easy for the thoughtless and remiss to deceive themselves as to
the true character of the belief they had been taught to profess. And
this must have been the case, had the pastors of the Church never failed
in their watchfulness, and the Church itself never erred in its practice
or doctrine. But when every year that removed the truths of the Gospel
into deeper distance, added to them also some false or foolish
tradition; when wilful distortion was added to natural obscurity, and
the dimness of memory was disguised by the fruitfulness of fiction;
when, moreover, the enormous temporal power granted to the clergy
attracted into their ranks multitudes of men who, but for such
temptation, would not have pretended to the Christian name, so that
grievous wolves entered in among them, not sparing the flock; and when,
by the machinations of such men, and the remissness of others, the form
and administrations of Church doctrine and discipline had become little
more than a means of aggrandizing the power of the priesthood, it was
impossible any longer for men of thoughtfulness or piety to remain in an
unquestioning serenity of faith. The Church had become so mingled with
the world that its witness could no longer be received; and the
professing members of it, who were placed in circumstances such as to
enable them to become aware of its corruptions, and whom their interest
or their simplicity did not bribe or beguile into silence, gradually
separated themselves into two vast multitudes of adverse energy, one
tending to Reformation, and the other to Infidelity.
§ XCIV. Of these, the last stood, as it were, apart, to watch the course
of the struggle between Romanism and Protestantism; a struggle which,
however necessary, was attended with infinite calamity to the Church.
For, in the first place, the Protestant movement was, in reality, not
_reformation_ but _reanimation_. It poured new life into the Church, but
it did not form or define her anew. In some sort it rather broke down
her hedges, so that all they who passed by might pluck off her grapes.
The reformers speedily found that the enemy was never far behind the
sower of good seed; that an evil spirit might enter the ranks of
reformation as well as those of resistance; and that though the deadly
blight might be checked amidst the wheat, there was no hope of ever
ridding the wheat itself from the tares. New temptations were invented
by Satan wherewith to oppose the revived strength of Christianity: as
the Romanist, confiding in his human teachers, had ceased to try whether
they were teachers sent from God, so the Protestant, confiding in the
teaching of the Spirit, believed every spirit, and did not try the
spirits whether they were of God. And a thousand enthusiasms and
heresies speedily obscured the faith and divided the force of the
Reformation.
§ XCV. But the main evils rose out of the antagonism of the two great
parties; primarily, in the mere fact of the existence of an antagonism.
To the eyes of the unbeliever the Church of Christ, for the first time
since its foundation, bore the aspect of a house divided against itself.
Not that many forms of schism had not before arisen in it; but either
they had been obscure and silent, hidden among the shadows of the Alps
and the marshes of the Rhine; or they had been outbreaks of visible and
unmistakable error, cast off by the Church, rootless, and speedily
withering away, while, with much that was erring and criminal, she still
retained within her the pillar and ground of the truth. But here was at
last a schism in which truth and authority were at issue. The body that
was cast off withered away no longer. It stretched out its boughs to the
sea and its branches to the river, and it was the ancient trunk that
gave signs of decrepitude. On one side stood the reanimated faith, in
its right hand the book open, and its left hand lifted up to heaven,
appealing for its proof to the Word of the Testimony and the power of
the Holy Ghost. On the other stood, or seemed to stand, all beloved
custom and believed tradition; all that for fifteen hundred years had
been closest to the hearts of men, or most precious for their help.
Long-trusted legend; long-reverenced power; long-practised discipline;
faiths that had ruled the destiny, and sealed the departure, of souls
that could not be told or numbered for multitude; prayers, that from the
lips of the fathers to those of the children had distilled like sweet
waterfalls, sounding through the silence of ages, breaking themselves
into heavenly dew to return upon the pastures of the wilderness; hopes,
that had set the face as a flint in the torture, and the sword as a
flame in the battle, that had pointed the purposes and ministered the
strength of life, brightened the last glances and shaped the last
syllables of death; charities, that had bound together the brotherhoods
of the mountain and the desert, and had woven chains of pitying or
aspiring communion between this world and the unfathomable beneath and
above; and, more than these, the spirits of all the innumerable,
undoubting, dead, beckoning to the one way by which they had been
content to follow the things that belonged unto their peace;--these all
stood on the other side: and the choice must have been a bitter one,
even at the best; but it was rendered tenfold more bitter by the
natural, but most sinful animosity of the two divisions of the Church
against each other.
§ XCVI. On one side this animosity was, of course, inevitable. The
Romanist party, though still including many Christian men, necessarily
included, also, all the worst of those who called themselves Christians.
In the fact of its refusing correction, it stood confessed as the Church
of the unholy; and, while it still counted among its adherents many of
the simple and believing,--men unacquainted with the corruption of the
body to which they belonged, or incapable of accepting any form of
doctrine but that which they had been taught from their youth,--it
gathered together with them whatever was carnal and sensual in
priesthood or in people, all the lovers of power in the one, and of ease
in the other. And the rage of these men was, of course, unlimited
against those who either disputed their authority, reprehended their
manner of life, or cast suspicion upon the popular methods of lulling
the conscience in the lifetime, or purchasing salvation on the
death-bed.
§ XCVII. Besides this, the reassertion and defence of various tenets
which before had been little more than floating errors in the popular
mind, but which, definitely attacked by Protestantism, it became
necessary to fasten down with a band of iron and brass, gave a form at
once more rigid, and less rational, to the whole body of Romanist
Divinity. Multitudes of minds which in other ages might have brought
honor and strength to the Church, preaching the more vital truths which
it still retained, were now occupied in pleading for arraigned
falsehoods, or magnifying disused frivolities; and it can hardly be
doubted by any candid observer, that the nascent or latent errors which
God pardoned in times of ignorance, became unpardonable when they were
formally defined and defended; that fallacies which were forgiven to the
enthusiasm of a multitude, were avenged upon the stubbornness of a
Council; that, above all, the great invention of the age, which rendered
God's word accessible to every man, left all sins against its light
incapable of excuse or expiation; and that from the moment when Rome set
herself in direct opposition to the Bible, the judgment was pronounced
upon her, which made her the scorn and the prey of her own children, and
cast her down from the throne where she had magnified herself against
heaven, so low, that at last the unimaginable scene of the Bethlehem
humiliation was mocked in the temples of Christianity. Judea had seen
her God laid in the manger of the beasts of burden; it was for
Christendom to stable the beasts of burden by the altar of her God.
§ XCVIII. Nor, on the other hand, was the opposition of Protestantism to
the Papacy less injurious to itself. That opposition was, for the most
part, intemperate, undistinguishing, and incautious. It could indeed
hardly be otherwise. Fresh bleeding from the sword of Rome, and still
trembling at her anathema, the reformed churches were little likely to
remember any of her benefits, or to regard any of her teaching. Forced
by the Romanist contumely into habits of irreverence, by the Romanist
fallacies into habits of disbelief, the self-trusting, rashly-reasoning
spirit gained ground among them daily. Sect branched out of sect,
presumption rose over presumption; the miracles of the early Church
were denied and its martyrs forgotten, though their power and palm were
claimed by the members of every persecuted sect; pride, malice, wrath,
love of change, masked themselves under the thirst for truth, and
mingled with the just resentment of deception, so that it became
impossible even for the best and truest men to know the plague of their
own hearts; while avarice and impiety openly transformed reformation
into robbery, and reproof into sacrilege. Ignorance could as easily lead
the foes of the Church, as lull her slumber; men who would once have
been the unquestioning recipients, were now the shameless inventors of
absurd or perilous superstitions; they who were of the temper that
walketh in darkness, gained little by having discovered their guides to
be blind; and the simplicity of the faith, ill understood and
contumaciously alleged, became an excuse for the rejection of the
highest arts and most tried wisdom of mankind: while the learned
infidel, standing aloof, drew his own conclusions, both from the rancor
of the antagonists, and from their errors; believed each in all that he
alleged against the other; and smiled with superior humanity, as he
watched the winds of the Alps drift the ashes of Jerome, and the dust of
England drink the blood of King Charles.
§ XCIX. Now all this evil was, of course, entirely independent of the
renewal of the study of Pagan writers. But that renewal found the faith
of Christendom already weakened and divided; and therefore it was itself
productive of an effect tenfold greater than could have been apprehended
from it at another time. It acted first, as before noticed, in leading
the attention of all men to words instead of things; for it was
discovered that the language of the middle ages had been corrupt, and
the primal object of every scholar became now to purify his style. To
this study of words, that of forms being added, both as of matters of
the first importance, half the intellect of the age was at once absorbed
in the base sciences of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; studies utterly
unworthy of the serious labor of men, and necessarily rendering those
employed upon them incapable of high thoughts or noble emotion. Of the
debasing tendency of philology, no proof is needed beyond once reading
a grammarian's notes on a great poet: logic is unnecessary for men who
can reason; and about as useful to those who cannot, as a machine for
forcing one foot in due succession before the other would be to a man
who could not walk: while the study of rhetoric is exclusively one for
men who desire to deceive or be deceived; he who has the truth at his
heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue, or, if he
fear it, it is because the base rhetoric of dishonesty keeps the truth
from being heard.
§ C. The study of these sciences, therefore, naturally made men shallow
and dishonest in general; but it had a peculiarly fatal effect with
respect to religion, in the view which men took of the Bible. Christ's
teaching was discovered not to be rhetorical, St. Paul's preaching not
to be logical, and the Greek of the New Testament not to be grammatical.
The stern truth, the profound pathos, the impatient period, leaping from
point to point and leaving the intervals for the hearer to fill, the
comparatively Hebraized and unelaborate idiom, had little in them of
attraction for the students of phrase and syllogism; and the chief
knowledge of the age became one of the chief stumbling-blocks to its
religion.
§ CI. But it was not the grammarian and logician alone who was thus
retarded or perverted; in them there had been small loss. The men who
could truly appreciate the higher excellences of the classics were
carried away by a current of enthusiasm which withdrew them from every
other study. Christianity was still professed as a matter of form, but
neither the Bible nor the writings of the Fathers had time left for
their perusal, still less heart left for their acceptance. The human
mind is not capable of more than a certain amount of admiration or
reverence, and that which was given to Horace was withdrawn from David.
Religion is, of all subjects, that which will least endure a second
place in the heart or thoughts, and a languid and occasional study of it
was sure to lead to error or infidelity. On the other hand, what was
heartily admired and unceasingly contemplated was soon brought nigh to
being believed; and the systems of Pagan mythology began gradually to
assume the places in the human mind from which the unwatched
Christianity was wasting. Men did not indeed openly sacrifice to
Jupiter, or build silver shrines for Diana, but the ideas of Paganism
nevertheless became thoroughly vital and present with them at all times;
and it did not matter in the least, as far as respected the power of
true religion, whether the Pagan image was believed in or not, so long
as it entirely occupied the thoughts. The scholar of the sixteenth
century, if he saw the lightning shining from the east unto the west,
thought forthwith of Jupiter, not of the coming of the Son of Man; if he
saw the moon walking in brightness, he thought of Diana, not of the
throne which was to be established for ever as a faithful witness in
heaven; and though his heart was but secretly enticed, yet thus he
denied the God that is above.[25]
And, indeed, this double creed, of Christianity confessed and Paganism
beloved, was worse than Paganism itself, inasmuch as it refused
effective and practical belief altogether. It would have been better to
have worshipped Diana and Jupiter at once, than to have gone on through
the whole of life naming one God, imagining another, and dreading none.
Better, a thousandfold, to have been "a Pagan suckled in some creed
outworn," than to have stood by the great sea of Eternity and seen no
God walking on its waves, no heavenly world on its horizon.
§ CII. This fatal result of an enthusiasm for classical literature was
hastened and heightened by the misdirection of the powers of art. The
imagination of the age was actively set to realize these objects of
Pagan belief; and all the most exalted faculties of man, which, up to
that period, had been employed in the service of Faith, were now
transferred to the service of Fiction. The invention which had formerly
been both sanctified and strengthened by laboring under the command of
settled intention, and on the ground of assured belief, had now the
reins laid upon its neck by passion, and all ground of fact cut from
beneath its feet; and the imagination which formerly had helped men to
apprehend the truth, now tempted them to believe a falsehood. The
faculties themselves wasted away in their own treason; one by one they
fell in the potter's field; and the Raphael who seemed sent and inspired
from heaven that he might paint Apostles and Prophets, sank at once into
powerlessness at the feet of Apollo and the Muses.
§ CIII. But this was not all. The habit of using the greatest gifts of
imagination upon fictitious subjects, of course destroyed the honor and
value of the same imagination used in the cause of truth. Exactly in the
proportion in which Jupiters and Mercuries were embodied and believed,
in that proportion Virgins and Angels were disembodied and disbelieved.
The images summoned by art began gradually to assume one average value
in the spectator's mind; and incidents from the Iliad and from the
Exodus to come within the same degrees of credibility. And, farther,
while the powers of the imagination were becoming daily more and more
languid, because unsupported by faith, the manual skill and science of
the artist were continually on the increase. When these had reached a
certain point, they began to be the principal things considered in the
picture, and its story or scene to be thought of only as a theme for
their manifestation. Observe the difference. In old times, men used
their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times,
they used the objects of faith that they might show their powers of
painting. The distinction is enormous, the difference incalculable as
irreconcilable. And thus, the more skilful the artist, the less his
subject was regarded; and the hearts of men hardened as their handling
softened, until they reached a point when sacred, profane, or sensual
subjects were employed, with absolute indifference, for the display of
color and execution; and gradually the mind of Europe congealed into
that state of utter apathy,--inconceivable, unless it had been
witnessed, and unpardonable, unless by us, who have been infected by
it,--which permits us to place the Madonna and the Aphrodite side by
side in our galleries, and to pass, with the same unmoved inquiry into
the manner of their handling, from a Bacchanal to a Nativity.
Now all this evil, observe, would have been merely the necessary and
natural operation of an enthusiasm for the classics, and of a delight in
the mere science of the artist, on the most virtuous mind. But this
operation took place upon minds enervated by luxury, and which were
tempted, at the very same period, to forgetfulness or denial of all
religious principle by their own basest instincts. The faith which had
been undermined by the genius of Pagans, was overthrown by the crimes of
Christians; and the ruin which was begun by scholarship, was completed
by sensuality. The characters of the heathen divinities were as suitable
to the manners of the time as their forms were agreeable to its taste;
and Paganism again became, in effect, the religion of Europe. That is to
say, the civilized world is at this moment, collectively, just as Pagan
as it was in the second century; a small body of believers being now, as
they were then, representative of the Church of Christ in the midst of
the faithless: but there is just this difference, and this very fatal
one, between the second and nineteenth centuries, that the Pagans are
nominally and fashionably Christians, and that there is every
conceivable variety and shade of belief between the two; so that not
only is it most difficult theoretically to mark the point where
hesitating trust and failing practice change into definite infidelity,
but it has become a point of politeness not to inquire too deeply into
our neighbor's religious opinions; and, so that no one be offended by
violent breach of external forms, to waive any close examination into
the tenets of faith. The fact is, we distrust each other and ourselves
so much, that we dare not press this matter; we know that if, on any
occasion of general intercourse, we turn to our next neighbor, and put
to him some searching or testing question, we shall, in nine cases out
of ten, discover him to be only a Christian in his own way, and as far
as he thinks proper, and that he doubts of many things which we
ourselves do not believe strongly enough to hear doubted without danger.
What is in reality cowardice and faithlessness, we call charity; and
consider it the part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men's evil
practice for the sake of their accurate faith, and sometimes to forgive
their confessed heresy for the sake of their admirable practice. And
under this shelter of charity, humility, and faintheartedness, the
world, unquestioned by others or by itself, mingles with and overwhelms
the small body of Christians, legislates for them, moralizes for them,
reasons for them; and, though itself of course greatly and beneficently
influenced by the association, and held much in check by its pretence to
Christianity, yet undermines, in nearly the same degree, the sincerity
and practical power of Christianity itself, until at last, in the very
institutions of which the administration may be considered as the
principal test of the genuineness of national religion, those devoted to
education, the Pagan system is completely triumphant; and the entire
body of the so-called Christian world has established a system of
instruction for its youth, wherein neither the history of Christ's
Church, nor the language of God's law, is considered a study of the
smallest importance; wherein, of all subjects of human inquiry, his own
religion is the one in which a youth's ignorance is most easily
forgiven;[26] and in which it is held a light matter that he should be
daily guilty of lying, or debauchery, or of blasphemy, so only that he
write Latin verses accurately, and with speed.
I believe that in few years more we shall wake from all these errors in
astonishment, as from evil dreams; having been preserved, in the midst
of their madness, by those hidden roots of active and earnest
Christianity which God's grace has bound in the English nation with iron
and brass. But in the Venetian, those roots themselves had withered;
and, from the palace of their ancient religion, their pride cast them
forth hopelessly to the pasture of the brute. From pride to infidelity,
from infidelity to the unscrupulous and insatiable pursuit of pleasure,
and from this to irremediable degradation, the transitions were swift,
like the falling of a star. The great palaces of the haughtiest nobles
of Venice were stayed, before they had risen far above their
foundations, by the blast of a penal poverty; and the wild grass, on the
unfinished fragments of their mighty shafts, waves at the tide-mark
where the power of the godless people first heard the "Hitherto shalt
thou come." And the regeneration in which they had so vainly
trusted,--the new birth and clear dawning, as they thought it, of all
art, all knowledge, and all hope,--became to them as that dawn which
Ezekiel saw on the hills of Israel: "Behold the day; behold, it is come.
The rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded, violence is risen up into a
rod of wickedness. None of them shall remain, nor of their multitude;
let not the buyer rejoice, nor the seller mourn, for wrath is upon all
the multitude thereof."
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Or, more briefly, science has to do with facts, art with
phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to
facts; and to art facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena. I
use the word "art" here with reference to the fine arts only, for
the lower arts of mechanical production I should reserve the word
"manufacture."
[9] Tintoret.
[10] St. Bernard.
[11] Society always has a destructive influence upon an artist:
first by its sympathy with his meanest powers; secondly, by its
chilling want of understanding of his greatest; and, thirdly, by its
vain occupation of his time and thoughts. Of course a painter of men
must be _among_ men; but it ought to be as a watcher, not as a
companion.
[12] I intended in this place to have introduced some special
consideration of the science of anatomy, which I believe to have
been in great part the cause of the decline of modern art; but I
have been anticipated by a writer better able to treat the subject.
I have only glanced at his book; and there is something in the
spirit of it which I do not like, and some parts of it are assuredly
wrong; but, respecting anatomy, it seems to me to settle the
question indisputably, more especially as being written by a master
of the science. I quote two passages, and must refer the reader to
the sequel.
"_The scientific men of forty centuries_ have failed to describe so
accurately, so beautifully, so artistically, as Homer did, the
organic elements constituting the emblems of youth and beauty, and
the waste and decay which these sustain by time and age. All these
Homer understood better, and has described more truthfully than the
scientific men of forty centuries....
"Before I approach this question, permit me to make a few remarks on
the pre-historic period of Greece; that era which seems to have
produced nearly all the great men.
"On looking attentively at the statues within my observation, I
cannot find the slightest foundation for the assertion that their
sculptors must have dissected the human frame and been well
acquainted with the human anatomy. They, like Homer, had discovered
Nature's secret, and bestowed their whole attention on the exterior.
The exterior they read profoundly, and studied deeply--the _living
exterior_ and the _dead_. Above all, they avoided displaying the
dead and dissected interior, through the exterior. They had
discovered that the interior presents hideous shapes, but not forms.
Men during the philosophic era of Greece saw all this, each reading
the antique to the best of his abilities. The man of genius
rediscovered the canon of the ancient masters, and wrought on its
principles. The greater number, as now, unequal to this step, merely
imitated and copied those who preceded them."--_Great Artists and
Great Anatomists_. By R. Knox, M.D. London, Van Voorst, 1852.
Respecting the value of literary knowledge in general as regards
art, the reader will also do well to meditate on the following
sentences from Hallam's "Literature of Europe;" remembering at the
same time what I have above said, that "the root of all great art in
Europe is struck in the thirteenth century," and that the great time
is from 1250 to 1350:
"In Germany the tenth century, Leibnitz declares, was a golden age
of learning compared with the thirteenth."
"The writers of the thirteenth century display an incredible
ignorance, not only of pure idiom, but of common grammatical rules."
The fourteenth century was "not superior to the thirteenth in
learning.... We may justly praise Richard of Bury for his zeal in
collecting books. But his erudition appears crude, his style
indifferent, and his thoughts superficial."
I doubt the superficialness of the _thoughts_: at all events, this
is not a character of the time, though it may be of the writer; for
this would affect art more even than literature.
[13] Churton's "Early English Church." London, 1840.
[14] "Quibus nulla macula inest quæ non cernatur. Ita viri nobilitate
præditi eam vitam peragant cui nulla nota possit inviri." The first
sentence is literally, "in which there is no spot that may not be
seen." But I imagine the writer meant it as I have put it in the
text, else his comparison does not hold.
[15] Observe, however, that the magnitude spoken of here and in the
following passages, is the finished and polished magnitude sought
for the sake of pomp: not the rough magnitude sought for the sake of
sublimity: respecting which see the "Seven Lamps," chap. iii. § 5,
6, and 8.
[16] Can Grande died in 1329: we can hardly allow more than five
years for the erection of his tomb.
[17] Vol. I. Chap. I.
[18] Sansovino, lib. xiii.
[19] Tentori, vi. 142, i. 157.
[20] "Jacobus Pisaurius Paphi Episcopus qui Turcos bello, se ipsum
pace vincebat, ex nobili inter Venetas, ad nobiliorem inter Angelos
familiam delatus, nobilissimam in illa die Coronam justo Judice
reddente, hic situs expectat Vixit annos Platonicos. Obijt MDXLVII.
IX. Kal. Aprilis."
[21] Isaiah xlvii. 7, 10, 11, 15.
[22] Compare "Seven Lamps," chap. vii. § 3.
[23] See the farther remarks on Inspiration, in the fourth chapter.
[24] That is to say, orders separated by such distinctions as the old
Greek ones: considered with reference to the bearing power of the
capital, all orders may be referred to two, as long ago stated; just
as trees may be referred to the two great classes, monocotyledonous
and dicotyledonous.
[25] Job xxi: 26-28; Psalm lxxxix. 37.
[26] I shall not forget the impression made upon me at Oxford, when,
going up for my degree, and mentioning to one of the authorities
that I had not had time enough to read the Epistles properly, I was
told, that "the Epistles were separate sciences, and I need not
trouble myself about them."
The reader will find some farther notes on this subject in Appendix
7, "Modern Education."
CHAPTER III.
GROTESQUE RENAISSANCE.
§ I. In the close of the last chapter it was noted that the phases of
transition in the moral temper of the falling Venetians, during their
fall, were from pride to infidelity, and from infidelity to the
unscrupulous _pursuit of pleasure_. During the last years of the
existence of the state, the minds both of the nobility and the people
seem to have been set simply upon the attainment of the means of
self-indulgence. There was not strength enough in them to be proud, nor
forethought enough to be ambitious. One by one the possessions of the
state were abandoned to its enemies; one by one the channels of its
trade were forsaken by its own languor, or occupied and closed against
it by its more energetic rivals; and the time, the resources, and the
thoughts of the nation were exclusively occupied in the invention of
such fantastic and costly pleasures as might best amuse their apathy,
lull their remorse, or disguise their ruin.
§ II. The architecture raised at Venice during this period is amongst
the worst and basest ever built by the hands of men, being especially
distinguished by a spirit of brutal mockery and insolent jest, which,
exhausting itself in deformed and monstrous sculpture, can sometimes be
hardly otherwise defined than as the perpetuation in stone of the
ribaldries of drunkenness. On such a period, and on such work, it is
painful to dwell, and I had not originally intended to do so; but I
found that the entire spirit of the Renaissance could not be
comprehended unless it was followed to its consummation; and that there
were many most interesting questions arising out of the study of this
particular spirit of jesting, with reference to which I have called it
the _Grotesque_ Renaissance. For it is not this period alone which is
distinguished by such a spirit. There is jest--perpetual, careless, and
not unfrequently obscene--in the most noble work of the Gothic periods;
and it becomes, therefore, of the greatest possible importance to
examine into the nature and essence of the Grotesque itself, and to
ascertain in what respect it is that the jesting of art in its highest
flight, differs from its jesting in its utmost degradation.
§ III. The place where we may best commence our inquiry is one renowned
in the history of Venice, the space of ground before the Church of Santa
Maria Formosa; a spot which, after the Rialto and St. Mark's Place,
ought to possess a peculiar interest in the mind of the traveller, in
consequence of its connexion with the most touching and true legend of
the Brides of Venice. That legend is related at length in every Venetian
history, and, finally, has been told by the poet Rogers, in a way which
renders it impossible for any one to tell it after him. I have only,
therefore, to remind the reader that the capture of the brides took
place in the cathedral church, St. Pietro di Castello; and that this of
Santa Maria Formosa is connected with the tale, only because it was
yearly visited with prayers by the Venetian maidens, on the anniversary
of their ancestors' deliverance. For that deliverance, their thanks were
to be rendered to the Virgin; and there was no church then dedicated to
the Virgin, in Venice, except this.[27]
Neither of the cathedral church, nor of this dedicated to St. Mary the
Beautiful, is one stone left upon another. But, from that which has been
raised on the site of the latter, we may receive a most important
lesson, introductory to our immediate subject, if first we glance back
to the traditional history of the church which has been destroyed.
§ IV. No more honorable epithet than "traditional" can be attached to
what is recorded concerning it, yet I should grieve to lose the legend
of its first erection. The Bishop of Uderzo, driven by the Lombards from
his Bishopric, as he was praying, beheld in a vision the Virgin Mother,
who ordered him to found a church in her honor, in the place where he
should see a white cloud rest. And when he went out, the white cloud
went before him; and on the place where it rested he built a church, and
it was called the Church of St. Mary the Beautiful, from the loveliness
of the form in which she had appeared in the vision.[28]
The first church stood only for about two centuries. It was rebuilt in
864, and enriched with various relics some fifty years later; relics
belonging principally to St. Nicodemus, and much lamented when they and
the church were together destroyed by fire in 1105.
It was then rebuilt in "magnifica forma," much resembling, according to
Corner, the architecture of the chancel of St. Mark;[29] but the
information which I find in various writers, as to the period at which
it was reduced to its present condition, is both sparing and
contradictory.
§ V. Thus, by Corner, we are told that this church, resembling St.
Mark's, "remained untouched for more than four centuries," until, in
1689, it was thrown down by an earthquake, and restored by the piety of
a rich merchant, Turrin Toroni, "in ornatissima forma;" and that, for
the greater beauty of the renewed church, it had added to it two façades
of marble. With this information that of the Padre dell' Oratoria
agrees, only he gives the date of the earlier rebuilding of the church
in 1175, and ascribes it to an architect of the name of Barbetta. But
Quadri, in his usually accurate little guide, tells us that this
Barbetta rebuilt the church in the fourteenth century; and that of the
two façades, so much admired by Corner, one is of the sixteenth century,
and its architect unknown; and the rest of the church is of the
seventeenth, "in the style of Sansovino."
§ VI. There is no occasion to examine, or endeavor to reconcile, these
conflicting accounts. All that is necessary for the reader to know is,
that every vestige of the church in which the ceremony took place was
destroyed _at least_ as early as 1689; and that the ceremony itself,
having been abolished in the close of the fourteenth century, is only to
be conceived as taking place in that more ancient church, resembling St.
Mark's, which, even according to Quadri, existed until that period. I
would, therefore, endeavor to fix the reader's mind, for a moment, on
the contrast between the former and latter aspect of this plot of
ground; the former, when it had its Byzantine church, and its yearly
procession of the Doge and the Brides; and the latter, when it has its
Renaissance church "in the style of Sansovino," and its yearly honoring
is done away.
§ VII. And, first, let us consider for a little the significance and
nobleness of that early custom of the Venetians, which brought about the
attack and the rescue of the year 943: that there should be but one
marriage day for the nobles of the whole nation,[30] so that all might
rejoice together; and that the sympathy might be full, not only of the
families who that year beheld the alliance of their children, and prayed
for them in one crowd, weeping before the altar, but of all the families
of the state, who saw, in the day which brought happiness to others, the
anniversary of their own. Imagine the strong bond of brotherhood thus
sanctified among them, and consider also the effect on the minds of the
youth of the state; the greater deliberation and openness necessarily
given to the contemplation of marriage, to which all the people were
solemnly to bear testimony; the more lofty and unselfish tone which it
would give to all their thoughts. It was the exact contrary of stolen
marriage. It was marriage to which God and man were taken for witnesses,
and every eye was invoked for its glance, and every tongue for its
prayers.[31]
§ VIII. Later historians have delighted themselves in dwelling on the
pageantry of the marriage day itself, but I do not find that they have
authority for the splendor of their descriptions. I cannot find a word
in the older Chronicles about the jewels or dress of the brides, and I
believe the ceremony to have been more quiet and homely than is usually
supposed. The only sentence which gives color to the usual accounts of
it is one of Sansovino's, in which he says that the magnificent dress of
the brides in his day was founded "on ancient custom."[32] However this
may have been, the circumstances of the rite were otherwise very simple.
Each maiden brought her dowry with her in a small "cassetta," or chest;
they went first to the cathedral, and waited for the youths, who having
come, they heard mass together, and the bishop preached to them and
blessed them: and so each bridegroom took his bride and her dowry and
bore her home.
§ IX. It seems that the alarm given by the attack of the pirates put an
end to the custom of fixing one day for all marriages: but the main
objects of the institution were still attained by the perfect publicity
given to the marriages of all the noble families; the bridegroom
standing in the Court of the Ducal Palace to receive congratulations on
his betrothal, and the whole body of the nobility attending the
nuptials, and rejoicing, "as at some personal good fortune; since, by
the constitution of the state, they are for ever incorporated together,
as if of one and the same family."[33] But the festival of the 2nd of
February, after the year 943, seems to have been observed only in memory
of the deliverance of the brides, and no longer set apart for public
nuptials.
§ X. There is much difficulty in reconciling the various accounts, or
distinguishing the inaccurate ones, of the manner of keeping this
memorable festival. I shall first give Sansovino's, which is the popular
one, and then note the points of importance in the counter-statements.
Sansovino says that the success of the pursuit of the pirates was owing
to the ready help and hard fighting of the men of the district of Sta.
Maria Formosa, for the most part trunkmakers; and that they, having been
presented after the victory to the Doge and the Senate, were told to ask
some favor for their reward. "The good men then said that they desired
the Prince, with his wife and the Signory, to visit every year the
church of their district, on the day of its feast. And the Prince asking
them, 'Suppose it should rain?' they answered, 'We will give you hats to
cover you; and if you are thirsty, we will give you to drink.' Whence is
it that the Vicar, in the name of the people, presents to the Doge, on
his visit, two flasks of malvoisie[34] and two oranges; and presents to
him two gilded hats, bearing the arms of the Pope, of the Prince, and of
the Vicar. And thus was instituted the Feast of the Maries, which was
called noble and famous because the people from all round came together
to behold it. And it was celebrated in this manner:...." The account
which follows is somewhat prolix; but its substance is, briefly, that
twelve maidens were elected, two for each division of the city; and that
it was decided by lot which contrade, or quarters of the town, should
provide them with dresses. This was done at enormous expense, one
contrada contending with another, and even the jewels of the treasury of
St. Mark being lent for the occasion to the "Maries," as the twelve
damsels were called. They, being thus dressed with gold, and silver, and
jewels, went in their galley to St. Mark's for the Doge, who joined them
with the Signory, and went first to San Pietro di Castello to hear mass
on St. Mark's day, the 31st of January, and to Santa Maria Formosa on
the 2nd of February, the intermediate day being spent in passing in
procession through the streets of the city; "and sometimes there arose
quarrels about the places they should pass through, for every one wanted
them to pass by his house."
§ XI. Nearly the same account is given by Corner, who, however, does not
say anything about the hats or the malvoisie. These, however, we find
again in the Matricola de' Casseleri, which, of course, sets the
services of the trunkmakers and the privileges obtained by them in the
most brilliant light. The quaintness of the old Venetian is hardly to be
rendered into English. "And you must know that the said trunkmakers were
the men who were the cause of such victory, and of taking the galley,
and of cutting all the Triestines to pieces, because, at that time, they
were valiant men and well in order. The which victory was on the 2nd
February, on the day of the Madonna of candles. And at the request and
entreaties of the said trunkmakers, it was decreed that the Doge, every
year, as long as Venice shall endure, should go on the eve of the said
feast to vespers in the said church, with the Signory. And be it noted,
that the vicar is obliged to give to the Doge two flasks of malvoisie,
with two oranges besides. And so it is observed, and will be observed
always." The reader must observe the continual confusion between St.
Mark's day the 31st of January, and Candlemas the 2nd of February. The
fact appears to be, that the marriage day in the old republic was St.
Mark's day, and the recovery of the brides was the same day at evening;
so that, as we are told by Sansovino, the commemorative festival began
on that day, but it was continued to the day of the Purification, that
especial thanks might be rendered to the Virgin; and, the visit to Sta.
Maria Formosa being the most important ceremony of the whole festival,
the old chroniclers, and even Sansovino, got confused, and asserted the
victory itself to have taken place on the day appointed for that
pilgrimage.
§ XII. I doubt not that the reader who is acquainted with the beautiful
lines of Rogers is as much grieved as I am at the interference of the
"casket-makers" with the achievement which the poet ascribes to the
bridegrooms alone; an interference quite as inopportune as that of old
Le Balafré with the victory of his nephew, in the unsatisfactory
conclusion of "Quentin Durward." I am afraid I cannot get the
casket-makers quite out of the way; but it may gratify some of my
readers to know that a chronicle of the year 1378, quoted by
Galliciolli, denies the agency of the people of Sta. Maria Formosa
altogether, in these terms: "Some say that the people of Sta. M. Formosa
were those who recovered the _spoil_ ("predra;" I may notice, in
passing, that most of the old chroniclers appear to consider the
recovery of the _caskets_ rather more a subject of congratulation than
that of the brides), and that, for their reward, they asked the Doge and
Signory to visit Sta. M. Formosa; but _this is false_. The going to Sta.
M. Formosa was because the thing had succeeded on that day, and because
this was then the only church in Venice in honor of the Virgin." But
here is again the mistake about the day itself; and besides if we get
rid altogether of the trunkmakers, how are we to account for the
ceremony of the oranges and hats, of which the accounts seem authentic?
If, however, the reader likes to substitute "carpenters" or
"house-builders" for casket-makers, he may do so with great reason (vide
Galliciolli, lib. ii. § 1758); but I fear that one or the other body of
tradesmen must be allowed to have had no small share in the honor of the
victory.
§ XIII. But whatever doubt attaches to the particular circumstances of
its origin, there is none respecting the splendor of the festival
itself, as it was celebrated for four centuries afterwards. We find that
each contrada spent from 800 to 1000 zecchins in the dress of the
"Maries" entrusted to it; but I cannot find among how many contrade the
twelve Maries were divided; it is also to be supposed that most of the
accounts given refer to the later periods of the celebration of the
festival. In the beginning of the eleventh century, the good Doge Pietro
Orseolo II. left in his will the third of his entire fortune "per la
Festa della Marie;" and, in the fourteenth century, so many people came
from the rest of Italy to see it, that special police regulations were
made for it, and the Council of Ten were twice summoned before it took
place.[35] The expense lavished upon it seems to have increased till the
year 1379, when all the resources of the republic were required for the
terrible war of Chiozza, and all festivity was for that time put an end
to. The issue of the war left the Venetians with neither the power nor
the disposition to restore the festival on its ancient scale, and they
seem to have been ashamed to exhibit it in reduced splendor. It was
entirely abolished.
§ XIV. As if to do away even with its memory, every feature of the
surrounding scene which was associated with that festival has been in
succeeding ages destroyed. With one solitary exception,[36] there is not
a house left in the whole Piazza of Santa Maria Formosa from whose
windows the festa of the Maries has ever been seen: of the church in
which they worshipped, not a stone is left, even the form of the ground
and direction of the neighboring canals are changed; and there is now
but one landmark to guide the steps of the traveller to the place where
the white cloud rested, and the shrine was built to St. Mary the
Beautiful. Yet the spot is still worth his pilgrimage, for he may
receive a lesson upon it, though a painful one. Let him first fill his
mind with the fair images of the ancient festival, and then seek that
landmark the tower of the modern church, built upon the place where the
daughters of Venice knelt yearly with her noblest lords; and let him
look at the head that is carved on the base of the tower,[37] still
dedicated to St. Mary the Beautiful.
§ XV. A head,--huge, inhuman, and monstrous,--leering in bestial
degradation, too foul to be either pictured or described, or to be
beheld for more than an instant: yet let it be endured for that instant;
for in that head is embodied the type of the evil spirit to which Venice
was abandoned in the fourth period of her decline; and it is well that
we should see and feel the full horror of it on this spot, and know what
pestilence it was that came and breathed upon her beauty, until it
melted away like the white cloud from the ancient fields of Santa Maria
Formosa.
§ XVI. This head is one of many hundreds which disgrace the latest
buildings of the city, all more or less agreeing in their expression of
sneering mockery, in most cases enhanced by thrusting out the tongue.
Most of them occur upon the bridges, which were among the very last
works undertaken by the republic, several, for instance, upon the Bridge
of Sighs; and they are evidences of a delight in the contemplation of
bestial vice, and the expression of low sarcasm, which is, I believe,
the most hopeless state into which the human mind can fall. This spirit
of idiotic mockery is, as I have said, the most striking characteristic
of the last period of the Renaissance, which, in consequence of the
character thus imparted to its sculpture, I have called grotesque; but
it must be our immediate task, and it will be a most interesting one, to
distinguish between this base grotesqueness, and that magnificent
condition of fantastic imagination, which was above noticed as one of
the chief elements of the Northern Gothic mind. Nor is this a question
of interesting speculation merely: for the distinction between the true
and false grotesque is one which the present tendencies of the English
mind have rendered it practically important to ascertain; and that in a
degree which, until he has made some progress in the consideration of
the subject, the reader will hardly anticipate.
§ XVII. But, first, I have to note one peculiarity in the late
architecture of Venice, which will materially assist us in understanding
the true nature of the spirit which is to be the subject of our inquiry;
and this peculiarity, singularly enough, is first exemplified in the
very façade of Santa Maria Formosa which is flanked by the grotesque
head to which our attention has just been directed. This façade, whose
architect is unknown, consists of a pediment, sustained on four
Corinthian pilasters, and is, I believe, the earliest in Venice which
appears _entirely destitute of every religious symbol, sculpture, or
inscription_; unless the Cardinal's hat upon the shield in the centre of
the impediment be considered a religious symbol. The entire façade is
nothing else than a monument to the Admiral Vincenzo Cappello. Two
tablets, one between each pair of flanking pillars, record his acts and
honors; and, on the corresponding spaces upon the base of the church,
are two circular trophies, composed of halberts, arrows, flags,
tridents, helmets, and lances: sculptures which are just as valueless in
a military as in an ecclesiastical point of view; for, being all copied
from the forms of Roman arms and armor, they cannot even be referred to
for information respecting the costume of the period. Over the door, as
the chief ornament of the façade, exactly in the spot which in the
"barbarous" St. Mark's is occupied by the figure of Christ, is the
statue of Vincenzo Cappello, in Roman armor. He died in 1542; and we
have, therefore, the latter part of the sixteenth century fixed as the
period when, in Venice, churches were first built to the glory of man,
instead of the glory of God.
§ XVIII. Throughout the whole of Scripture history, nothing is more
remarkable than the close connection of punishment with the sin of
vain-glory. Every other sin is occasionally permitted to remain, for
lengthened periods, without definite chastisement; but the forgetfulness
of God, and the claim of honor by man, as belonging to himself, are
visited at once, whether in Hezekiah, Nebuchadnezzar, or Herod, with the
most tremendous punishment. We have already seen, that the first reason
for the fall of Venice was the manifestation of such a spirit; and it is
most singular to observe the definiteness with which it is here
marked,--as if so appointed, that it might be impossible for future ages
to miss the lesson. For, in the long inscriptions[38] which record the
acts of Vincenzo Cappello, it might, at least, have been anticipated
that some expressions would occur indicative of remaining pretence to
religious feeling, or formal acknowledgement of Divine power. But there
are none whatever. The name of God does not once occur; that of St. Mark
is found only in the statement that Cappello was a procurator of the
church: there is no word touching either on the faith or hope of the
deceased; and the only sentence which alludes to supernatural powers at
all, alludes to them under the heathen name of _fates_, in its
explanation of what the Admiral Cappello _would_ have accomplished,
"nisi fata Christianis adversa vetuissent."
§ XIX. Having taken sufficient note of all the baseness of mind which
these facts indicate in the people, we shall not be surprised to find
immediate signs of dotage in the conception of their architecture. The
churches raised throughout this period are so grossly debased, that even
the Italian critics of the present day, who are partially awakened to
the true state of art in Italy, though blind, as yet, to its true cause,
exhaust their terms of reproach upon these last efforts of the
Renaissance builders. The two churches of San Moisè and Santa Maria
Zobenigo, which are among the most remarkable in Venice for their
manifestation of insolent atheism, are characterized by Lazari, the one
as "culmine d'ogni follia architettonica," the other as "orrido ammasso
di pietra d'Istria," with added expressions of contempt, as just as it
is unmitigated.
§ XX. Now both these churches, which I should like the reader to visit
in succession, if possible, after that of Sta. Maria Formosa, agree with
that church, and with each other, in being totally destitute of
religious symbols, and entirely dedicated to the honor of two Venetian
families. In San Moisè, a bust of Vincenzo Fini is set on a tall narrow
pyramid, above the central door, with this marvellous inscription:
"OMNE FASTIGIVM
VIRTVTE IMPLET
VINCENTIVS FINI."
It is very difficult to translate this; for fastigium, besides its
general sense, has a particular one in architecture, and refers to the
part of the building occupied by the bust; but the main meaning of it is
that "Vincenzo Fini fills all height with his virtue." The inscription
goes on into farther praise, but this example is enough. Over the two
lateral doors are two other laudatory inscriptions of younger members of
the Fini family, the dates of death of the three heroes being 1660,
1685, and 1726, marking thus the period of consummate degradation.
[Illustration: Plate III.
NOBLE AND IGNOBLE GROTESQUE.]
§ XXI. In like manner, the Church of Santa Maria Zobenigo is entirely
dedicated to the Barbaro family; the only religious symbols with which
it is invested being statues of angels blowing brazen trumpets, intended
to express the spreading of the fame of the Barbaro family in heaven. At
the top of the church is Venice crowned, between Justice and Temperance,
Justice holding a pair of grocer's scales, of iron, swinging in the
wind. There is a two-necked stone eagle (the Barbaro crest), with a
copper crown, in the centre of the pediment. A huge statue of a Barbaro
in armor, with a fantastic head-dress, over the central door; and four
Barbaros in niches, two on each side of it, strutting statues, in the
common stage postures of the period,--Jo. Maria Barbaro, sapiens
ordinum; Marinus Barbaro, Senator (reading a speech in a Ciceronian
attitude); Franc. Barbaro, legatus in classe (in armor, with high-heeled
boots, and looking resolutely fierce); and Carolus Barbaro, sapiens
ordinum: the decorations of the façade being completed by two trophies,
consisting of drums, trumpets, flags and cannon; and six plans,
sculptured in relief, of the towns of Zara, Candia, Padua, Rome, Corfu,
and Spalatro.
§ XXII. When the traveller has sufficiently considered the meaning of
this façade, he ought to visit the Church of St. Eustachio, remarkable
for the dramatic effect of the group of sculpture on its façade, and
then the Church of the Ospedaletto (see Index, under head Ospedaletto);
noticing, on his way, the heads on the foundations of the Palazzo Corner
della Regina, and the Palazzo Pesaro, and any other heads carved on the
modern bridges, closing with those on the Bridge of Sighs.
He will then have obtained a perfect idea of the style and feeling of
the Grotesque Renaissance. I cannot pollute this volume by any
illustration of its worst forms, but the head turned to the front, on
the right-hand in the opposite Plate, will give the general reader an
idea of its most graceful and refined developments. The figure set
beside it, on the left, is a piece of noble grotesque, from fourteenth
century Gothic; and it must be our present task to ascertain the nature
of the difference which exists between the two, by an accurate inquiry
into the true essence of the grotesque spirit itself.
§ XXIII. First, then, it seems to me that the grotesque is, in almost
all cases, composed of two elements, one ludicrous, the other fearful;
that, as one or other of these elements prevails, the grotesque falls
into two branches, sportive grotesque and terrible grotesque; but that
we cannot legitimately consider it under these two aspects, because
there are hardly any examples which do not in some degree combine both
elements; there are few grotesques so utterly playful as to be overcast
with no shade of fearfulness, and few so fearful as absolutely to
exclude all ideas of jest. But although we cannot separate the grotesque
itself into two branches, we may easily examine separately the two
conditions of mind which it seems to combine; and consider successively
what are the kinds of jest, and what the kinds of fearfulness, which may
be legitimately expressed in the various walks of art, and how their
expressions actually occur in the Gothic and Renaissance schools.
First, then, what are the conditions of playfulness which we may fitly
express in noble art, or which (for this is the same thing) are
consistent with nobleness in humanity? In other words, what is the
proper function of play, with respect not to youth merely, but to all
mankind?
§ XXIV. It is a much more serious question than may be at first
supposed; for a healthy manner of play is necessary in order to a
healthy manner of work: and because the choice of our recreation is, in
most cases, left to ourselves, while the nature of our work is generally
fixed by necessity or authority, it may be well doubted whether more
distressful consequences may not have resulted from mistaken choice in
play than from mistaken direction in labor.
§ XXV. Observe, however, that we are only concerned, here, with that
kind of play which causes laughter or implies recreation, not with that
which consists in the excitement of the energies whether of body or
mind. Muscular exertion is, indeed, in youth, one of the conditions of
recreation; "but neither the violent bodily labor which children of all
ages agree to call play," nor the grave excitement of the mental
faculties in games of skill or chance, are in anywise connected with the
state of feeling we have here to investigate, namely, that sportiveness
which man possesses in common with many inferior creatures, but to which
his higher faculties give nobler expression in the various
manifestations of wit, humor, and fancy.
With respect to the manner in which this instinct of playfulness is
indulged or repressed, mankind are broadly distinguishable into four
classes: the men who play wisely; who play necessarily; who play
inordinately; and who play not at all.
§ XXVI. First: Those who play wisely. It is evident that the idea of any
kind of play can only be associated with the idea of an imperfect,
childish, and fatigable nature. As far as men can raise that nature, so
that it shall no longer be interested by trifles or exhausted by toils,
they raise it above play; he whose heart is at once fixed upon heaven,
and open to the earth, so as to apprehend the importance of heavenly
doctrines, and the compass of human sorrow, will have little disposition
for jest; and exactly in proportion to the breadth and depth of his
character and intellect, will be, in general, the incapability of
surprise, or exuberant and sudden emotion, which must render play
impossible. It is, however, evidently not intended that many men should
even reach, far less pass their lives in, that solemn state of
thoughtfulness, which brings them into the nearest brotherhood with
their Divine Master; and the highest and healthiest state which is
competent to ordinary humanity appears to be that which, accepting the
necessity of recreation, and yielding to the impulses of natural delight
springing out of health and innocence, does, indeed, condescend often to
playfulness, but never without such deep love of God, of truth, and of
humanity, as shall make even its slightest words reverent, its idlest
fancies profitable, and its keenest satire indulgent. Wordsworth and
Plato furnish us with, perhaps, the finest and highest examples of this
playfulness: in the one case, unmixed with satire, the perfectly simple
effusion of that spirit--in
"Which gives to all the self-same bent,
Whose life is wise, and innocent;"
Plato, and, by the by, in a very wise book of our own times, not
unworthy of being named in such companionship, "Friends in Council,"
mingled with an exquisitely tender and loving satire.
§ XXVII. Secondly: The men who play necessarily. That highest species of
playfulness, which we have just been considering, is evidently the
condition of a mind, not only highly cultivated, but so habitually
trained to intellectual labor that it can bring a considerable force of
accurate thought into its moments even of recreation. This is not
possible, unless so much repose of mind and heart are enjoyed, even at
the periods of greatest exertion, that the rest required by the system
is diffused over the whole life. To the majority of mankind, such a
state is evidently unattainable. They must, perforce, pass a large part
of their lives in employments both irksome and toilsome, demanding an
expenditure of energy which exhausts the system, and yet consuming that
energy upon subjects incapable of interesting the nobler faculties. When
such employments are intermitted, those noble instincts, fancy,
imagination, and curiosity, are all hungry for the food which the labor
of the day has denied to them, while yet the weariness of the body, in a
great degree, forbids their application to any serious subject. They
therefore exert themselves without any determined purpose, and under no
vigorous restraint, but gather, as best they may, such various
nourishment, and put themselves to such fantastic exercise, as may
soonest indemnify them for their past imprisonment, and prepare them to
endure their recurrence. This sketching of the mental limbs as their
fetters fall away,--this leaping and dancing of the heart and intellect,
when they are restored to the fresh air of heaven, yet half paralyzed by
their captivity, and unable to turn themselves to any earnest
purpose,--I call necessary play. It is impossible to exaggerate its
importance, whether in polity, or in art.
§ XXVIII. Thirdly: The men who play inordinately. The most perfect state
of society which, consistently with due understanding of man's nature,
it may be permitted us to conceive, would be one in which the whole
human race were divided, more or less distinctly, into workers and
thinkers; that is to say, into the two classes, who only play wisely, or
play necessarily. But the number and the toil of the working class are
enormously increased, probably more than doubled, by the vices of the
men who neither play wisely nor necessarily, but are enabled by
circumstances, and permitted by their want of principle, to make
amusement the object of their existence. There is not any moment of the
lives of such men which is not injurious to others; both because they
leave the work undone which was appointed for them, and because they
necessarily think wrongly, whenever it becomes compulsory upon them to
think at all. The greater portion of the misery of this world arises
from the false opinions of men whose idleness has physically
incapacitated them from forming true ones. Every duty which we omit
obscures some truth which we should have known; and the guilt of a life
spent in the pursuit of pleasure is twofold, partly consisting in the
perversion of action, and partly in the dissemination of falsehood.
§ XXIX. There is, however, a less criminal, though hardly less dangerous
condition of mind; which, though not failing in its more urgent duties,
fails in the finer conscientiousness which regulates the degree, and
directs the choice, of amusement, at those times when amusement is
allowable. The most frequent error in this respect is the want of
reverence in approaching subjects of importance or sacredness, and of
caution in the expression of thoughts which may encourage like
irreverence in others: and these faults are apt to gain upon the mind
until it becomes habitually more sensible to what is ludicrous and
accidental, than to what is grave and essential, in any subject that is
brought before it; or even, at last, desires to perceive or to know
nothing but what may end in jest. Very generally minds of this
character are active and able; and many of them are so far
conscientious, that they believe their jesting forwards their work. But
it is difficult to calculate the harm they do, by destroying the
reverence which is our best guide into all truth; for weakness and evil
are easily visible, but greatness and goodness are often latent; and we
do infinite mischief by exposing weakness to eyes which cannot
comprehend greatness. This error, however, is more connected with abuses
of the satirical than of the playful instinct; and I shall have more to
say of it presently.
§ XXX. Lastly: The men who do not play at all: those who are so dull or
so morose as to be incapable of inventing or enjoying jest, and in whom
care, guilt, or pride represses all healthy exhilaration of the fancy;
or else men utterly oppressed with labor, and driven too hard by the
necessities of the world to be capable of any species of happy
relaxation.
§ XXXI. We have now to consider the way in which the presence or absence
of joyfulness, in these several classes, is expressed in art.
1. Wise play. The first and noblest class hardly ever speak through art,
except seriously; they feel its nobleness too profoundly, and value the
time necessary for its production too highly, to employ it in the
rendering of trivial thoughts. The playful fancy of a moment may
innocently be expressed by the passing word; but he can hardly have
learned the preciousness of life, who passes days in the elaboration of
a jest. And, as to what regards the delineation of human character, the
nature of all noble art is to epitomize and embrace so much at once,
that its subject can never be altogether ludicrous; it must possess all
the solemnities of the whole, not the brightness of the partial, truth.
For all truth that makes us smile is partial. The novelist amuses us by
his relation of a particular incident; but the painter cannot set any
one of his characters before us without giving some glimpse of its whole
career. That of which the historian informs us in successive pages, it
is the task of the painter to inform us of at once, writing upon the
countenance not merely the expression of the moment, but the history of
the life: and the history of a life can never be a jest.
Whatever part, therefore, of the sportive energy of these men of the
highest class would be expressed in verbal wit or humor finds small
utterance through their art, and will assuredly be confined, if it occur
there at all, to scattered and trivial incidents. But so far as their
minds can recreate themselves by the imagination of strange, yet not
laughable, forms, which, either in costume, in landscape, or in any
other accessaries, may be combined with those necessary for their more
earnest purposes, we find them delighting in such inventions; and a
species of grotesqueness thence arising in all their work, which is
indeed one of its most valuable characteristics, but which is so
intimately connected with the sublime or terrible form of the grotesque,
that it will be better to notice it under that head.
§ XXXII. 2. Necessary play. I have dwelt much in a former portion of
this work, on the justice and desirableness of employing the minds of
inferior workmen, and of the lower orders in general, in the production
of objects of art of one kind or another. So far as men of this class
are compelled to hard manual labor for their daily bread, so far forth
their artistical efforts must be rough and ignorant, and their
artistical perceptions comparatively dull. Now it is not possible, with
blunt perceptions and rude hands, to produce works which shall be
pleasing by their beauty; but it is perfectly possible to produce such
as shall be interesting by their character or amusing by their satire.
For one hard-working man who possesses the finer instincts which decide
on perfection of lines and harmonies of color, twenty possess dry humor
or quaint fancy; not because these faculties were originally given to
the human race, or to any section of it, in greater degree than the
sense of beauty, but because these are exercised in our daily
intercourse with each other, and developed by the interest which we take
in the affairs of life, while the others are not. And because,
therefore, a certain degree of success will probably attend the effort
to express this humor or fancy, while comparative failure will
assuredly result from an ignorant struggle to reach the forms of solemn
beauty, the working-man, who turns his attention partially to art, will
probably, and wisely, choose to do that which he can do best, and
indulge the pride of an effective satire rather than subject himself to
assured mortification in the pursuit of beauty; and this the more,
because we have seen that his application to art is to be playful and
recreative, and it is not in recreation that the conditions of
perfection can be fulfilled.
§ XXXIII. Now all the forms of art which result from the comparatively
recreative exertion of minds more or less blunted or encumbered by other
cares and toils, the art which we may call generally art of the wayside,
as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best
sense of the word, Grotesque. And it is noble or inferior, first,
according to the tone of the minds which have produced it, and in
proportion to their knowledge, wit, love of truth, and kindness;
secondly, according to the degree of strength they have been able to
give forth; but yet, however much we may find in it needing to be
forgiven, always delightful so long as it is the work of good and
ordinarily intelligent men. And its delightfulness ought mainly to
consist _in those very imperfections_ which mark it for work done in
times of rest. It is not its own merit so much as the enjoyment of him
who produced it, which is to be the source of the spectator's pleasure;
it is to the strength of his sympathy, not to the accuracy of his
criticism, that it makes appeal; and no man can indeed be a lover of
what is best in the higher walks of art, who has not feeling and charity
enough to rejoice with the rude sportiveness of hearts that have escaped
out of prison, and to be thankful for the flowers which men have laid
their burdens down to sow by the wayside.
§ XXXIV. And consider what a vast amount of human work this right
understanding of its meaning will make fruitful and admirable to us,
which otherwise we could only have passed by with contempt. There is
very little architecture in the world which is, in the full sense of the
words, good and noble. A few pieces of Italian Gothic and Romanesque, a
few scattered fragments of Gothic cathedrals, and perhaps two or three
of Greek temples, are all that we possess approaching to an ideal of
perfection. All the rest--Egyptian, Norman, Arabian, and most Gothic,
and, which is very noticeable, for the most part all the strongest and
mightiest--depend for their power on some developement of the grotesque
spirit; but much more the inferior domestic architecture of the middle
ages, and what similar conditions remain to this day in countries from
which the life of art has not yet been banished by its laws. The
fantastic gables, built up in scroll-work and steps, of the Flemish
street; the pinnacled roofs set with their small humorist double
windows, as if with so many ears and eyes, of Northern France; the
blackened timbers, crossed and carved into every conceivable waywardness
of imagination, of Normandy and old England; the rude hewing of the pine
timbers of the Swiss cottage; the projecting turrets and bracketed
oriels of the German street; these, and a thousand other forms, not in
themselves reaching any high degree of excellence, are yet admirable,
and most precious, as the fruits of a rejoicing energy in uncultivated
minds. It is easier to take away the energy, than to add the
cultivation; and the only effect of the better knowledge which civilized
nations now possess, has been, as we have seen in a former chapter, to
forbid their being happy, without enabling them to be great.
§ XXXV. It is very necessary, however, with respect to this provincial
or rustic architecture, that we should carefully distinguish its truly
grotesque from its picturesque elements. In the "Seven Lamps" I defined
the picturesque to be "parasitical sublimity," or sublimity belonging to
the external or accidental characters of a thing, not to the thing
itself. For instance, when a highland cottage roof is covered with
fragments of shale instead of slates, it becomes picturesque, because
the irregularity and rude fractures of the rocks, and their grey and
gloomy color, give to it something of the savageness, and much of the
general aspect, of the slope of a mountain side. But as a mere cottage
roof, it cannot be sublime, and whatever sublimity it derives from the
wildness or sternness which the mountains have given it in its covering,
is, so far forth, parasitical. The mountain itself would have been
grand, which is much more than picturesque; but the cottage cannot be
grand as such, and the parasitical grandeur which it may possess by
accidental qualities, is the character for which men have long agreed to
use the inaccurate word "Picturesque."
§ XXXVI. On the other hand, beauty cannot be parasitical. There is
nothing so small or so contemptible, but it may be beautiful in its own
right. The cottage may be beautiful, and the smallest moss that grows on
its roof, and the minutest fibre of that moss which the microscope can
raise into visible form, and all of them in their own right, not less
than the mountains and the sky; so that we use no peculiar term to
express their beauty, however diminutive, but only when the sublime
element enters, without sufficient worthiness in the nature of the thing
to which it is attached.
§ XXXVII. Now this picturesque element, which is always given, if by
nothing else, merely by ruggedness, adds usually very largely to the
pleasurableness of grotesque work, especially to that of its inferior
kinds; but it is not for this reason to be confounded with the
grotesqueness itself. The knots and rents of the timbers, the irregular
lying of the shingles on the roofs, the vigorous light and shadow, the
fractures and weather-stains of the old stones, which were so deeply
loved and so admirably rendered by our lost Prout, are the picturesque
elements of the architecture: the grotesque ones are those which are not
produced by the working of nature and of time, but exclusively by the
fancy of man; and, as also for the most part by his indolent and
uncultivated fancy, they are always, in some degree, wanting in
grandeur, unless the picturesque element be united with them.
§ XXXVIII. 3. Inordinate play. The reader will have some difficulty, I
fear, in keeping clearly in his mind the various divisions of our
subject; but, when he has once read the chapter through, he will see
their places and coherence. We have next to consider the expression
throughout of the minds of men who indulge themselves in unnecessary
play. It is evident that a large number of these men will be more
refined and more highly educated than those who only play necessarily;
the power of pleasure-seeking implies, in general, fortunate
circumstances of life. It is evident also that their play will not be so
hearty, so simple, or so joyful; and this deficiency of brightness will
affect it in proportion to its unnecessary and unlawful continuance,
until at last it becomes a restless and dissatisfied indulgence in
excitement, or a painful delving after exhausted springs of pleasure.
The art through which this temper is expressed will, in all probability,
be refined and sensual,--therefore, also, assuredly feeble; and because,
in the failure of the joyful energy of the mind, there will fail, also,
its perceptions and its sympathies, it will be entirely deficient in
expression of character, and acuteness of thought, but will be
peculiarly restless, manifesting its desire for excitement in idle
changes of subject and purpose. Incapable of true imagination, it will
seek to supply its place by exaggerations, incoherencies, and
monstrosities; and the form of the grotesque to which it gives rise will
be an incongruous chain of hackneyed graces, idly thrown
together,--prettinesses or sublimities, not of its own invention,
associated in forms which will be absurd without being fantastic, and
monstrous without being terrible. And because, in the continual pursuit
of pleasure, men lose both cheerfulness and charity, there will be small
hilarity, but much malice, in this grotesque; yet a weak malice,
incapable of expressing its own bitterness, not having grasp enough of
truth to become forcible, and exhausting itself in impotent or
disgusting caricature.
§ XXXIX. Of course, there are infinite ranks and kinds of this
grotesque, according to the natural power of the minds which originate
it, and to the degree in which they have lost themselves. Its highest
condition is that which first developed itself among the enervated
Romans, and which was brought to the highest perfection of which it was
capable, by Raphael, in the arabesques of the Vatican. It may be
generally described as an elaborate and luscious form of nonsense. Its
lower conditions are found in the common upholstery and decorations
which, over the whole of civilized Europe, have sprung from this
poisonous root; an artistical pottage, composed of nymphs, cupids, and
satyrs, with shreddings of heads and paws of meek wild beasts, and
nondescript vegetables. And the lowest of all are those which have not
even graceful models to recommend them, but arise out of the corruption
of the higher schools, mingled with clownish or bestial satire, as is
the case in the latter Renaissance of Venice, which we were above
examining. It is almost impossible to believe the depth to which the
human mind can be debased in following this species of grotesque. In a
recent Italian garden, the favorite ornaments frequently consist of
stucco images, representing, in dwarfish caricature, the most disgusting
types of manhood and womanhood which can be found amidst the dissipation
of the modern drawingroom; yet without either veracity or humor, and
dependent, for whatever interest they possess, upon simple grossness of
expression and absurdity of costume. Grossness, of one kind or another,
is, indeed, an unfailing characteristic of the style; either latent, as
in the refined sensuality of the more graceful arabesques, or, in the
worst examples, manifested in every species of obscene conception and
abominable detail. In the head, described in the opening of this
chapter, at Santa Maria Formosa, the _teeth_ are represented as
_decayed_.
§ XL. 4. The minds of the fourth class of men who do not play at all,
are little likely to find expression in any trivial form of art, except
in bitterness of mockery; and this character at once stamps the work in
which it appears, as belonging to the class of terrible, rather than of
playful, grotesque. We have, therefore, now to examine the state of mind
which gave rise to this second and more interesting branch of
imaginative work.
§ XLI. Two great and principal passions are evidently appointed by the
Deity to rule the life of man; namely, the love of God, and the fear of
sin, and of its companion--Death. How many motives we have for Love, how
much there is in the universe to kindle our admiration and to claim our
gratitude, there are, happily, multitudes among us who both feel and
teach. But it has not, I think, been sufficiently considered how
evident, throughout the system of creation, is the purpose of God that
we should often be affected by Fear; not the sudden, selfish, and
contemptible fear of immediate danger, but the fear which arises out of
the contemplation of great powers in destructive operation, and
generally from the perception of the presence of death. Nothing appears
to me more remarkable than the array of scenic magnificence by which the
imagination is appalled, in myriads of instances, when the actual danger
is comparatively small; so that the utmost possible impression of awe
shall be produced upon the minds of all, though direct suffering is
inflicted upon few. Consider, for instance, the moral effect of a single
thunder-storm. Perhaps two or three persons may be struck dead within
the space of a hundred square miles; and their deaths, unaccompanied by
the scenery of the storm, would produce little more than a momentary
sadness in the busy hearts of living men. But the preparation for the
Judgment by all that mighty gathering of clouds; by the questioning of
the forest leaves, in their terrified stillness, which way the winds
shall go forth; by the murmuring to each other, deep in the distance, of
the destroying angels before they draw forth their swords of fire; by
the march of the funeral darkness in the midst of the noon-day, and the
rattling of the dome of heaven beneath the chariot-wheels of death;--on
how many minds do not these produce an impression almost as great as the
actual witnessing of the fatal issue! and how strangely are the
expressions of the threatening elements fitted to the apprehension of
the human soul! The lurid color, the long, irregular, convulsive sound,
the ghastly shapes of flaming and heaving cloud, are all as true and
faithful in their appeal to our instinct of danger, as the moaning or
wailing of the human voice itself is to our instinct of pity. It is not
a reasonable calculating terror which they awake in us; it is no matter
that we count distance by seconds, and measure probability by averages.
That shadow of the thunder-cloud will still do its work upon our hearts,
and we shall watch its passing away as if we stood upon the
threshing-floor of Araunah.
§ XLII. And this is equally the case with respect to all the other
destructive phenomena of the universe. From the mightiest of them to the
gentlest, from the earthquake to the summer shower, it will be found
that they are attended by certain aspects of threatening, which strike
terror into the hearts of multitudes more numerous a thousandfold than
those who actually suffer from the ministries of judgment; and that,
besides the fearfulness of these immediately dangerous phenomena, there
is an occult and subtle horror belonging to many aspects of the creation
around us, calculated often to fill us with serious thought, even in our
times of quietness and peace. I understand not the most dangerous,
because most attractive form of modern infidelity, which, pretending to
exalt the beneficence of the Deity, degrades it into a reckless
infinitude of mercy, and blind obliteration of the work of sin; and
which does this chiefly by dwelling on the manifold appearances of God's
kindness on the face of creation. Such kindness is indeed everywhere and
always visible; but not alone. Wrath and threatening are invariably
mingled with the love; and in the utmost solitudes of nature, the
existence of Hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand
spiritual utterances, as that of Heaven. It is well for us to dwell with
thankfulness on the unfolding of the flower, and the falling of the dew,
and the sleep of the green fields in the sunshine; but the blasted
trunk, the barren rock, the moaning of the bleak winds, the roar of the
black, perilous, merciless whirlpools of the mountain streams, the
solemn solitudes of moors and seas, the continual fading of all beauty
into darkness, and of all strength into dust, have these no language for
us? We may seek to escape their teaching by reasonings touching the good
which is wrought out of all evil; but it is vain sophistry. The good
succeeds to the evil as day succeeds the night, but so also the evil to
the good. Gerizim and Ebal, birth and death, light and darkness, heaven
and hell, divide the existence of man, and his Futurity.[39]
§ XLIII. And because the thoughts of the choice we have to make between
these two, ought to rule us continually, not so much in our own actions
(for these should, for the most part, be governed by settled habit and
principle) as in our manner of regarding the lives of other men, and our
own responsibilities with respect to them; therefore, it seems to me
that the healthiest state into which the human mind can be brought is
that which is capable of the greatest love, and the greatest awe: and
this we are taught even in our times of rest; for when our minds are
rightly in tone, the merely pleasurable excitement which they seek with
most avidity is that which rises out of the contemplation of beauty or
of terribleness. We thirst for both, and, according to the height and
tone of our feeling, desire to see them in noble or inferior forms. Thus
there is a Divine beauty, and a terribleness or sublimity coequal with
it in rank, which are the subjects of the highest art; and there is an
inferior or ornamental beauty, and an inferior terribleness coequal with
it in rank, which are the subjects of grotesque art. And the state of
mind in which the terrible form of the grotesque is developed, is that
which in some irregular manner, dwells upon certain conditions of
terribleness, into the complete depth of which it does not enter for the
time.
§ XLIV. Now the things which are the proper subjects of human fear are
twofold; those which have the power of Death, and those which have the
nature of Sin. Of which there are many ranks, greater or less in power
and vice, from the evil angels themselves down to the serpent which is
their type, and which though of a low and contemptible class, appears
to unite the deathful and sinful natures in the most clearly visible and
intelligible form; for there is nothing else which we know, of so small
strength and occupying so unimportant a place in the economy of
creation, which yet is so mortal and so malignant. It is, then, on these
two classes of objects that the mind fixes for its excitement, in that
mood which gives rise to the terrible grotesque; and its subject will be
found always to unite some expression of vice and danger, but regarded
in a peculiar temper; sometimes (A) of predetermined or involuntary
apathy, sometimes (B) of mockery, sometimes (C) of diseased and
ungoverned imaginativeness.
§ XLV. For observe, the difficulty which, as I above stated, exists in
distinguishing the playful from the terrible grotesque arises out of
this cause; that the mind, under certain phases of excitement, _plays_
with _terror_, and summons images which, if it were in another temper,
would be awful, but of which, either in weariness or in irony, it
refrains for the time to acknowledge the true terribleness. And the mode
in which this refusal takes place distinguishes the noble from the
ignoble grotesque. For the master of the noble grotesque knows the depth
of all at which he seems to mock, and would feel it at another time, or
feels it in a certain undercurrent of thought even while he jests with
it; but the workman of the ignoble grotesque can feel and understand
nothing, and mocks at all things with the laughter of the idiot and the
cretin.
To work out this distinction completely is the chief difficulty in our
present inquiry; and, in order to do so, let us consider the above-named
three conditions of mind in succession, with relation to objects of
terror.
§ _XLVI_. (A). Involuntary or predetermined apathy. We saw above that
the grotesque was produced, chiefly in subordinate or ornamental art, by
rude, and in some degree uneducated men, and in their times of rest. At
such times, and in such subordinate work, it is impossible that they
should represent any solemn or terrible subject with a full and serious
entrance into its feeling. It is not in the languor of a leisure hour
that a man will set his whole soul to conceive the means of representing
some important truth, nor to the projecting angle of a timber bracket
that he would trust its representation, if conceived. And yet, in this
languor, and in this trivial work, he must find some expression of the
serious part of his soul, of what there is within him capable of awe, as
well as of love. The more noble the man is, the more impossible it will
be for him to confine his thoughts to mere loveliness, and that of a low
order. Were his powers and his time unlimited, so that, like Frà
Angelico, he could paint the Seraphim, in that order of beauty he could
find contentment, bringing down heaven to earth. But by the conditions
of his being, by his hard-worked life, by his feeble powers of
execution, by the meanness of his employment and the languor of his
heart, he is bound down to earth. It is the world's work that he is
doing, and world's work is not to be done without fear. And whatever
there is of deep and eternal consciousness within him, thrilling his
mind with the sense of the presence of sin and death around him, must be
expressed in that slight work, and feeble way, come of it what will. He
cannot forget it, among all that he sees of beautiful in nature; he may
not bury himself among the leaves of the violet on the rocks, and of the
lily in the glen, and twine out of them garlands of perpetual gladness.
He sees more in the earth than these,--misery and wrath, and
discordance, and danger, and all the work of the dragon and his angels;
this he sees with too deep feeling ever to forget. And though when he
returns to his idle work,--it may be to gild the letters upon the page,
or to carve the timbers of the chamber, or the stones of the
pinnacle,--he cannot give his strength of thought any more to the woe or
to the danger, there is a shadow of them still present with him: and as
the bright colors mingle beneath his touch, and the fair leaves and
flowers grow at his bidding, strange horrors and phantasms rise by their
side; grisly beasts and venomous serpents, and spectral fiends and
nameless inconsistencies of ghastly life, rising out of things most
beautiful, and fading back into them again, as the harm and the horror
of life do out of its happiness. He has seen these things; he wars with
them daily; he cannot but give them their part in his work, though in a
state of comparative apathy to them at the time. He is but carving and
gilding, and must not turn aside to weep; but he knows that hell is
burning on, for all that, and the smoke of it withers his oak-leaves.
§ XLVII. Now, the feelings which give rise to the false or ignoble
grotesque, are exactly the reverse of these. In the true grotesque, a
man of naturally strong feeling is accidentally or resolutely apathetic;
in the false grotesque, a man naturally apathetic is forcing himself
into temporary excitement. The horror which is expressed by the one,
comes upon him whether he will or not; that which is expressed by the
other, is sought out by him, and elaborated by his art. And therefore,
also, because the fear of the one is true, and of true things, however
fantastic its expression may be, there will be reality in it, and force.
It is not a manufactured terribleness, whose author, when he had
finished it, knew not if it would terrify any one else or not: but it is
a terribleness taken from the life; a spectre which the workman indeed
saw, and which, as it appalled him, will appal us also. But the other
workman never felt any Divine fear; he never shuddered when he heard the
cry from the burning towers of the earth,
"Venga Medusa; sì lo farem di smalto."
He is stone already, and needs no gentle hand laid upon his eyes to save
him.
§ XLVIII. I do not mean what I say in this place to apply to the
creations of the imagination. It is not as the creating but as the
_seeing_ man, that we are here contemplating the master of the true
grotesque. It is because the dreadfulness of the universe around him
weighs upon his heart, that his work is wild; and therefore through the
whole of it we shall find the evidence of deep insight into nature. His
beasts and birds, however monstrous, will have profound relations with
the true. He may be an ignorant man, and little acquainted with the laws
of nature; he is certainly a busy man, and has not much time to watch
nature; but he never saw a serpent cross his path, nor a bird flit
across the sky, nor a lizard bask upon a stone, without learning so much
of the sublimity and inner nature of each as will not suffer him
thenceforth to conceive them coldly. He may not be able to carve plumes
or scales well; but his creatures will bite and fly, for all that. The
ignoble workman is the very reverse of this. He never felt, never looked
at nature; and if he endeavor to imitate the work of the other, all his
touches will be made at random, and all his extravagances will be
ineffective; he may knit brows, and twist lips, and lengthen beaks, and
sharpen teeth, but it will be all in vain. He may make his creatures
disgusting, but never fearful.
§ XLIX. There is, however, often another cause of difference than this.
The true grotesque being the expression of the _repose_ or play of a
_serious_ mind, there is a false grotesque opposed to it, which is the
result of the _full exertion_ of a _frivolous_ one. There is much
grotesque which is wrought out with exquisite care and pains, and as
much labor given to it as if it were of the noblest subject; so that the
workman is evidently no longer apathetic, and has no excuse for
unconnectedness of thought, or sudden unreasonable fear. If he awakens
horror now, it ought to be in some truly sublime form. His strength is
in his work; and he must not give way to sudden humor, and fits of
erratic fancy. If he does so, it must be because his mind is naturally
frivolous, or is for the time degraded into the deliberate pursuit of
frivolity. And herein lies the real distinction between the base
grotesque of Raphael and the Renaissance, above alluded to, and the true
Gothic grotesque. Those grotesques or arabesques of the Vatican, and
other such work, which have become the patterns of ornamentation in
modern times, are the fruit of great minds degraded to base objects. The
care, skill, and science, applied to the distribution of the leaves, and
the drawing of the figures, are intense, admirable, and accurate;
therefore, they ought to have produced a grand and serious work, not a
tissue of nonsense. If we can draw the human head perfectly, and are
masters of its expression and its beauty, we have no business to cut it
off, and hang it up by the hair at the end of a garland. If we can draw
the human body in the perfection of its grace and movement, we have no
business to take away its limbs, and terminate it with a bunch of
leaves. Or rather our doing so will imply that there is something wrong
with us; that, if we can consent to use our best powers for such base
and vain trifling, there must be something wanting in the powers
themselves; and that, however skilful we may be, or however learned, we
are wanting both in the earnestness which can apprehend a noble truth,
and in the thoughtfulness which can feel a noble fear. No Divine terror
will ever be found in the work of the man who wastes a colossal strength
in elaborating toys; for the first lesson which that terror is sent to
teach us, is the value of the human soul, and the shortness of mortal
time.
§ L. And are we never, then, it will be asked, to possess a refined or
perfect ornamentation? Must all decoration be the work of the ignorant
and the rude? Not so; but exactly in proportion as the ignorance and
rudeness diminish, must the ornamentation become rational, and the
grotesqueness disappear. The noblest lessons may be taught in
ornamentation, the most solemn truths compressed into it. The Book of
Genesis, in all the fulness of its incidents, in all the depth of its
meaning, is bound within the leaf-borders of the gates of Ghiberti. But
Raphael's arabesque is mere elaborate idleness. It has neither meaning
nor heart in it; it is an unnatural and monstrous abortion.
§ LI. Now, this passing of the grotesque into higher art, as the mind of
the workman becomes informed with better knowledge, and capable of more
earnest exertion, takes place in two ways. Either, as his power
increases, he devotes himself more and more to the beauty which he now
feels himself able to express, and so the grotesqueness expands, and
softens into the beautiful, as in the above-named instance of the gates
of Ghiberti; or else, if the mind of the workman be naturally inclined
to gloomy contemplation, the imperfection or apathy of his work rises
into nobler terribleness, until we reach the point of the grotesque of
Albert Durer, where, every now and then, the playfulness or apathy of
the painter passes into perfect sublime. Take the Adam and Eve, for
instance. When he gave Adam a bough to hold, with a parrot on it, and a
tablet hung to it, with "Albertus Durer Noricus faciebat, 1504,"
thereupon, his mind was not in Paradise. He was half in play, half
apathetic with respect to his subject, thinking how to do his work well,
as a wise master-graver, and how to receive his just reward of fame. But
he rose into the true sublime in the head of Adam, and in the profound
truthfulness of every creature that fills the forest. So again in that
magnificent coat of arms, with the lady and the satyr, as he cast the
fluttering drapery hither and thither around the helmet, and wove the
delicate crown upon the woman's forehead, he was in a kind of play; but
there is none in the dreadful skull upon the shield. And in the "Knight
and Death," and in the dragons of the illustrations to the Apocalypse,
there is neither play nor apathy; but their grotesque is of the ghastly
kind which best illustrates the nature of death and sin. And this leads
us to the consideration of the second state of mind out of which the
noble grotesque is developed; that is to say, the temper of mockery.
§ LII. (B). Mockery, or Satire. In the former part of this chapter, when
I spoke of the kinds of art which were produced in the recreation of the
lower orders, I only spoke of forms of ornament, not of the expression
of satire or humor. But it seems probable, that nothing is so refreshing
to the vulgar mind as some exercise of this faculty, more especially on
the failings of their superiors; and that, wherever the lower orders are
allowed to express themselves freely, we shall find humor, more or less
caustic, becoming a principal feature in their work. The classical and
Renaissance manufacturers of modern times having silenced the
independent language of the operative, his humor and satire pass away in
the word-wit which has of late become the especial study of the group of
authors headed by Charles Dickens; all this power was formerly thrown
into noble art, and became permanently expressed in the sculptures of
the cathedral. It was never thought that there was anything discordant
or improper in such a position: for the builders evidently felt very
deeply a truth of which, in modern times, we are less cognizant; that
folly and sin are, to a certain extent, synonymous, and that it would be
well for mankind in general, if all could be made to feel that
wickedness is as contemptible as it is hateful. So that the vices were
permitted to be represented under the most ridiculous forms, and all the
coarsest wit of the workman to be exhausted in completing the
degradation of the creatures supposed to be subjected to them.
§ LIII. Nor were even the supernatural powers of evil exempt from this
species of satire. For with whatever hatred or horror the evil angels
were regarded, it was one of the conditions of Christianity that they
should also be looked upon as vanquished; and this not merely in their
great combat with the King of Saints, but in daily and hourly combats
with the weakest of His servants. In proportion to the narrowness of the
powers of abstract conception in the workman, the nobleness of the idea
of spiritual nature diminished, and the traditions of the encounters of
men with fiends in daily temptations were imagined with less terrific
circumstances, until the agencies which in such warfare were almost
always represented as vanquished with disgrace, became, at last, as much
the objects of contempt as of terror.
The superstitions which represented the devil as assuming various
contemptible forms of disguises in order to accomplish his purposes
aided this gradual degradation of conception, and directed the study of
the workman to the most strange and ugly conditions of animal form,
until at last, even in the most serious subjects, the fiends are oftener
ludicrous than terrible. Nor, indeed, is this altogether avoidable, for
it is not possible to express intense wickedness without some condition
of degradation. Malice, subtlety, and pride, in their extreme, cannot be
written upon noble forms; and I am aware of no effort to represent the
Satanic mind in the angelic form, which has succeeded in painting.
Milton succeeds only because he separately describes the movements of
the mind, and therefore leaves himself at liberty to make the form
heroic; but that form is never distinct enough to be painted. Dante, who
will not leave even external forms obscure, degrades them before he can
feel them to be demoniacal; so also John Bunyan: both of them, I think,
having firmer faith than Milton's in their own creations, and deeper
insight into the nature of sin. Milton makes his fiends too noble, and
misses the foulness, inconstancy, and fury of wickedness. His Satan
possesses some virtues, not the less virtues for being applied to evil
purpose. Courage, resolution, patience, deliberation in council, this
latter being eminently a wise and holy character, as opposed to the
"Insania" of excessive sin: and all this, if not a shallow and false, is
a smooth and artistical, conception. On the other hand, I have always
felt that there was a peculiar grandeur in the indescribable,
ungovernable fury of Dante's fiends, ever shortening its own powers, and
disappointing its own purposes; the deaf, blind, speechless, unspeakable
rage, fierce as the lightning, but erring from its mark or turning
senselessly against itself, and still further debased by foulness of
form and action. Something is indeed to be allowed for the rude feelings
of the time, but I believe all such men as Dante are sent into the world
at the time when they can do their work best; and that, it being
appointed for him to give to mankind the most vigorous realization
possible both of Hell and Heaven, he was born both in the country and at
the time which furnished the most stern opposition of Horror and Beauty,
and permitted it to be written in the clearest terms. And, therefore,
though there are passages in the "Inferno" which it would be impossible
for any poet now to write, I look upon it as all the more perfect for
them. For there can be no question but that one characteristic of
excessive vice is indecency, a general baseness in its thoughts and acts
concerning the body,[40] and that the full portraiture of it cannot be
given without marking, and that in the strongest lines, this tendency to
corporeal degradation; which, in the time of Dante, could be done
frankly, but cannot now. And, therefore, I think the twenty-first and
twenty-second books of the "Inferno" the most perfect portraitures of
fiendish nature which we possess; and at the same time, in their
mingling of the extreme of horror (for it seems to me that the silent
swiftness of the first demon, "con l'ali aperte e sovra i pie leggiero,"
cannot be surpassed in dreadfulness) with ludicrous actions and images,
they present the most perfect instances with which I am acquainted of
the terrible grotesque. But the whole of the "Inferno" is full of this
grotesque, as well as the "Faërie Queen;" and these two poems, together
with the works of Albert Durer, will enable the reader to study it in
its noblest forms, without reference to Gothic cathedrals.
§ LIV. Now, just as there are base and noble conditions of the apathetic
grotesque, so also are there of this satirical grotesque. The condition
which might be mistaken for it is that above described as resulting from
the malice of men given to pleasure, and in which the grossness and
foulness are in the workman as much as in his subject, so that he
chooses to represent vice and disease rather than virtue and beauty,
having his chief delight in contemplating them; though he still mocks at
them with such dull wit as may be in him, because, as Young has said
most truly,
"'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool."
§ LV. Now it is easy to distinguish this grotesque from its noble
counterpart, by merely observing whether any forms of beauty or dignity
are mingled with it or not; for, of course, the noble grotesque is only
employed by its master for good purposes, and to contrast with beauty:
but the base workman cannot conceive anything but what is base; and
there will be no loveliness in any part of his work, or, at the best, a
loveliness measured by line and rule, and dependent on legal shapes of
feature. But, without resorting to this test, and merely by examining
the ugly grotesque itself, it will be found that, if it belongs to the
base school, there will be, first, no Horror in it; secondly, no Nature
in it; and, thirdly, no Mercy in it.
§ LVI. I say, first, no Horror. For the base soul has no fear of sin,
and no hatred of it: and, however it may strive to make its work
terrible, there will be no genuineness in the fear; the utmost it can do
will be to make its work disgusting.
Secondly, there will be no Nature in it. It appears to be one of the
ends proposed by Providence in the appointment of the forms of the brute
creation, that the various vices to which mankind are liable should be
severally expressed in them so distinctly and clearly as that men could
not but understand the lesson; while yet these conditions of vice might,
in the inferior animal, be observed without the disgust and hatred which
the same vices would excite, if seen in men, and might be associated
with features of interest which would otherwise attract and reward
contemplation. Thus, ferocity, cunning, sloth, discontent, gluttony,
uncleanness, and cruelty are seen, each in its extreme, in various
animals; and are so vigorously expressed, that when men desire to
indicate the same vices in connexion with human forms, they can do it no
better than by borrowing here and there the features of animals. And
when the workman is thus led to the contemplation of the animal kingdom,
finding therein the expressions of vice which he needs, associated with
power, and nobleness, and freedom from disease, if his mind be of right
tone he becomes interested in this new study; and all noble grotesque
is, therefore, full of the most admirable rendering of animal character.
But the ignoble workman is capable of no interest of this kind; and,
being too dull to appreciate, and too idle to execute, the subtle and
wonderful lines on which the expression of the lower animal depends, he
contents himself with vulgar exaggeration, and leaves his work as false
as it is monstrous, a mass of blunt malice and obscene ignorance.
§ LVII. Lastly, there will be no Mercy in it. Wherever the satire of the
noble grotesque fixes upon human nature, it does so with much sorrow
mingled amidst its indignation: in its highest forms there is an
infinite tenderness, like that of the fool in Lear; and even in its more
heedless or bitter sarcasm, it never loses sight altogether of the
better nature of what it attacks, nor refuses to acknowledge its
redeeming or pardonable features. But the ignoble grotesque has no pity:
it rejoices in iniquity, and exists only to slander.
§ LVIII. I have not space to follow out the various forms of transition
which exist between the two extremes of great and base in the satirical
grotesque. The reader must always remember, that, although there is an
infinite distance between the best and worst, in this kind the interval
is filled by endless conditions more or less inclining to the evil or
the good; impurity and malice stealing gradually into the nobler forms,
and invention and wit elevating the lower, according to the countless
minglings of the elements of the human soul.
§ LIX. (C). Ungovernableness of the imagination. The reader is always to
keep in mind that if the objects of horror, in which the terrible
grotesque finds its materials, were contemplated in their true light,
and with the entire energy of the soul, they would cease to be
grotesque, and become altogether sublime; and that therefore it is some
shortening of the power, or the will, of contemplation, and some
consequent distortion of the terrible image in which the grotesqueness
consists. Now this distortion takes place, it was above asserted, in
three ways: either through apathy, satire, or ungovernableness of
imagination. It is this last cause of the grotesque which we have
finally to consider; namely, the error and wildness of the mental
impressions, caused by fear operating upon strong powers of imagination,
or by the failure of the human faculties in the endeavor to grasp the
highest truths.
§ LX. The grotesque which comes to all men in a disturbed dream is the
most intelligible example of this kind, but also the most ignoble; the
imagination, in this instance, being entirely deprived of all aid from
reason, and incapable of self-government. I believe, however, that the
noblest forms of imaginative power are also in some sort ungovernable,
and have in them something of the character of dreams; so that the
vision, of whatever kind, comes uncalled, and will not submit itself to
the seer, but conquers him, and forces him to speak as a prophet,
having no power over his words or thoughts.[41] Only, if the whole man
be trained perfectly, and his mind calm, consistent and powerful, the
vision which comes to him is seen as in a perfect mirror, serenely, and
in consistence with the rational powers; but if the mind be imperfect
and ill trained, the vision is seen as in a broken mirror, with strange
distortions and discrepancies, all the passions of the heart breathing
upon it in cross ripples, till hardly a trace of it remains unbroken. So
that, strictly speaking, the imagination is never governed; it is always
the ruling and Divine power: and the rest of the man is to it only as an
instrument which it sounds, or a tablet on which it writes; clearly and
sublimely if the wax be smooth and the strings true, grotesquely and
wildly if they are stained and broken. And thus the "Iliad," the
"Inferno," the "Pilgrim's Progress," the "Faërie Queen," are all of them
true dreams; only the sleep of the men to whom they came was the deep,
living sleep which God sends, with a sacredness in it, as of death, the
revealer of secrets.
§ LXI. Now, observe in this matter, carefully, the difference between a
dim mirror and a distorted one; and do not blame me for pressing the
analogy too far, for it will enable me to explain my meaning every way
more clearly. Most men's minds are dim mirrors, in which all truth is
seen, as St. Paul tells us, darkly: this is the fault most common and
most fatal; dulness of the heart and mistiness of sight, increasing to
utter hardness and blindness; Satan breathing upon the glass, so that if
we do not sweep the mist laboriously away, it will take no image. But,
even so far as we are able to do this, we have still the distortion to
fear, yet not to the same extent, for we can in some sort allow for the
distortion of an image, if only we can see it clearly. And the fallen
human soul, at its best, must be as a diminishing glass, and that a
broken one, to the mighty truths of the universe round it; and the wider
the scope of its glance, and the vaster the truths into which it obtains
an insight, the more fantastic their distortion is likely to be, as the
winds and vapors trouble the field of the telescope most when it reaches
farthest.
§ LXII. Now, so far as the truth is seen by the imagination[42] in its
wholeness and quietness, the vision is sublime; but so far as it is
narrowed and broken by the inconsistencies of the human capacity, it
becomes grotesque; and it would seem to be rare that any very exalted
truth should be impressed on the imagination without some grotesqueness
in its aspect, proportioned to the degree of _diminution of breadth_ in
the grasp which is given of it. Nearly all the dreams recorded in the
Bible,--Jacob's, Joseph's, Pharaoh's, Nebuchadnezzar's,--are grotesques;
and nearly the whole of the accessary scenery in the books of Ezekiel
and the Apocalypse. Thus, Jacob's dream revealed to him the ministry of
angels; but because this ministry could not be seen or understood by him
in its fulness, it was narrowed to him into a ladder between heaven and
earth, which was a grotesque. Joseph's two dreams were evidently
intended to be signs of the steadfastness of the Divine purpose towards
him, by possessing the clearness of special prophecy; yet were couched
in such imagery, as not to inform him prematurely of his destiny, and
only to be understood after their fulfilment. The sun, and moon, and
stars were at the period, and are indeed throughout the Bible, the
symbols of high authority. It was not revealed to Joseph that he should
be lord over all Egypt; but the representation of his family by symbols
of the most magnificent dominion, and yet as subject to him, must have
been afterwards felt by him as a distinctly prophetic indication of his
own supreme power. It was not revealed to him that the occasion of his
brethren's special humiliation before him should be their coming to buy
corn; but when the event took place, must he not have felt that there
was prophetic purpose in the form of the sheaves of wheat which first
imaged forth their subjection to him? And these two images of the sun
doing obeisance, and the sheaves bowing down,--narrowed and imperfect
intimations of great truth which yet could not be otherwise
conveyed,--are both grotesque. The kine of Pharaoh eating each other,
the gold and clay of Nebuchadnezzar's image, the four beasts full of
eyes, and other imagery of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, are grotesques of
the same kind, on which I need not further insist.
§ LXIII. Such forms, however, ought perhaps to have been arranged under
a separate head, as Symbolical Grotesque; but the element of awe enters
into them so strongly, as to justify, for all our present purposes,
their being classed with the other varieties of terrible grotesque. For
even if the symbolic vision itself be not terrible, the sense of what
may be veiled behind it becomes all the more awful in proportion to the
insignificance or strangeness of the sign itself; and, I believe, this
thrill of mingled doubt, fear, and curiosity lies at the very root of
the delight which mankind take in symbolism. It was not an accidental
necessity for the conveyance of truth by pictures instead of words,
which led to its universal adoption wherever art was on the advance; but
the Divine fear which necessarily follows on the understanding that a
thing is other and greater than it seems; and which, it appears
probable, has been rendered peculiarly attractive to the human heart,
because God would have us understand that this is true not of invented
symbols merely, but of all things amidst which we live; that there is a
deeper meaning within them than eye hath seen, or ear hath heard; and
that the whole visible creation is a mere perishable symbol of things
eternal and true. It cannot but have been sometimes a subject of wonder
with thoughtful men, how fondly, age after age, the Church has cherished
the belief that the four living creatures which surrounded the
Apocalyptic throne were symbols of the four Evangelists, and rejoiced
to use those forms in its picture-teaching; that a calf, a lion, an
eagle, and a beast with a man's face, should in all ages have been
preferred by the Christian world, as expressive of Evangelistic power
and inspiration, to the majesty of human forms; and that quaint
grotesques, awkward and often ludicrous caricatures even of the animals
represented, should have been regarded by all men, not only with
contentment, but with awe, and have superseded all endeavors to
represent the characters and persons of the Evangelistic writers
themselves (except in a few instances, confined principally to works
undertaken without a definite religious purpose);--this, I say, might
appear more than strange to us, were it not that we ourselves share the
awe, and are still satisfied with the symbol, and that justly. For,
whether we are conscious of it or not, there is in our hearts, as we
gaze upon the brutal forms that have so holy a signification, an
acknowledgment that it was not Matthew, nor Mark, nor Luke, nor John, in
whom the Gospel of Christ was unsealed: but that the invisible things of
Him from the beginning of the creation are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made; that the whole world, and all
that is therein, be it low or high, great or small, is a continual
Gospel; and that as the heathen, in their alienation from God, changed
His glory into an image made like unto corruptible man, and to birds,
and four-footed beasts, the Christian, in his approach to God, is to
undo this work, and to change the corruptible things into the image of
His glory; believing that there is nothing so base in creation, but that
our faith may give it wings which shall raise us into companionship with
heaven; and that, on the other hand, there is nothing so great or so
goodly in creation, but that it is a mean symbol of the Gospel of
Christ, and of the things He has prepared for them that love Him.
§ LXIV. And it is easy to understand, if we follow out this thought,
how, when once the symbolic language was familiarized to the mind, and
its solemnity felt in all its fulness, there was no likelihood of
offence being taken at any repulsive or feeble characters in execution
or conception. There was no form so mean, no incident so commonplace,
but, if regarded in this light, it might become sublime; the more
vigorous the fancy and the more faithful the enthusiasm, the greater
would be the likelihood of their delighting in the contemplation of
symbols whose mystery was enhanced by apparent insignificance, or in
which the sanctity and majesty of meaning were contrasted with the
utmost uncouthness of external form: nor with uncouthness merely, but
even with every appearance of malignity or baseness; the beholder not
being revolted even by this, but comprehending that, as the seeming evil
in the framework of creation did not invalidate its Divine authorship,
so neither did the evil or imperfection in the symbol invalidate its
Divine message. And thus, sometimes, the designer at last became wanton
in his appeal to the piety of his interpreter, and recklessly poured out
the impurity and the savageness of his own heart, for the mere pleasure
of seeing them overlaid with the fine gold of the sanctuary, by the
religion of their beholder.
§ LXV. It is not, however, in every symbolical subject that the fearful
grotesque becomes embodied to the full. The element of distortion which
affects the intellect when dealing with subjects above its proper
capacity, is as nothing compared with that which it sustains from the
direct impressions of terror. It is the trembling of the human soul in
the presence of death which most of all disturbs the images on the
intellectual mirror, and invests them with the fitfulness and
ghastliness of dreams. And from the contemplation of death, and of the
pangs which follow his footsteps, arise in men's hearts the troop of
strange and irresistible superstitions which, more or less melancholy or
majestic according to the dignity of the mind they impress, are yet
never without a certain grotesqueness, following on the paralysis of the
reason and over-excitement of the fancy. I do not mean to deny the
actual existence of spiritual manifestations; I have never weighed the
evidence upon the subject; but with these, if such exist, we are not
here concerned. The grotesque which we are examining arises out of that
condition of mind which appears to follow naturally upon the
contemplation of death, and in which the fancy is brought into morbid
action by terror, accompanied by the belief in spiritual presence, and
in the possibility of spiritual apparition. Hence are developed its most
sublime, because its least voluntary, creations, aided by the
fearfulness of the phenomena of nature which are in any wise the
ministers of death, and primarily directed by the peculiar ghastliness
of expression in the skeleton, itself a species of terrible grotesque in
its relation to the perfect human frame.
§ LXVI. Thus, first born from the dusty and dreadful whiteness of the
charnel house, but softened in their forms by the holiest of human
affections, went forth the troop of wild and wonderful images, seen
through tears, that had the mastery over our Northern hearts for so many
ages. The powers of sudden destruction lurking in the woods and waters,
in the rocks and clouds;--kelpie and gnome, Lurlei and Hartz spirits;
the wraith and foreboding phantom; the spectra of second sight; the
various conceptions of avenging or tormented ghost, haunting the
perpetrator of crime, or expiating its commission; and the half
fictitious and contemplative, half visionary and believed images of the
presence of death itself, doing its daily work in the chambers of
sickness and sin, and waiting for its hour in the fortalices of strength
and the high places of pleasure;--these, partly degrading us by the
instinctive and paralyzing terror with which they are attended, and
partly ennobling us by leading our thoughts to dwell in the eternal
world, fill the last and the most important circle in that great kingdom
of dark and distorted power, of which we all must be in some sort the
subjects until mortality shall be swallowed up of life; until the waters
of the last fordless river cease to roll their untransparent volume
between us and the light of heaven, and neither death stand between us
and our brethren, nor symbols between us and our God.
§ LXVII. We have now, I believe, obtained a view approaching to
completeness of the various branches of human feeling which are
concerned in the developement of this peculiar form of art. It remains
for us only to note, as briefly as possible, what facts in the actual
history of the grotesque bear upon our immediate subject.
From what we have seen to be its nature, we must, I think, be led to one
most important conclusion; that wherever the human mind is healthy and
vigorous in all its proportions, great in imagination and emotion no
less than in intellect, and not overborne by an undue or hardened
preëminence of the mere reasoning faculties, there the grotesque will
exist in full energy. And, accordingly, I believe that there is no test
of greatness in periods, nations, or men, more sure than the
developement, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test
of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more
sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of
understanding it. I think that the central man of all the world, as
representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral, and intellectual
faculties, all at their highest, is Dante; and in him the grotesque
reaches at once the most distinct and the most noble developement to
which it was ever brought in the human mind. The two other greatest men
whom Italy has produced, Michael Angelo and Tintoret, show the same
element in no less original strength, but oppressed in the one by his
science, and in both by the spirit of the age in which they lived;
never, however, absent even in Michael Angelo, but stealing forth
continually in a strange and spectral way, lurking in folds of raiment
and knots of wild hair, and mountainous confusions of craggy limb and
cloudy drapery; and, in Tintoret, ruling the entire conceptions of his
greatest works to such a degree that they are an enigma or an offence,
even to this day, to all the petty disciples of a formal criticism. Of
the grotesque in our own Shakspeare I need hardly speak, nor of its
intolerableness to his French critics; nor of that of Æschylus and
Homer, as opposed to the lower Greek writers; and so I believe it will
be found, at all periods, in all minds of the first order.
§ LXVIII. As an index of the greatness of nations, it is a less certain
test, or, rather, we are not so well agreed on the meaning of the term
"greatness" respecting them. A nation may produce a great effect, and
take up a high place in the world's history, by the temporary enthusiasm
or fury of its multitudes, without being truly great; or, on the other
hand, the discipline of morality and common sense may extend its
physical power or exalt its well-being, while yet its creative and
imaginative powers are continually diminishing. And again: a people may
take so definite a lead over all the rest of the world in one direction,
as to obtain a respect which is not justly due to them if judged on
universal grounds. Thus the Greeks perfected the sculpture of the human
body; threw their literature into a disciplined form, which has given it
a peculiar power over certain conditions of modern mind; and were the
most carefully educated race that the world has seen; but a few years
hence, I believe, we shall no longer think them a greater people than
either the Egyptians or Assyrians.
§ LXIX. If, then, ridding ourselves as far as possible of prejudices
owing merely to the school-teaching which remains from the system of the
Renaissance, we set ourselves to discover in what races the human soul,
taken all in all, reached its highest magnificence, we shall find, I
believe, two great families of men, one of the East and South, the other
of the West and North: the one including the Egyptians, Jews, Arabians,
Assyrians, and Persians; the other, I know not whence derived, but
seeming to flow forth from Scandinavia, and filling the whole of Europe
with its Norman and Gothic energy. And in both these families, wherever
they are seen in their utmost nobleness, there the grotesque is
developed in its utmost energy; and I hardly know whether most to admire
the winged bulls of Nineveh, or the winged dragons of Verona.
§ LXX. The reader who has not before turned his attention to this
subject may, however, at first have some difficulty in distinguishing
between the noble grotesque of these great nations, and the barbarous
grotesque of mere savages, as seen in the work of the Hindoo and other
Indian nations; or, more grossly still, in that of the complete savage
of the Pacific islands; or if, as is to be hoped, he instinctively
feels the difference, he may yet find difficulty in determining wherein
that difference consists. But he will discover, on consideration, that
the noble grotesque _involves the true appreciation of beauty_, though
the mind may wilfully turn to other images or the hand resolutely stop
short of the perfection which it must fail, if it endeavored, to reach;
while the grotesque of the Sandwich islander involves no perception or
imagination of anything above itself. He will find that in the exact
proportion in which the grotesque results from an incapability of
perceiving beauty, it becomes savage or barbarous; and that there are
many stages of progress to be found in it even in its best times, much
truly savage grotesque occurring in the fine Gothic periods, mingled
with the other forms of the ignoble grotesque resulting from vicious
inclinations or base sportiveness. Nothing is more mysterious in the
history of the human mind, than the manner in which gross and ludicrous
images are mingled with the most solemn subjects in the work of the
middle ages, whether of sculpture or illumination; and although, in
great part, such incongruities are to be accounted for on the various
principles which I have above endeavored to define, in many instances
they are clearly the result of vice and sensuality. The general
greatness of seriousness of an age does not effect the restoration of
human nature; and it would be strange, if, in the midst of the art even
of the best periods, when that art was entrusted to myriads of workmen,
we found no manifestations of impiety, folly, or impurity.
§ LXXI. It needs only to be added that in the noble grotesque, as it is
partly the result of a morbid state of the imaginative power, that power
itself will be always seen in a high degree; and that therefore our
power of judging of the rank of a grotesque work will depend on the
degree in which we are in general sensible of the presence of invention.
The reader may partly test this power in himself by referring to the
Plate given in the opening of this chapter, in which, on the left, is a
piece of noble and inventive grotesque, a head of the lion-symbol of St.
Mark, from the Veronese Gothic; the other is a head introduced as a
boss on the foundation of the Palazzo Corner della Regina at Venice,
utterly devoid of invention, made merely monstrous by exaggerations of
the eyeballs and cheeks, and generally characteristic of that late
Renaissance grotesque of Venice, with which we are at present more
immediately concerned.[43]
§ LXXII. The developement of that grotesque took place under different
laws from those which regulate it in any other European city. For, great
as we have seen the Byzantine mind show itself to be in other
directions, it was marked as that of a declining nation by the absence
of the grotesque element; and, owing to its influence, the early
Venetian Gothic remained inferior to all other schools in this
particular character. Nothing can well be more wonderful than its
instant failure in any attempt at the representation of ludicrous or
fearful images, more especially when it is compared with the magnificent
grotesque of the neighboring city of Verona, in which the Lombard
influence had full sway. Nor was it until the last links of connexion
with Constantinople had been dissolved, that the strength of the
Venetian mind could manifest itself in this direction. But it had then a
new enemy to encounter. The Renaissance laws altogether checked its
imagination in architecture; and it could only obtain permission to
express itself by starting forth in the work of the Venetian painters,
filling them with monkeys and dwarfs, even amidst the most serious
subjects, and leading Veronese and Tintoret to the most unexpected and
wild fantasies of form and color.
§ LXXIII. We may be deeply thankful for this peculiar reserve of the
Gothic grotesque character to the last days of Venice. All over the rest
of Europe it had been strongest in the days of imperfect art;
magnificently powerful throughout the whole of the thirteenth century,
tamed gradually in the fourteenth and fifteenth, and expiring in the
sixteenth amidst anatomy and laws of art. But at Venice, it had not been
received when it was elsewhere in triumph, and it fled to the lagoons
for shelter when elsewhere it was oppressed. And it was arrayed by the
Venetian painters in robes of state, and advanced by them to such honor
as it had never received in its days of widest dominion; while, in
return, it bestowed upon their pictures that fulness, piquancy, decision
of parts, and mosaic-like intermingling of fancies, alternately
brilliant and sublime, which were exactly what was most needed for the
developement of their unapproachable color-power.
§ LXXIV. Yet, observe, it by no means follows that because the grotesque
does not appear in the art of a nation, the sense of it does not exist
in the national mind. Except in the form of caricature, it is hardly
traceable in the English work of the present day; but the minds of our
workmen are full of it, if we would only allow them to give it shape.
They express it daily in gesture and gibe, but are not allowed to do so
where it would be useful. In like manner, though the Byzantine influence
repressed it in the early Venetian architecture, it was always present
in the Venetian mind, and showed itself in various forms of national
custom and festival; _acted_ grotesques, full of wit, feeling, and
good-humor. The ceremony of the hat and the orange, described in the
beginning of this chapter, is one instance out of multitudes. Another,
more rude, and exceedingly characteristic, was that instituted in the
twelfth century in memorial of the submission of Woldaric, the patriarch
of Aquileia, who, having taken up arms against the patriarch of Grado,
and being defeated and taken prisoner by the Venetians, was sentenced,
not to death, but to send every year on "Fat Thursday" sixty-two large
loaves, twelve fat pigs, and a bull, to the Doge; the bull being
understood to represent the patriarch, and the twelve pigs his clergy:
and the ceremonies of the day consisting in the decapitation of these
representatives, and a distribution of their joints among the senators;
together with a symbolic record of the attack upon Aquileia, by the
erection of a wooden castle in the rooms of the Ducal Palace, which the
_Doge and the Senate_ attacked and demolished with clubs. As long as the
Doge and the Senate were truly kingly and noble, they were content to
let this ceremony be continued; but when they became proud and selfish,
and were destroying both themselves and the state by their luxury, they
found it inconsistent with their dignity, and it was abolished, as far
as the Senate was concerned, in 1549.[44]
§ LXXV. By these and other similar manifestations, the grotesque spirit
is traceable through all the strength of the Venetian people. But again:
it is necessary that we should carefully distinguish between it and the
spirit of mere levity. I said, in the fifth chapter, that the Venetians
were distinctively a serious people, serious, that is to say, in the
sense in which the English are a more serious people than the French;
though the habitual intercourse of our lower classes in London has a
tone of humor in it which I believe is untraceable in that of the
Parisian populace. It is one thing to indulge in playful rest, and
another to be devoted to the pursuit of pleasure: and gaiety of heart
during the reaction after hard labor, and quickened by satisfaction in
the accomplished duty or perfected result, is altogether compatible
with, nay, even in some sort arises naturally out of, a deep internal
seriousness of disposition; this latter being exactly the condition of
mind which, as we have seen, leads to the richest developements of the
playful grotesque; while, on the contrary, the continual pursuit of
pleasure deprives the soul of all alacrity and elasticity, and leaves it
incapable of happy jesting, capable only of that which is bitter, base,
and foolish. Thus, throughout the whole of the early career of the
Venetians, though there is much jesting, there is no levity; on the
contrary there is an intense earnestness both in their pursuit of
commercial and political successes, and in their devotion to
religion,[45] which led gradually to the formation of that highly
wrought mingling of immovable resolution with secret thoughtfulness,
which so strangely, sometimes so darkly, distinguishes the Venetian
character at the time of their highest power, when the seriousness was
left, but the conscientiousness destroyed. And if there be any one sign
by which the Venetian countenance, as it is recorded for us, to the very
life, by a school of portraiture which has never been equalled (chiefly
because no portraiture ever had subjects so noble),--I say, if there be
one thing more notable than another in the Venetian features, it is this
deep pensiveness and solemnity. In other districts of Italy, the dignity
of the heads which occur in the most celebrated compositions is clearly
owing to the feeling of the painter. He has visibly raised or idealized
his models, and appears always to be veiling the faults or failings of
the human nature around him, so that the best of his work is that which
has most perfectly taken the color of his own mind; and the least
impressive, if not the least valuable, that which appears to have been
unaffected and unmodified portraiture. But at Venice, all is exactly the
reverse of this. The tone of mind in the painter appears often in some
degree frivolous or sensual; delighting in costume, in domestic and
grotesque incident, and in studies of the naked form. But the moment he
gives himself definitely to portraiture, all is noble and grave; the
more literally true his work, the more majestic; and the same artist who
will produce little beyond what is commonplace in painting a Madonna or
an apostle, will rise into unapproachable sublimity when his subject is
a member of the Forty, or a Master of the Mint.
Such, then, were the general tone and progress of the Venetian mind, up
to the close of the seventeenth century. First, serious, religious, and
sincere; then, though serious still, comparatively deprived of
conscientiousness, and apt to decline into stern and subtle policy: in
the first case, the spirit of the noble grotesque not showing itself in
art at all, but only in speech and action; in the second case,
developing itself in painting, through accessories and vivacities of
composition, while perfect dignity was always preserved in portraiture.
A third phase rapidly developed itself.
§ LXXVI. Once more, and for the last time, let me refer the reader to
the important epoch of the death of the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo in 1423,
long ago indicated as the commencement of the decline of the Venetian
power. That commencement is marked, not merely by the words of the dying
Prince, but by a great and clearly legible sign. It is recorded, that on
the accession of his successor, Foscari, to the throne, "SI FESTEGGIO
DALLA CITTA UNO ANNO INTERO:" "The city kept festival for a whole year."
Venice had in her childhood sown, in tears, the harvest she was to reap
in rejoicing. She now sowed in laughter the seeds of death.
Thenceforward, year after year, the nation drank with deeper thirst from
the fountains of forbidden pleasure, and dug for springs, hitherto
unknown, in the dark places of the earth. In the ingenuity of
indulgence, in the varieties of vanity, Venice surpassed the cities of
Christendom, as of old she surpassed them in fortitude and devotion; and
as once the powers of Europe stood before her judgment-seat, to receive
the decisions of her justice, so now the youth of Europe assembled in
the halls of her luxury, to learn from her the arts of delight.
It is as needless, as it is painful, to trace the steps of her final
ruin. That ancient curse was upon her, the curse of the cities of the
plain, "Pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness." By the
inner burning of her own passions, as fatal as the fiery reign of
Gomorrah, she was consumed from her place among the nations; and her
ashes are choking the channels of the dead salt sea.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Mutinelli, Annali Urbani, lib. i. p. 24; and the Chronicle of
1738, quoted by Galliciolli: "attrovandosi allora la giesia de Sta.
Maria Formosa sola giesia del nome della gloriosa Vergine Maria."
[28] Or from the brightness of the cloud, according to the Padre who
arranged the "Memorie delle Chiese di Venezia," vol. iii. p. 7.
Compare Corner, p. 42. This first church was built in 639.
[29] Perhaps both Corner and the Padre founded their diluted
information on the short sentence of Sansovino: "Finalmente, l'anno
1075, fu ridotta a perfezione da Paolo Barbetta, sul modello del
corpo di mezzo della chiesa di S. Marco." Sansovino, however, gives
842, instead of 864, as the date of the first rebuilding.
[30] Or at least for its principal families. Vide Appendix 8, "Early
Venetian Marriages."
[31] "Nazionale quasi la ceremonia, perciocche per essa nuovi
difensori ad acquistar andava la patria, sostegni nuovi le leggi, la
Liberta."--_Mutinelli._
[32] "Vestita, _per antico uso_, di bianco, e con chiome sparse giù
per le spalle, conteste con fila d'oro." "Dressed according to
ancient usage in white, and with her hair thrown down upon her
shoulders, interwoven with threads of gold." This was when she was
first brought out of her chamber to be seen by the guests invited to
the espousals. "And when the form of the espousal has been gone
through, she is led, to the sound of pipes and trumpets, and other
musical instruments, round the room, _dancing serenely all the time,
and bowing herself before the guests_ (ballando placidamente, e
facendo inchini ai convitati); and so she returns to her chamber:
and when other guests have arrived, she again comes forth, and makes
the circuit of the chamber. And this is repeated for an hour or
somewhat more; and then, accompanied by many ladies who wait for
her, she enters a gondola without its felze (canopy), and, seated on
a somewhat raised seat covered with carpets, with a great number of
gondolas following her, she goes to visit the monasteries and
convents, wheresoever she has any relations."
[33] Sansovino.
[34] English, "Malmsey." The reader will find a most amusing account
of the negotiations between the English and Venetians, touching the
supply of London with this wine, in Mr. Brown's translation of the
Giustiniani papers. See Appendix IX.
[35] "XV. diebus et octo diebus ante festum Mariarum omni
anno."--_Galliciolli._ The same precautions were taken before the
feast of the Ascension.
[36] Casa Vittura.
[37] The keystone of the arch on its western side, facing the canal.
[38] The inscriptions are as follows:
To the left of the reader.
"VINCENTIUS CAPELLUS MARITIMARUM
RERUM PERITISSIMUS ET ANTIQUORUM
LAUDIBUS PAR, TRIREMIUM ONERARIA
RUM PRÆFECTUS, AB HENRICO VII. BRI
TANNIÆ REGE INSIGNE DONATUS CLAS
SIS LEGATUS V. IMP. DESIG. TER CLAS
SEM DEDUXIT, COLLAPSAM NAVALEM DIS
CIPLINAM RESTITUIT, AD ZACXINTHUM
AURIÆ CÆSARIS LEGATO PRISCAM
VENETAM VIRTUTEM OSTENDIT."
To the right of the reader.
"IN AMBRACIO SINU BARBARUSSUM OTTHO
MANICÆ CLASSIS DUCEM INCLUSIT
POSTRIDIE AD INTERNITIONEM DELETU
RUS NISI FATA CHRISTIANIS ADVERSA
VETUISSENT. IN RYZONICO SINU CASTRO NOVO
EXPUGNATO DIVI MARCI PROCUR
UNIVERSO REIP CONSENSU CREATUS
IN PATRIA MORITUR TOTIUS CIVITATIS
MOERORE, ANNO ÆTATIS LXXIV. MDCXLII. XIV. KAL SEPT."
[39] The Love of God is, however, always shown by the predominance,
or greater sum, of good, in the end; but never by the annihilation
of evil. The modern doubts of eternal punishment are not so much the
consequence of benevolence as of feeble powers of reasoning. Every
one admits that God brings finite good out of finite evil. Why not,
therefore, infinite good out of infinite evil?
[40] Let the reader examine, with special reference to this subject,
the general character of the language of Iago.
[41] This opposition of art to inspiration is long and gracefully
dwelt upon by Plato, in his "Phædrus," using, in the course of his
argument, almost the words of St Paul: [Greek: kallion marturousin
oi palaioi manian sôphrosynês tên ek Theou tês par anthrôpôn
gignomenês]: "It is the testimony of the ancients, that _the madness
which is of God is a nobler thing than the wisdom which is of men_;"
and again, "He who sets himself to any work with which the Muses
have to do," (i. e. to any of the fine arts,) "without madness,
thinking that by art alone he can do his work sufficiently, will be
found vain and incapable, and the work of temperance and rationalism
will be thrust aside and obscured by that of inspiration." The
passages to the same effect, relating especially to poetry, are
innumerable in nearly all ancient writers; but in this of Plato, the
entire compass of the fine arts is intended to be embraced.
No one acquainted with other parts of my writings will suppose me to
be an advocate of idle trust in the imagination. But it is in these
days just as necessary to allege the supremacy of genius as the
necessity of labor; for there never was, perhaps, a period in which
the peculiar gift of the painter was so little discerned, in which
so many and so vain efforts have been made to replace it by study
and toil. This has been peculiarly the case with the German school,
and there are few exhibitions of human error more pitiable than the
manner in which the inferior members of it, men originally and for
ever destitute of the painting faculty, force themselves into an
unnatural, encumbered, learned fructification of tasteless fruit,
and pass laborious lives in setting obscurely and weakly upon canvas
the philosophy, if such it be, which ten minutes' work of a strong
man would have put into healthy practice, or plain words. I know not
anything more melancholy than the sight of the huge German cartoon,
with its objective side, and subjective side; and mythological
division, and symbolical division, and human and Divine division;
its allegorical sense, and literal sense; and ideal point of view,
and intellectual point of view; its heroism of well-made armor and
knitted brows; its heroinism of graceful attitude and braided hair;
its inwoven web of sentiment, and piety, and philosophy, and
anatomy, and history, all profound: and twenty innocent dashes of
the hand of one God-made painter, poor old Bassan or Bonifazio, were
worth it all, and worth it ten thousand times over.
Not that the sentiment or the philosophy is base in itself. They
will make a good man, but they will not make a good painter,--no,
nor the millionth part of a painter. They would have been good in
the work and words of daily life; but they are good for nothing in
the cartoon, if they are there alone. And the worst result of the
system is the intense conceit into which it cultivates a weak mind.
Nothing is so hopeless, so intolerable, as the pride of a foolish
man who has passed through a process of thinking, so as actually to
have found something out. He believes there is nothing else to be
found out in the universe. Whereas the truly great man, on whom the
Revelations rain till they bear him to the earth with their weight,
lays his head in the dust, and speaks thence--often in broken
syllables. Vanity is indeed a very equally divided inheritance among
mankind; but I think that among the first persons, no emphasis is
altogether so strong as that on the German _Ich_. I was once
introduced to a German philosopher-painter before Tintoret's
"Massacre of the Innocents." He looked at it superciliously, and
said it "wanted to be restored." He had been himself several years
employed in painting a "Faust" in a red jerkin and blue fire; which
made Tintoret appear somewhat dull to him.
[42] I have before stated ("Modern Painters" vol. ii.) that the
first function of the imagination is the apprehension of ultimate
truth.
[43] Note especially, in connexion with what was advanced in Vol. II.
respecting our English neatness of execution, how the base workman
has cut the lines of the architecture neatly and precisely round the
abominable head: but the noble workman has used his chisel like a
painter's pencil, and sketched the glory with a few irregular lines,
anything rather than circular; and struck out the whole head in the
same frank and fearless way, leaving the sharp edges of the stone as
they first broke, and flinging back the crest of hair from the
forehead with half a dozen hammer-strokes, while the poor wretch who
did the other was half a day in smoothing its vapid and vermicular
curls.
[44] The decree is quoted by Mutinelli, lib. i. p. 46.
[45] See Appendix 9.
CHAPTER IV.
CONCLUSION.
§ I. I fear this chapter will be a rambling one, for it must be a kind
of supplement to the preceding pages, and a general recapitulation of
the things I have too imperfectly and feebly said.
The grotesques of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the nature
of which we examined in the last chapter, close the career of the
architecture of Europe. They were the last evidences of any feeling
consistent with itself, and capable of directing the efforts of the
builder to the formation of anything worthy the name of a style or
school. From that time to this, no resuscitation of energy has taken
place, nor does any for the present appear possible. How long this
impossibility may last, and in what direction with regard to art in
general, as well as to our lifeless architecture, our immediate efforts
may most profitably be directed, are the questions I would endeavor
briefly to consider in the present chapter.
§ II. That modern science, with all its additions to the comforts of
life, and to the fields of rational contemplation, has placed the
existing races of mankind on a higher platform than any that preceded
them, none can doubt for an instant; and I believe the position in which
we find ourselves is somewhat analogous to that of thoughtful and
laborious youth succeeding a restless and heedless infancy. Not long
ago, it was said to me by one of the masters of modern science: "When
men invented the locomotive, the child was learning to go; when they
invented the telegraph, it was learning to speak." He looked forward to
the manhood of mankind, as assuredly the nobler in proportion to the
slowness of its developement. What might not be expected from the prime
and middle strength of the order of existence whose infancy had lasted
six thousand years? And, indeed, I think this the truest, as well as the
most cheering, view that we can take of the world's history. Little
progress has been made as yet. Base war, lying policy, thoughtless
cruelty, senseless improvidence,--all things which, in nations, are
analogous to the petulance, cunning, impatience, and carelessness of
infancy,--have been, up to this hour, as characteristic of mankind as
they were in the earliest periods; so that we must either be driven to
doubt of human progress at all, or look upon it as in its very earliest
stage. Whether the opportunity is to be permitted us to redeem the hours
that we have lost; whether He, in whose sight a thousand years are as
one day, has appointed us to be tried by the continued possession of the
strange powers with which He has lately endowed us; or whether the
periods of childhood and of probation are to cease together, and the
youth of mankind is to be one which shall prevail over death, and bloom
for ever in the midst of a new heaven and a new earth, are questions
with which we have no concern. It is indeed right that we should look
for, and hasten, so far as in us lies, the coming of the Day of God; but
not that we should check any human efforts by anticipations of its
approach. We shall hasten it best by endeavoring to work out the tasks
that are appointed for us here; and, therefore, reasoning as if the
world were to continue under its existing dispensation, and the powers
which have just been granted to us were to be continued through myriads
of future ages.
§ III. It seems to me, then, that the whole human race, so far as their
own reason can be trusted, may at present be regarded as just emergent
from childhood; and beginning for the first time to feel their strength,
to stretch their limbs, and explore the creation around them. If we
consider that, till within the last fifty years, the nature of the
ground we tread on, of the air we breathe, and of the light by which we
see, were not so much as conjecturally conceived by us; that the
duration of the globe, and the races of animal life by which it was
inhabited, are just beginning to be apprehended; and that the scope of
the magnificent science which has revealed them, is as yet so little
received by the public mind, that presumption and ignorance are still
permitted to raise their voices against it unrebuked; that perfect
veracity in the representation of general nature by art has never been
attempted until the present day, and has in the present day been
resisted with all the energy of the popular voice;[46] that the simplest
problems of social science are yet so little understood, as that
doctrines of liberty and equality can be openly preached, and so
successfully as to affect the whole body of the civilized world with
apparently incurable disease; that the first principles of commerce were
acknowledged by the English Parliament only a few months ago, in its
free trade measures, and are still so little understood by the million,
that no nation dares to abolish its custom-houses;[47] that the simplest
principles of policy are still not so much as stated, far less received,
and that civilized nations persist in the belief that the subtlety and
dishonesty which they know to be ruinous in dealings between man and
man, are serviceable in dealings between multitude and multitude;
finally, that the scope of the Christian religion, which we have been
taught for two thousand years, is still so little conceived by us, that
we suppose the laws of charity and of self-sacrifice bear upon
individuals in all their social relations, and yet do not bear upon
nations in any of their political relations;--when, I say, we thus
review the depth of simplicity in which the human race are still
plunged with respect to all that it most profoundly concerns them to
know, and which might, by them, with most ease have been ascertained, we
can hardly determine how far back on the narrow path of human progress
we ought to place the generation to which we belong, how far the
swaddling clothes are unwound from us, and childish things beginning to
be put away.
On the other hand, a power of obtaining veracity in the representation
of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and
conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been placed in the hands of all
men,[48] almost without labor. The foundation of every natural science
is now at last firmly laid, not a day passing without some addition of
buttress and pinnacle to their already magnificent fabric. Social
theorems, if fiercely agitated, are therefore the more likely to be at
last determined, so that they never can be matters of question more.
Human life has been in some sense prolonged by the increased powers of
locomotion, and an almost limitless power of converse. Finally, there is
hardly any serious mind in Europe but is occupied, more or less, in the
investigation of the questions which have so long paralyzed the strength
of religious feeling, and shortened the dominion of religious faith. And
we may therefore at least look upon ourselves as so far in a definite
state of progress, as to justify our caution in guarding against the
dangers incident to every period of change, and especially to that from
childhood into youth.
§ IV. Those dangers appear, in the main, to be twofold; consisting
partly in the pride of vain knowledge, partly in the pursuit of vain
pleasure. A few points are still to be noticed with respect to each of
these heads.
Enough, it might be thought, had been said already, touching the pride
of knowledge; but I have not yet applied the principles, at which we
arrived in the third chapter, to the practical questions of modern art.
And I think those principles, together with what were deduced from the
consideration of the nature of Gothic in the second volume, so necessary
and vital, not only with respect to the progress of art, but even to the
happiness of society, that I will rather run the risk of tediousness
than of deficiency, in their illustration and enforcement.
In examining the nature of Gothic, we concluded that one of the chief
elements of power in that, and in _all good_ architecture, was the
acceptance of uncultivated and rude energy in the workman. In examining
the nature of Renaissance, we concluded that its chief element of
weakness was that pride of knowledge which not only prevented all
rudeness in expression, but gradually quenched all energy which could
only be rudely expressed; nor only so, but, for the motive and matter of
the work itself, preferred science to emotion, and experience to
perception.
§ V. The modern mind differs from the Renaissance mind in that its
learning is more substantial and extended, and its temper more humble;
but its errors, with respect to the cultivation of art, are precisely
the same,--nay, as far as regards execution, even more aggravated. We
require, at present, from our general workmen, more perfect finish than
was demanded in the most skilful Renaissance periods, except in their
very finest productions; and our leading principles in teaching, and in
the patronage which necessarily gives tone to teaching, are, that the
goodness of work consists primarily in firmness of handling and accuracy
of science, that is to say, in hand-work and head-work; whereas
heart-work, which is the _one_ work we want, is not only independent of
both, but often, in great degree, inconsistent with either.
§ VI. Here, therefore, let me finally and firmly enunciate the great
principle to which all that has hitherto been stated is
subservient:--that art is valuable or otherwise, only as it expresses
the personality, activity, and living perception of a good and great
human soul; that it may express and contain this with little help from
execution, and less from science; and that if it have not this, if it
show not the vigor, perception, and invention of a mighty human spirit,
it is worthless. Worthless, I mean, as _art_; it may be precious in some
other way, but, as art, it is nugatory. Once let this be well understood
among us, and magnificent consequences will soon follow. Let me repeat
it in other terms, so that I may not be misunderstood. All art is great,
and good, and true, only so far as it is distinctively the work of
_manhood_ in its entire and highest sense; that is to say, not the work
of limbs and fingers, but of the soul, aided, according to her
necessities, by the inferior powers; and therefore distinguished in
essence from all products of those inferior powers unhelped by the soul.
For as a photograph is not a work of art, though it requires certain
delicate manipulations of paper and acid, and subtle calculations of
time, in order to bring out a good result; so, neither would a drawing
_like_ a photograph, made directly from nature, be a work of art,
although it would imply many delicate manipulations of the pencil and
subtle calculations of effects of color and shade. It is no more art[49]
to manipulate a camel's hair pencil, than to manipulate a china tray and
a glass vial. It is no more art to lay on color delicately, than to lay
on acid delicately. It is no more art to use the cornea and retina for
the reception of an image, than to use a lens and a piece of silvered
paper. But the moment that inner part of the man, or rather that entire
and only being of the man, of which cornea and retina, fingers and
hands, pencils and colors, are all the mere servants and
instruments;[50] that manhood which has light in itself, though the
eyeball be sightless, and can gain in strength when the hand and the
foot are hewn off and cast into the fire; the moment this part of the
man stands forth with its solemn "Behold, it is I," then the work
becomes art indeed, perfect in honor, priceless in value, boundless in
power.
§ VII. Yet observe, I do not mean to speak of the body and soul as
separable. The man is made up of both: they are to be raised and
glorified together, and all art is an expression of the one, by and
through the other. All that I would insist upon is, the necessity of the
whole man being in his work; the body _must_ be in it. Hands and habits
must be in it, whether we will or not; but the nobler part of the man
may often not be in it. And that nobler part acts principally in love,
reverence, and admiration, together with those conditions of thought
which arise out of them. For we usually fall into much error by
considering the intellectual powers as having dignity in themselves, and
separable from the heart; whereas the truth is, that the intellect
becomes noble and ignoble according to the food we give it, and the kind
of subjects with which it is conversant. It is not the reasoning power
which, of itself, is noble, but the reasoning power occupied with its
proper objects. Half of the mistakes of metaphysicians have arisen from
their not observing this; namely, that the intellect, going through the
same processes, is yet mean or noble according to the matter it deals
with, and wastes itself away in mere rotatory motion, if it be set to
grind straws and dust. If we reason only respecting words, or lines, or
any trifling and finite things, the reason becomes a contemptible
faculty; but reason employed on holy and infinite things, becomes
herself holy and infinite. So that, by work of the soul, I mean the
reader always to understand the work of the entire immortal creature,
proceeding from a quick, perceptive, and eager heart, perfected by the
intellect, and finally dealt with by the hands, under the direct
guidance of these higher powers.
§ VIII. And now observe, the first important consequence of our fully
understanding this preëminence of the soul, will be the due
understanding of that subordination of knowledge respecting which so
much has already been said. For it must be felt at once, that the
increase of knowledge, merely as such, does not make the soul larger or
smaller; that, in the sight of God, all the knowledge man can gain is as
nothing: but that the soul, for which the great scheme of redemption was
laid, be it ignorant or be it wise, is all in all; and in the activity,
strength, health, and well-being of this soul, lies the main difference,
in His sight, between one man and another. And that which is all in all
in God's estimate is also, be assured, all in all in man's labor; and to
have the heart open, and the eyes clear, and the emotions and thoughts
warm and quick, and not the knowing of this or the other fact, is the
state needed for all mighty doing in this world. And therefore finally,
for this, the weightiest of all reasons, let us take no pride in our
knowledge. We may, in a certain sense, be proud of being immortal; we
may be proud of being God's children; we may be proud of loving,
thinking, seeing, and of all that we are by no human teaching: but not
of what we have been taught by rote; not of the ballast and freight of
the ship of the spirit, but only of its pilotage, without which all the
freight will only sink it faster, and strew the sea more richly with
its ruin. There is not at this moment a youth of twenty, having received
what we moderns ridiculously call education, but he knows more of
everything, except the soul, than Plato or St. Paul did; but he is not
for that reason a greater man, or fitter for his work, or more fit to be
heard by others, than Plato or St. Paul. There is not at this moment a
junior student in our schools of painting, who does not know fifty times
as much about the art as Giotto did; but he is not for that reason
greater than Giotto; no, nor his work better, nor fitter for our
beholding. Let him go on to know all that the human intellect can
discover and contain in the term of a long life, and he will not be one
inch, one line, nearer to Giotto's feet. But let him leave his academy
benches, and, innocently, as one knowing nothing, go out into the
highways and hedges, and there rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep
with them that weep; and in the next world, among the companies of the
great and good, Giotto will give his hand to him, and lead him into
their white circle, and say, "This is our brother."
§ IX. And the second important consequence of our feeling the soul's
preëminence will be our understanding the soul's language, however
broken, or low, or feeble, or obscure in its words; and chiefly that
great symbolic language of past ages, which has now so long been
unspoken. It is strange that the same cold and formal spirit which the
Renaissance teaching has raised amongst us, should be equally dead to
the languages of imitation and of symbolism; and should at once disdain
the faithful rendering of real nature by the modern school of the
Pre-Raphaelites, and the symbolic rendering of imagined nature in the
work of the thirteenth century. But so it is; and we find the same body
of modern artists rejecting Pre-Raphaelitism because it is not ideal!
and thirteenth century work, because it is not real!--their own practice
being at once false and un-ideal, and therefore equally opposed to both.
§ X. It is therefore, at this juncture, of much importance to mark for
the reader the exact relation of healthy symbolism and of healthy
imitation; and, in order to do so, let us return to one of our Venetian
examples of symbolic art, to the central cupola of St. Mark's. On that
cupola, as has been already stated, there is a mosaic representing the
Apostles on the Mount of Olives, with an olive-tree separating each from
the other; and we shall easily arrive at our purpose, by comparing the
means which would have been adopted by a modern artist bred in the
Renaissance schools,--that is to say, under the influence of Claude and
Poussin, and of the common teaching of the present day,--with those
adopted by the Byzantine mosaicist to express the nature of these trees.
§ XI. The reader is doubtless aware that the olive is one of the most
characteristic and beautiful features of all Southern scenery. On the
slopes of the northern Apennines, olives are the usual forest timber;
the whole of the Val d'Arno is wooded with them, every one of its
gardens is filled with them, and they grow in orchard-like ranks out of
its fields of maize, or corn, or vine; so that it is physically
impossible, in most parts of the neighborhood of Florence, Pistoja,
Lucca, or Pisa, to choose any site of landscape which shall not owe its
leading character to the foliage of these trees. What the elm and oak
are to England, the olive is to Italy; nay, more than this, its presence
is so constant, that, in the case of at least four fifths of the
drawings made by any artist in North Italy, he must have been somewhat
impeded by branches of olive coming between him and the landscape. Its
classical associations double its importance in Greece; and in the Holy
Land the remembrances connected with it are of course more touching than
can ever belong to any other tree of the field. Now, for many years
back, at least one third out of all the landscapes painted by English
artists have been chosen from Italian scenery; sketches in Greece and in
the Holy Land have become as common as sketches on Hampstead Heath; our
galleries also are full of sacred subjects, in which, if any background
be introduced at all, the foliage of the olive ought to have been a
prominent feature.
And here I challenge the untravelled English reader to tell me what an
olive-tree is like?
§ XII. I know he cannot answer my challenge. He has no more idea of an
olive-tree than if olives grew only in the fixed stars. Let him meditate
a little on this one fact, and consider its strangeness, and what a
wilful and constant closing of the eyes to the most important truths it
indicates on the part of the modern artist. Observe, a want of
perception, not of science. I do not want painters to tell me any
scientific facts about olive-trees. But it had been well for them to
have felt and seen the olive-tree; to have loved it for Christ's sake,
partly also for the helmed Wisdom's sake which was to the heathen in
some sort as that nobler Wisdom which stood at God's right hand, when He
founded the earth and established the heavens. To have loved it, even to
the hoary dimness of its delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as
if the ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it for ever; and
to have traced, line by line, the gnarled writhing of its intricate
branches, and the pointed fretwork of its light and narrow leaves,
inlaid on the blue field of the sky, and the small rosy-white stars of
its spring blossoming, and the beads of sable fruit scattered by autumn
along its topmost boughs--the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the
fatherless, and the widow,--and, more than all, the softness of the
mantle, silver grey, and tender like the down on a bird's breast, with
which, far away, it veils the undulation of the mountains;--these it had
been well for them to have seen and drawn, whatever they had left
unstudied in the gallery.
§ XIII. And if the reader would know the reason why this has not been
done (it is one instance only out of the myriads which might be given of
sightlessness in modern art), and will ask the artists themselves, he
will be informed of another of the marvellous contradictions and
inconsistencies in the base Renaissance art; for it will be answered
him, that it is not right, nor according to law, to draw trees so that
one should be known from another, but that trees ought to be generalized
into a universal idea of a tree: that is to say, that the very school
which carries its science in the representation of man down to the
dissection of the most minute muscle, refuses so much science to the
drawing of a tree as shall distinguish one species from another; and
also, while it attends to logic, and rhetoric, and perspective, and
atmosphere, and every other circumstance which is trivial, verbal,
external, or accidental, in what it either says or sees, it will _not_
attend to what is essential and substantial,--being intensely
solicitous, for instance, if it draws two trees, one behind the other,
that the farthest off shall be as much smaller as mathematics show that
it should be, but totally unsolicitous to show, what to the spectator is
a far more important matter, whether it is an apple or an orange tree.
§ XIV. This, however, is not to our immediate purpose. Let it be granted
that an idea of an olive-tree is indeed to be given us in a special
manner; how, and by what language, this idea is to be conveyed, are
questions on which we shall find the world of artists again divided; and
it was this division which I wished especially to illustrate by
reference to the mosaics of St. Mark's.
Now the main characteristics of an olive-tree are these. It has sharp
and slender leaves of a greyish green, nearly grey on the under surface,
and resembling, but somewhat smaller than, those of our common willow.
Its fruit, when ripe, is black and lustrous; but of course so small,
that, unless in great quantity, it is not conspicuous upon the tree. Its
trunk and branches are peculiarly fantastic in their twisting, showing
their fibres at every turn; and the trunk is often hollow, and even rent
into many divisions like separate stems, but the extremities are
exquisitely graceful, especially in the setting on of the leaves; and
the notable and characteristic effect of the tree in the distance is of
a rounded and soft mass or ball of downy foliage.
§ XV. Supposing a modern artist to address himself to the rendering of
this tree with his best skill: he will probably draw accurately the
twisting of the branches, but yet this will hardly distinguish the tree
from an oak: he will also render the color and intricacy of the foliage,
but this will only confuse the idea of an oak with that of a willow. The
fruit, and the peculiar grace of the leaves at the extremities, and the
fibrous structure of the stems, will all be too minute to be rendered
consistently with his artistical feeling of breadth, or with the amount
of labor which he considers it dexterous and legitimate to bestow upon
the work: but, above all, the rounded and monotonous form of the head of
the tree will be at variance with his ideas of "composition;" he will
assuredly disguise or break it, and the main points of the olive-tree
will all at last remain untold.
§ XVI. Now observe, the old Byzantine mosaicist begins his work at
enormous disadvantage. It is to be some one hundred and fifty feet above
the eye, in a dark cupola; executed not with free touches of the pencil,
but with square pieces of glass; not by his own hand, but by various
workmen under his superintendence; finally, not with a principal purpose
of drawing olive-trees, but mainly as a decoration of the cupola. There
is to be an olive-tree beside each apostle, and their stems are to be
the chief lines which divide the dome. He therefore at once gives up the
irregular twisting of the boughs hither and thither, but he will not
give up their fibres. Other trees have irregular and fantastic branches,
but the knitted cordage of fibres is the olive's own. Again, were he to
draw the leaves of their natural size, they would be so small that their
forms would be invisible in the darkness; and were he to draw them so
large as that their shape might be seen, they would look like laurel
instead of olive. So he arranges them in small clusters of five each,
nearly of the shape which the Byzantines give to the petals of the lily,
but elongated so as to give the idea of leafage upon a spray; and these
clusters,--his object always, be it remembered, being _decoration_ not
less than _representation_,--he arranges symmetrically on each side of
his branches, laying the whole on a dark ground most truly suggestive of
the heavy rounded mass of the tree, which, in its turn, is relieved
against the gold of the cupola. Lastly, comes the question respecting
the fruit. The whole power and honor of the olive is in its fruit; and,
unless that be represented, nothing is represented. But if the berries
were colored black or green, they would be totally invisible; if of
any other color, utterly unnatural, and violence would be done to the
whole conception. There is but one conceivable means of showing them,
namely to represent them as golden. For the idea of golden fruit of
various kinds was already familiar to the mind, as in the apples of the
Hesperides, without any violence to the distinctive conception of the
fruit itself.[51] So the mosaicist introduced small round golden berries
into the dark ground between each leaf, and his work was done.
[Illustration: Plate IV.
Mosaics of Olive-tree and Flowers.]
§ XVII. On the opposite plate, the uppermost figure on the left is a
tolerably faithful representation of the general effect of one of these
decorative olive-trees; the figure on the right is the head of the tree
alone, showing the leaf clusters, berries, and _interlacing_ of the
boughs as they leave the stem. Each bough is connected with a separate
line of fibre in the trunk, and the junctions of the arms and stem are
indicated, down to the very root of the tree, with a truth in structure
which may well put to shame the tree anatomy of modern times.
§ XVIII. The white branching figures upon the serpentine band below are
two of the clusters of flowers which form the foreground of a mosaic in
the atrium. I have printed the whole plate in blue, because that color
approaches more nearly than black to the distant effect of the mosaics,
of which the darker portions are generally composed of blue, in greater
quantity than any other color. But the waved background in this
instance, is of various shades of blue and green alternately, with one
narrow black band to give it force; the whole being intended to
represent the distant effect and color of deep grass, and the wavy line
to _express its bending motion_, just as the same symbol is used to
represent the waves of water. Then the two white clusters are
representative of the distinctly visible herbage close to the
spectator, having buds and flowers of two kinds, springing in one case
out of the midst of twisted grass, and in the other out of their own
proper leaves; the clusters being kept each so distinctly symmetrical,
as to form, when set side by side, an ornamental border of perfect
architectural severity; and yet each cluster different from the next,
and every flower, and bud, and knot of grass, varied in form and
thought. The way the mosaic tesseræ are arranged, so as to give the
writhing of the grass blades round the stalks of the flowers, is
exceedingly fine.
The tree circles below are examples of still more severely conventional
forms, adopted, on principle, when the decoration is to be in white and
gold, instead of color; these ornaments being cut in white marble on the
outside of the church, and the ground laid in with gold, though
necessarily here represented, like the rest of the plate, in blue. And
it is exceedingly interesting to see how the noble workman, the moment
he is restricted to more conventional materials, retires into more
conventional forms, and reduces his various leafage into symmetry, now
nearly perfect; yet observe, in the central figure, where the symbolic
meaning of the vegetation beside the cross required it to be more
distinctly indicated, he has given it life and growth by throwing it
into unequal curves on the opposite sides.
§ XIX. I believe the reader will now see, that in these mosaics, which
the careless traveller is in the habit of passing by with contempt,
there is a depth of feeling and of meaning greater than in most of the
best sketches from nature of modern times; and, without entering into
any question whether these conventional representations are as good as,
under the required limitations, it was possible to render them, they are
at all events good enough completely to illustrate that mode of
symbolical expression which appeals altogether to thought, and in no
wise trusts to realization. And little as, in the present state of our
schools, such an assertion is likely to be believed, the fact is that
this kind of expression is the _only one allowable in noble art_.
§ XX. I pray the reader to have patience with me for a few moments. I do
not mean that no art is noble but Byzantine mosaic; but no art is noble
which in any wise depends upon direct imitation for its effect upon the
mind. This was asserted in the opening chapters of "Modern Painters,"
but not upon the highest grounds; the results at which we have now
arrived in our investigation of early art, will enable me to place it on
a loftier and firmer foundation.
§ XXI. We have just seen that all great art is the work of the whole
living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul. But it is not
only _the work_ of the whole creature, it likewise _addresses_ the whole
creature. That in which the perfect being speaks, must also have the
perfect being to listen. I am not to spend my utmost spirit, and give
all my strength and life to my work, while you, spectator or hearer,
will give me only the attention of half your soul. You must be all mine,
as I am all yours; it is the only condition on which we can meet each
other. All your faculties, all that is in you of greatest and best, must
be awake in you, or I have no reward. The painter is not to cast the
entire treasure of his human nature into his labor, merely to please a
part of the beholder: not merely to delight his senses, not merely to
amuse his fancy, not merely to beguile him into emotion, not merely to
lead him into thought, but to do _all_ this. Senses, fancy, feeling,
reason, the whole of the beholding spirit, must be stilled in attention
or stirred with delight; else the laboring spirit has not done its work
well. For observe, it is not merely its _right_ to be thus met, face to
face, heart to heart; but it is its _duty_ to evoke its answering of the
other soul; its trumpet call must be so clear, that though the challenge
may by dulness or indolence be unanswered, there shall be no error as to
the meaning of the appeal; there must be a summons in the work, which it
shall be our own fault if we do not obey. We require this of it, we
beseech this of it. Most men do not know what is in them, till they
receive this summons from their fellows: their hearts die within them,
sleep settles upon them, the lethargy of the world's miasmata; there is
nothing for which they are so thankful as for that cry, "Awake, thou
that sleepest." And this cry must be most loudly uttered to their
noblest faculties; first of all to the imagination, for that is the most
tender, and the soonest struck into numbness by the poisoned air; so
that one of the main functions of art in its service to man, is to
arouse the imagination from its palsy, like the angel troubling the
Bethesda pool; and the art which does not do this is false to its duty,
and degraded in its nature. It is not enough that it be well imagined,
it must task the beholder also to imagine well; and this so
imperatively, that if he does not choose to rouse himself to meet the
work, he shall not taste it, nor enjoy it in any wise. Once that he is
well awake, the guidance which the artist gives him should be full and
authoritative: the beholder's imagination must not be suffered to take
its own way, or wander hither and thither; but neither must it be left
at rest; and the right point of realization, for any given work of art,
is that which will enable the spectator to complete it for himself, in
the exact way the artist would have him, but not that which will save
him the trouble of effecting the completion. So soon as the idea is
entirely conveyed, the artist's labor should cease; and every touch
which he adds beyond the point when, with the help of the beholder's
imagination, the story ought to have been told, is a degradation to his
work. So that the art is wrong, which either realizes its subject
completely, or fails in giving such definite aid as shall enable it to
be realized by the beholding imagination.
§ XXII. It follows, therefore, that the quantity of finish or detail
which may rightly be bestowed upon any work, depends on the number and
kind of ideas which the artist wishes to convey, much more than on the
amount of realization necessary to enable the imagination to grasp them.
It is true that the differences of judgment formed by one or another
observer are in great degree dependent on their unequal imaginative
powers, as well as their unequal efforts in following the artist's
intention; and it constantly happens that the drawing which appears
clear to the painter in whose mind the thought is formed, is slightly
inadequate to suggest it to the spectator. These causes of false
judgment, or imperfect achievement, must always exist, but they are of
no importance. For, in nearly every mind, the imaginative power, however
unable to act independently, is so easily helped and so brightly
animated by the most obscure suggestion, that there is no form of
artistical language which will not readily be seized by it, if once it
set itself intelligently to the task; and even without such effort there
are few hieroglyphics of which, once understanding that it is to take
them as hieroglyphics, it cannot make itself a pleasant picture.
§ XXIII. Thus, in the case of all sketches, etchings, unfinished
engravings, &c., no one ever supposes them to be imitations. Black
outlines on white paper cannot produce a deceptive resemblance of
anything; and the mind, understanding at once that it is to depend on
its own powers for great part of its pleasure, sets itself so actively
to the task that it can completely enjoy the rudest outline in which
meaning exists. Now, when it is once in this temper, the artist is
infinitely to be blamed who insults it by putting anything into his work
which is not suggestive: having summoned the imaginative power, he must
turn it to account and keep it employed, or it will run against him in
indignation. Whatever he does merely to realize and substantiate an idea
is impertinent; he is like a dull story-teller, dwelling on points which
the hearer anticipates or disregards. The imagination will say to him:
"I knew all that before; I don't want to be told that. Go on; or be
silent, and let me go on in my own way. I can tell the story better than
you."
Observe, then, whenever finish is given for the sake of realization, it
is wrong; whenever it is given for the sake of adding ideas it is right.
All true finish consists in the addition of ideas, that is to say, in
giving the imagination more food; for once well awaked, it is ravenous
for food: but the painter who finishes in order to substantiate takes
the food out of its mouth, and it will turn and rend him.
§ XXIV. Let us go back, for instance, to our olive grove,--or, lest the
reader should be tired of olives, let it be an oak copse,--and consider
the difference between the substantiating and the imaginative methods of
finish in such a subject. A few strokes of the pencil, or dashes of
color, will be enough to enable the imagination to conceive a tree; and
in those dashes of color Sir Joshua Reynolds would have rested, and
would have suffered the imagination to paint what more it liked for
itself, and grow oaks, or olives, or apples, out of the few dashes of
color at its leisure. On the other hand, Hobbima, one of the worst of
the realists, smites the imagination on the mouth, and bids it be
silent, while he sets to work to paint his oak of the right green, and
fill up its foliage laboriously with jagged touches, and furrow the bark
all over its branches, so as, if possible, to deceive us into supposing
that we are looking at a real oak; which, indeed, we had much better do
at once, without giving any one the trouble to deceive us in the matter.
§ XXV. Now, the truly great artist neither leaves the imagination to
itself, like Sir Joshua, nor insults it by realization, like Hobbima,
but finds it continual employment of the happiest kind. Having summoned
it by his vigorous first touches, he says to it: "Here is a tree for
you, and it is to be an oak. Now I know that you can make it green and
intricate for yourself, but that is not enough: an oak is not only green
and intricate, but its leaves have most beautiful and fantastic forms
which I am very sure you are not quite able to complete without help; so
I will draw a cluster or two perfectly for you, and then you can go on
and do all the other clusters. So far so good: but the leaves are not
enough; the oak is to be full of acorns, and you may not be quite able
to imagine the way they grow, nor the pretty contrast of their glossy
almond-shaped nuts with the chasing of their cups; so I will draw a
bunch or two of acorns for you, and you can fill up the oak with others
like them. Good: but that is not enough; it is to be a bright day in
summer, and all the outside leaves are to be glittering in the sunshine
as if their edges were of gold: I cannot paint this, but you can; so I
will really gild some of the edges nearest you,[52] and you can turn
the gold into sunshine, and cover the tree with it. Well done: but still
this is not enough; the tree is so full foliaged and so old that the
wood birds come in crowds to build there; they are singing, two or three
under the shadow of every bough. I cannot show you them all; but here is
a large one on the outside spray, and you can fancy the others inside."
§ XXVI. In this way the calls upon the imagination are multiplied as a
great painter finishes; and from these larger incidents he may proceed
into the most minute particulars, and lead the companion imagination to
the veins in the leaves and the mosses on the trunk, and the shadows of
the dead leaves upon the grass, but always multiplying thoughts, or
subjects of thought, never working for the sake of realization; the
amount of realization actually reached depending on his space, his
materials, and the nature of the thoughts he wishes to suggest. In the
sculpture of an oak-tree, introduced above an Adoration of the Magi on
the tomb of the Doge Marco Dolfino (fourteenth century), the sculptor
has been content with a few leaves, a single acorn, and a bird; while,
on the other hand, Millais' willow-tree with the robin, in the
background of his "Ophelia," or the foreground of Hunt's "Two Gentlemen
of Verona," carries the appeal to the imagination into particulars so
multiplied and minute, that the work nearly reaches realization. But it
does not matter how near realization the work may approach in its
fulness, or how far off it may remain in its slightness, so long as
realization is not the end proposed, but the informing one spirit of the
thoughts of another. And in this greatness and simplicity of purpose all
noble art is alike, however slight its means, or however perfect, from
the rudest mosaics of St. Mark's to the most tender finishing of the
"Huguenot" or the "Ophelia."
§ XXVII. Only observe, in this matter, that a greater degree of
realization is often allowed, for the sake of color, than would be right
without it. For there is not any distinction between the artists of the
inferior and the nobler schools more definite than this; that the first
_color for the sake of realization_, and the second _realize for the
sake of color_. I hope that, in the fifth chapter, enough has been said
to show the nobility of color, though it is a subject on which I would
fain enlarge whenever I approach it: for there is none that needs more
to be insisted upon, chiefly on account of the opposition of the persons
who have no eye for color, and who, being therefore unable to understand
that it is just as divine and distinct in its power as music (only
infinitely more varied in its harmonies), talk of it as if it were
inferior and servile with respect to the other powers of art;[53]
whereas it is so far from being this, that wherever it enters it must
take the mastery, and, whatever else is sacrificed for its sake, _it_,
at least, must be right. This is partly the case even with music: it is
at our choice, whether we will accompany a poem with music, or not; but,
if we do, the music _must_ be right, and neither discordant nor
inexpressive. The goodness and sweetness of the poem cannot save it, if
the music be harsh or false; but, if the music be right, the poem may be
insipid or inharmonious, and still saved by the notes to which it is
wedded. But this is far more true of color. If that be wrong, all is
wrong. No amount of expression or invention can redeem an ill-colored
picture; while, on the other hand, if the color be right, there is
nothing it will not raise or redeem; and, therefore, wherever color
enters at all, anything _may_ be sacrificed to it, and, rather than it
should be false or feeble, everything _must_ be sacrificed to it: so
that, when an artist touches color, it is the same thing as when a poet
takes up a musical instrument; he implies, in so doing, that he is a
master, up to a certain point, of that instrument, and can produce sweet
sound from it, and is able to fit the course and measure of his words to
its tones, which, if he be not able to do, he had better not have
touched it. In like manner, to add color to a drawing is to undertake
for the perfection of a visible music, which, if it be false, will
utterly and assuredly mar the whole work; if true, proportionately
elevate it, according to its power and sweetness. But, in no case ought
the color to be added in order to increase the realization. The drawing
or engraving is all that the imagination needs. To "paint" the subject
merely to make it more real, is only to insult the imaginative power and
to vulgarize the whole. Hence the common, though little understood
feeling, among men of ordinary cultivation, that an inferior sketch is
always better than a bad painting; although, in the latter, there may
verily be more skill than in the former. For the painter who has
presumed to touch color without perfectly understanding it, not for the
color's sake, nor because he loves it, but for the sake of completion
merely, has committed two sins against us; he has dulled the imagination
by not trusting it far enough, and then, in this languid state, he
oppresses it with base and false color; for all color that is not
lovely, is discordant; there is no mediate condition. So, therefore,
when it is permitted to enter at all, it must be with the
predetermination that, cost what it will, the color shall be right and
lovely: and I only wish that, in general, it were better understood that
a _painter's_ business is _to paint_, primarily; and that all
expression, and grouping, and conceiving, and what else goes to
constitute design, _are of less importance than color, in a colored
work_. And so they were always considered in the noble periods; and
sometimes all resemblance to nature whatever (as in painted windows,
illuminated manuscripts, and such other work) is sacrificed to the
brilliancy of color; sometimes distinctness of form to its richness, as
by Titian, Turner, and Reynolds; and, which is the point on which we are
at present insisting, sometimes, in the pursuit of its utmost
refinements on the surfaces of objects, an amount of realization becomes
consistent with noble art, which would otherwise be altogether
inadmissible, that is to say, which no great mind could otherwise have
either produced or enjoyed. The extreme finish given by the
Pre-Raphaelites is rendered noble chiefly by their love of color.
§ XXVIII. So then, whatever may be the means, or whatever the more
immediate end of any kind of art, all of it that is good agrees in this,
that it is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is
precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it. And
consider what mighty consequences follow from our acceptance of this
truth! what a key we have herein given us for the interpretation of the
art of all time! For, as long as we held art to consist in any high
manual skill, or successful imitation of natural objects, or any
scientific and legalized manner of performance whatever, it was
necessary for us to limit our admiration to narrow periods and to few
men. According to our own knowledge and sympathies, the period chosen
might be different, and our rest might be in Greek statues, or Dutch
landscapes, or Italian Madonnas; but, whatever our choice, we were
therein captive, barred from all reverence but of our favorite masters,
and habitually using the language of contempt towards the whole of the
human race to whom it had not pleased Heaven to reveal the arcana of the
particular craftsmanship we admired, and who, it might be, had lived
their term of seventy years upon the earth, and fitted themselves
therein for the eternal world, without any clear understanding,
sometimes even with an insolent disregard, of the laws of perspective
and chiaroscuro.
But let us once comprehend the holier nature of the art of man, and
begin to look for the meaning of the spirit, however syllabled, and the
scene is changed; and we are changed also. Those small and dexterous
creatures whom once we worshipped, those fur-capped divinities with
sceptres of camel's hair, peering and poring in their one-windowed
chambers over the minute preciousness of the labored canvas; how are
they swept away and crushed into unnoticeable darkness! And in their
stead, as the walls of the dismal rooms that enclosed them, and us, are
struck by the four winds of Heaven, and rent away, and as the world
opens to our sight, lo! far back into all the depths of time, and forth
from all the fields that have been sown with human life, how the harvest
of the dragon's teeth is springing! how the companies of the gods are
ascending out of the earth! The dark stones that have so long been the
sepulchres of the thoughts of nations, and the forgotten ruins wherein
their faith lay charnelled, give up the dead that were in them; and
beneath the Egyptian ranks of sultry and silent rock, and amidst the dim
golden lights of the Byzantine dome, and out of the confused and cold
shadows of the Northern cloister, behold, the multitudinous souls come
forth with singing, gazing on us with the soft eyes of newly
comprehended sympathy, and stretching their white arms to us across the
grave, in the solemn gladness of everlasting brotherhood.
§ XXIX. The other danger to which, it was above said, we were primarily
exposed under our present circumstances of life, is the pursuit of vain
pleasure, that is to say, false pleasure; delight, which is not indeed
delight; as knowledge vainly accumulated, is not indeed knowledge. And
this we are exposed to chiefly in the fact of our ceasing to be
children. For the child does not seek false pleasure; its pleasures are
true, simple, and instinctive: but the youth is apt to abandon his early
and true delight for vanities,--seeking to be like men, and sacrificing
his natural and pure enjoyments to his pride. In like manner, it seems
to me that modern civilization sacrifices much pure and true pleasure to
various forms of ostentation from which it can receive no fruit.
Consider, for a moment, what kind of pleasures are open to human nature,
undiseased. Passing by the consideration of the pleasures of the higher
affections, which lie at the root of everything, and considering the
definite and practical pleasures of daily life, there is, first, the
pleasure of doing good; the greatest of all, only apt to be despised
from not being often enough tasted: and then, I know not in what order
to put them, nor does it matter,--the pleasure of gaining knowledge; the
pleasure of the excitement of imagination and emotion (or poetry and
passion); and, lastly, the gratification of the senses, first of the
eye, then of the ear, and then of the others in their order.
§ XXX. All these we are apt to make subservient to the desire of praise;
nor unwisely, when the praise sought is God's and the conscience's: but
if the sacrifice is made for man's admiration, and knowledge is only
sought for praise, passion repressed or affected for praise, and the
arts practised for praise, we are feeding on the bitterest apples of
Sodom, suffering always ten mortifications for one delight. And it seems
to me, that in the modern civilized world we make such sacrifice doubly:
first, by laboring for merely ambitious purposes; and secondly, which is
the main point in question, by being ashamed of simple pleasures, more
especially of the pleasure in sweet color and form, a pleasure evidently
so necessary to man's perfectness and virtue, that the beauty of color
and form has been given lavishly throughout the whole of creation, so
that it may become the food of all, and with such intricacy and subtlety
that it may deeply employ the thoughts of all. If we refuse to accept
the natural delight which the Deity has thus provided for us, we must
either become ascetics, or we must seek for some base and guilty
pleasures to replace those of Paradise, which we have denied ourselves.
Some years ago, in passing through some of the cells of the Grand
Chartreuse, noticing that the window of each apartment looked across the
little garden of its inhabitant to the wall of the cell opposite, and
commanded no other view, I asked the monk beside me, why the window was
not rather made on the side of the cell whence it would open to the
solemn fields of the Alpine valley. "We do not come here," he replied,
"to look at the mountains."
§ XXXI. The same answer is given, practically, by the men of this
century, to every such question; only the walls with which they enclose
themselves are those of pride, not of prayer. But in the middle ages it
was otherwise. Not, indeed, in landscape itself, but in the art which
can take the place of it, in the noble color and form with which they
illumined, and into which they wrought, every object around them that
was in any wise subjected to their power, they obeyed the laws of their
inner nature, and found its proper food. The splendor and fantasy even
of dress, which in these days we pretend to despise, or in which, if we
even indulge, it is only for the sake of vanity, and therefore to our
infinite harm, were in those early days studied for love of their true
beauty and honorableness, and became one of the main helps to dignity of
character, and courtesy of bearing. Look back to what we have been told
of the dress of the early Venetians, that it was so invented "that in
clothing themselves with it, they might clothe themselves also with
modesty and honor;"[54] consider what nobleness of expression there is
in the dress of any of the portrait figures of the great times, nay,
what perfect beauty, and more than beauty, there is in the folding of
the robe round the imagined form even of the saint or of the angel; and
then consider whether the grace of vesture be indeed a thing to be
despised. We cannot despise it if we would; and in all our highest
poetry and happiest thought we cling to the magnificence which in daily
life we disregard. The essence of modern romance is simply the return of
the heart and fancy to the things in which they naturally take pleasure;
and half the influence of the best romances, of Ivanhoe, or Marmion, or
the Crusaders, or the Lady of the Lake, is completely dependent upon the
accessaries of armor and costume. Nay, more than this, deprive the Iliad
itself of its costume, and consider how much of its power would be lost.
And that delight and reverence which we feel in, and by means of, the
mere imagination of these accessaries, the middle ages had in the vision
of them; the nobleness of dress exercising, as I have said, a perpetual
influence upon character, tending in a thousand ways to increase
dignity and self-respect, and together with grace of gesture, to induce
serenity of thought.
§ XXXII. I do not mean merely in its magnificence; the most splendid
time was not the best time. It was still in the thirteenth
century,--when, as we have seen, simplicity and gorgeousness were justly
mingled, and the "leathern girdle and clasp of bone" were worn, as well
as the embroidered mantle,--that the manner of dress seems to have been
noblest. The chain mail of the knight, flowing and falling over his form
in lapping waves of gloomy strength, was worn under full robes of one
color in the ground, his crest quartered on them, and their borders
enriched with subtle illumination. The women wore first a dress close to
the form in like manner, and then long and flowing robes, veiling them
up to the neck, and delicately embroidered around the hem, the sleeves,
and the girdle. The use of plate armor gradually introduced more
fantastic types; the nobleness of the form was lost beneath the steel;
the gradually increasing luxury and vanity of the age strove for
continual excitement in more quaint and extravagant devices; and in the
fifteenth century, dress reached its point of utmost splendor and fancy,
being in many cases still exquisitely graceful, but now, in its morbid
magnificence, devoid of all wholesome influence on manners. From this
point, like architecture, it was rapidly degraded; and sank through the
buff coat, and lace collar, and jack-boot, to the bag-wig, tailed coat,
and high-heeled shoes; and so to what it is now.
§ XXXIII. Precisely analogous to this destruction of beauty in dress,
has been that of beauty in architecture; its color, and grace, and
fancy, being gradually sacrificed to the base forms of the Renaissance,
exactly as the splendor of chivalry has faded into the paltriness of
fashion. And observe the form in which the necessary reaction has taken
place; necessary, for it was not possible that one of the strongest
instincts of the human race could be deprived altogether of its natural
food. Exactly in the degree that the architect withdrew from his
buildings the sources of delight which in early days they had so richly
possessed, demanding, in accordance with the new principles of taste,
the banishment of all happy color and healthy invention, in that degree
the minds of men began to turn to landscape as their only resource. The
picturesque school of art rose up to address those capacities of
enjoyment for which, in sculpture, architecture, or the higher walks of
painting, there was employment no more; and the shadows of Rembrandt,
and savageness of Salvator, arrested the admiration which was no longer
permitted to be rendered to the gloom or the grotesqueness of the Gothic
aisle. And thus the English school of landscape, culminating in Turner,
is in reality nothing else than a healthy effort to fill the void which
the destruction of Gothic architecture has left.
§ XXXIV. But the void cannot thus be completely filled; no, nor filled
in any considerable degree. The art of landscape-painting will never
become thoroughly interesting or sufficing to the minds of men engaged
in active life, or concerned principally with practical subjects. The
sentiment and imagination necessary to enter fully into the romantic
forms of art are chiefly the characteristics of youth; so that nearly
all men as they advance in years, and some even from their childhood
upwards, must be appealed to, if at all, by a direct and substantial
art, brought before their daily observation and connected with their
daily interests. No form of art answers these conditions so well as
architecture, which, as it can receive help from every character of mind
in the workman, can address every character of mind in the spectator;
forcing itself into notice even in his most languid moments, and
possessing this chief and peculiar advantage, that it is the property of
all men. Pictures and statues may be jealously withdrawn by their
possessors from the public gaze, and to a certain degree their safety
requires them to be so withdrawn; but the outsides of our houses belong
not so much to us as to the passer-by, and whatever cost and pains we
bestow upon them, though too often arising out of ostentation, have at
least the effect of benevolence.
§ XXXV. If, then, considering these things, any of my readers should
determine, according to their means, to set themselves to the revival
of a healthy school of architecture in England, and wish to know in few
words how this may be done, the answer is clear and simple. First, let
us cast out utterly whatever is connected with the Greek, Roman, or
Renaissance architecture, in principle or in form. We have seen above,
that the whole mass of the architecture, founded on Greek and Roman
models, which we have been in the habit of building for the last three
centuries, is utterly devoid of all life, virtue, honorableness, or
power of doing good. It is base, unnatural, unfruitful, unenjoyable, and
impious. Pagan in its origin, proud and unholy in its revival, paralyzed
in its old age, yet making prey in its dotage of all the good and living
things that were springing around it in their youth, as the dying and
desperate king, who had long fenced himself so strongly with the towers
of it, is said to have filled his failing veins with the blood of
children;[55] an architecture invented, as it seems, to make plagiarists
of its architects, slaves of its workmen, and Sybarites of its
inhabitants; an architecture in which intellect is idle, invention
impossible, but in which all luxury is gratified, and all insolence
fortified;--the first thing we have to do is to cast it out, and shake
the dust of it from our feet for ever. Whatever has any connexion with
the five orders, or with any one of the orders,--whatever is Doric, or
Ionic, or Tuscan, or Corinthian, or Composite, or in any way Grecized or
Romanized; whatever betrays the smallest respect for Vitruvian laws, or
conformity with Palladian work,--that we are to endure no more. To
cleanse ourselves of these "cast clouts and rotten rags" is the first
thing to be done in the court of our prison.
§ XXXVI. Then, to turn our prison into a palace is an easy thing. We
have seen above, that exactly in the degree in which Greek and Roman
architecture is lifeless, unprofitable, and unchristian, in that same
degree our own ancient Gothic is animated, serviceable, and faithful. We
have seen that it is flexible to all duty, enduring to all time,
instructive to all hearts, honorable and holy in all offices. It is
capable alike of all lowliness and all dignity, fit alike for cottage
porch or castle gateway; in domestic service familiar, in religious,
sublime; simple, and playful, so that childhood may read it, yet clothed
with a power that can awe the mightiest, and exalt the loftiest of human
spirits: an architecture that kindles every faculty in its workman, and
addresses every emotion in its beholder; which, with every stone that is
laid on its solemn walls, raises some human heart a step nearer heaven,
and which from its birth has been incorporated with the existence, and
in all its form is symbolical of the faith, of Christianity. In this
architecture let us henceforward build, alike the church, the palace,
and the cottage; but chiefly let us use it for our civil and domestic
buildings. These once ennobled, our ecclesiastical work will be exalted
together with them: but churches are not the proper scenes for
experiments in untried architecture, nor for exhibitions of unaccustomed
beauty. It is certain that we must often fail before we can again build
a natural and noble Gothic: let not our temples be the scenes of our
failures. It is certain that we must offend many deep-rooted prejudices,
before ancient Christian architecture[56] can be again received by all
of us: let not religion be the first source of such offence. We shall
meet with difficulties in applying Gothic architecture to churches,
which would in no wise affect the designs of civil buildings, for the
most beautiful forms of Gothic chapels are not those which are best
fitted for Protestant worship. As it was noticed in the second volume,
when speaking of the Cathedral of Torcello it seems not unlikely, that
as we study either the science of sound, or the practice of the early
Christians, we may see reason to place the pulpit generally at the
extremity of the apse or chancel; an arrangement entirely destructive of
the beauty of a Gothic church, as seen in existing examples, and
requiring modifications of its design in other parts with which we
should be unwise at present to embarrass ourselves; besides, that the
effort to introduce the style exclusively for ecclesiastical purposes,
excites against it the strong prejudices of many persons who might
otherwise be easily enlisted among its most ardent advocates. I am quite
sure, for instance, that if such noble architecture as has been employed
for the interior of the church just built in Margaret Street[57] had
been seen in a civil building, it would have decided the question with
many men at once; whereas, at present, it will be looked upon with fear
and suspicion, as the expression of the ecclesiastical principles of a
particular party. But, whether thus regarded or not, this church
assuredly decides one question conclusively, that of our present
capability of Gothic design. It is the first piece of architecture I
have seen, built in modern days, which is free from all signs of
timidity or incapacity. In general proportion of parts, in refinement
and piquancy of mouldings, above all, in force, vitality, and grace of
floral ornament, worked in a broad and masculine manner, it challenges
fearless comparison with the noblest work of any time. Having done this,
we may do anything; there need be no limits to our hope or our
confidence; and I believe it to be possible for us, not only to equal,
but far to surpass, in some respects, any Gothic yet seen in Northern
countries. In the introduction of figure-sculpture, we must, indeed, for
the present, remain utterly inferior, for we have no figures to study
from. No architectural sculpture was ever good for anything which did
not represent the dress and persons of the people living at the time;
and our modern dress will _not_ form decorations for spandrils and
niches. But in floral sculpture we may go far beyond what has yet been
done, as well as in refinement of inlaid work and general execution.
For, although the glory of Gothic architecture is to receive the rudest
work, it refuses not the best; and, when once we have been content to
admit the handling of the simplest workman, we shall soon be rewarded by
finding many of our simple workmen become cunning ones: and, with the
help of modern wealth and science, we may do things like Giotto's
campanile, instead of like our own rude cathedrals; but better than
Giotto's campanile, insomuch as we may adopt the pure and perfect forms
of the Northern Gothic, and work them out with the Italian refinement.
It is hardly possible at present to imagine what may be the splendor of
buildings designed in the forms of English and French thirteenth century
_surface_ Gothic, and wrought out with the refinement of Italian art in
the details, and with a deliberate resolution, since we cannot have
figure sculpture, to display in them the beauty of every flower and herb
of the English fields, each by each; doing as much for every tree that
roots itself in our rocks, and every blossom that drinks our summer
rains, as our ancestors did for the oak, the ivy, and the rose. Let this
be the object of our ambition, and let us begin to approach it, not
ambitiously, but in all humility, accepting help from the feeblest
hands; and the London of the nineteenth century may yet become as Venice
without her despotism, and as Florence without her dispeace.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] In the works of Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites.
[47] Observe, I speak of these various principles as self-evident,
only under the present circumstances of the world, not as if they
had always been so; and I call them now self-evident, not merely
because they seem so to myself, but because they are felt to be so
likewise by all the men in whom I place most trust. But granting
that they are not so, then their very disputability proves the state
of infancy above alleged, as characteristic of the world. For I do
not suppose that any Christian reader will doubt the first great
truth, that whatever facts or laws are important to mankind, God has
made ascertainable by mankind; and that as the decision of all these
questions is of vital importance to the race, that decision must
have been long ago arrived at, unless they were still in a state of
childhood.
[48] I intended to have given a sketch in this place (above referred
to) of the probable results of the daguerreotype and calotype within
the next few years, in modifying the application of the engraver's
art, but I have not had time to complete the experiments necessary
to enable me to speak with certainty. Of one thing, however, I have
little doubt, that an infinite service will soon be done to a large
body of our engravers; namely, the making them draughtsmen (in black
and white) on paper instead of steel.
[49] I mean art in its highest sense. All that men do ingeniously is
art, in one sense. In fact, we want a definition of the word "art"
much more accurate than any in our minds at present. For, strictly
speaking, there is no such thing as "fine" or "high" art. All _art_
is a low and common thing, and what we indeed respect is not art at
all, but _instinct_ or _inspiration_ expressed by the help of art.
[50] "_Socrates_. This, then, was what I asked you; whether that
which puts anything else to service, and the thing which is put to
service by it, are always two different things?
_Alcibiades._ I think so.
_Socrates._ What shall we then say of the leather-cutter? Does he
cut his leather with his instruments only, or with his hands also?
_Alcibiades._ With his hands also.
_Socrates._ Does he not use his eyes as well as his hands?
_Alcibiades._ Yes.
_Socrates._ And we agreed that the thing which uses and the thing
which is used, were different things?
_Alcibiades._ Yes.
_Socrates._ Then the leather-cutter is not the same thing as his
eyes or hands?
_Alcibiades._ So it appears.
_Socrates._ Does not, then, man make use of his whole body?
_Alcibiades._ Assuredly.
_Socrates._ Then the man is not the same thing as his body?
_Alcibiades._ It seems so.
_Socrates._ What, then, _is_ the man?
_Alcibiades._ I know not."
_Plato_, Alcibiades I.
[51] Thus the grapes pressed by Excesse are partly golden (Spenser,
book ii. cant. 12.):
"Which did themselves amongst the leaves enfold,
As lurking from the view of covetous guest,
That the weake boughes, with so rich load opprest
Did bow adowne as overburdened."
[52] The reader must not suppose that the use of gold, in this manner,
is confined to early art. Tintoret, the greatest master of pictorial
effect that ever existed, has gilded the ribs of the fig-leaves in
his "Resurrection," in the Scuola di San Rocco.
[53] Nothing is more wonderful to me than to hear the pleasure of the
eye, in color, spoken of with disdain as "sensual," while people
exalt that of the ear in music. Do they really suppose the eye is a
less noble bodily organ than the ear,--that the organ by which
nearly all our knowledge of the external universe is communicated to
us, and through which we learn the wonder and the love, can be less
exalted in its own peculiar delight than the ear, which is only for
the communication of the ideas which owe to the eye their very
existence? I do not mean to depreciate music: let it be loved and
reverenced as is just; only let the delight of the eye be reverenced
more. The great power of music over the multitude is owing, not to
its being less but _more_ sensual than color; it is so distinctly
and so richly sensual, that it can be idly enjoyed; it is exactly at
the point where the lower and higher pleasures of the senses and
imagination are balanced; so that pure and great minds love it for
its invention and emotion, and lower minds for its sensual power.
[54] Vol. II. Appendix 7.
[55] Louis the Eleventh. "In the month of March, 1481, Louis was
seized with a fit of apoplexy at _St. Bénoit-du-lac-mort_, near
Chinon. He remained speechless and bereft of reason three days; and
then but very imperfectly restored, he languished in a miserable
state.... To cure him," says a contemporary historian, "wonderful
and terrible medicines were compounded. It was reported among the
people that his physicians opened the veins of little children, and
made him drink their blood, to correct the poorness of his
own."--_Bussey's History of France._ London, 1850.
[56] Observe, I call Gothic "Christian" architecture, not
"ecclesiastical." There is a wide difference. I believe it is the
only architecture which Christian men should build, but not at all
an architecture necessarily connected with the services of their
church.
[57] Mr. Hope's Church, in Margaret Street, Portland Place. I do not
altogether like the arrangements of color in the brickwork; but
these will hardly attract the eye, where so much has been already
done with precious and beautiful marble, and is yet to be done in
fresco. Much will depend, however, upon the coloring of this latter
portion. I wish that either Holman Hunt or Millais could be
prevailed upon to do at least some of these smaller frescoes.
APPENDIX.
1. ARCHITECT OF THE DUCAL PALACE.
Popular tradition and a large number of the chroniclers ascribe the
building of the Ducal Palace to that Filippo Calendario who suffered
death for his share in the conspiracy of Faliero. He was certainly one
of the leading architects of the time, and had for several years the
superintendence of the works of the Palace; but it appears, from the
documents collected by the Abbé Cadorin, that the first designer of the
Palace, the man to whom we owe the adaptation of the Frari traceries to
civil architecture, was Pietro Baseggio, who is spoken of expressly as
"formerly the Chief Master of our New Palace,"[58] in the decree of
1361, quoted by Cadorin, and who, at his death, left Calendario his
executor. Other documents collected by Zanotto, in his work on "Venezia
e le sue Lagune," show that Calendario was for a long time at sea, under
the commands of the Signory, returning to Venice only three or four
years before his death; and that therefore the entire management of the
works of the Palace, in the most important period, must have been
entrusted to Baseggio.
It is quite impossible, however, in the present state of the Palace, to
distinguish one architect's work from another in the older parts; and I
have not in the text embarrassed the reader by any attempt at close
definition of epochs before the great junction of the Piazzetta Façade
with the older palace in the fifteenth century. Here, however, it is
necessary that I should briefly state the observations I was able to
make on the relative dates of the earlier portions.
In the description of the Fig-tree angle, given in the eighth chapter of
Vol. II., I said that it seemed to me somewhat earlier than that of the
Vine, and the reader might be surprised at the apparent opposition of
this statement to my supposition that the Palace was built gradually
round from the Rio Façade to the Piazzetta. But in the two great open
arcades there is no succession of work traceable; from the Vine angle to
the junction with the fifteenth century work, above and below, all seems
nearly of the same date, the only question being of the accidental
precedence of workmanship of one capital or another; and I think, from
its style, that the Fig-tree angle must have been first completed. But
in the upper stories of the Palace there are enormous differences of
style. On the Rio Façade, in the upper story, are several series of
massive windows of the third order, corresponding exactly in mouldings
and manner of workmanship to those of the chapter-house of the Frari,
and consequently carrying us back to a very early date in the fourteenth
century: several of the capitals of these windows, and two richly
sculptured string-courses in the wall below, are of Byzantine
workmanship, and in all probability fragments of the Ziani Palace. The
traceried windows on the Rio Façade, and the two eastern windows on the
Sea Façade, are all of the finest early fourteenth century work,
masculine and noble in their capitals and bases to the highest degree,
and evidently contemporary with the very earliest portions of the lower
arcades. But the moment we come to the windows of the Great Council
Chamber the style is debased. The mouldings are the same, but they are
coarsely worked, and the heads set amidst the leafage of the capitals
quite valueless and vile.
I have not the least doubt that these window-jambs and traceries were
restored after the great fire;[59] and various other restorations have
taken place since, beginning with the removal of the traceries from all
the windows except the northern one of the Sala del Scrutinio, behind
the Porta della Carta, where they are still left. I made out four
periods of restoration among these windows, each baser than the
preceding. It is not worth troubling the reader about them, but the
traveller who is interested in the subject may compare two of them in
the same window; the one nearer the sea of the two belonging to the
little room at the top of the Palace on the Piazzetta Façade, between
the Sala del Gran Consiglio and that of the Scrutinio. The seaward jamb
of that window is of the first, and the opposite jamb of the second,
period of these restorations. These are all the points of separation in
date which I could discover by internal evidence. But much more might be
made out by any Venetian antiquary whose time permitted him thoroughly
to examine any existing documents which allude to or describe the parts
of the Palace spoken of in the important decrees of 1340, 1342, and
1344; for the first of these decrees speaks of certain "columns looking
towards the Canal"[60] or sea, as then existing, and I presume these
columns to have been part of the Ziani Palace, corresponding to the part
of that palace on the Piazzetta where were the "red columns" between
which Calendario was executed; and a great deal more might be determined
by any one who would thoroughly unravel the obscure language of those
decrees.
Meantime, in order to complete the evidence respecting the main dates
stated in the text, I have collected here such notices of the building
of the Ducal Palace as appeared to me of most importance in the various
chronicles I examined. I could not give them all in the text, as they
repeat each other, and would have been tedious; but they will be
interesting to the antiquary, and it is to be especially noted in all of
them how the Palazzo _Vecchio_ is invariably distinguished, either
directly or by implication, from the Palazzo Nuovo. I shall first
translate the piece of the Zancarol Chronicle given by Cadorin, which
has chiefly misled the Venetian antiquaries. I wish I could put the rich
old Italian into old English, but must be content to lose its raciness,
as it is necessary that the reader should be fully acquainted with its
facts.
"It was decreed that none should dare to propose to the Signory of
Venice to ruin the _old_ palace and rebuild it new and more richly, and
there was a penalty of one thousand ducats against any one who should
break it. Then the Doge, wishing to set forward the public good, said to
the Signory, ... that they ought to rebuild the façades of the _old_
palace, and that it ought to be restored, to do honor to the nation: and
so soon as he had done speaking, the Avogadori demanded the penalty from
the Doge, for having disobeyed the law; and the Doge with ready mind
paid it, remaining in his opinion that the said fabric ought to be
built. And so, in the year 1422, on the 20th day of September, it was
passed in the Council of the Pregadi that the said new palace should be
begun, and the expense should be borne by the Signori del Sal; and so,
on the 24th day of March, 1424, it was begun to throw down the _old_
palace, and to build it anew."--_Cadorin_, p. 129.
The day of the month, and the council in which the decree was passed,
are erroneously given by this Chronicle. Cadorin has printed the words
of the decree itself, which passed in the Great Council on the 27th
September: and these words are, fortunately, much to our present
purpose. For as more than one façade is spoken of in the above extract,
the Marchese Selvatico was induced to believe that both the front to the
sea and that to the Piazzetta had been destroyed; whereas, the "façades"
spoken of are evidently those of the Ziani Palace. For the words of the
decree (which are much more trustworthy than those of the Chronicle,
even if there were any inconsistency between them) run thus: "Palatium
nostrum fabricetur et fiat in forma decora et convenienti, quod
respondeat _solemnissimo principio palatii nostri novi_." Thus the new
council chamber and façade to the sea are called the "most venerable
beginning of our _New_ Palace;" and the rest was ordered to be designed
in accordance with these, as was actually the case as far as the Porta
della Carta. But the Renaissance architects who thenceforward proceeded
with the fabric, broke through the design, and built everything else
according to their own humors.
The question may be considered as set at rest by these words of the
decree, even without any internal or any farther documentary evidence.
But rather for the sake of impressing the facts thoroughly on the
reader's mind, than of any additional proof, I shall quote a few more of
the best accredited Chronicles.
The passage given by Bettio, from the Sivos Chronicle, is a very
important parallel with that from the Zancarol above:
"Essendo molto vecchio, e quasi rovinoso el Palazzo sopra la piazza, fo
deliberato di far quella parte tutta da novo, et continuarla com' è
quella della Sala grande, et cosi il Lunedi 27 Marzo 1424 fu dato
principio a ruinare detto Palazzo vecchio dalla parte, ch' è verso
panateria cioè della Giustizia, ch' è nelli occhi di sopra le colonne
fino alla Chiesa et fo fatto anco la porta grande, com' è al presente,
con la sala che si addimanda la Libraria."[61]
We have here all the facts told us in so many words: the "old palace" is
definitely stated to have been "on the piazza," and it is to be rebuilt
"like the part of the great saloon." The very point from which the newer
buildings commenced is told us; but here the chronicler has carried his
attempt at accuracy too far. The point of junction is, as stated above,
at the third pillar beyond the medallion of Venice; and I am much at a
loss to understand what could have been the disposition of these three
pillars where they joined the Ziani Palace, and how they were connected
with the arcade of the inner cortile. But with these difficulties, as
they do not bear on the immediate question, it is of no use to trouble
the reader.
The next passage I shall give is from a Chronicle in the Marcian
Library, bearing title, "Supposta di Zancaruol;" but in which I could
not find the passage given by Cadorin from, I believe, a manuscript of
this Chronicle at Vienna. There occurs instead of it the following thus
headed:--
"Come _la parte nova_ del Palazzo fuo hedificata _novamente_.
"El Palazzo novo de Venesia quella parte che xe verso la Chiesia de S.
Marcho fuo prexo chel se fesse del 1422 e fosse pagado la spexa per li
officiali del sal. E fuo fatto per sovrastante G. Nicolo Barberigo cum
provision de ducati X doro al mexe e fuo fabricado e fatto nobelissimo.
Come fin ancho di el sta e fuo grande honor a la Signoria de Venesia e a
la sua Citta."
This entry, which itself bears no date, but comes between others dated
22nd July and 27th December, is interesting, because it shows the first
transition of the idea of _newness_, from the Grand Council Chamber to
the part built under Foscari. For when Mocenigo's wishes had been
fulfilled, and the old palace of Ziani had been destroyed, and another
built in its stead, the Great Council Chamber, which was "the new
palace" compared with Ziani's, became "the old palace" compared with
Foscari's; and thus we have, in the body of the above extract, the whole
building called "the new palace of Venice;" but in the heading of it, we
have "the new _part_ of the palace" applied to the part built by
Foscari, in contradistinction to the Council Chamber.
The next entry I give is important, because the writing of the MS. in
which it occurs, No. 53 in the Correr Museum, shows it to be probably
not later than the end of the fifteenth century:
"El palazo nuovo de Venixia zoe quella parte che se sora la piazza verso
la giesia di Miss. San Marcho del 1422 fo principiado, el qual fo fato e
finito molto belo, chome al presente se vede nobilissimo, et a la
fabricha de quello fo deputado Miss. Nicolo Barberigo, soprastante con
ducati dieci doro al mexe."
We have here the part built by Foscari distinctly called the Palazzo
Nuovo, as opposed to the Great Council Chamber, which had now completely
taken the position of the Palazzo Vecchio, and is actually so called by
Sansovino. In the copy of the Chronicle of Paolo Morosini, and in the
MSS. numbered respectively 57, 59, 74, and 76 in the Correr Museum, the
passage above given from No. 53 is variously repeated with slight
modifications and curtailments; the entry in the Morosini Chronicle
being headed, "Come fu principiato il palazo che guarda sopra la piaza
grande di S. Marco," and proceeding in the words, "El Palazo Nuovo di
Venetia, cioè quella parte che e sopra la piaza," &c., the writers being
cautious, in all these instances, to _limit their statement_ to the part
facing the Piazza, that no reader might suppose the Council Chamber to
have been built or begun at the same time; though, as long as to the end
of the sixteenth century, we find the Council Chamber still included in
the expression "Palazzo Nuovo." Thus, in the MS. No. 75 in the Correr
Museum, which is about that date, we have "Del 1422, a di 20 Settembre
fu preso nel consegio grando de dover _compir_ el Palazo Novo, e dovesen
fare la spessa li officialli del Sal (61. M. 2. B.)." And, so long as
this is the case, the "Palazzo Vecchio" always means the Ziani Palace.
Thus, in the next page of this same MS. we have "a di 27 Marzo (1424 by
context) fo principia a butar zosso, el _Palazzo Vecchio_ per refarlo da
novo, e poi se he" (and so it is done); and in the MS. No. 81, "Del
1424, fo gittado zoso el _Palazzo Vecchio_ per refarlo de nuovo, a di 27
Marzo." But in the time of Sansovino the Ziani Palace was quite
forgotten; the Council Chamber was then the _old_ palace, and Foscari's
part was the new. His account of the "Palazzo Publico" will now be
perfectly intelligible; but, as the work itself is easily accessible, I
shall not burden the reader with any farther extracts, only noticing
that the chequering of the façade with red and white marbles, which he
ascribes to Foscari, may or may not be of so late a date, as there is
nothing in the style of the work which can be produced as evidence.
2. THEOLOGY OF SPENSER.
The following analysis of the first books of the "Faërie Queen," may be
interesting to readers who have been in the habit of reading the noble
poem too hastily to connect its parts completely together; and may
perhaps induce them to more careful study of the rest of the poem.
The Redcrosse Knight is Holiness,--the "Pietas" of St. Mark's, the
"Devotio" of Orcagna,--meaning, I think, in general, Reverence and Godly
Fear.
This Virtue, in the opening of the book, has Truth (or Una) at its side,
but presently enters the Wandering Wood, and encounters the serpent
Error; that is to say, Error in her universal form, the first enemy of
Reverence and Holiness; and more especially Error as founded on
learning; for when Holiness strangles her,
"Her vomit _full of bookes and papers was_,
With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke."
Having vanquished this first open and palpable form of Error, as
Reverence and Religion must always vanquish it, the Knight encounters
Hypocrisy, or Archimagus; Holiness cannot detect Hypocrisy, but
believes him, and goes home with him; whereupon Hypocrisy succeeds in
separating Holiness from Truth; and the Knight (Holiness) and Lady
(Truth) go forth separately from the house of Archimagus.
Now observe: the moment Godly Fear, or Holiness, is separated from
Truth, he meets Infidelity, or the Knight Sans Foy; Infidelity having
Falsehood, or Duesa, riding behind him. The instant the Redcrosse Knight
is aware of the attack of Infidelity, he
"Gan fairly couch his speare, and towards ride."
He vanquishes and slays Infidelity; but is deceived by his companion,
Falsehood, and takes her for his lady: thus showing the condition of
Religion, when, after being attacked by Doubt, and remaining victorious,
it is nevertheless seduced, by any form of Falsehood, to pay reverence
where it ought not. This, then, is the first fortune of Godly Fear
separated from Truth. The poet then returns to Truth, separated from
Godly Fear. She is immediately attended by a lion, or Violence, which
makes her dreaded wherever she comes; and when she enters the mart of
Superstition, this Lion tears Kirkrapine in pieces: showing how Truth,
separated from Godliness, does indeed put an end to the abuses of
Superstition, but does so violently and desperately. She then meets
again with Hypocrisy, whom she mistakes for her own lord, or Godly Fear,
and travels a little way under his guardianship (Hypocrisy thus not
unfrequently appearing to defend the Truth), until they are both met by
Lawlessness, or the Knight Sans Loy, whom Hypocrisy cannot resist.
Lawlessness overthrows Hypocrisy, and seizes upon Truth, first slaying
her lion attendant: showing that the first aim of licence is to destroy
the force and authority of Truth. Sans Loy then takes Truth captive, and
bears her away. Now this Lawlessness is the "unrighteousness," or
"adikia," of St. Paul; and his bearing Truth away captive, is a type of
those "who hold the truth in unrighteousness,"--that is to say,
generally, of men who, knowing what is true, make the truth give way to
their own purposes, or use it only to forward them, as is the case with
so many of the popular leaders of the present day. Una is then delivered
from Sans Loy by the satyrs, to show that Nature, in the end, must work
out the deliverance of the truth, although, where it has been captive to
Lawlessness, that deliverance can only be obtained through Savageness,
and a return to barbarism. Una is then taken from among the satyrs by
Satyrane, the son of a satyr and a "lady myld, fair Thyamis," (typifying
the early steps of renewed civilization, and its rough and hardy
character "nousled up in life and manners wilde,") who, meeting again
with Sans Loy, enters instantly into rough and prolonged combat with
him: showing how the early organization of a hardy nation must be
wrought out through much discouragement from Lawlessness. This contest
the poet leaving for the time undecided, returns to trace the adventures
of the Redcrosse Knight, or Godly Fear, who, having vanquished
Infidelity, presently is led by Falsehood to the house of Pride: thus
showing how religion, separated from truth, is first tempted by doubts
of God, and then by the pride of life. The description of this house of
Pride is one of the most elaborate and noble pieces in the poem; and
here we begin to get at the proposed system of Virtues and Vices. For
Pride, as queen, has six other vices yoked in her chariot; namely,
first, Idleness, then Gluttony, Lust, Avarice, Envy, and Anger, all
driven on by "Sathan, with a smarting whip in hand." From these lower
vices and their company, Godly Fear, though lodging in the house of
Pride, holds aloof; but he is challenged, and has a hard battle to fight
with Sans Joy, the brother of Sans Foy: showing, that though he has
conquered Infidelity, and does not give himself up to the allurements of
Pride, he is yet exposed, so long as he dwells in her house, to distress
of mind and loss of his accustomed rejoicing before God. He, however,
having partly conquered Despondency, or Sans Joy, Falsehood goes down to
Hades, in order to obtain drugs to maintain the power or life of
Despondency; but, meantime, the Knight leaves the house of Pride:
Falsehood pursues and overtakes him, and finds him by a fountain side,
of which the waters are
"Dull and slow,
And all that drinke thereof do faint and feeble grow."
Of which the meaning is, that Godly Fear, after passing through the
house of Pride, is exposed to drowsiness and feebleness of watch; as,
after Peter's boast, came Peter's sleeping, from weakness of the flesh,
and then, last of all, Peter's fall. And so it follows: for the
Redcrosse Knight, being overcome with faintness by drinking of the
fountain, is thereupon attacked by the giant Orgoglio, overcome and
thrown by him into a dungeon. This Orgoglio is Orgueil, or Carnal Pride;
not the pride of life, spiritual and subtle, but the common and vulgar
pride in the power of this world: and his throwing the Redcrosse Knight
into a dungeon, is a type of the captivity of true religion under the
temporal power of corrupt churches, more especially of the Church of
Rome; and of its gradually wasting away in unknown places, while carnal
pride has the preëminence over all things. That Spenser means,
especially, the pride of the Papacy, is shown by the 16th stanza of the
book; for there the giant Orgoglio is said to have taken Duessa, or
Falsehood, for his "deare," and to have set upon her head a triple
crown, and endowed her with royal majesty, and made her to ride upon a
seven-headed beast.
In the meantime, the dwarf, the attendant of the Redcrosse Knight, takes
his arms, and finding Una tells her of the captivity of her lord. Una,
in the midst of her mourning, meets Prince Arthur, in whom, as Spenser
himself tells us, is set forth generally Magnificence; but who, as is
shown by the choice of the hero's name, is more especially the
magnificence, or literally, "great doing" of the kingdom of England.
This power of England, going forth with Truth, attacks Orgoglio, or the
Pride of Papacy, slays him; strips Duessa, or Falsehood, naked; and
liberates the Redcrosse Knight. The magnificent and well-known
description of Despair follows, by whom the Redcrosse Knight is hard
bested, on account of his past errors and captivity, and is only saved
by Truth, who, perceiving him to be still feeble, brings him to the
house of Coelia, called, in the argument of the canto, Holiness, but
properly, Heavenly Grace, the mother of the Virtues. Her "three
daughters, well up-brought," are Faith, Hope, and Charity. Her porter is
Humility; because Humility opens the door of Heavenly Grace. Zeal and
Reverence are her chamberlains, introducing the new comers to her
presence; her groom, or servant, is Obedience; and her physician,
Patience. Under the commands of Charity, the matron Mercy rules over
her hospital, under whose care the Knight is healed of his sickness; and
it is to be especially noticed how much importance Spenser, though never
ceasing to chastise all hypocrisies and mere observances of form,
attaches to true and faithful _penance_ in effecting this cure. Having
his strength restored to him, the Knight is trusted to the guidance of
Mercy, who, leading him forth by a narrow and thorny way, first
instructs him in the seven works of Mercy, and then leads him to the
hill of Heavenly Contemplation; whence, having a sight of the New
Jerusalem, as Christian of the Delectable Mountains, he goes forth to
the final victory over Satan, the old serpent, with which the book
closes.
3. AUSTRIAN GOVERNMENT IN ITALY.
I cannot close these volumes without expressing my astonishment and
regret at the facility with which the English allow themselves to be
misled by any representations, however openly groundless or ridiculous,
proceeding from the Italian Liberal party, respecting the present
administration of the Austrian Government. I do not choose here to enter
into any political discussion, or express any political opinion; but it
is due to justice to state the simple facts which came under my notice
during my residence in Italy. I was living at Venice through two entire
winters, and in the habit of familiar association both with Italians and
Austrians, my own antiquarian vocations rendering such association
possible without exciting the distrust of either party. During this
whole period, I never once was able to ascertain, from any liberal
Italian, that he had a single _definite_ ground of complaint against the
Government. There was much general grumbling and vague discontent; but I
never was able to bring one of them to the point, or to discover what it
was that they wanted, or in what way they felt themselves injured; nor
did I ever myself witness an instance of oppression on the part of the
Government, though several of much kindness and consideration. The
indignation of those of my own countrymen and countrywomen whom I
happened to see during their sojourn in Venice was always vivid, but by
no means large in its grounds. English ladies on their first arrival
invariably began the conversation with the same remark: "What a
dreadful thing it was to be ground under the iron heel of despotism!"
Upon closer inquiries it always appeared that being "ground under the
heel of despotism" was a poetical expression for being asked for one's
passport at San Juliano, and required to fetch it from San Lorenzo, full
a mile and a quarter distant. In like manner, travellers, after two or
three days' residence in the city, used to return with pitiful
lamentations over "the misery of the Italian people." Upon inquiring
what instances they had met with of this misery, it invariably turned
out that their gondoliers, after being paid three times their proper
fare, had asked for something to drink, and had attributed the fact of
their being thirsty to the Austrian Government. The misery of the
Italians consists in having three festa days a week, and doing in their
days of exertion about one fourth as much work as an English laborer.
There is, indeed, much true distress occasioned by the measures which
the Government is sometimes compelled to take in order to repress
sedition; but the blame of this lies with those whose occupation is the
excitement of sedition. So also there is much grievous harm done to
works of art by the occupation of the country by so large an army; but
for the mode in which that army is quartered, the Italian municipalities
are answerable, not the Austrians. Whenever I was shocked by finding, as
above-mentioned at Milan, a cloister, or a palace, occupied by soldiery,
I always discovered, on investigation, that the place had been given by
the municipality; and that, beyond requiring that lodging for a certain
number of men should be found in such and such a quarter of the town,
the Austrians had nothing to do with the matter. This does not, however,
make the mischief less: and it is strange, if we think of it, to see
Italy, with all her precious works of art, made a continual
battle-field; as if no other place for settling their disputes could be
found by the European powers, than where every random shot may destroy
what a king's ransom cannot restore.[62] It is exactly as if the
tumults in Paris could he settled no otherwise than by fighting them out
in the Gallery of the Louvre.
4. DATE OF THE PALACES OF THE BYZANTINE RENAISSANCE.
In the sixth article of the Appendix to the first volume, the question
of the date of the Casa Dario and Casa Trevisan was deferred until I
could obtain from my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown, to whom the former palace
once belonged, some more distinct data respecting this subject than I
possessed myself.
Speaking first of the Casa Dario, he says: "Fontana dates it from about
the year 1450, and considers it the earliest specimen of the
architecture founded by Pietro Lombardo, and followed by his sons,
Tullio and Antonio. In a Sanuto autograph miscellany, purchased by me
long ago, and which I gave to St. Mark's Library, are two letters from
Giovanni Dario, dated 10th and 11th July, 1485, in the neighborhood of
Adrianople; where the Turkish camp found itself, and Bajazet II.
received presents from the Soldan of Egypt, from the Schah of the Indies
(query Grand Mogul), and from the King of Hungary: of these matters,
Dario's letters give many curious details. Then, in the _printed_
Malipiero Annals, page 136 (which err, I think, by a year), the
Secretary Dario's negotiations at the Porte are alluded to; and in date
of 1484 he is stated to have returned to Venice, having quarrelled with
the Venetian bailiff at Constantinople: the annalist adds, that
'Giovanni Dario was a native of Candia, and that the Republic was so
well satisfied with him for having concluded peace with Bajazet, that he
received, as a gift from his country, an estate at Noventa, in the
Paduan territory, worth 1500 ducats, and 600 ducats in cash for the
dower of one of his daughters.' These largesses probably enabled him to
build his house about the year 1486, and are doubtless hinted at in the
inscription, which I restored A.D. 1837; _it had no date_, and ran thus,
URBIS . GENIO . JOANNES . DARIVS. In the Venetian history of Paolo
Morosini, page 594, it is also mentioned, that Giovanni Dario was,
moreover, the Secretary who concluded the peace between Mahomet, the
conqueror of Constantinople, and Venice, A.D. 1478; but, unless he build
his house by proxy, that date has nothing to do with it; and in my mind,
the fact of the present, and the inscription, warrant one's dating it
1486, and not 1450.
"The Trevisan-Cappello House, in Canonica, was once the property (A.D.
1578) of a Venetian dame, fond of cray-fish, according to a letter of
hers in the archives, whereby she thanks one of her lovers for some
which he had sent her from Treviso to Florence, of which she was then
Grand Duchess. Her name has perhaps found its way into the English
annuals. Did you ever hear of Bianca Cappello? She bought that house of
the Trevisana family, by whom Selva (in Cicognara) and Fontana
(following Selva) say it was ordered of the Lombardi, at the
commencement of the sixteenth century: but the inscription on its
façade, thus,
SOLI | | HONOR. ET
DEO | | GLORIA.
reminding one both of the Dario House, and of the words NON NOBIS DOMINE
inscribed on the façade of the Loredano Vendramin Palace at S. Marcuola
(now the property of the Duchess of Berri), of which Selva found proof
in the Vendramin Archives that it was commenced by Sante Lombardo, A.D.
1481, is in favor of its being classed among the works of the fifteenth
century."
5. RENAISSANCE SIDE OF DUCAL PALACE.
In passing along the Rio del Palazzo the traveller ought especially to
observe the base of the Renaissance building, formed by alternately
depressed and raised pyramids, the depressed portions being _casts_ of
the projecting ones, which are truncated on the summits. The work cannot
be called rustication, for it is cut as sharply and delicately as a
piece of ivory, but it thoroughly answers the end which rustication
proposes, and misses: it gives the base of the building a look of
crystalline hardness, actually resembling, and that very closely, the
appearance presented by the fracture of a piece of cap quartz; while yet
the light and shade of its alternate recesses and projections are so
varied as to produce the utmost possible degree of delight to the eye,
attainable by a geometrical pattern so simple. Yet, with all this high
merit, it is not a base which could be brought into general use. Its
brilliancy and piquancy are here set off with exquisite skill by its
opposition to mouldings, in the upper part of the building, of an almost
effeminate delicacy, and its complexity is rendered delightful by its
contrast with the ruder bases of the other buildings of the city; but it
would look meagre if it were employed to sustain bolder masses above,
and would become wearisome if the eye were once thoroughly familiarized
with it by repetition.
6. CHARACTER OF THE DOGE MICHELE MOROSINI.
The following extracts from the letter of Count Charles Morosini, above
mentioned, appear to set the question at rest.
"It is our unhappy destiny that, during the glory of the Venetian
republic, no one took the care to leave us a faithful and conscientious
history: but I hardly know whether this misfortune should be laid to the
charge of the historians themselves, or of those commentators who have
destroyed their trustworthiness by new accounts of things, invented by
themselves. As for the poor Morosini, we may perhaps save his honor by
assembling a conclave of our historians, in order to receive their
united sentence; for, in this case, he would have the absolute majority
on his side, nearly all the authors bearing testimony to his love for
his country and to the magnanimity of his heart. I must tell you that
the history of Daru is not looked upon with esteem by well-informed men;
and it is said that he seems to have no other object in view than to
obscure the glory of all actions. I know not on what authority the
English writer depends; but he has, perhaps, merely copied the statement
of Daru.... I have consulted an ancient and authentic MS. belonging to
the Venieri family, a MS. well known, and certainly better worthy of
confidence than Daru's history, and it says nothing of M. Morosini but
that he was elected Doge to the delight and joy of all men. Neither do
the Savina or Dolfin Chronicles say a word of the shameful speculation;
and our best informed men say that the reproach cast by some historians
against the Doge perhaps arose from a mistaken interpretation of the
words pronounced by him, and reported by Marin Sanuto, that 'the
speculation would sooner or later have been advantageous to the
country.' But this single consideration is enough to induce us to form a
favorable conclusion respecting the honor of this man, namely, that he
was not elected Doge until after he had been entrusted with many
honorable embassies to the Genoese and Carrarese, as well as to the King
of Hungary and Amadeus of Savoy; and if in these embassies he had not
shown himself a true lover of his country, the republic not only would
not again have entrusted him with offices so honorable, but would never
have rewarded him with the dignity of Doge, therein to succeed such a
man as Andrea Contarini; and the war of Chioggia, during which it is
said that he tripled his fortune by speculations, took place during the
reign of Contarini, 1379, 1380, while Morosini was absent on foreign
embassies."
7. MODERN EDUCATION.
The following fragmentary notes on this subject have been set down at
different times. I have been accidentally prevented from arranging them
properly for publication, but there are one or two truths in them which
it is better to express insufficiently than not at all.
* * * * *
By a large body of the people of England and of Europe a man is called
educated if he can write Latin verses and construe a Greek chorus. By
some few more enlightened persons it is confessed that the construction
of hexameters is not in itself an important end of human existence; but
they say, that the general discipline which a course of classical
reading gives to the intellectual powers, is the final object of our
scholastical institutions.
But it seems to me, there is no small error even in this last and more
philosophical theory. I believe, that what it is most honorable to know,
it is also most profitable to learn; and that the science which it is
the highest power to possess, it is also the best exercise to acquire.
And if this be so, the question as to what should be the materiel of
education, becomes singularly simplified. It might be matter of dispute
what processes have the greatest effect in developing the intellect; but
it can hardly be disputed what facts it is most advisable that a man
entering into life should accurately know.
I believe, in brief, that he ought to know three things:
First. Where he is.
Secondly. Where he is going.
Thirdly. What he had best do, under those circumstances.
First. Where he is.--That is to say, what sort of a world he has got
into; how large it is; what kind of creatures live in it, and how; what
it is made of, and what may be made of it.
Secondly. Where he is going.--That is to say, what chances or reports
there are of any other world besides this; what seems to be the nature
of that other world; and whether, for information respecting it, he had
better consult the Bible, Koran, or Council of Trent.
Thirdly. What he had best do under those circumstances.--That is to say,
what kind of faculties he possesses; what are the present state and
wants of mankind; what is his place in society; and what are the
readiest means in his power of attaining happiness and diffusing it. The
man who knows these things, and who has had his will so subdued in the
learning them, that he is ready to do what he knows he ought, I should
call educated; and the man who knows them not,--uneducated, though he
could talk all the tongues of Babel.
Our present European system of so-called education ignores, or despises,
not one, nor the other, but all the three, of these great branches of
human knowledge.
First: It despises Natural History.--Until within the last year or two,
the instruction in the physical sciences given at Oxford consisted of a
course of twelve or fourteen lectures on the Elements of Mechanics or
Pneumatics, and permission to ride out to Shotover with the Professor of
Geology. I do not know the specialties of the system pursued in the
academies of the Continent; but their practical result is, that unless a
man's natural instincts urge him to the pursuit of the physical sciences
too strongly to be resisted, he enters into life utterly ignorant of
them. I cannot, within my present limits, even so much as count the
various directions in which this ignorance does evil. But the main
mischief of it is, that it leaves the greater number of men without the
natural food which God intended for their intellects. For one man who is
fitted for the study of words, fifty are fitted for the study of things,
and were intended to have a perpetual, simple, and religious delight in
watching the processes, or admiring the creatures, of the natural
universe. Deprived of this source of pleasure, nothing is left to them
but ambition or dissipation; and the vices of the upper classes of
Europe are, I believe, chiefly to be attributed to this single cause.
Secondly: It despises Religion.--I do not say it despises "Theology,"
that is to say, _Talk_ about God. But it despises "Religion;" that is to
say, the "binding" or training to God's service. There is much talk and
much teaching in all our academies, of which the effect is not to bind,
but to loosen, the elements of religious faith. Of the ten or twelve
young men who, at Oxford, were my especial friends, who sat with me
under the same lectures on Divinity, or were punished with me for
missing lecture by being sent to evening prayers,[63] four are now
zealous Romanists,--a large average out of twelve; and while thus our
own universities profess to teach Protestantism, and do not, the
universities on the Continent profess to teach Romanism, and do
not,--sending forth only rebels and infidels. During long residence on
the Continent, I do not remember meeting with above two or three young
men, who either believed in revelation, or had the grace to hesitate in
the assertion of their infidelity.
Whence, it seems to me, we may gather one of two things; either that
there is nothing in any European form of religion so reasonable or
ascertained, as that it can be taught securely to our youth, or fastened
in their minds by any rivets of proof which they shall not be able to
loosen the moment they begin to think; or else, that no means are taken
to train them in such demonstrable creeds.
It seems to me the duty of a rational nation to ascertain (and to be at
some pains in the matter) which of these suppositions is true; and, if
indeed no proof can be given of any supernatural fact, or Divine
doctrine, stronger than a youth just out of his teens can overthrow in
the first stirrings of serious thought, to confess this boldly; to get
rid of the expense of an Establishment, and the hypocrisy of a Liturgy;
to exhibit its cathedrals as curious memorials of a by-gone
superstition, and, abandoning all thoughts of the next world, to set
itself to make the best it can of this.
But if, on the other hand, there _does_ exist any evidence by which the
probability of certain religious facts may be shown, as clearly, even,
as the probabilities of things not absolutely ascertained in
astronomical or geological science, let this evidence be set before all
our youth so distinctly, and the facts for which it appears inculcated
upon them so steadily, that although it may be possible for the evil
conduct of after life to efface, or for its earnest and protracted
meditation to modify, the impressions of early years, it may not be
possible for our young men, the instant they emerge from their
academies, to scatter themselves like a flock of wild fowl risen out of
a marsh, and drift away on every irregular wind of heresy and apostasy.
Lastly: Our system of European education despises Politics.--That is to
say, the science of the relations and duties of men to each other. One
would imagine, indeed, by a glance at the state of the world, that there
was no such science. And, indeed, it is one still in its infancy.
It implies, in its full sense, the knowledge of the operations of the
virtues and vices of men upon themselves and society; the understanding
of the ranks and offices of their intellectual and bodily powers in
their various adaptations to art, science, and industry; the
understanding of the proper offices of art, science, and labor
themselves, as well as of the foundations of jurisprudence, and broad
principles of commerce; all this being coupled with practical knowledge
of the present state and wants of mankind.
What, it will be said, and is all this to be taught to schoolboys? No;
but the first elements of it, all that are necessary to be known by an
individual in order to his acting wisely in any station of life, might
be taught, not only to every schoolboy, but to every peasant. The
impossibility of equality among men; the good which arises from their
inequality; the compensating circumstances in different states and
fortunes; the honorableness of every man who is worthily filling his
appointed place in society, however humble; the proper relations of poor
and rich, governor and governed; the nature of wealth, and mode of its
circulation; the difference between productive and unproductive labor;
the relation of the products of the mind and hand; the true value of
works of the higher arts, and the possible amount of their production;
the meaning of "Civilization," its advantages and dangers; the meaning
of the term "Refinement;" the possibilities of possessing refinement in
a low station, and of losing it in a high one; and, above all, the
significance of almost every act of a man's daily life, in its ultimate
operation upon himself and others;--all this might be, and ought to be,
taught to every boy in the kingdom, so completely, that it should be
just as impossible to introduce an absurd or licentious doctrine among
our adult population, as a new version of the multiplication table. Nor
am I altogether without hope that some day it may enter into the heads
of the tutors of our schools to try whether it is not as easy to make an
Eton boy's mind as sensitive to falseness in policy, as his ear is at
present to falseness in prosody.
I know that this is much to hope. That English ministers of religion
should ever come to desire rather to make a youth acquainted with the
powers of nature and of God, than with the powers of Greek particles;
that they should ever think it more useful to show him how the great
universe rolls upon its course in heaven, than how the syllables are
fitted in a tragic metre; that they should hold it more advisable for
him to be fixed in the principles of religion than in those of syntax;
or, finally, that they should ever come to apprehend that a youth likely
to go straight out of college into parliament, might not unadvisably
know as much of the Peninsular as of the Peloponnesian War, and be as
well acquainted with the state of Modern Italy as of old Etruria;--all
this however unreasonably, I _do_ hope, and mean to work for. For though
I have not yet abandoned all expectation of a better world than this, I
believe this in which we live is not so good as it might be. I know
there are many people who suppose French revolutions, Italian
insurrections, Caffre wars, and such other scenic effects of modern
policy, to be among the normal conditions of humanity. I know there are
many who think the atmosphere of rapine, rebellion, and misery which
wraps the lower orders of Europe more closely every day, is as natural a
phenomenon as a hot summer. But God forbid! There are ills which flesh
is heir to, and troubles to which man is born; but the troubles which he
is born to are as sparks which fly _upward_, not as flames burning to
the nethermost Hell. The Poor we must have with us always, and sorrow is
inseparable from any hour of life; but we may make their poverty such as
shall inherit the earth, and the sorrow, such as shall be hallowed by
the hand of the Comforter, with everlasting comfort. We _can_, if we
will but shake off this lethargy and dreaming that is upon us, and take
the pains to think and act like men, we can, I say, make kingdoms to be
like well-governed households, in which, indeed, while no care or
kindness can prevent occasional heart-burnings, nor any foresight or
piety anticipate all the vicissitudes of fortune, or avert every stroke
of calamity, yet the unity of their affection and fellowship remains
unbroken, and their distress is neither embittered by division,
prolonged by imprudence, nor darkened by dishonor.
* * * * *
The great leading error of modern times is the mistaking erudition for
education. I call it the leading error, for I believe that, with little
difficulty, nearly every other might be shown to have root in it; and,
most assuredly, the worst that are fallen into on the subject of art.
Education then, briefly, is the leading human souls to what is best, and
making what is best out of them; and these two objects are always
attainable together, and by the same means; the training which makes men
happiest in themselves, also makes them most serviceable to others. True
education, then, has respect, first to the ends which are proposable to
the man, or attainable by him; and, secondly, to the material of which
the man is made. So far as it is able, it chooses the end according to
the material: but it cannot always choose the end, for the position of
many persons in life is fixed by necessity; still less can it choose
the material; and, therefore, all it can do, is to fit the one to the
other as wisely as may be.
But the first point to be understood, is that the material is as various
as the ends; that not only one man is unlike another, but _every_ man is
essentially different from _every_ other, so that no training, no
forming, nor informing, will ever make two persons alike in thought or
in power. Among all men, whether of the upper or lower orders, the
differences are eternal and irreconcilable, between one individual and
another, born under absolutely the same circumstances. One man is made
of agate, another of oak; one of slate, another of clay. The education
of the first is polishing; of the second, seasoning; of the third,
rending; of the fourth, moulding. It is of no use to season the agate;
it is vain to try to polish the slate; but both are fitted, by the
qualities they possess, for services in which they may be honored.
Now the cry for the education of the lower classes, which is heard every
day more widely and loudly, is a wise and a sacred cry, provided it be
extended into one for the education of _all_ classes, with definite
respect to the work each man has to do, and the substance of which he is
made. But it is a foolish and vain cry, if it be understood, as in the
plurality of cases it is meant to be, for the expression of mere craving
after knowledge, irrespective of the simple purposes of the life that
now is, and blessings of that which is to come.
One great fallacy into which men are apt to fall when they are reasoning
on this subject is: that light, as such, is always good; and darkness,
as such, always evil. Far from it. Light untempered would be
annihilation. It is good to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow
of death; but, to those that faint in the wilderness, so also is the
shadow of the great rock in a weary land. If the sunshine is good, so
also the cloud of the latter rain. Light is only beautiful, only
available for life, when it is tempered with shadow; pure light is
fearful, and unendurable by humanity. And it is not less ridiculous to
say that the light, as such, is good in itself, than to say that the
darkness is good in itself. Both are rendered safe, healthy, and useful
by the other; the night by the day, the day by the night; and we could
just as easily live without the dawn as without the sunset, so long as
we are human. Of the celestial city we are told there shall be "no night
there," and then we shall know even as also we are known: but the night
and the mystery have both their service here; and our business is not to
strive to turn the night into day, but to be sure that we are as they
that watch for the morning.
Therefore, in the education either of lower or upper classes, it matters
not the least how much or how little they know, provided they know just
what will fit them to do their work, and to be happy in it. What the sum
or the nature of their knowledge ought to be at a given time or in a
given case, is a totally different question: the main thing to be
understood is, that a man is not educated, in any sense whatsoever,
because he can read Latin, or write English, or can behave well in a
drawingroom; but that he is only educated if he is happy, busy,
beneficent, and effective in the world; that millions of peasants are
therefore at this moment better educated than most of those who call
themselves gentlemen; and that the means taken to "educate" the lower
classes in any other sense may very often be productive of a precisely
opposite result.
Observe: I do not say, nor do I believe, that the lower classes ought
not to be better educated, in millions of ways, than they are. I believe
_every man in a Christian kingdom ought to be equally well educated_.
But I would have it education to purpose; stern, practical,
irresistible, in moral habits, in bodily strength and beauty, in all
faculties of mind capable of being developed under the circumstances of
the individual, and especially in the technical knowledge of his own
business; but yet, infinitely various in its effort, directed to make
one youth humble, and another confident; to tranquillize this mind, to
put some spark of ambition into that; now to urge, and now to restrain:
and in the doing of all this, considering knowledge as one only out of
myriads of means in its hands, or myriads of gifts at its disposal; and
giving it or withholding it as a good husbandman waters his garden,
giving the full shower only to the thirsty plants, and at times when
they are thirsty, whereas at present we pour it upon the heads of our
youth as the snow falls on the Alps, on one and another alike, till they
can bear no more, and then take honor to ourselves because here and
there a river descends from their crests into the valleys, not
observing that we have made the loaded hills themselves barren for ever.
Finally: I hold it for indisputable, that the first duty of a state is
to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed,
and educated, till it attain years of discretion. But in order to the
effecting this, the government must have an authority over the people of
which we now do not so much as dream; and I cannot in this place pursue
the subject farther.
8. EARLY VENETIAN MARRIAGES.
Galliciolli, lib. ii. § 1757, insinuates a doubt of the general custom,
saying "it would be more reasonable to suppose that only twelve maidens
were married in public on St. Mark's day;" and Sandi also speaks of
twelve only. All evidence, however, is clearly in favor of the popular
tradition; the most curious fact connected with the subject being the
mention, by Herodotus, of the mode of marriage practised among the
Illyrian "Veneti" of his time, who presented their maidens for marriage
on one day in each year; and, with the price paid for those who were
beautiful, gave dowries to those who had no personal attractions.
It is very curious to find the traces of this custom existing, though in
a softened form, in Christian times. Still, I admit that there is little
confidence to be placed in the mere concurrence of the Venetian
Chroniclers, who, for the most part, copied from each other: but the
best and most complete account I have read, is that quoted by
Galliciolli from the "Matricola de' Casseleri," written in 1449; and, in
that account, the words are quite unmistakable. "It was anciently the
custom of Venice, that _all the brides_ (novizze) of Venice, when they
married, should be married by the bishop, in the Church of S. Pietro di
Castello, on St. Mark's day, which is the 31st of January." Rogers quotes
Navagiero to the same effect; and Sansovino is more explicit still. "It
was the custom to contract marriages openly; and when the deliberations
were completed, the damsels assembled themselves in St. Pietro di
Castello, for the feast of St. Mark, in February."
9. CHARACTER OF THE VENETIAN ARISTOCRACY.
The following noble answer of a Venetian ambassador, Giustiniani, on the
occasion of an insult offered him at the court of Henry the Eighth, is
as illustrative of the dignity which there yet remained in the character
and thoughts of the Venetian noble, as descriptive, in few words, of the
early faith and deeds of his nation. He writes thus to the Doge, from
London, on the 15th of April, 1516:
"By my last, in date of the 30th ult., I informed you that the
countenances of some of these lords evinced neither friendship nor
goodwill, and that much language had been used to me of a nature
bordering not merely on arrogance, but even on outrage; and not having
specified this in the foregoing letters, I think fit now to mention it
in detail. Finding myself at the court, and talking familiarly about
other matters, two lay lords, great personages in this kingdom, inquired
of me 'whence it came that your Excellency was of such slippery faith,
now favoring one party and then the other?' Although these words ought
to have irritated me, I answered them with all discretion, 'that you did
keep, and ever had kept your faith; the maintenance of which has placed
you in great trouble, and subjected you to wars of longer duration than
you would otherwise have experienced; descending to particulars in
justification of your Sublimity.' Whereupon one of them replied, '_Isti
Veneti sunt piscatores._'[64] Marvellous was the command I then had over
myself in not giving vent to expressions which might have proved
injurious to your Signory; and with extreme moderation I rejoined, 'that
had he been at Venice, and seen our Senate, and the Venetian nobility,
he perhaps would not speak thus; and moreover, were he well read in our
history, both concerning the origin of our city and the grandeur of your
Excellency's feats, neither the one nor the other would seem to him
those of fishermen; yet,' said I, 'did fishermen found the Christian
faith, and we have been those fishermen who defended it against the
forces of the Infidel, our fishing-boats being galleys and ships, our
hooks the treasure of St. Mark, and our bait the life-blood of our
citizens, who died for the Christian faith.'"
I take this most interesting passage from a volume of despatches
addressed from London to the Signory of Venice, by the ambassador
Giustiniani, during the years 1516-1519; despatches not only full of
matters of historical interest, but of the most delightful every-day
description of all that went on at the English court. They were
translated by Mr. Brown from the original letters, and will, I believe,
soon be published, and I hope also, read and enjoyed: for I cannot close
these volumes without expressing a conviction, which has long been
forcing itself upon my mind, that _restored_ history is of little more
value than restored painting or architecture; that the only history
worth reading is that written at the time of which it treats, the
history of what was done and seen, heard out of the mouths of the men
who did and saw. One fresh draught of such history is worth more than a
thousand volumes of abstracts, and reasonings, and suppositions, and
theories; and I believe that, as we get wiser, we shall take little
trouble about the history of nations who have left no distinct records
of themselves, but spend our time only in the examination of the
faithful documents which, in any period of the world, have been left,
either in the form of art or literature, portraying the scenes, or
recording the events, which in those days were actually passing before
the eyes of men.
10. FINAL APPENDIX.
The statements respecting the dates of Venetian buildings made
throughout the preceding pages, are founded, as above stated, on careful
and personal examination of all the mouldings, or other features
available as evidence, of every palace of importance in the city. Three
parts, at least, of the time occupied in the completion of the work have
been necessarily devoted to the collection of these evidences, of which
it would be quite useless to lay the mass before the reader; but of
which the leading points must be succinctly stated, in order to show the
nature of my authority for any of the conclusions expressed in the text.
I have therefore collected in the plates which illustrate this article
of the Appendix, for the examination of any reader who may be interested
by them, as many examples of the evidence-bearing details as are
sufficient for the proof required, especially including all the
exceptional forms; so that the reader may rest assured that if I had
been able to lay before him all the evidence in my possession, it would
have been still more conclusive than the portion now submitted to him.
[Illustration: Plate V.
BYZANTINE BASES.]
We must examine in succession the Bases, Doorways and Jambs, Capitals,
Archivolts, Cornices, and Tracery Bars, of Venetian architecture.
_I. Bases._
The principal points we have to notice are the similarity and simplicity
of the Byzantine bases in general, and the distinction between those of
Torcello and Murano, and of St. Mark's, as tending to prove the early
dates attributed in the text to the island churches. I have sufficiently
illustrated the forms of the Gothic bases in Plates X., XI., and XIII.
of the first volume, so that I here note chiefly the Byzantine or
Romanesque ones, adding two Gothic forms for the sake of comparison.
The most characteristic examples, then, are collected in Plate V.
opposite; namely:
1, 2, 3, 4. In the upper gallery of apse of Murano.
5. Lower shafts of apse. Murano.
6. Casa Falier.
7. Small shafts of panels. Casa Farsetti.
8. Great shafts and plinth. Casa Farsetti.
9. Great lower shafts. Fondaco de' Turchi.
10. Ducal Palace, upper arcade.
PLATE V. 11. General late Gothic form.
Vol. III. 12. Tomb of Dogaressa Vital Michele, in St. Mark's atrium.
13. Upper arcade of Madonnetta House.
14. Rio-Foscari House.
15. Upper arcade. Terraced House.
16, 17, 18. Nave. Torcello.
19, 20. Transepts. St. Mark's.
21. Nave. St. Mark's.
22. External pillars of northern portico. St. Mark's.
23, 24. Clustered pillars of northern portico. St. Mark's.
25, 26. Clustered pillars of southern portico. St. Mark's.
Now, observe, first, the enormous difference in style between the bases
1 to 5, and the rest in the upper row, that is to say, between the bases
of Murano and the twelfth and thirteenth century bases of Venice; and,
secondly, the difference between the bases 16 to 20 and the rest in the
lower row, that is to say, between the bases of Torcello (with those of
St. Mark's which belong to the nave, and which may therefore be supposed
to be part of the earlier church), and the later ones of the St. Mark's
Façade.
Secondly: Note the fellowship between 5 and 6, one of the evidences of
the early date of the Casa Falier.
Thirdly: Observe the slurring of the upper roll into the cavetto, in 13,
14, and 15, and the consequent relationship established between three
most important buildings, the Rio-Foscari House, Terraced House, and
Madonnetta House.
Fourthly: Byzantine bases, if they have an incision between the upper
roll and cavetto, are very apt to approach the form of fig. 23, in which
the upper roll is cut out of the flat block, and the ledge beneath it is
sloping. Compare Nos. 7, 8, 9, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26. On the other
hand, the later Gothic base, 11, has always its upper roll well
developed, and, generally, the fillet between it and the cavetto
vertical. The sloping fillet is indeed found down to late periods; and
the vertical fillet, as in No. 12, in Byzantine ones; but still, when a
base has such a sloping fillet and peculiarly graceful sweeping cavetto,
as those of No. 10, looking as if they would run into one line with each
other, it is strong presumptive evidence of its belonging to an early,
rather than a late period.
The base 12 is the boldest example I could find of the exceptional form
in early times; but observe, in this, that the upper roll is larger than
the lower. This is _never_ the case in late Gothic, where the proportion
is always as in fig. 11. Observe that in Nos. 8 and 9 the upper rolls
are at least as large as the lower, an important evidence of the dates
of the Casa Farsetti and Fondaco de' Turchi.
Lastly: Note the peculiarly steep profile of No. 22, with reference to
what is said of this base in Vol. II. Appendix 9.
_II. Doorways and Jambs._
The entrances to St. Mark's consist, as above mentioned, of great
circular or ogee porches; underneath which the real open entrances, in
which the valves of the bronze doors play, are square headed.
[Illustration: Fig. I.]
The mouldings of the jambs of these doors are highly curious, and the
most characteristic are therefore represented in one view. The outsides
of the jambs are lowest.
_a_. Northern lateral door.
_b_. First northern door of the façade.
_c_. Second door of the façade.
_d_. Fourth door of the façade.
_e_. Central door of the façade.
I wish the reader especially to note the arbitrary character of the
curves and incisions; all evidently being drawn by hand, none being
segments of circles, none like another, none influenced by any visible
law. I do not give these mouldings as beautiful; they are, for the most
part, very poor in effect, but they are singularly characteristic of the
free work of the time.
The kind of door to which these mouldings belong, is shown, with the
other groups of doors, in Plate XIV. Vol. II. fig. 6 _a_. Then 6 _b_, 6
_c_, 6 _d_ represent the groups of doors in which the Byzantine
influence remained energetic, admitting slowly the forms of the pointed
Gothic; 7 _a_, with the gable above, is the intermediate group between
the Byzantine and Gothic schools; 7 _b_, 7 _c_, 7 _d_, 7 _e_ are the
advanced guards of the Gothic and Lombardic invasions, representative of
a large number of thirteenth century arcades and doors. Observe that 6
_d_ is shown to be of a late school by its finial, and 6 _e_ of the
latest school by its finial, complete ogee arch (instead of round or
pointed), and abandonment of the lintel.
These examples, with the exception of 6 _a_, which is a general form,
are all actually existing doors; namely:
6 _b._ In the Fondamenta Venier, near St. Maria della Salute.
6 _c._ In the Calle delle Botteri, between the Rialto and San Cassan.
6 _d._ Main door of San Gregorio.
6 _e._ Door of a palace in Rio San Paternian.
7 _a._ Door of a small courtyard near house of Marco Polo.
7 _b._ Arcade in narrow canal, at the side of Casa Barbaro.
7 _c._ At the turn of the canal, close to the Ponte dell' Angelo.
7 _d._ In Rio San Paternian (a ruinous house).
7 _e._ At the turn of the canal on which the Sotto Portico della Stua
opens, near San Zaccaria.
If the reader will take a magnifying glass to the figure 6 _d_, he will
see that its square ornaments, of which, in the real door, each contains
a rose, diminish to the apex of the arch; a very interesting and
characteristic circumstance, showing the subtle feeling of the Gothic
builders. They must needs diminish the ornamentation, in order to
sympathize with the delicacy of the point of the arch. The magnifying
glass will also show the Bondumieri shield in No. 7 _d_, and the Leze
shield in No. 7 _e_, both introduced on the keystones in the grand early
manner. The mouldings of these various doors will be noticed under the
head Archivolt.
[Illustration: Plate VI.
BYZANTINE JAMBS.]
Now, throughout the city we find a number of doors resembling the square
doors of St. Mark, and occurring with rare exceptions either in
buildings of the Byzantine period, or imbedded in restored houses;
never, in a single instance, forming a connected portion of any late
building; and they therefore furnish a most important piece of evidence,
wherever they are part of the original structure of a _Gothic_ building,
that such building is one of the advanced guards of the Gothic school,
and belongs to its earliest period.
On Plate VI., opposite, are assembled all the important examples I could
find in Venice of these mouldings. The reader will see at a glance their
peculiar character, and unmistakable likeness to each other. The
following are the references:
1. Door in Calle Mocenigo.
2. Angle of tomb of Dogaressa Vital Michele.
3. Door in Sotto Portico, St. Apollonia (near Ponte di
Canonica).
4. Door in Calle della Verona (another like it is close by).
5. Angle of tomb of Doge Marino Morosini.
6, 7. Door in Calle Mocenigo.
8. Door in Campo S. Margherita.
Plate VI. 9. Door at Traghetto San Samuele, on south side of Grand
Vol. III. Canal.
10. Door at Ponte St. Toma.
11. Great door of Church of Servi.
12. In Calle della Chiesa, Campo San Filippo e Giacomo.
13. Door of house in Calle di Rimedio (Vol. II.).
14. Door in Fondaco de' Turchi.
15. Door in Fondamenta Malcanton, near Campo S. Margherita.
16. Door in south side of Canna Reggio.
17, 18. Doors in Sotto Portico dei Squellini.
The principal points to be noted in these mouldings are their curious
differences of level, as marked by the dotted lines, more especially in
14, 15, 16, and the systematic projection of the outer or lower
mouldings in 16, 17, 18. Then, as points of evidence, observe that 1 is
the jamb and 6 the archivolt (7 the angle on a larger scale) of the
brick door given in my folio work from Ramo di rimpetto Mocenigo, one of
the evidences of the early date of that door; 8 is the jamb of the door
in Campo Santa Margherita (also given in my folio work), fixing the
early date of that also; 10 is from a Gothic door opening off the Ponte
St. Toma; and 11 is also from a Gothic building. All the rest are from
Byzantine work, or from ruins. The angle of the tomb of Marino Morosini
(5) is given for comparison only.
The doors with the mouldings 17, 18, are from the two ends of a small
dark passage, called the Sotto Portico dei Squellini, opening near Ponte
Cappello, on the Rio-Marin: 14 is the outside one, arranged as usual,
and at _a_, in the rough stone, are places for the staples of the door
valve; 15, at the other end of the passage, opening into the little
Corte dei Squellini, is set with the part _a_ outwards, it also having
places for hinges; but it is curious that the rich moulding should be
set in towards the dark passage, though natural that the doors should
both open one way.
[Illustration: Plate VII.
GOTHIC JAMBS.]
The next Plate, VII., will show the principal characters of the Gothic
jambs, and the total difference between them and the Byzantine ones. Two
more Byzantine forms, 1 and 2, are given here for the sake of
comparison; then 3, 4, and 5 are the common profiles of simple jambs of
doors in the Gothic period; 6 is one of the jambs of the Frari windows,
continuous into the archivolt, and meeting the traceries, where the line
is set upon it at the extremity of its main slope; 7 and 8 are jambs of
the Ducal Palace windows, in which the great semicircle is the half
shaft which sustains the traceries, and the rest of the profile is
continuous in the archivolt; 17, 18, and 19 are the principal piers of
the Ducal Palace; and 20, from St. Fermo of Verona, is put with them in
order to show the step of transition from the Byzantine form 2 to the
Gothic chamfer, which is hardly represented at Venice. The other
profiles on the plate are all late Gothic, given to show the gradual
increase of complexity without any gain of power. The open lines in 12,
14, 16, etc., are the parts of the profile cut into flowers or cable
mouldings; and so much incised as to show the constant outline of the
cavetto or curve beneath them. The following are the references:
1. Door in house of Marco Polo.
2. Old door in a restored church of St. Cassan.
3, 4, 5. Common jambs of Gothic doors.
6. Frari windows.
7, 8. Ducal Palace windows.
9. Casa Priuli, great entrance.
10. San Stefano, great door.
PLATE VII. 11. San Gregorio, door opening to the water.
Vol. III. 12. Lateral door, Frari.
13. Door of Campo San Zaccaria.
14. Madonna dell'Orto.
15. San Gregorio, door in the façade.
16. Great lateral door, Frari.
17. Pilaster at Vine angle, Ducal Palace.
18. Pier, inner cortile, Ducal Palace.
19. Pier, under the medallion of Venice, on the Piazetta
façade of the Ducal Palace.
_III. Capitals._
I shall here notice the various facts I have omitted in the text of the
work.
First, with respect to the Byzantine Capitals represented in Plate VII.
Vol. II., I omitted to notice that figs. 6 and 7 represent two sides of
the same capital at Murano (though one is necessarily drawn on a smaller
scale than the other). Fig. 7 is the side turned to the light, and fig.
6 to the shade, the inner part, which is quite concealed, not being
touched at all.
We have here a conclusive proof that these capitals were cut for their
place in the apse; therefore I have always considered them as tests of
Venetian workmanship, and, on the strength of that proof, have
occasionally spoken of capitals as of true Venetian work, which M.
Lazari supposes to be of the Lower Empire. No. 11, from St. Mark's, was
not above noticed. The way in which the cross is gradually left in
deeper relief as the sides slope inwards and away from it, is highly
picturesque and curious.
No. 9 has been reduced from a larger drawing, and some of the life and
character of the curves lost in consequence. It is chiefly given to show
the irregular and fearless freedom of the Byzantine designers, no two
parts of the foliage being correspondent; in the original it is of white
marble, the ground being colored blue.
Plate X. Vol. II. represents the four principal orders of Venetian
capitals in their greatest simplicity, and the profiles of the most
interesting examples of each. The figures 1 and 4 are the two great
concave and convex groups, and 2 and 3 the transitional. Above each type
of form I have put also an example of the group of flowers which
represent it in nature: fig. 1 has a lily; fig. 2 a variety of the
Tulipa sylvestris; figs. 3 and 4 forms of the magnolia. I prepared this
plate in the early spring, when I could not get any other examples,[65]
or I would rather have had two different species for figs. 3 and 4; but
the half-open magnolia will answer the purpose, showing the beauty of
the triple curvature in the sides.
I do not say that the forms of the capitals are actually taken from
flowers, though assuredly so in some instances, and partially so in the
decoration of nearly all. But they were designed by men of pure and
natural feeling for beauty, who therefore instinctively adopted the
forms represented, which are afterwards proved to be beautiful by their
frequent occurrence in common flowers.
The convex forms, 3 and 4, are put lowest in the plate only because they
are heaviest; they are the earliest in date, and have already been
enough examined.
I have added a plate to this volume (Plate XII.), which should have
appeared in illustration of the fifth chapter of Vol. II., but was not
finished in time. It represents the central capital and two of the
lateral ones of the Fondaco de' Turchi, the central one drawn very
large, in order to show the excessive simplicity of its chiselling,
together with the care and sharpness of it, each leaf being expressed by
a series of sharp furrows and ridges. Some slight errors in the large
tracings from which the engraving was made have, however, occasioned a
loss of spring in the curves, and the little fig. 4 of Plate X. Vol. II.
gives a truer idea of the distant effect of the capital.
The profiles given in Plate X. Vol. II. are the following:
1. _a._ Main capitals, upper arcade, Madonnetta House.
_b._ Main capitals, upper arcade, Casa Falier.
_c._ Lateral capitals, upper arcade, Fondaco de' Turchi.
_d._ Small pillars of St. Mark's Pulpit.
_e._ Casa Farsetti.
_f._ Inner capitals of arcade of Ducal Palace.
_g._ Plinth of the house[66] at Apostoli.
_h._ Main capitals of house at Apostoli.
_i._ Main capitals, upper arcade, Fondaco de' Turchi.
2. _a._ Lower arcade, Fondaco de' Turchi.
_b, c._ Lower pillars, house at Apostoli.
_d._ San Simeon Grande.
PLATE X. _e._ Restored house on Grand Canal. Three of the old arches left.
vol. II. _f._ Upper arcade, Ducal Palace.
_g._ Windows of third order, central shaft, Ducal Palace.
_h._ Windows of third order, lateral shaft, Ducal Palace.
_i._ Ducal Palace, main shafts.
_k._ Piazzetta shafts.
3. _a._ St. Mark's Nave.
_b, c._ Lily capitals, St. Mark's.
4. _a._ Fondaco de' Turchi, central shaft, upper arcade.
_b._ Murano, upper arcade.
_c._ Murano, lower arcade.
_d._ Tomb of St. Isidore.
_e._ General late Gothic profile.
The last two sections are convex in effect, though not in reality; the
bulging lines being carved into bold flower-work.
The capitals belonging to the groups 1 and 2, in the Byzantine times,
have already been illustrated in Plate VIII. Vol. II.; we have yet to
trace their succession in the Gothic times. This is done in Plate II. of
this volume, which we will now examine carefully. The following are the
capitals represented in that plate:
1. Small shafts of St. Mark's Pulpit.
2. From the transitional house in the Calle di Rimedio (conf.
Vol. II.).
3. General simplest form of the middle Gothic capital.
4. Nave of San Giacomo de Lorio.
5. Casa Falier.
6. Early Gothic house in Campo Sta. M^a. Mater Domini.
PLATE II. 7. House at the Apostoli.
Vol. III. 8. Piazzetta shafts.
9. Ducal Palace, upper arcade.
10. Palace of Marco Querini.
11. Fondaco de' Turchi.
12. Gothic palaces in Campo San Polo.
13. Windows of fourth order, Plate XVI. Vol. II.
14. Nave of Church of San Stefano.
15. Late Gothic Palace at the Miracoli.
The two lateral columns form a consecutive series: the central column is
a group of exceptional character, running parallel with both. We will
take the lateral ones first. 1. Capital of pulpit of St. Mark's
(representative of the simplest concave forms of the Byzantine period).
Look back to Plate VIII. Vol. II., and observe that while all the forms
in that plate are contemporaneous, we are now going to follow a series
_consecutive_ in time, which begins from fig. 1, either in that plate or
in this; that is to say, with the simplest possible condition to be
found at the time; and which proceeds to develope itself into gradually
increasing richness, while the _already rich_ capitals of the old school
die at its side. In the forms 14 and 15 (Plate VIII.) the Byzantine
school expired; but from the Byzantine simple capital (1, Plate II.
above) which was coexistent with them, sprang another hardy race of
capitals, whose succession we have now to trace.
The form 1, Plate II. is evidently the simplest conceivable condition of
the truncated capital, long ago represented generally in Vol. I., being
only rounded a little on its side to fit it to the shaft. The next step
was to place a leaf beneath each of the truncations (fig. 4, Plate II.,
San Giacomo de Lorio), the end of the leaf curling over at the top in a
somewhat formal spiral, partly connected with the traditional volute of
the Corinthian capital. The sides are then enriched by the addition of
some ornament, as a shield (fig. 7) or rose (fig. 10), and we have the
formed capital of the early Gothic. Fig. 10, being from the palace of
Marco Querini, is certainly not later than the middle of the thirteenth
century (see Vol. II.), and fig. 7, is, I believe, of the same date; it
is one of the bearing capitals of the lower story of the palace at the
Apostoli, and is remarkably fine in the treatment of its angle leaves,
which are not deeply under-cut, but show their magnificent sweeping
under surface all the way down, not as a leaf surface, but treated like
the gorget of a helmet, with a curved line across it like that where the
gorget meets the mail. I never saw anything finer in simple design. Fig.
10 is given chiefly as a certification of date, and to show the
treatment of the capitals of this school on a small scale. Observe the
more expansive head in proportion to the diameter of the shaft, the
leaves being drawn from the angles, as if gathered in the hand, till
their edges meet; and compare the rule given in Vol. I. Chap. IX. § XIV.
The capitals of the remarkable house, of which a portion is represented
in Fig. XXXI. Vol. II., are most curious and pure examples of this
condition; with experimental trefoils, roses, and leaves introduced
between their volutes. When compared with those of the Querini Palace,
they form one of the most important evidences of the date of the
building.
Fig. 13. One of the bearing capitals, already drawn on a small scale in
the windows represented in Plate XVI. Vol. II.
Now, observe. The capital of the form of fig. 10 appeared sufficient to
the Venetians for all ordinary purposes; and they used it in common
windows to the latest Gothic periods, but yet with certain differences
which at once show the lateness of the work. In the first place, the
rose, which at first was flat and quatrefoiled, becomes, after some
experiments, a round ball dividing into three leaves, closely resembling
our English ball flower, and probably derived from it; and, in other
cases, forming a bold projecting bud in various degrees of contraction
or expansion. In the second place, the extremities of the angle leaves
are wrought into rich flowing lobes, and bent back so as to lap against
their own breasts; showing lateness of date in exact proportion to the
looseness of curvature. Fig. 3 represents the general aspect of these
later capitals, which may be conveniently called the rose capitals of
Venice; two are seen on service, in Plate VIII. Vol. I., showing
comparatively early date by the experimental form of the six-foiled
rose. But for elaborate edifices this form was not sufficiently rich;
and there was felt to be something awkward in the junction of the leaves
at the bottom. Therefore, four other shorter leaves were added at the
sides, as in fig. 13, Plate II., and as generally represented in Plate
X. Vol. II. fig. 1. This was a good and noble step, taken very early in
the thirteenth century; and all the best Venetian capitals were
thenceforth of this form. Those which followed, and rested in the common
rose type, were languid and unfortunate: I do not know a single good
example of them after the first half of the thirteenth century.
But the form reached in fig. 13 was quickly felt to be of great value
and power. One would have thought it might have been taken straight from
the Corinthian type; but it is clearly the work of men who were making
experiments for themselves. For instance, in the central capital of Fig.
XXXI. Vol. II., there is a trial condition of it, with the intermediate
leaf set behind those at the angles (the reader had better take a
magnifying glass to this woodcut; it will show the character of the
capitals better). Two other experimental forms occur in the Casa Cicogna
(Vol. II.), and supply one of the evidences which fix the date of that
palace. But the form soon was determined as in fig. 13, and then means
were sought of recommending it by farther decoration.
The leaves which are used in fig. 13, it will be observed, have lost
the Corinthian volute, and are now pure and plain leaves, such as were
used in the Lombardic Gothic of the early thirteenth century all over
Italy. Now in a round-arched gateway at Verona, certainly not later than
1300; the pointed leaves of this pure form are used in one portion of
the mouldings, and in another are enriched by having their surfaces
carved each into a beautiful ribbed and pointed leaf. The capital, fig.
6, Plate II., is nothing more than fig. 13 so enriched; and the two
conditions are quite contemporary, fig. 13 being from a beautiful series
of fourth order windows in Campo Sta. M^a. Mater Domini, already drawn
in my folio work.
Fig. 13 is representative of the richest conditions of Gothic capital
which existed at the close of the thirteenth century. The builder of the
Ducal Palace amplified them into the form of fig. 9, but varying the
leafage in disposition and division of lobes in every capital; and the
workmen trained under him executed many noble capitals for the Gothic
palaces of the early fourteenth century, of which fig. 12, from a palace
in the Campo St. Polo, is one of the most beautiful examples. In figs. 9
and 12 the reader sees the Venetian Gothic capital in its noblest
developement. The next step was to such forms as fig. 15, which is
generally characteristic of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth
century Gothic, and of which I hope the reader will at once perceive the
exaggeration and corruption.
This capital is from a palace near the Miracoli, and it is remarkable
for the delicate, though corrupt, ornament on its abacus, which is
precisely the same as that on the pillars of the screen of St. Mark's.
That screen is a monument of very great value, for it shows the entire
corruption of the Gothic power, and the style of the later palaces
accurately and completely defined in all its parts, and is dated 1380;
thus at once furnishing us with a limiting date, which throws all the
noble work of the early Ducal Palace, and all that is like it in Venice,
thoroughly back into the middle of the fourteenth century at the latest.
Fig. 2 is the simplest condition of the capital universally employed in
the windows of the second order, noticed above, Vol. II., as belonging
to a style of great importance in the transitional architecture of
Venice. Observe, that in all the capitals given in the lateral columns
in Plate II., the points of the leaves _turn over_. But in this central
group they lie _flat_ against the angle of the capital, and form a
peculiarly light and lovely succession of forms, occurring only in their
purity in the windows of the second order, and in some important
monuments connected with them.
In fig. 2 the leaf at the angle is cut, exactly in the manner of an
Egyptian bas-relief, _into_ the stone, with a raised edge round it, and
a raised rib up the centre; and this mode of execution, seen also in
figs. 4 and 7, is one of the collateral evidences of early date. But in
figs. 5 and 8, where more elaborate effect was required, the leaf is
thrown out boldly with an even edge from the surface of the capital, and
enriched on its own surface: and as the treatment of fig. 2 corresponds
with that of fig. 4, so that of fig. 5 corresponds with that of fig. 6;
2 and 5 having the upright leaf, 4 and 6 the bending leaves; but all
contemporary.
Fig. 5 is the central capital of the windows of Casa Falier, drawn in
Plate XV. Vol. II.; and one of the leaves set on its angles is drawn
larger at fig. 7, Plate XX. Vol. II. It has no rib, but a sharp raised
ridge down its centre; and its lobes, of which the reader will observe
the curious form,--round in the middle one, truncated in the sides,--are
wrought with a precision and care which I have hardly ever seen
equalled: but of this more presently.
The next figure (8, Plate II.) is the most important capital of the
whole transitional period, that employed on the two columns of the
Piazzetta. These pillars are said to have been _raised_ in the close of
the twelfth century, but I cannot find even the most meagre account of
their bases, capitals, or, which seems to me most wonderful, of that
noble winged lion, one of the grandest things produced by mediæval art,
which all men admire, and none can draw. I have never yet seen a
faithful representation of his firm, fierce, and fiery strength. I
believe that both he and the capital which bears him are late thirteenth
century work. I have not been up to the lion, and cannot answer for it;
but if it be not thirteenth century work, it is as good; and respecting
the capitals, there can be small question. They are of exactly the date
of the oldest tombs, bearing crosses, outside of St. John and Paul; and
are associated with all the other work of the transitional period, from
1250 to 1300 (the bases of these pillars, representing the trades of
Venice, ought, by the by, to have been mentioned as among the best early
efforts of Venetian grotesque); and, besides, their abaci are formed by
four reduplications of the dentilled mouldings of St. Mark's, which
never occur after the year 1300.
Nothing can be more beautiful or original than the adaptation of these
broad bearing abaci; but as they have nothing to do with the capital
itself, and could not easily be brought into the space, they are omitted
in Plate II., where fig. 8 shows the bell of the capital only. Its
profile is curiously subtle,--apparently concave everywhere, but in
reality concave (all the way down) only on the angles, and slightly
convex at the sides (the profile through the side being 2 _k_, Plate X.
Vol. II.); in this subtlety of curvature, as well as in the simple
cross, showing the influence of early times.
The leaf on the angle, of which more presently, is fig. 5, Plate XX.
Vol. II.
Connected with this school of transitional capitals we find a form in
the later Gothic, such as fig. 14, from the Church of San Stefano; but
which appears in part derived from an old and rich Byzantine type, of
which fig. 11, from the Fondaco de' Turchi, is a characteristic example.
I must now take the reader one step farther, and ask him to examine,
finally, the treatment of the leaves, down to the cutting of their most
minute lobes, in the series of capitals of which we have hitherto only
sketched the general forms.
In all capitals with nodding leaves, such as 6 and 9 in Plate II., the
real form of the leaf is not to be seen, except in perspective; but, in
order to render the comparison more easy, I have in Plate XX. Vol. II.
opened all the leaves out, as if they were to be dried in a herbarium,
only leaving the furrows and sinuosities of surface, but laying the
outside contour nearly flat upon the page, except for a particular
reason in figs. 2, 10, 11, and 15.
I shall first, as usual, give the references, and then note the points
of interest.
1, 2, 3. Fondaco de' Turchi, upper arcade.
4. Greek pillars brought from St. Jean d'Acre.
5. Piazzetta shafts.
6. Madonnetta House.
PLATE XX. 7. Casa Falier.
Vol. II. 8. Palace near St. Eustachio.
9. Tombs, outside of St. John and Paul.
10. Tomb of Giovanni Soranzo.
11. Tomb of Andrea Dandolo.
12, 13, 14. Ducal Palace.
N.B. The upper row, 1 to 4, is Byzantine, the next transitional, the
last two Gothic.
Fig. 1. The leaf of the capital No. 6, Plate VIII. Vol. II. Each lobe of
the leaf has a sharp furrow up to its point, from its root.
Fig. 2. The leaf of the capital on the right hand, at the top of Plate
XII. in this volume. The lobes worked in the same manner, with deep
black drill holes between their points.
Fig. 3. One of the leaves of fig. 14, Plate VIII. Vol. II. fully
unfolded. The lobes worked in the same manner, but left shallow, so as
not to destroy the breadth of light; the central line being drawn by
drill holes, and the interstices between lobes cut black and deep.
Fig. 4. Leaf with flower; pure Byzantine work, showing whence the
treatment of all the other leaves has been derived.
Fig. 6. For the sake of symmetry, this is put in the centre: it is the
earliest of the three in this row; taken from the Madonnetta House,
where the capitals have leaves both at their sides and angles. The tall
angle leaf, with its two lateral ones, is given in the plate; and there
is a remarkable distinction in the mode of workmanship of these leaves,
which, though found in a palace of the Byzantine period, is indicative
of a tendency to transition; namely, that the sharp furrow is now drawn
_only to the central lobe_ of each division of the leaf, and the rest of
the surface of the leaf is left nearly flat, a slight concavity only
marking the division of the extremities. At the base of these leaves
they are perfectly flat, only cut by the sharp and narrow furrow, as an
elevated table-land is by ravines.
Fig. 5. A more advanced condition; the fold at the recess, between each
division of the leaf, carefully expressed, and the concave or depressed
portions of the extremities marked more deeply, as well as the central
furrow, and a rib added in the centre.
Fig. 7. A contemporary, but more finished form; the sharp furrows
becoming softer, and the whole leaf more flexible.
Fig. 8. An exquisite form of the same period, but showing still more
advanced naturalism, from a very early group of third order windows,
near the Church of St. Eustachio on the Grand Canal.
Fig. 9. Of the same time, from a small capital of an angle shaft of the
sarcophagi at the _side_ of St. John and Paul, in the little square
which is adorned by the Colleone statue. This leaf is very quaint and
pretty in giving its midmost lateral divisions only two lobes each,
instead of the usual three or four.
Fig. 10. Leaf employed in the cornice of the tomb of the Doge Giovanni
Soranzo, who died in 1312. It nods over, and has three ribs on its upper
surface; thus giving us the completed ideal form of the leaf, but its
execution is still very archaic and severe.
Now the next example, fig. 11, is from the tomb of the Doge Andrea
Dandolo, and therefore executed between 1354 and 1360; and this leaf
shows the Gothic naturalism and refinement of curvature fully developed.
In this forty years' interval, then, the principal advance of Gothic
sculpture is to be placed.
I had prepared a complete series of examples, showing this advance, and
the various ways in which the separations of the ribs, a most
characteristic feature, are more and more delicately and scientifically
treated, from the beginning to the middle of the fourteenth century, but
I feared that no general reader would care to follow me into these
minutiæ, and have cancelled this portion of the work, at least for the
present, the main point being, that the reader should feel the full
extent of the change, which he can hardly fail to do in looking from
fig. 10 to figs. 11 and 12. I believe that fig. 12 is the earlier of the
two; and it is assuredly the finer, having all the elasticity and
simplicity of the earliest forms, with perfect flexibility added. In
fig. 11 there is a perilous element beginning to develope itself into
one feature, namely, the extremities of the leaves, which, instead of
merely nodding over, now curl completely round into a kind of ball. This
occurs early, and in the finest Gothic work, especially in cornices and
other running mouldings: but it is a fatal symptom, a beginning of the
intemperance of the later Gothic, and it was followed out with singular
avidity; the ball of coiled leafage increasing in size and complexity,
and at last becoming the principal feature of the work; the light
striking on its vigorous projection, as in fig. 14. Nearly all the
Renaissance Gothic of Venice depends upon these balls for effect, a late
capital being generally composed merely of an upper and lower range of
leaves terminating in this manner.
It is very singular and notable how, in this loss of _temperance_, there
is loss of _life_. For truly healthy and living leaves do not bind
themselves into knots at the extremities. They bend, and wave, and nod,
but never curl. It is in disease, or in death, by blight, or frost, or
poison only, that leaves in general assume this ingathered form. It is
the flame of autumn that has shrivelled them, or the web of the
caterpillar that has bound them: and thus the last forms of the Venetian
leafage set forth the fate of Venetian pride; and, in their utmost
luxuriance and abandonment, perish as if eaten of worms.
And now, by glancing back to Plate X. Vol. II, the reader will see in a
moment the kind of evidence which is found of the date of capitals in
their profiles merely. Observe: we have seen that the treatment of the
leaves in the Madonnetta House seemed "indicative of a tendency to
transition." Note their profile, 1_a_, and its close correspondence with
1 _h_, which is actually of a transitional capital from the upper arcade
of second order windows in the Apostoli Palace; yet both shown to be
very close to the Byzantine period, if not belonging to it, by their
fellowship with the profile _i_, from the Fondaco de' Turchi. Then note
the close correspondence of all the other profiles in that line, which
belong to the concave capitals or plinths of the Byzantine palaces, and
note their composition, the abacus being, in idea, merely an echo or
reduplication of the capital itself; as seen in perfect simplicity in
the profile _f_, which is a roll under a _tall_ concave curve forming
the bell of the capital, with a roll and _short_ concave curve for its
abacus. This peculiar abacus is an unfailing test of early date; and our
finding this simple profile used for the Ducal Palace (_f_), is strongly
confirmatory of all our former conclusions.
Then the next row, 2, are the Byzantine and early Gothic semi-convex
curves, in their pure forms, having no roll below; but often with a roll
added, as at _f_, and in certain early Gothic conditions curiously fused
into it, with a cavetto between, as _b_, _c_, _d_. But the more archaic
form is as at _f_ and _k_; and as these two profiles are from the Ducal
Palace and Piazzetta shafts, they join again with the rest of the
evidence of their early date. The profiles _i_ and _k_ are both most
beautiful; _i_ is that of the great capitals of the Ducal Palace, and
the small profiles between it and _k_ are the varieties used on the
fillet at its base. The profile _i_ should have had leaves springing
from it, as 1 _h_ has, only more boldly, but there was no room for them.
The reader cannot fail to discern at a glance the fellowship of the
whole series of profiles, 2 _a_ to _k_, nor can he but with equal ease
observe a marked difference in 4 _d_ and 4 _e_ from any others in the
plate; the bulging outlines of leafage being indicative of the luxuriant
and flowing masses, no longer expressible with a simple line, but to be
considered only as confined within it, of the later Gothic. Now _d_ is a
dated profile from the tomb of St. Isidore, 1355, which by its dog-tooth
abacus and heavy leafage distinguishes itself from all the other
profiles, and therefore throws them back into the first half of the
century. But, observe, it still retains the noble swelling root. This
character soon after vanishes; and, in 1380, the profile _e_, at once
heavy, feeble, and ungraceful, with a meagre and valueless abacus hardly
discernible, is characteristic of all the capitals of Venice.
Note, finally, this contraction of the abacus. Compare 4 _c_, which is
the earliest form in the plate, from Murano, with 4 _e_, which is the
latest. The other profiles show the gradual process of change; only
observe, in 3_a_ the abacus is not drawn; it is so bold that it would
not come into the plate without reducing the bell curve to too small a
scale.
So much for the evidence derivable from the capitals; we have next to
examine that of the archivolts or arch mouldings.
[Illustration: Plate VIII.
BYZANTINE ARCHIVOLTS.]
_IV. Archivolts._
In Plate VIII., opposite, are arranged in one view all the conditions of
Byzantine archivolt employed in Venice, on a large scale. It will be
seen in an instant that there can be no mistaking the manner of their
masonry. The soffit of the arch is the horizontal line at the bottom of
all these profiles, and each of them (except 13, 14) is composed of two
slabs of marble, one for the soffit, another for the face of the arch;
the one on the soffit is worked on the edge into a roll (fig. 10) or
dentil (fig. 9), and the one on the face is bordered on the other side
by another piece let edgeways into the wall, and also worked into a roll
or dentil: in the richer archivolts a cornice is added to this roll, as
in figs. 1 and 4, or takes its place, as in figs. 1, 3, 5, and 6; and in
such richer examples the facestone, and often the soffit, are
sculptured, the sculpture being cut into their surfaces, as indicated in
fig. 11. The concavities cut in the facestones of 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 are all
indicative of sculpture in effect like that of Fig. XXVI. Vol. II., of
which archivolt fig. 5, here, is the actual profile. The following are
the references to the whole:
1. Rio-Foscari House.
2. Terraced House, entrance door.
3. Small Porticos of St. Mark's, external arches.
4. Arch on the canal at Ponte St. Toma.
5. Arch of Corte del Remer.
6. Great outermost archivolt of central door, St. Mark's.
PLATE VIII. 7. Inner archivolt of southern porch, St. Mark's Façade.
Vol. III. 8. Inner archivolt of central entrance, St. Mark's.
9. Fondaco de' Turchi, main arcade.
10. Byzantine restored house on Grand Canal, lower arcade.
11. Terraced House, upper arcade.
12. Inner archivolt of northern porch of façade, St. Mark's.
13 and 14. Transitional forms.
[Illustration: Plate IX.
GOTHIC ARCHIVOLTS.]
There is little to be noted respecting these forms, except that, in fig.
1, the two lower rolls, with the angular projections between, represent
the fall of the mouldings of two proximate arches on the abacus of the
bearing shaft; their two cornices meeting each other, and being
gradually narrowed into the little angular intermediate piece, their
sculptures being slurred into the contracted space, a curious proof of
the earliness of the work. The real archivolt moulding is the same as
fig. 4 _c c_, including only the midmost of the three rolls in fig. 1.
It will be noticed that 2, 5, 6, and 8 are sculptured on the soffits as
well as the faces; 9 is the common profile of arches decorated only with
colored marble, the facestone being colored, the soffit white. The
effect of such a moulding is seen in the small windows at the right hand
of Fig. XXVI. Vol. II.
The reader will now see that there is but little difficulty in
identifying Byzantine work, the archivolt mouldings being so similar
among themselves, and so unlike any others. We have next to examine the
Gothic forms.
Figs. 13 and 14 in Plate VIII. represent the first brick mouldings of
the transitional period, occurring in such instances as Fig. XXIII. or
Fig. XXXIII. Vol. II. (the soffit stone of the Byzantine mouldings being
taken away), and this profile, translated into solid stone, forms the
almost universal moulding of the windows of the second order. These two
brick mouldings are repeated, for the sake of comparison, at the top of
Plate IX. opposite; and the upper range of mouldings which they
commence, in that plate, are the brick mouldings of Venice in the early
Gothic period. All the forms below are in stone; and the moulding 2,
translated into stone, forms the universal archivolt of the early
pointed arches of Venice, and windows of second and third orders. The
moulding 1 is much rarer, and used for the most part in doors only.
The reader will see at once the resemblance of character in the various
flat brick mouldings, 3 to 11. They belong to such arches as 1 and 2 in
Plate XVII. Vol. II.; or 6 _b_, 6 _c_, in Plate XIV. Vol. II., 7 and 8
being actually the mouldings of those two doors; the whole group being
perfectly defined, and separate from all the other Gothic work in
Venice, and clearly the result of an effort to imitate, in brickwork,
the effect of the flat sculptured archivolts of the Byzantine times.
(See Vol. II. Chap. VII. § XXXVII.)
Then comes the group 14 to 18 in stone, derived from the mouldings 1 and
2; first by truncation, 14; then by beading the truncated angle, 15, 16.
The occurrence of the profile 16 in the three beautiful windows
represented in the uppermost figure of Plate XVIII. Vol. I. renders that
group of peculiar interest, and is strong evidence of its antiquity.
Then a cavetto is added, 17; first shallow and then deeper, 18, which is
the common archivolt moulding of the central Gothic door and window:
but, in the windows of the early fourth order, this moulding is
complicated by various additions of dog-tooth mouldings under the
dentil, as in 20; or the _gabled_ dentil (see fig. 20, Plate IX. Vol.
I), as fig. 21; or both, as figs 23, 24. All these varieties expire in
the advanced period, and the established moulding for windows is 29. The
intermediate group, 25 to 28, I found only in the high windows of the
third order in the Ducal Palace, or in the Chapter-house of the Frari,
or in the arcades of the Ducal Palace; the great outside lower arcade of
the Ducal Palace has the profile 31, the left-hand side being the
innermost.
Now observe, all these archivolts, without exception, assume that the
spectator looks from the outside only: none are complete on both sides;
they are essentially _window_ mouldings, and have no resemblance to
those of our perfect Gothic arches prepared for traceries. If they were
all completely drawn in the plate, they should be as fig. 25, having a
great depth of wall behind the mouldings, but it was useless to
represent this in every case. The Ducal Palace begins to show mouldings
on both sides, 28, 31; and 35 is a _complete_ arch moulding from the
apse of the Frari. That moulding, though so perfectly developed, is
earlier than the Ducal Palace, and with other features of the building,
indicates the completeness of the Gothic system, which made the
architect of the Ducal Palace found his work principally upon that
church.
The other examples in this plate show the various modes of combination
employed in richer archivolts. The triple change of slope in 38 is very
curious. The references are as follows:
1. Transitional to the second order.
2. Common second order.
3. Brick, at Corte del Forno, Round arch.
4. Door at San Giovanni Grisostomo.
5. Door at Sotto Portico della Stua.
6. Door in Campo St. Luca, of rich brickwork.
7. Round door at Fondamenta Venier.
8. Pointed door. Fig. 6_c_, Plate XIV. Vol. II.
9. Great pointed arch, Salizzada San Lio.
10. Round door near Fondaco de' Turchi.
11. Door with Lion, at Ponte della Corona.
12. San Gregorio, Façade.
13. St. John and Paul, Nave.
14. Rare early fourth order, at San Cassan.
15. General early Gothic archivolt.
16. Same, from door in Rio San G. Grisostomo.
17. Casa Vittura.
18. Casa Sagredo, Unique thirds. Vol. II.
19. Murano Palace, Unique fourths.[67]
PLATE IX. 20. Pointed door of Four-Evangelist House.[68]
Vol. III. 21. Keystone door in Campo St. M. Formosa.
22. Rare fourths, at St. Pantaleon.
23. Rare fourths, Casa Papadopoli.
24. Rare fourths, Chess house.[69]
25. Thirds of Frari Cloister.
26. Great pointed arch of Frari Cloister.
27. Unique thirds, Ducal Palace.
28. Inner Cortile, pointed arches, Ducal Palace.
29. Common fourth and fifth order Archivolt.
30. Unique thirds, Ducal Palace.
31. Ducal Palace, lower arcade.
32. Casa Priuli, arches in the inner court.
33. Circle above the central window, Ducal Palace.
34. Murano apse.
35. Acute-pointed arch, Frari.
36. Door of Accademia delle belle Arti.
37. Door in Calle Tiossi, near Four-Evangelist House.
38. Door in Campo San Polo.
39. Door of palace at Ponte Marcello.
40. Door of a palace close to the Church of the Miracoli.
_V. Cornices._
Plate X. represents, in one view, the cornices or string-courses of
Venice, and the abaci of its capitals, early and late; these two
features being inseparably connected, as explained in Vol. I.
The evidence given by these mouldings is exceedingly clear. The two
upper lines in the Plate, 1-11, 12-24, are all plinths from Byzantine
buildings. The reader will at once observe their unmistakable
resemblances. The row 41 to 50 are contemporary abaci of capitals; 52,
53, 54, 56, are examples of late Gothic abaci; and observe, especially,
these are all rounded at the _top_ of the cavetto, but the Byzantine
abaci are rounded, if at all, at the _bottom_ of the cavetto (see 7, 8,
9, 10, 20, 28, 46). Consider what a valuable test of date this is, in
any disputable building.
Again, compare 28, 29, one from St. Mark's, the other from the Ducal
Palace, and observe the close resemblance, giving farther evidence of
early date in the palace.
25 and 50 are drawn to the same scale. The former is the wall-cornice,
the latter the abacus of the great shafts, in the Casa Loredan; the one
passing into the other, as seen in Fig. XXVIII. Vol. I. It is curious to
watch the change in proportion, while the moulding, all but the lower
roll, remains the same.
[Illustration: Plate X.
CORNICES AND ABACI.]
The following are the references:
1. Common plinth of St. Mark's.
2. Plinth above lily capitals, St. Mark's.
3, 4. Plinths in early surface Gothic.
5. Plinth of door in Campo St. Luca.
6. Plinth of treasury door, St. Mark's.
7. Archivolts of nave, St. Mark's.
8. Archivolts of treasury door, St. Mark's.
9. Moulding of circular window in St. John and Paul.
10. Chief decorated narrow plinth, St. Mark's.
11. Plinth of door, Campo St. Margherita.
12. Plinth of tomb of Doge Vital Falier.
13. Lower plinth, Fondaco de' Turchi, and Terraced House.
14. Running plinth of Corte del Remer.
15. Highest plinth at top of Fondaco de' Turchi.
16. Common Byzantine plinth.
17. Running plinth of Casa Falier.
18. Plinth of arch at Ponte St. Toma.
19, 20, 21. Plinths of tomb of Doge Vital Falier.
22. Plinth of window in Calle del Pistor.
23. Plinth of tomb of Dogaressa Vital Michele.
24. Archivolt in the Frari.
25. Running plinth, Casa Loredan.
26. Running plinth, under pointed arch, in Salizzada San Lio.
27. Running plinth, Casa Erizzo.
PLATE X. 28. Circles in portico of St. Mark's.
Vol. III. 29. Ducal Palace cornice, lower arcade.
30. Ducal Palace cornice, upper arcade.
31. Central Gothic plinth.
32. Late Gothic plinth.
33. Late Gothic plinth, Casa degli Ambasciatori.
34. Late Gothic plinth, Palace near the Jesuiti.
35, 36. Central balcony cornice.
37. Plinth of St. Mark's balustrade.
38. Cornice of the Frari, in brick, cabled.
39. Central balcony plinth.
40. Uppermost cornice, Ducal Palace.
41. Abacus of lily capitals, St. Mark's.
42. Abacus, Fondaco de' Turchi.
43. Abacus, large capital of Terraced House.
44. Abacus, Fondaco de' Turchi.
45. Abacus, Ducal Palace, upper arcade.
46. Abacus, Corte del Remer.
47. Abacus, small pillars, St. Mark's pulpit.
48. Abacus, Murano and Torcello.
49. Abacus, Casa Farsetti.
50. Abacus, Casa Loredan, lower story.
51. Abacus, capitals of Frari.
52. Abacus, Casa Cavalli (plain).
53. Abacus, Casa Priuli (flowered).
54. Abacus, Casa Foscari (plain).
55. Abacus, Casa Priuli (flowered).
56. Abacus, Plate II. fig. 15.
57. Abacus, St. John and Paul.
58. Abacus, St. Stefano.
It is only farther to be noted, that these mouldings are used in various
proportions, for all kinds of purposes: sometimes for true cornices;
sometimes for window-sills; sometimes, 3 and 4 (in the Gothic time)
especially, for dripstones of gables: 11 and such others form little
plinths or abaci at the spring of arches, such as those shown at _a_,
Fig. XXIII. Vol. II. Finally, a large number of superb Byzantine
cornices occur, of the form shown at the top of the arch in Plate V.
Vol. II., having a profile like 16 or 19 here; with nodding leaves of
acanthus thrown out from it, being, in fact, merely one range of the
leaves of a Byzantine capital unwrapped, and formed into a continuous
line. I had prepared a large mass of materials for the illustration of
these cornices, and the Gothic ones connected with them; but found the
subject would take up another volume, and was forced, for the present,
to abandon it. The lower series of profiles, 7 to 12 in Plate XV. Vol.
I, shows how the leaf-ornament is laid on the simple early cornices.
_VI. Traceries._
We have only one subject more to examine, the character of the early and
late Tracery Bars.
The reader may perhaps have been surprised at the small attention given
to traceries in the course of the preceding volumes: but the reason is,
that there are no _complicated_ traceries at Venice belonging to the
good Gothic time, with the single exception of those of the Casa
Cicogna; and the magnificent arcades of the Ducal Palace Gothic are so
simple as to require little explanation.
There are, however, two curious circumstances in the later traceries;
the first, that they are universally considered by the builder (as the
old Byzantines considered sculptured surfaces of stone) as material out
of which a certain portion is _to be cut_, to fill his window. A fine
Northern Gothic tracery is a complete and systematic arrangement of
arches and foliation, _adjusted_ to the form of the window; but a
Venetian tracery is a piece of a larger composition, cut to the shape of
the window. In the Porta della Carta, in the Church of the Madonna
dell'Orto, in the Casa Bernardo on the Grand Canal, in the old Church of
the Misericordia, and wherever else there are rich traceries in Venice,
it will always be found that a certain arrangement of quatrefoils and
other figures has been planned as if it were to extend indefinitely into
miles of arcade; and out of this colossal piece of marble lace, a piece
in the shape of a window is cut, mercilessly and fearlessly: whatever
fragments and odd shapes of interstice, remnants of this or that figure
of the divided foliation, may occur at the edge of the window, it
matters not; all are cut across, and shut in by the great outer
archivolt.
It is very curious to find the Venetians treating what in other
countries became of so great individual importance, merely as a kind of
diaper ground, like that of their chequered colors on the walls. There
is great grandeur in the idea, though the system of their traceries was
spoilt by it: but they always treated their buildings as masses of color
rather than of line; and the great traceries of the Ducal Palace itself
are not spared any more than those of the minor palaces. They are cut
off at the flanks in the middle of the quatrefoils, and the terminal
mouldings take up part of the breadth of the poor half of a quatrefoil
at the extremity.
One other circumstance is notable also. In good Northern Gothic the
tracery bars are of a constant profile, the same on both sides; and if
the plan of the tracery leaves any interstices so small that there is
not room for the full profile of the tracery bar all round them, those
interstices are entirely closed, the tracery bars being supposed to have
met each other. But in Venice, if an interstice becomes anywhere
inconveniently small, the tracery bar is sacrificed; cut away, or in
some way altered in profile, in order to afford more room for the light,
especially in the early traceries, so that one side of a tracery bar is
often quite different from the other. For instance, in the bars 1 and 2,
Plate XI., from the Frari and St. John and Paul, the uppermost side is
towards a great opening, and there was room for the bevel or slope to
the cusp; but in the other side the opening was too small, and the bar
falls vertically to the cusp. In 5 the uppermost side is to the narrow
aperture, and the lower to the small one; and in fig. 9, from the Casa
Cicogna, the uppermost side is to the apertures of the tracery, the
lowermost to the arches beneath, the great roll following the design of
the tracery; while 13 and 14 are left without the roll at the base of
their cavettos on the uppermost sides, which are turned to narrow
apertures. The earliness of the Casa Cicogna tracery is seen in a moment
by its being moulded on the face only. It is in fact nothing more than a
series of quatrefoiled apertures in the solid wall of the house, with
mouldings on their faces, and magnificent arches of pure pointed fifth
order sustaining them below.
[Illustration: Plate XI.
TRACERY BARS.]
The following are the references to the figures in the plate:
1. Frari.
2. Apse, St. John and Paul.
3. Frari.
4. Ducal Palace, inner court, upper window.
5. Madonna dell'Orto.
6. St. John and Paul.
7. Casa Bernardo.
8. Casa Contarini Fasan.
9. Casa Cicogna.
10. 11. Frari.
12. Murano Palace (see note, p. 265).
PLATE XI. 13. Misericordia.
Vol. III. 14. Palace of the younger Foscari.[70]
15. Casa d'Oro; great single windows.
16. Hotel Danieli.
17. Ducal Palace.
18. Casa Erizzo, on Grand Canal.
19. Main story, Casa Cavalli.
20. Younger Foscari.
21. Ducal Palace, traceried windows.
22. Porta della Carta.
23. Casa d'Oro.
24. Casa d'Oro, upper story.
25. Casa Facanon.
26. Casa Cavalli, near Post-Office.
It will be seen at a glance that, except in the very early fillet
traceries of the Frari and St. John and Paul, Venetian work consists of
roll traceries of one general pattern. It will be seen also, that 10 and
11 from the Frari, furnish the first examples of the form afterwards
completely developed in 17, the tracery bar of the Ducal Palace; but
that this bar differs from them in greater strength and squareness, and
in adding a recess between its smaller roll and the cusp. Observe, that
this is done for strength chiefly; as, in the contemporary tracery (21)
of the upper windows, no such additional thickness is used.
Figure 17 is slightly inaccurate. The little curved recesses behind the
smaller roll are not equal on each side; that next the cusp is smallest,
being about 5/8 of an inch, while that next the cavetto is about 7/8; to
such an extent of subtlety did the old builders carry their love of
change.
The return of the cavetto in 21, 23, and 26, is comparatively rare, and
is generally a sign of later date.
[Illustration: Fig. II.]
[Illustration: Fig. III.]
The reader must observe that the great sturdiness of the form of the
bars, 5, 9, 17, 24, 25, is a consequence of the peculiar office of
Venetian traceries in supporting the mass of the building above, already
noticed in Vol. II.; and indeed the forms of the Venetian Gothic are,
in many other ways, influenced by the difficulty of obtaining stability
on sandy foundations. One thing is especially noticeable in all their
arrangements of traceries; namely, the endeavor to obtain equal and
horizontal pressure along the whole breadth of the building, not the
divided and local pressures of Northern Gothic. This object is
considerably aided by the structure of the balconies, which are of great
service in knitting the shafts together, forming complete tie-beams of
marble, as well as a kind of rivets, at their bases. For instance, at
_b_, Fig. II., is represented the masonry of the base of the upper
arcade of the Ducal Palace, showing the root of one of its main shafts,
with the binding balconies. The solid stones which form the foundation
are much broader than the balcony shafts, so that the socketed
arrangement is not seen: it is shown as it would appear in a
longitudinal section. The balconies are not let into the circular
shafts, but fitted to their circular curves, so as to grasp them, and
riveted with metal; and the bars of stone which form the tops of the
balconies are of great strength and depth, the small trefoiled arches
being cut out of them as in Fig. III., so as hardly to diminish their
binding power. In the lighter independent balconies they are often cut
deeper; but in all cases the bar of stone is nearly independent of the
small shafts placed beneath it, and would stand firm though these were
removed, as at _a_, Fig. II., supported either by the main shafts of
the traceries, or by its own small pilasters with semi-shafts at their
sides, of the plan _d_, Fig. II., in a continuous balcony, and _e_ at
the angle of one.
There is one more very curious circumstance illustrative of the Venetian
desire to obtain horizontal pressure. In all the Gothic staircases with
which I am acquainted, out of Venice, in which vertical shafts are used
to support an inclined line, those shafts are connected by arches rising
each above the other, with a little bracket above the capitals, on the
side where it is necessary to raise the arch; or else, though less
gracefully, with a longer curve to the lowest side of the arch.
But the Venetians seem to have had a morbid horror of arches which were
not _on a level_. They could not endure the appearance of the roof of
one arch bearing against the side of another; and rather than introduce
the idea of obliquity into bearing curves, they abandoned the arch
principle altogether; so that even in their richest Gothic staircases,
where trefoiled arches, exquisitely decorated, are used on the landings,
they ran the shafts on the sloping stair simply into the bar of stone
above them, and used the excessively ugly and valueless arrangement of
Fig. II., rather than sacrifice the sacred horizontality of their arch
system.
[Illustration: Fig. IV.]
It will be noted, in Plate XI., that the form and character of the
tracery bars themselves are independent of the position or projection of
the cusps on their flat sides. In this respect, also, Venetian traceries
are peculiar, the example 22 of the Porta della Carta being the only one
in the plate which is subordinated according to the Northern system. In
every other case the form of the aperture is determined, either by a
flat and solid cusp as in 6, or by a pierced cusp as in 4. The effect of
the pierced cusp is seen in the uppermost figure, Plate XVIII. Vol. II.;
and its derivation from the solid cusp will be understood, at once, from
the woodcut Fig. IV., which represents a series of the flanking stones
of any arch of the fifth order, such as _f_ in Plate III. Vol. I.
[Illustration: Fig. V.]
The first on the left shows the condition of cusp in a perfectly simple
and early Gothic arch, 2 and 3 are those of common arches of the fifth
order, 4 is the condition in more studied examples of the Gothic
advanced guard, and 5 connects them all with the system of traceries.
Introducing the common archivolt mouldings on the projecting edge of 2
and 3, we obtain the bold and deep fifth order window, used down to the
close of the fourteenth century or even later, and always grand in its
depth of cusp, and consequently of shadow; but the narrow cusp 4 occurs
also in very early work, and is piquant when set beneath a bold flat
archivolt, as in Fig. V., from the Corte del Forno at Santa Marina. The
pierced cusp gives a peculiar lightness and brilliancy to the window,
but is not so sublime. In the richer buildings the surface of the flat
and solid cusp is decorated with a shallow trefoil (see Plate VIII. Vol.
I.), or, when the cusp is small, with a triangular incision only, as
seen in figs. 7 and 8, Plate XI. The recesses on the sides of the other
cusps indicate their single or double lines of foliation. The cusp of
the Ducal Palace has a fillet only round its edge, and a ball of red
marble on its truncated point, and is perfect in its grand simplicity;
but in general the cusps of Venice are far inferior to those of Verona
and of the other cities of Italy, chiefly because there was always some
confusion in the mind of the designer between true cusps and the mere
bending inwards of the arch of the fourth order. The two series, 4 _a_
to 4 _e_, and 5 _a_ to 5 _e_, in Plate XIV. Vol. II., are arranged so as
to show this connexion, as well as the varieties of curvature in the
trefoiled arches of the fourth and fifth orders, which, though
apparently slight on so small a scale, are of enormous importance in
distant effect; a house in which the joints of the cusps project as much
as in 5 _c_, being quite piquant and grotesque when compared with one in
which the cusps are subdued to the form 5 _b_. 4 _d_ and 4 _e_ are
Veronese forms, wonderfully effective and spirited; the latter occurs at
Verona only, but the former at Venice also. 5 _d_ occurs in Venice, but
is very rare; and 5 _e_ I found only once, on the narrow canal close to
the entrance door of the Hotel Danieli. It was partly walled up, but I
obtained leave to take down the brickwork and lay open one side of the
arch, which may still be seen.
* * * * *
The above particulars are enough to enable the reader to judge of the
distinctness of evidence which the details of Venetian architecture bear
to its dates. Farther explanation of the plates would be vainly tedious:
but the architect who uses these volumes in Venice will find them of
value, in enabling him instantly to class the mouldings which may
interest him; and for this reason I have given a larger number of
examples than would otherwise have been sufficient for my purpose.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] "Olim _magistri_ prothi palatii nostri novi."--_Cadorin_, p. 127.
[59] A print, dated 1585, barbarously inaccurate, as all prints were
at that time, but still in some respects to be depended upon,
represents all the windows on the façade full of traceries; and the
circles above, between them, occupied by quatrefoils.
[60] "Lata tanto, quantum est ambulum existens super columnis versus
canale respicientibus."
[61] Bettio, p. 28.
[62] In the bombardment of Venice in 1848, hardly a single palace
escaped without three or four balls through its roof: three came
into the Scuola di San Rocco, tearing their way through the pictures
of Tintoret, of which the ragged fragments were still hanging from
the ceiling in 1851; and the shells had reached to within a hundred
yards of St. Mark's Church itself, at the time of the capitulation.
[63] A _Mohammedan_ youth is punished, I believe, for such
misdemeanors, by being _kept away_ from prayers.
[64] "Those Venetians are fishermen."
[65] I am afraid that the kind friend, Lady Trevelyan, who helped me
to finish this plate, will not like to be thanked here; but I cannot
let her send into Devonshire for magnolias, and draw them for me,
_without_ thanking her.
[66] That is, the house in the parish of the Apostoli, on the Grand
Canal, noticed in Vol. II.; and see also the Venetian Index, under
head "Apostoli."
[67] Close to the bridge over the main channel through Murano is a
massive foursquare Gothic palace, containing some curious traceries,
and many _unique_ transitional forms of window, among which these
windows of the fourth order occur, with a roll within their dentil
band.
[68] Thus, for the sake of convenience, we may generally call the
palace with the emblems of the Evangelists on its spandrils, Vol.
II.
[69] The house with chequers like a chess-board on its spandrils,
given in my folio work.
[70] The palace next the Casa Foscari, on the Grand Canal, sometimes
said to have belonged to the son of the Doge.
INDICES.
I. PERSONAL INDEX. | III. TOPICAL INDEX.
II. LOCAL INDEX. | IV. VENETIAN INDEX.
The first of the following Indices contains the names of persons; the
second those of places (not in Venice) alluded to in the body of the
work. The third Index consists of references to the subjects touched
upon. In the fourth, called the Venetian Index, I have named every
building of importance in the city of Venice itself, or near it;
supplying, for the convenience of the traveller, short notices of those
to which I had no occasion to allude in the text of the work; and making
the whole as complete a guide as I could, with such added directions as
I should have given to any private friend visiting the city. As,
however, in many cases, the opinions I have expressed differ widely from
those usually received; and, in other instances, subjects which may be
of much interest to the traveller have not come within the scope of my
inquiry; the reader had better take Lazari's small Guide in his hand
also, as he will find in it both the information I have been unable to
furnish, and the expression of most of the received opinions upon any
subject of art.
Various inconsistencies will be noticed in the manner of indicating the
buildings, some being named in Italian, some in English, and some half
in one, and half in the other. But these inconsistencies are permitted
in order to save trouble, and make the Index more practically useful.
For instance, I believe the traveller will generally look for "Mark,"
rather than for "Marco," when he wishes to find the reference to St.
Mark's Church; but I think he will look for Rocco, rather than for Roch,
when he is seeking for the account of the Scuola di San Rocco. So also I
have altered the character in which the titles of the plates are
printed, from the black letter in the first volume, to the plain Roman
in the second and third; finding experimentally that the former
character was not easily legible, and conceiving that the book would be
none the worse for this practical illustration of its own principles, in
a daring sacrifice of symmetry to convenience.
These alphabetical Indices will, however, be of little use, unless
another, and a very different kind of Index, be arranged in the mind of
the reader; an Index explanatory of the principal purposes and contents
of the various parts of this essay. It is difficult to analyze the
nature of the reluctance with which either a writer or painter takes it
upon him to explain the meaning of his own work, even in cases where,
without such explanation, it must in a measure remain always disputable:
but I am persuaded that this reluctance is, in most instances, carried
too far; and that, wherever there really is a serious purpose in a book
or a picture, the author does wrong who, either in modesty or vanity
(both feelings have their share in producing the dislike of personal
interpretation), trusts entirely to the patience and intelligence of the
readers or spectators to penetrate into their significance. At all
events, I will, as far as possible, spare such trouble with respect to
these volumes, by stating here, finally and clearly, both what they
intend and what they contain; and this the rather because I have lately
noticed, with some surprise, certain reviewers announcing as a
discovery, what I thought had lain palpably on the surface of the book,
namely, that "if Mr. Ruskin be right, all the architects, and all the
architectural teaching of the last three hundred years, must have been
wrong." That is indeed precisely the fact; and the very thing I meant to
say, which indeed I thought I had said over and over again. I believe
the architects of the last three centuries to have been wrong; wrong
without exception; wrong totally, and from the foundation. This is
exactly the point I have been endeavoring to prove, from the beginning
of this work to the end of it. But as it seems not yet to have been
stated clearly enough, I will here try to put my entire theorem into an
unmistakable form.
The various nations who attained eminence in the arts before the time of
Christ, each of them, produced forms of architecture which in their
various degrees of merit were almost exactly indicative of the degrees
of intellectual and moral energy of the nations which originated them;
and each reached its greatest perfection at the time when the true
energy and prosperity of the people who had invented it were at their
culminating point. Many of these various styles of architecture were
good, considered in relation to the times and races which gave birth to
them; but none were absolutely good or perfect, or fitted for the
practice of all future time.
The advent of Christianity for the first time rendered possible the full
development of the soul of man, and therefore the full development of
the arts of man.
Christianity gave birth to a new architecture, not only immeasurably
superior to all that had preceded it, but demonstrably the best
architecture that _can_ exist; perfect in construction and decoration,
and fit for the practice of all time.
This architecture, commonly called "Gothic," though in conception
perfect, like the theory of a Christian character, never reached an
actual perfection, having been retarded and corrupted by various adverse
influences; but it reached its highest perfection, hitherto manifested,
about the close of the thirteenth century, being then indicative of a
peculiar energy in the Christian mind of Europe.
In the course of the fifteenth century, owing to various causes which I
have endeavored to trace in the preceding pages, the Christianity of
Europe was undermined; and a Pagan architecture was introduced, in
imitation of that of the Greeks and Romans.
The architecture of the Greeks and Romans themselves was not good, but
it was natural; and, as I said before, good in some respects, and for a
particular time.
But the imitative architecture introduced first in the fifteenth
century, and practised ever since, was neither good nor natural. It was
good in no respect, and for no time. All the architects who have built
in that style have built what was worthless; and therefore the greater
part of the architecture which has been built for the last three hundred
years, and which we are now building, is worthless. We must give up this
style totally, despise it and forget it, and build henceforward only in
that perfect and Christian style hitherto called Gothic, which is
everlastingly the best.
This is the theorem of these volumes.
In support of this theorem, the first volume contains, in its first
chapter, a sketch of the actual history of Christian architecture, up to
the period of the Reformation; and, in the subsequent chapters, an
analysis of the entire system of the laws of architectural construction
and decoration, deducing from those laws positive conclusions as to the
best forms and manners of building for all time.
The second volume contains, in its first five chapters, an account of
one of the most important and least known forms of Christian
architecture, as exhibited in Venice, together with an analysis of its
nature in the fourth chapter; and, which is a peculiarly important part
of this section, an account of the power of color over the human mind.
The sixth chapter of the second volume contains an analysis of the
nature of Gothic architecture, properly so called, and shows that in its
external form it complies precisely with the abstract laws of structure
and beauty, investigated in the first volume. The seventh and eighth
chapters of the second volume illustrate the nature of Gothic
architecture by various Venetian examples. The third volume
investigates, in its first chapter, the causes and manner of the
corruption of Gothic architecture; in its second chapter, defines the
nature of the Pagan architecture which superseded it; in the third
chapter, shows the connexion of that Pagan architecture with the various
characters of mind which brought about the destruction of the Venetian
nation; and, in the fourth chapter, points out the dangerous tendencies
in the modern mind which the practice of such an architecture indicates.
Such is the intention of the preceding pages, which I hope will no more
be doubted or mistaken. As far as regards the manner of its fulfilment,
though I hope, in the course of other inquiries, to add much to the
elucidation of the points in dispute, I cannot feel it necessary to
apologize for the imperfect handling of a subject which the labor of a
long life, had I been able to bestow it, must still have left
imperfectly treated.
I.
PERSONAL INDEX.
A
Alberti, Duccio degli, his tomb, iii. 74, 80.
Alexander III., his defence by Venetians, i. 7.
Ambrose, St., his verbal subtleties, ii. 320.
Angelico, Frà, artistical power of, i. 400; his influence on
Protestants, ii. 105; his coloring, ii. 145.
Aristotle, his evil influence on the modern mind, ii. 319.
Averulinus, his book on architecture, iii. 63.
B
Barbaro, monuments of the family, iii. 125.
Barbarossa, Emperor, i. 7, 9.
Baseggio, Pietro, iii. 199.
Bellini, John, i. 11; his kindness to Albert Durer, i. 383; general
power of, see Venetian Index, under head "Giovanni Grisostomo;"
Gentile, his brother, iii. 21.
Berti, Bellincion, ii. 263.
Browning, Elizabeth B., her poetry, ii. 206.
Bunsen, Chevalier, his work on Romanesque Churches, ii. 381.
Bunyan, John, his portraiture of constancy, ii. 333; of patience, ii.
334; of vanity, ii. 346; of sin, iii. 147.
C
Calendario, Filippo, iii. 199.
Canaletto, i. 24; and see Venetian Index under head "Carità."
Canova, i. 217; and see Venetian Index under head "Frari."
Cappello, Vincenzo, his tomb, iii. 122.
Caracci, school of the, i. 24.
Cary, his translation of Dante, ii. 264.
Cavalli, Jacopo, his tomb, iii. 82.
Cicero, influence of his philosophy, ii. 317, 318.
Claude Lorraine, i. 24.
Comnenus, Manuel, ii. 263.
Cornaro, Marco, his tomb, iii. 79.
Correggio, ii. 192.
Crabbe, naturalism in his poetry, ii. 195.
D
Dandolo, Andrea, tomb of, ii. 70; Francesco, tomb of, iii. 74;
character of, iii. 76; Simon, tomb of, iii. 79.
Dante, his central position, ii. 340, iii. 158; his system of virtue,
ii. 323; his portraiture of sin, iii. 147.
Daru, his character as a historian, iii. 213.
Dolci, Carlo, ii. 105.
Dolfino, Giovanni, tomb of, iii. 78.
Durer, Albert, his rank as a landscape painter, i. 383; his power in
grotesque, iii. 145.
E
Edwin, King, his conversion, iii. 62.
F
Faliero, Bertuccio, his tomb, iii. 94; Marino, his house, ii. 254;
Vitale, miracle in his time, ii. 61.
Fergusson, James, his system of beauty, i. 388.
Foscari, Francesco, his reign, i. 4, iii. 165; his tomb, iii. 84; his
countenance, iii. 86.
G
Garbett, answer to Mr., i. 403.
Ghiberti, his sculpture, i. 217.
Giotto, his system of the virtues, ii. 323, 329, 341; his rank as a
painter, ii. 188, iii. 172.
Giulio Romano, i. 23.
Giustiniani, Marco, his tomb, i. 315; Sebastian, ambassador to
England, iii. 224.
Godfrey of Bouillon, his piety, iii. 62.
Gozzoli, Benozzo, ii. 195.
Gradenigo, Pietro, ii. 290.
Grande, Can, della Scala, his tomb, i. 268 (the cornice _g_ in Plate
XVI. is taken from it), iii. 71.
Guariento, his Paradise, ii. 296.
Guercino, ii. 105.
H
Hamilton, Colonel, his paper on the Serapeum, ii. 220.
Hobbima, iii. 184.
Hunt, William, his painting of peasant boys, ii. 192; of still life,
ii. 394.
Hunt, William Holman, relation of his works to modern and ancient
art, iii. 185.
K
Knight, Gally, his work on Architecture, i. 378.
L
Leonardo da Vinci, ii. 171.
Louis XI., iii. 194.
M
Martin, John, ii. 104.
Mastino, Can, della Scala, his tomb, ii. 224, iii. 72.
Maynard, Miss, her poems, ii. 397.
Michael Angelo, ii. 134, 188, iii. 56, 90, 99, 158.
Millais, John E., relation of his works to older art, iii. 185;
aerial perspective in his "Huguenot," iii. 47.
Milton, how inferior to Dante, iii. 147.
Mocenigo, Tomaso, his character, i. 4; his speech on rebuilding the
Ducal Palace, ii. 299; his tomb, i. 26, iii. 84.
Morosini, Carlo, Count, note on Daru's History by, iii. 213.
Morosini, Marino, his tomb, iii. 93.
Morosini, Michael, his character, iii. 213;
his tomb, iii. 80.
Murillo, his sensualism, ii. 192.
N
Napoleon, his genius in civil administration, i. 399.
Niccolo Pisano, i. 215.
O
Orcagna, his system of the virtues, ii. 329.
Orseolo, Pietro (Doge), iii. 120.
Otho the Great, his vow at Murano, ii. 32.
P
Palladio, i. 24, 146; and see Venetian Index, under head "Giorgio
Maggiore."
Participazio, Angelo, founds the Ducal Palace, ii. 287.
Pesaro, Giovanni, tomb of, iii. 92; Jacopo, tomb of, iii. 91.
Philippe de Commynes, i. 12.
Plato, influence of his philosophy, ii. 317, 338; his playfulness,
iii. 127.
Poussin, Nicolo and Gaspar, i. 23.
Procaccini, Camillo, ii. 188.
Prout, Samuel, his style, i. 250, iii. 19, 134.
Pugin, Welby, his rank as an architect, i. 385.
Q
Querini, Marco, his palace, ii. 255.
R
Raffaelle, ii. 188, iii. 56, 108, 136.
Reynolds, Sir J., his painting at New College, ii. 323; his general
manner, iii. 184.
Rogers, Samuel, his works, ii. 195, iii. 113.
Rubens, intellectual rank of, i. 400;
coarseness of, ii. 145.
S
Salvator Rosa, i. 24, ii. 105, 145, 188.
Scaligeri, tombs of, at Verona; see "Grande," "Mastino," "Signorio;"
palace of, ii. 257.
Scott, Sir W., his feelings of romance, iii. 191.
Shakspeare, his "Seven Ages," whence derived, ii. 361.
Sharpe, Edmund, his works, i. 342, 408.
Signorio, Can, della Scala, his tomb, character, i. 268, iii. 73.
Simplicius, St., ii. 356.
Spenser, value of his philosophy, ii. 327, 341; his personifications
of the months, ii. 272; his system of the virtues, ii. 326; scheme of
the first book of the Faërie Queen, iii. 205.
Steno, Michael, ii. 306; his tomb, ii. 296.
Stothard (the painter), his works, ii. 187, 195.
Symmachus, St., ii. 357.
T
Teniers, David, ii. 188.
Tiepolo, Jacopo and Lorenzo, their tombs, iii. 69; Bajamonte, ii.
255.
Tintoret, i. 12; his genius and function, ii. 149; his Paradise, ii.
304, 372; his rank among the men of Italy, iii. 158.
Titian, i. 12; his function and fall, ii. 149, 187.
Turner, his rank as a landscape painter, i. 382, ii. 187.
U
Uguccione, Benedetto, destroys Giotto's façade at Florence, i. 197.
V
Vendramin, Andrea (Doge), his tomb, i. 27, iii. 88.
Verocchio, Andrea, iii. 11, 13.
Veronese, Paul, artistical rank of, i. 400; his designs of
balustrades, ii. 247; and see in Venetian Index, "Ducal Palace,"
"Pisani," "Sebastian," "Redentore," "Accademia."
W
West, Benjamin, ii. 104.
Wordsworth, his observation of nature, i. 247 (note).
Z
Zeno, Carlo, i. 4, iii. 80.
Ziani, Sebastian (Doge), builds Ducal Palace, ii. 289.
II.
LOCAL INDEX.
A
Abbeville, door of church at, ii. 225; parapet at, ii. 245.
Alexandria, Church at, i. 381.
Alhambra, ornamentation of, i. 429.
Alps, how formed for distant effect, i. 247; how seen from Venice,
ii. 2, 28.
Amiens, pillars of Cathedral at, i. 102.
Arqua, hills of, how seen from Venice, ii. 2.
Assisi, Giotto's paintings at, ii. 323.
B
Beauvais, piers of Cathedral at, i. 93; grandeur of its buttress
structure, i. 170.
Bergamo, Duomo at, i. 275.
Bologna, Palazzo Pepoli at, i. 275.
Bourges, Cathedral at, i. 43, 102, 228, 271, 299; ii. 92, 186; house
of Jacques Coeur at, i. 346.
C
Chamouni, glacier forms at, i. 222.
Como, Broletto of, i. 141, 339.
D
Dijon, pillars in Church of Notre Dame at, i. 102; tombs of Dukes of
Burgundy, iii. 68.
E
Edinburgh, college at, i. 207.
F
Falaise (St. Gervaise at), piers of, i. 103.
Florence, Cathedral of, i. 197, iii. 13.
G
Gloucester, Cathedral of, i. 192.
L
Lombardy, geology of, ii. 5.
London, Church in Margaret Street, Portland Place, iii. 196; Temple
Church, i. 412; capitals in Belgrave and Grosvenor Squares, i. 330;
Bank of England, base of, i. 283; wall of, typical of accounts, i.
295; statue in King William Street, i. 210; shops in Oxford Street,
i. 202; Arthur Club-house, i. 295; Athenæum Club-house, i. 157, 283;
Duke of York's Pillar, i. 283; Treasury, i. 205; Whitehall, i. 205;
Westminster, fall of houses at, ii. 268; Monument, i. 82, 283; Nelson
Pillar, i. 216; Wellington Statue, i. 257.
Lucca, Cathedral of, ii. 275; San Michele at, i. 375.
Lyons, porch of cathedral at, i. 379.
M
Matterhorn (Mont Cervin), structure of, i. 58; lines of, applied to
architecture, i. 308, 310, 332.
Mestre, scene in street of, i. 355.
Milan, St. Ambrogio, piers of, i. 102; capital of, i. 324; St.
Eustachio, tomb of St. Peter Martyr, i. 218.
Moulins, brickwork at, i. 296.
Murano, general aspect of, ii. 29; Duomo of, ii. 32; balustrades of,
ii. 247; inscriptions at, ii. 384.
N
Nineveh, style of its decorations, i. 234, 239; iii. 159.
O
Orange (South France), arch at, i. 250.
Orleans, Cathedral of, i. 95.
P
Padua, Arena chapel at, ii. 324; St. Antonio at, i. 135; St. Sofia
at, i. 327; Eremitani, Church of, at, i. 135.
Paris, Hotel des Invalides, i. 214; Arc de l'Etoile, i. 291; Colonne
Vendome, i. 212.
Pavia, St. Michele at, piers of, i. 102, 337; ornaments of, i. 376.
Pisa, Baptistery of, ii. 275.
Pistoja, San Pietro at, i. 295.
R
Ravenna, situation of, ii. 6.
Rouen, Cathedral, piers of, i. 103, 153; pinnacles of, ii. 213; St.
Maclou at, sculptures of, ii. 197.
S
Salisbury Cathedral, piers of, i. 102; windows at, ii. 224.
Sens, Cathedral of, i. 135.
Switzerland, cottage architecture of, i. 156, 203, iii. 133.
V
Verona, San Fermo at, i. 136, ii. 259; Sta. Anastasia at, i. 142;
Duomo of, i. 373; St. Zeno at, i. 373; balconies at, ii. 247;
archivolt at, i. 335; tombs at, see in Personal Index, "Grande,"
"Mastino," "Signorio."
Vevay, architecture of, i. 136.
Vienne (South France), Cathedral of, i. 274.
W
Warwick, Guy's tower at, i. 168.
Wenlock (Shropshire), Abbey of, i. 270.
Winchester, Cathedral of, i. 192.
Y
York, Minster of, i. 205, 313.
III.
TOPICAL INDEX.
A
Abacus, defined, i. 107; law of its proportion, i. 111-115; its
connection with cornices, i. 116; its various profiles, i. 319-323;
iii. 243-248.
Acanthus, leaf of, its use in architecture, i. 233; how treated at
Torcello, ii. 15.
Alabaster, use of, in incrustation, ii. 86.
Anachronism, necessity of, in the best art, ii. 198.
Anatomy, a disadvantageous study for artists, iii. 47.
Angels, use of their images in Venetian heraldry, ii. 278; statues
of, on the Ducal Palace, ii. 311.
Anger, how symbolically represented, ii. 344.
Angles, decoration of, i. 260; ii. 305; of Gothic Palaces, ii. 238;
of Ducal Palace, ii. 307.
Animal character in northern and southern climates, ii. 156; in
grotesque art, iii. 149.
Apertures, analysis of their structure, i. 50; general forms of, i.
174.
Apse, forms of, in southern and northern churches compared, i. 170.
Arabesques of Raffaelle, their baseness, iii. 136.
Arabian architecture, i. 18, 234, 235, 429; ii. 135.
Arches, general structure of, i. 122; moral characters of, i. 126;
lancet, round, and depressed, i. 129; four-centred, i. 130; ogee, i.
131; non-concentric, i. 133, 341; masonry of, i. 133, ii. 218; load
of, i. 144; are not derived from vegetation, ii. 201.
Architects, modern, their unfortunate position, i. 404, 407.
Architecture, general view of its divisions, i. 47-51; how to judge
of it, ii. 173; adaptation of, to requirements of human mind, iii.
192; richness of early domestic, ii. 100, iii. 2; manner of its
debasement in general, iii. 3.
Archivolts, decoration of, i. 334; general families of, i. 335; of
Murano, ii. 49; of St. Mark's, ii. 95; in London, ii. 97; Byzantine,
ii. 138; profiles of, iii. 244.
Arts, relative dignity of, i. 395; how represented in Venetian
sculpture, ii. 355; what relation exists between them and their
materials, ii. 394; art divided into the art of facts, of design, and
of both, ii. 183; into purist, naturalist, and sensualist, ii. 187;
art opposed to inspiration, iii. 151; defined, iii. 170;
distinguished from science, iii. 35; how to enjoy that of the
ancients, iii. 188.
Aspiration, not the primal motive of Gothic work, i. 151.
Astrology, judicial, representation of its doctrines in Venetian
sculpture, ii. 352.
Austrian government in Italy, iii. 209.
Avarice, how represented figuratively, ii. 344.
B
Backgrounds, diapered, iii. 20.
Balconies, of Venice, ii. 243; general treatment of, iii. 254; of
iron, ii. 247.
Ballflower, its use in ornamentation, i. 279.
Balustrades. See "Balconies."
Bases, general account of, iii. 225; of walls, i. 55; of piers, i.
73; of shafts, i. 84; decoration of, i. 281; faults of Gothic
profiles of, i. 285; spurs of, i. 286; beauty of, in St. Mark's, i.
290; Lombardie, i. 292; ought not to be richly decorated, i. 292;
general effect of, ii. 387.
Battlements, i. 162; abuse of, in ornamentation, i. 219.
Beauty and ornament, relation of the terms, i. 404.
Bellstones of capitals defined, i. 108.
Birds, use of in ornamentation, i. 234, ii. 140.
Bishops, their ancient authority, ii. 25.
Body, its relation to the soul, i. 41, 395.
Brackets, division of, i. 161; ridiculous forms of, i. 161.
Breadth in Byzantine design, ii. 133.
Brickwork, ornamental, i. 296; in general, ii. 241, 260, 261.
Brides of Venice, legend of the, iii. 113, 116.
Buttresses, general structure of, i. 166; flying, i. 192; supposed
sanctity of, i. 173.
Bull, symbolical use of, in representing rivers, i. 418, 421, 424.
Byzantine style, analysis of, ii. 75; ecclesiastical fitness of, ii.
97; centralization in, ii. 236; palaces built in, ii. 118; sculptures
in, ii. 137, 140.
C
Candlemas, ancient symbols of, ii. 272.
Capitals, general structure of, i. 105; bells of, i. 107; just
proportions of, i. 114; various families of, i. 13, 65, 324, ii. 129,
iii. 231; are necessary to shafts in good architecture, i. 119;
Byzantine, ii. 131, iii. 231; Lily, of St. Mark's, ii. 137; of
Solomon's temple, ii. 137.
Care, how symbolized, ii. 348. See "Sorrow."
Caryatides, i. 302.
Castles, English, entrances of, i. 177.
Cathedrals, English, effect of, ii. 63.
Ceilings, old Venetian, ii. 280.
Centralization in design, ii. 237.
Chalet of Switzerland, its character, i. 203.
Chamfer defined, i. 263; varieties of, i. 262, 429.
Changefulness, an element of Gothic, ii. 172.
Charity, how symbolized, ii. 327, 339.
Chartreuse, Grande, morbid life in, iii. 190.
Chastity, how symbolized, ii. 328.
Cheerfulness, how symbolized, ii. 326, 348; virtue of, ii. 326.
Cherries, cultivation of, at Venice, ii. 361.
Christianity, how mingled with worldliness, iii. 109; how imperfectly
understood, iii. 168; influence of, in liberating workmen, ii. 159,
i. 243; influence of, on forms, i. 99.
Churches, wooden, of the North, i. 381; considered as ships, ii. 25;
decoration of, how far allowable, ii. 102.
Civilization, progress of, iii. 168; twofold danger of, iii. 169.
Classical literature, its effect on the modern mind, iii. 12.
Climate, its influence on architecture, i. 151, ii. 155, 203.
Color, its importance in early work, ii. 38, 40, 78, 91; its
spirituality, ii. 145, 396; its relation to music, iii. 186;
quartering of, iii. 20; how excusing realization, iii. 186.
Commerce, how regarded by Venetians, i. 6.
Composition, definition of the term, ii. 182.
Constancy, how symbolized, ii. 333.
Construction, architectural, how admirable, i. 36.
Convenience, how consulted by Gothic architecture, ii. 179.
Cornices, general divisions of, i. 63, iii. 248; of walls, i. 60; of
roofs, i. 149; ornamentation of, i. 305; curvatures of, i. 310;
military, i. 160; Greek, i. 157.
Courses in walls, i. 60.
Crockets, their use in ornamentation, i. 346; their abuse at Venice,
iii. 109.
Crosses, Byzantine, ii. 139.
Crusaders, character of the, ii. 263.
Crystals, architectural appliance of, i. 225.
Cupid, representation of, in early and later art, ii. 342.
Curvature, on what its beauty depends, i. 222, iii. 5.
Cusps, definition of, i. 135; groups of, i. 138; relation of, to
vegetation, ii. 219; general treatment of, iii. 255; earliest
occurrence of, ii. 220.
D
Daguerreotype, probable results of, iii. 169.
Darkness, a character of early churches, ii. 18; not an abstract
evil, iii. 220.
Death, fear of, in Renaissance times, iii. 65, 90, 92; how anciently
regarded, iii. 139, 156.
Decoration, true nature of, i. 405; how to judge of, i. 44, 45. See
"Ornament."
Demons, nature of, how illustrated by Milton and Dante, iii. 147.
Dentil, Venetian, defined, i. 273, 275.
Design, definition of the term, ii. 183; its relations to naturalism,
ii. 184.
Despair, how symbolized, ii. 334.
Diaper patterns in brick, i. 296; in color, iii. 21, 22.
Discord, how symbolized, ii. 333.
Discs, decoration by means of, i. 240, 416; ii. 147, 264.
Division of labor, evils of, ii. 165.
Doge of Venice, his power, i. 3, 360.
Dogtooth moulding defined, i. 269.
Dolphins, moral disposition of, i. 230; use of, in symbolic
representation of sea, i. 422, 423.
Domestic architecture, richness of, in middle ages, ii. 99.
Doors, general structure of, i. 174, 176; smallness of in English
cathedrals, i. 176; ancient Venetian, ii. 277, iii. 227.
Doric architecture, i. 157, 301, 307; Christian Doric, i. 308, 315.
Dragon, conquered by St. Donatus, ii. 33; use of, in ornamentation,
ii. 219.
Dreams, how resembled by the highest arts, iii. 153; prophetic, in
relation to the Grotesque, iii. 156.
Dress, its use in ornamentation, i. 212; early Venetian, ii. 383;
dignity of, iii. 191; changes in modern dress, iii. 192.
Duties of buildings, i. 47.
E
Earthquake of 1511, ii. 242.
Eastern races, their power over color, ii. 147.
Eaves, construction of, i. 156.
Ecclesiastical architecture in Venice, i. 20; no architecture
exclusively ecclesiastical, ii. 99.
Edge decoration, i. 268.
Education, University, i. 391; iii. 110; evils of, with respect to
architectural workmen, ii. 107; how to be successfully undertaken,
ii. 165, 214; modern education in general, how mistaken, iii. 110,
234; system of, in Plato, ii. 318; of Persian kings, ii. 318; not to
be mistaken for erudition, iii. 219; ought to be universal, iii. 220.
Egg and arrow mouldings, i. 314.
Egyptian architecture, i. 99, 239; ii. 203.
Elgin marbles, ii. 171.
Encrusted architecture, i. 271, 272; general analysis of, ii. 76.
Energy of Northern Gothic, i. 371; ii. 16, 204.
English (early) capitals, faults of, i. 100, 411; English mind, its
mistaken demands of perfection, ii. 160.
Envy, how set forth, ii. 346.
Evangelists, types of, how explicable, iii. 155.
F
Faërie Queen, Spenser's, value of, theologically, ii. 328.
Faith, influence of on art, ii. 104, 105; Titian's picture of, i. 11;
how symbolized, ii. 337.
Falsehood, how symbolized, ii. 349.
Fatalism, how expressed in Eastern architecture, ii. 205.
Fear, effect of, on human life, iii. 137; on Grotesque art, iii. 142.
Feudalism, healthy effects of, i. 184.
Fig-tree, sculpture of, on Ducal Palace, ii. 307.
Fillet, use of, in ornamentation, i. 267.
Finials, their use in ornamentation, i. 346; a sign of decline in
Venetian architecture, iii. 109.
Finish in workmanship, when to be required, ii. 165; dangers of, iii.
170, ii. 162.
Fir, spruce, influence of, on architecture, i. 152.
Fire, forms of, in ornamentation, i. 228.
Fish, use of, in ornamentation, i. 229.
Flamboyant Gothic, i. 278, ii. 225.
Flattery, common in Renaissance times, iii. 64.
Flowers, representation of, how desirable, i. 340; how represented in
mosaic, iii. 179.
Fluting of columns, a mistake, i. 301.
Foils, definition of, ii. 221.
Foliage, how carved in declining periods, iii. 8, 17. See "Vegetation."
Foliation defined, ii. 219; essential to Gothic architecture, ii. 222.
Folly, how symbolized, ii. 325, 348.
Form of Gothic, defined, ii. 209.
Fortitude, how symbolized, ii. 337.
Fountains, symbolic representations of, i. 427.
French architecture, compared with Italian, ii. 226.
Frivolity, how exhibited in Grotesque art, iii. 143.
Fruit, its use in ornamentation, i. 232.
G
Gable, general structure of, i. 124; essential to Gothic, ii. 210, 217.
Gardens, Italian, iii. 136.
Generalization, abuses of, iii. 176.
Geology of Lombardy, ii. 5.
Glass, its capacities in architecture, i. 409; manufacture of, ii.
166; true principles of working in, ii. 168, 395.
Gluttony, how symbolized, ii. 343.
Goldsmiths' work, a high form of art, ii. 166.
Gondola, management of, ii. 375.
Gothic architecture, analysis of, ii. 151; not derived from vegetable
structure, i. 121; convenience of, ii. 178; divisions of, ii. 215;
surface and linear, ii. 226; Italian and French, ii. 226; flamboyant,
i. 278, ii. 225; perpendicular, i. 192, ii. 223, 227; early English,
i. 109; how to judge of it, ii. 228; how fitted for domestic
purposes, ii. 269, iii. 195; how first corrupted, iii. 3; how to be
at present built, iii. 196; early Venetian, ii. 248; ecclesiastical
Venetian, i. 21; central Venetian, ii. 231; how adorned by color in
Venice, iii. 23.
Government of Venice, i. 2, ii. 366.
Grammar, results of too great study of it, iii. 55, 106.
Greek architecture, general character of, i. 240, ii. 215, iii. 159.
Grief. See "Sorrow."
Griffins, Lombardic, i. 292, 387.
Grotesque, analysis of, iii. 132; in changes of form, i. 317; in
Venetian painting, iii. 162; symbolical, iii. 155; its character in
Renaissance work, iii. 113, 121, 136, 143.
Gutters of roofs, i. 151.
H
Heathenism, typified in ornament, i. 317. See "Paganism."
Heaven and Hell, proofs of their existence in natural phenomena, iii.
138.
History, how to be written and read, iii. 224.
Hobbima, iii. 184.
Honesty, how symbolized, ii. 349.
Hope, how symbolized, ii. 341.
Horseshoe arches, i. 129, ii. 249, 250.
Humanity, spiritual nature of, i. 41; divisions of, with respect to
art, i. 394.
Humility, how symbolized, ii. 339.
I
Idleness, how symbolized, ii. 345.
Idolatry, proper sense of the term, ii. 388; is no encourager of art,
ii. 110. See "Popery."
Imagination, its relation to art, iii. 182.
Imitation of precious stones, &c., how reprehensible, iii. 26, 30.
Imposts, continuous, i. 120.
Infidelity, how symbolized, ii. 335; an element of the Renaissance
spirit, iii. 100.
Injustice, how symbolized, ii. 349.
Inlaid ornamentation, i. 369; perfection of, in early Renaissance,
iii. 26.
Inscriptions at Murano, ii. 47, 54; use of, in early times, ii. 111.
Insects, use of, in ornamentation, i. 230.
Inspiration, how opposed to art, iii. 151, 171.
Instinct, its dignity, iii. 171.
Intellect, how variable in dignity, iii. 173.
Involution, delightfulness of, in ornament, ii. 136.
Iron, its use in architecture, i. 184, 410.
Italians, modern character of, iii. 209.
Italy, how ravaged by recent war, iii. 209.
J
Jambs, Gothic, iii. 137.
Jesting, evils of, iii. 129.
Jesuits, their restricted power in Venice, i. 366.
Jewels, their cutting, a bad employment, ii. 166.
Judgments, instinctive, i. 399.
Job, book of, its purpose, iii. 53.
K
Keystones, how mismanaged in Renaissance work. See Venetian Index,
under head "Libreria."
Knowledge, its evil consequences, iii. 40; how to be received, iii.
50, &c. See "Education."
L
Labor, manual, ornamental value of, i. 407; evils of its division,
ii. 165; is not a degradation, ii. 168.
Labyrinth, in Venetian streets, its clue, ii. 254.
Lagoons, Venetian, nature of, ii. 7, 8.
Landscape, lower schools of, i. 24; Venetian, ii. 149; modern love
of, ii. 175, iii. 123.
Laws of right in architecture, i. 32; laws in general, how
permissibly violated, i. 255, ii. 210; their position with respect to
art, iii. 96; and to religion, iii. 205.
Leaves, use of, in ornamentation, i. 232 (see "Vegetation");
proportion of, ii. 128.
Liberality, how symbolized, ii. 333.
Life in Byzantine architecture, ii. 133.
Lilies, beautiful proportions of, ii. 128; used for parapet
ornaments, ii. 242; lily capitals, ii. 137.
Limitation of ornament, i. 254.
Lines, abstract use of, in ornament, i. 221.
Lintel, its structure, i. 124, 126.
Lion, on piazzetta shafts, iii. 238.
Load, of arches, i. 133.
Logic, a contemptible science, iii. 105.
Lombardic architecture, i. 17.
Lotus leaf, its use in architecture, i. 233.
Love, its power over human life, iii. 137.
Lusts, their power over human nature, how symbolized by Spenser, ii.
328.
Luxury, how symbolized, ii. 342; how traceable in ornament, iii. 4;
of Renaissance schools, iii. 61.
M
Madonna, Byzantine representations of, ii. 53.
Magnitude, vulgar admiration of, iii. 64.
Malmsey, use of, in Feast of the Maries, iii. 117.
Marble, its uses, iii. 27.
Maries, Feast of the, iii. 117.
Mariolatry, ancient and modern, ii. 55.
Marriages of Venetians, iii. 116.
Masonry, Mont-Cenisian, i. 132; of walls, i. 61; of arches, i. 133.
Materials, invention of new, how injurious to art, iii. 42.
Misery, how symbolized, ii. 347.
Modesty, how symbolized, ii. 335.
Monotony, its place in art, ii. 176.
Months, personifications of, in ancient art, ii. 272.
Moroseness, its guilt, iii. 130.
Mosaics at Torcello, ii. 18, 19; at St. Mark's, ii. 70, 112; early
character of, ii. 110, iii. 175, 178.
Music, its relation to color, iii. 186.
Mythology of Venetian painters, ii. 150; ancient, how injurious to
the Christian mind, iii. 107.
N
Natural history, how necessary a study, iii. 54.
Naturalism, general analysis of it with respect to art, ii. 181, 190;
its advance in Gothic art, iii. 6; not to be found in the encrusted
style, ii. 89; its presence in the noble Grotesque, iii. 144.
Nature (in the sense of material universe) not improvable by art, i.
350; its relation to architecture, i. 351.
Niches, use of, in Northern Gothic, i. 278; in Venetian, ii. 240; in
French and Veronese, ii. 227.
Norman hatchet-work, i. 297; zigzag, i. 339.
Novelty, its necessity to the human mind, ii. 176.
O
Oak-tree, how represented in symbolical art, iii. 185.
Obedience, how symbolized, ii. 334.
Oligarchical government, its effect on the Venetians, i. 5.
Olive-tree, neglect of, by artists, iii. 175; general expression of,
iii. 176, 177; representations of, in mosaic, iii. 178.
Order, uses and disadvantages of, ii. 172.
Orders, Doric and Corinthian, i. 13; ridiculous divisions of, i. 157,
370; ii. 173, 249; iii. 99.
Ornament, material of, i. 211; the best, expresses man's delight in
God's work, i. 220; not in his own, i. 211; general treatment of, i.
236; is necessarily imperfect, i. 237, 240; divided into servile,
subordinate, and insubordinate, i. 242, ii. 158; distant effect of,
i. 248; arborescent, i. 252; restrained within limits, i. 255; cannot
be overcharged if good, i. 406.
Oxford, system of education at, i. 391.
P
Paganism, revival of its power in modern times, iii. 105, 107, 122.
Painters, their power of perception, iii. 37; influence of society
on, iii. 41; what they should know, iii. 41; what is their business,
iii. 187.
Palace, the Crystal, merits of, i. 409.
Palaces, Byzantine, ii. 118, 391; Gothic, ii. 231.
Papacy. See "Popery."
Parapets, i. 162, ii. 240.
Parthenon, curves of, ii. 127.
Patience, how symbolized, ii. 334.
Pavements, ii. 52.
Peacocks, sculpture of, i. 240.
Pedestals of shafts, i. 82; and see Venetian Index under head
"Giorgio Maggiore."
Perception opposed to knowledge, iii. 37.
Perfection, inordinate desire of, destructive of art, i. 237; ii.
133, 158, 169.
Perpendicular style, i. 190, 253; ii. 223, 227.
Personification, evils of, ii. 322.
Perspective, aerial, ridiculous exaggerations of, iii. 45; ancient
pride in, iii. 57; absence of, in many great works, see in Venetian
Index the notice of Tintoret's picture of the Pool of Bethesda, under
head "Rocco."
Phariseeism and Liberalism, how opposed, iii. 97.
Philology, a base science, iii. 54.
Piazzetta at Venice, plan of, ii. 283; shafts of, ii. 233.
Pictures, judgment of, how formed, ii. 371; neglect of, in Venice,
ii. 372; how far an aid to religion, ii. 104, 110.
Picturesque, definition of term, iii. 134.
Piers, general structure of, i. 71, 98, 118.
Pilgrim's Progress. See "Bunyan."
Pine of Italy, its effect on architecture, i. 152; of Alps, effect in
distance, i. 245. See "Fir."
Pinnacles are of little practical service, i. 170; their effect on
common roofs, i. 347.
Play, its relation to Grotesque art, iii. 126.
Pleasure, its kinds and true uses, iii. 189.
Popery, how degraded in contest with Protestantism, i. 34, iii. 103;
its influence on art, i. 23, 34, 35, 384, 432, ii. 51; typified in
ornament, i. 316; power of Pope in Venice, i. 362; arts used in
support of Popery, ii. 74.
Porches, i. 195.
Portraiture, power of, in Venice, iii. 164.
Posture-making in Renaissance art, iii. 90.
Prayers, ancient and modern, difference between, ii. 315, 390.
Pre-Raphaelitism, iii. 90; present position of, iii. 168, 174, 188.
Pride, how symbolized, ii. 343, iii. 207; of knowledge, iii. 35; of
state, iii. 59; of system, iii. 95.
Priests, restricted power of, in Venice, i. 366.
Proportions, subtlety of, in early work, ii. 38, 121, 127.
Protestantism, its influence on art, i. 23; typified in ornament, i.
316; influence of, on prosperity of nations, i. 368; expenditure in
favor of, i. 434; is incapable of judging of art, ii. 105; how
expressed in art, ii. 205; its errors in opposing Romanism, iii, 102,
103, 104; its shame of religious confession, ii. 278.
Prudence, how symbolized, ii. 340.
Pulpits, proper structure of, ii. 22, 380.
Purism in art, its nature and definition, ii. 189.
Purity, how symbolized, iii. 20.
Q
Quadrupeds, use of in ornamentation, i. 234.
Quantity of ornament, its regulation, i. 23.
R
Rationalism, its influence on art, i. 23.
Realization, how far allowable in noble art, iii. 182, 186.
Recesses, decoration of, i. 278.
Recumbent statues, iii. 72.
Redundance, an element of Gothic, ii. 206.
Religion, its influence on Venetian policy, i. 6; how far aided by
pictorial art, ii. 104, 109; contempt of, in Renaissance times, iii.
122.
Renaissance architecture, nature of, iii. 33; early, iii. 1;
Byzantine, iii. 15; Roman, iii. 32; Grotesque, iii. 112;
inconsistencies of, iii. 42, etc.
Reptiles, how used in ornamentation, i. 230.
Resistance, line of, in arches, i. 126.
Restraint, ornamental, value of, i. 255.
Reverence, how ennobling to humanity, ii. 163.
Rhetoric, a base study, iii. 106.
Rigidity, an element of Gothic, ii. 203.
Rivers, symbolical representation of, i. 419, 420.
Rocks, use of, in ornamentation, i. 224; organization of, i. 246;
curvatures of, i. 58, 224.
Roll-mouldings, decoration of, i. 276.
Romance, modern errors of, ii. 4; how connected with dress, iii. 192.
Romanesque style, i. 15, 19, 145; ii. 215. See "Byzantine," and
"Renaissance."
Romanism. See "Popery."
Roofs, analysis of, i. 46, 148; ii. 212, 216; domed, i. 149; Swiss,
i. 149, 345; steepness of, conducive to Gothic character, i. 151, ii.
209; decoration of, i. 343.
Rustication, is ugly and foolish, i. 65; natural objects of which it
produces a resemblance, i. 296.
S
Salvia, its leaf applied to architecture, i. 287, 306.
Sarcophagi, Renaissance treatment of, iii. 90; ancient, iii. 69, 93.
Satellitic shafts, i. 95.
Satire in Grotesque art, iii. 126, 145.
Savageness, the first element of Gothic, ii. 155; in Grotesque art,
iii. 159.
Science opposed to art, iii. 36.
Sculpture, proper treatment of, i. 216, &c.
Sea, symbolical representations of, i. 352, 421; natural waves of, i.
351.
Sensualism in art, its nature and definition, ii. 189; how redeemed
by color, ii. 145.
Serapeum at Memphis, cusps of, ii. 220.
Sermons, proper manner of regarding them, ii. 22; mode of their
delivery in Scotch church, ii. 381.
Serrar del Consiglio, ii. 291.
Shafts, analysis of, i. 84; vaulting shafts, i. 145; ornamentation
of, i. 300; twisted, by what laws regulated, i. 303; strength of, i.
402; laws by which they are regulated in encrusted style, ii. 82.
Shields, use of, on tombs, ii. 224, iii. 87.
Shipping, use of, in ornamentation, i. 215.
Shops in Venice, ii. 65.
Sight, how opposed to thought, iii. 39.
Simplicity of life in thirteenth century, ii. 263.
Sin, how symbolized in Grotesque art, iii. 141.
Slavery of Greeks and Egyptians, ii. 158; of English workmen, ii.
162, 163.
Society, unhealthy state of, in modern times, ii. 163.
Sorrow, how sinful, ii. 325; how symbolized, ii. 347.
Soul, its development in art, iii. 173, 188; its connection with the
body, i. 41, 395.
Spandrils, structure of, i. 146; decoration of, i. 297.
Spirals, architectural value of, i. 222, ii. 16.
Spurs of bases, i. 79.
Staircases, i. 208; of Gothic palaces, ii. 280.
Stucco, when admissible, iii. 21.
Subordination of ornament, i. 240.
Superimposition of buildings, i. 200; ii. 386.
Surface-Gothic, explanation of term, ii. 225, 227.
Symbolism, i. 417; how opposed to personification, ii. 322.
System, pride of, how hurtful, iii. 95, 99.
T
Temperance, how symbolized, ii. 338; temperance in color and
curvature, iii. 420.
Theology, opposed to religion, iii. 216; of Spencer, iii. 205.
Thirteenth century, its high position with respect to art, ii. 263.
Thought, opposed to sight, iii. 39.
Tombs at Verona, i. 142, 412; at Venice, ii. 69; early Christian,
iii. 67; Gothic, iii. 71; Renaissance treatment of, iii. 84.
Towers, proper character of, i. 204; of St. Mark's, i 207.
Traceries, structure of, i. 184, 185; flamboyant, i. 189; stump, i.
189; English perpendicular, i 190, ii. 222; general character of, ii.
220; strength of, in Venetian Gothic, ii. 234, iii. 253; general
forms of tracery bars, iii. 250.
Treason, how detested by Dante, ii. 327.
Trees, use of, in ornamentation, i. 231.
Trefoil, use of, in ornamentation, ii. 42.
Triangles, used for ornaments at Murano, ii. 43.
Tribune at Torcello, ii. 24.
Triglyphs, ugliness of, i, 43.
Trunkmakers, their share in recovery of Brides of Venice, iii. 117, 118.
Truth, relation of, to religion, in Spenser's "Faërie Queen," iii,
205; typified by stones, iii. 31.
Tympanum, decoration of, i. 299.
U
Unity of Venetian nobility, i. 10.
V
Vain glory, speedy punishment of, iii. 122.
Vanity, how symbolized, ii. 346.
Variety in ornamental design, importance of, ii. 43, 133, 142, 172.
Vegetation, use of, in ornamentation, i. 232; peculiar meaning of, in
Gothic, ii. 199; how connected with cusps, ii. 219.
Veil (wall veil), construction of, i. 58; decoration of, i. 294.
Vine, Lombardic sculpture of, i. 375; at Torcello, ii. 15; use of, in
ornamentation, ii. 141; in symbolism, ii. 143; sculpture of, on Ducal
Palace, ii. 308.
Virtues, how symbolized in sepulchral monuments, iii. 82, 86; systems
of, in Pagan and Christian philosophy, ii. 312; cardinal, ii. 317,
318, 320; of architecture, i. 36, 44.
Voussoirs defined, i. 125; contest between them and architraves, i.
336.
W
Walls, general analysis of their structure, i. 48; bases of, i. 52,
53; cornices of, i. 63; rustication of, i. 61, 338; decoration of, i.
294; courses in, i. 61, 295.
Water, its use in ornamentation, i. 226; ancient representations of,
i. 417.
Weaving, importance of associations connected with, ii. 136.
Wells, old Venetian, ii. 279.
Windows, general forms of, i. 179; Arabian, i. 180, ii. 135;
square-headed, ii. 211, 269; development of, in Venice, ii. 235;
orders of, in Venice, ii. 248; advisable form of, in modern
buildings, ii. 269.
Winds, how symbolized at Venice, ii. 367.
Wooden architecture, i. 381.
Womanhood, virtues of, as given by Spenser, ii. 326.
Z
Zigzag, Norman, i. 339.
IV.
VENETIAN INDEX.
I have endeavored to make the following index as useful as possible to
the traveller, by indicating only the objects which are really worth his
study. A traveller's interest, stimulated as it is into strange vigor by
the freshness of every impression, and deepened by the sacredness of the
charm of association which long familiarity with any scene too fatally
wears away,[71] is too precious a thing to be heedlessly wasted; and as
it is physically impossible to see and to understand more than a certain
quantity of art in a given time, the attention bestowed on second-rate
works, in such a city as Venice, is not merely lost, but actually
harmful,--deadening the interest and confusing the memory with respect
to those which it is a duty to enjoy, and a disgrace to forget. The
reader need not fear being misled by any omissions; for I have
conscientiously pointed out every characteristic example, even of the
styles which I dislike, and have referred to Lazari in all instances in
which my own information failed: but if he is in any wise willing to
trust me, I should recommend him to devote his principal attention, if
he is fond of paintings, to the works of Tintoret, Paul Veronese, and
John Bellini; not of course neglecting Titian, yet remembering that
Titian can be well and thoroughly studied in almost any great European
gallery, while Tintoret and Bellini can be judged of _only_ in Venice,
and Paul Veronese, though gloriously represented by the two great
pictures in the Louvre, and many others throughout Europe, is yet not to
be fully estimated until he is seen at play among the fantastic chequers
of the Venetian ceilings.
I have supplied somewhat copious notices of the pictures of Tintoret,
because they are much injured, difficult to read, and entirely neglected
by other writers on art. I cannot express the astonishment and
indignation I felt on finding, in Kugler's handbook, a paltry cenacolo,
painted probably in a couple of hours for a couple of zecchins, for the
monks of St. Trovaso, quoted as characteristic of this master; just as
foolish readers quote separate stanzas of Peter Bell or the Idiot Boy,
as characteristic of Wordsworth. Finally, the reader is requested to
observe, that the dates assigned to the various buildings named in the
following index, are almost without exception conjectural; that is to
say, founded exclusively on the internal evidence of which a portion has
been given in the Final Appendix. It is likely, therefore, that here and
there, in particular instances, further inquiry may prove me to have
been deceived; but such occasional errors are not of the smallest
importance with respect to the general conclusions of the preceding
pages, which will be found to rest on too broad a basis to be disturbed.
A
ACCADEMIA DELLE BELLE ARTI. Notice above the door the two bas-reliefs
of St. Leonard and St. Christopher, chiefly remarkable for their rude
cutting at so late a date as 1377; but the niches under which they
stand are unusual in their bent gables, and in little crosses within
circles which fill their cusps. The traveller is generally too much
struck by Titian's great picture of the "Assumption," to be able to
pay proper attention to the other works in this gallery. Let him,
however, ask himself candidly, how much of his admiration is
dependent merely upon the picture being larger than any other in the
room, and having bright masses of red and blue in it: let him be
assured that the picture is in reality not one whit the better for
being either large, or gaudy in color; and he will then be better
disposed to give the pains necessary to discover the merit of the more
profound and solemn works of Bellini and Tintoret. One of the most
wonderful works in the whole gallery is Tintoret's "Death of Abel," on
the left of the "Assumption;" the "Adam and Eve," on the right of it,
is hardly inferior; and both are more characteristic examples of the
master, and in many respects better pictures, than the much vaunted
"Miracle of St. Mark." All the works of Bellini in this room are of
great beauty and interest. In the great room, that which contains
Titian's "Presentation of the Virgin," the traveller should examine
carefully all the pictures by Vittor Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini,
which represent scenes in ancient Venice; they are full of interesting
architecture and costume. Marco Basaiti's "Agony in the Garden" is a
lovely example of the religious school. The Tintorets in this room are
all second rate, but most of the Veronese are good, and the large ones
are magnificent.
ALIGA. See GIORGIO.
ALVISE, CHURCH OF ST. I have never been in this church, but Lazari
dates its interior, with decision, as of the year 1388, and it may be
worth a glance, if the traveller has time.
ANDREA, CHURCH OF ST. Well worth visiting for the sake of the
peculiarly sweet and melancholy effect of its little grass-grown
campo, opening to the lagoon and the Alps. The sculpture over the
door, "St. Peter walking on the Water," is a quaint piece of
Renaissance work. Note the distant rocky landscape, and the oar of the
existing gondola floating by St. Andrew's boat. The church is of the
later Gothic period, much defaced, but still picturesque. The lateral
windows are bluntly trefoiled, and good of their time.
ANGELI, CHURCH DELGLI, at Murano. The sculpture of the "Annunciation"
over the entrance-gate is graceful. In exploring Murano, it is worth
while to row up the great canal thus far for the sake of the opening
to the lagoon.
ANTONINO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
APOLLINARE, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
APOSTOLI, CHURCH OF THE. The exterior is nothing. There is said to be
a picture by Veronese in the interior, "The Fall of the Manna." I have
not seen it; but, if it be of importance, the traveller should compare
it carefully with Tintoret's, in the Scuola di San Rocco, and San
Giorgio Maggiore.
APOSTOLI, PALACE AT, II. 253, on the Grand Canal, near the Rialto,
opposite the fruit-market. A most important transitional palace. Its
sculpture in the first story is peculiarly rich and curious; I think
Venetian, in imitation of Byzantine. The sea story and first floor are
of the first half of the thirteenth century, the rest modern. Observe
that only one wing of the sea story is left, the other half having
been modernized. The traveller should land to look at the capital
drawn in Plate II. of Vol. III. fig. 7.
ARSENAL. Its gateway is a curiously picturesque example of Renaissance
workmanship, admirably sharp and expressive in its ornamental
sculpture; it is in many parts like some of the best Byzantine work.
The Greek lions in front of it appear to me to deserve more praise
than they have received; though they are awkwardly balanced between
conventional and imitative representation, having neither the severity
proper to the one, nor the veracity necessary for the other.
B
BADOER, PALAZZO, in the Campo San Giovanni in Bragola. A magnificent
example of the fourteenth century Gothic, circa 1310-1320, anterior to
the Ducal Palace, and showing beautiful ranges of the fifth order
window, with fragments of the original balconies, and the usual
lateral window larger than any of the rest. In the centre of its
arcade on the first floor is the inlaid ornament drawn in Plate VIII.
Vol. I. The fresco painting on the walls is of later date; and I
believe the heads which form the finials have been inserted afterwards
also, the original windows having been pure fifth order.
The building is now a ruin, inhabited by the lowest orders; the first
floor, when I was last in Venice, by a laundress.
BAFFO, PALAZZO, in the Campo St. Maurizio. The commonest late
Renaissance. A few olive leaves and vestiges of two figures still
remain upon it, of the frescoes by Paul Veronese, with which it was
once adorned.
BALBI, PALAZZO, in Volta di Canal. Of no importance.
BARBARIGO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, next the Casa Pisani. Late
Renaissance; noticeable only as a house in which some of the best
pictures of Titian were allowed to be ruined by damp, and out of which
they were then sold to the Emperor of Russia.
BARBARO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, next the Palazzo Cavalli. These
two buildings form the principal objects in the foreground of the view
which almost every artist seizes on his first traverse of the Grand
Canal, the Church of the Salute forming a most graceful distance.
Neither is, however, of much value, except in general effect; but the
Barbaro is the best, and the pointed arcade in its side wall, seen
from the narrow canal between it and the Cavalli, is good Gothic, of
the earliest fourteenth century type.
BARNABA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
BARTOLOMEO, CHURCH OF ST. I did not go to look at the works of
Sebastian del Piombo which it contains, fully crediting M. Lazari's
statement, that they have been "Barbaramente sfigurati da mani
imperite, che pretendevano ristaurarli." Otherwise the church is of no
importance.
BASSO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
BATTAGIA, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance.
BECCHERIE. See QUERINI.
BEMBO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, next the Casa Manin. A noble
Gothic pile, circa 1350-1380, which, before it was painted by the
modern Venetians with the two most valuable colors of Tintoret, Bianco
e Nero, by being whitewashed above, and turned into a coal warehouse
below, must have been among the most noble in effect on the whole
Grand Canal. It still forms a beautiful group with the Rialto, some
large shipping being generally anchored at its quay. Its sea story and
entresol are of earlier date, I believe, than the rest; the doors of
the former are Byzantine (see above, Final Appendix, under head
"Jambs"); and above the entresol is a beautiful Byzantine cornice,
built into the wall, and harmonizing well with the Gothic work.
BEMBO, PALAZZO, in the Calle Magno, at the Campo de' due Pozzi, close
to the Arsenal. Noticed by Lazari and Selvatico as having a very
interesting staircase. It is early Gothic, circa 1330, but not a whit
more interesting than many others of similar date and design. See
"Contarini Porta de Ferro," "Morosini," "Sanudo," and "Minelli."
BENEDETTO, CAMPO OF ST. Do not fail to see the superb, though
partially ruinous, Gothic palace fronting this little square. It is
very late Gothic, just passing into Renaissance; unique in Venice, in
masculine character, united with the delicacy of the incipient style.
Observe especially the brackets of the balconies, the flower-work on
the cornices, and the arabesques on the angles of the balconies
themselves.
BENEDETTO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
BERNARDO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. A very noble pile of early
fifteenth century Gothic, founded on the Ducal Palace. The traceries
in its lateral windows are both rich and unusual.
BERNARDO, PALAZZO, at St. Polo. A glorious palace, on a narrow canal,
in a part of Venice now inhabited by the lower orders only. It is
rather late Central Gothic, circa 1380-1400, but of the finest kind,
and superb in its effect of color when seen from the side. A capital
in the interior court is much praised by Selvatico and Lazari, because
its "foglie d'acanto" (anything by the by, _but_ acanthus), "quasi
agitate de vento si attorcigliano d'intorno alla campana, _concetto
non indegno della bell'epoca greca_!" Does this mean "epoca
Bisantina?" The capital is simply a translation into Gothic sculpture
of the Byzantine ones of St. Mark's and the Fondaco de' Turchi (see
Plate VIII. Vol. I. fig. 14), and is far inferior to either. But,
taken as a whole, I think that, after the Ducal Palace, this is the
noblest in effect of all in Venice.
BRENTA, Banks of the, I. 354. Villas on the, I. 354.
BUSINELLO, CASA, II. 391.
BYZANTINE PALACES generally, II. 118.
C
CAMERLENGHI, PALACE OF THE, beside the Rialto. A graceful work of the
early Renaissance (1525) passing into Roman Renaissance. Its details
are inferior to most of the work of the school. The "Camerlenghi,"
properly "Camerlenghi di Comune," were the three officers or ministers
who had care of the administration of public expenses.
CANCELLARIA, II. 293.
CANCIANO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
CAPPELLO, PALAZZO, at St. Aponal. Of no interest. Some say that Bianca
Cappello fled from it; but the tradition seems to fluctuate between
the various houses belonging to her family.
CARITÀ, CHURCH OF THE. Once an interesting Gothic church of the
fourteenth century, lately defaced, and applied to some of the usual
important purposes of the modern Italians. The effect of its ancient
façade may partly be guessed at from the pictures of Canaletto, but
only guessed at; Canaletto being less to be trusted for renderings of
details, than the rudest and most ignorant painter of the thirteenth
century.
CARMINI, CHURCH OF THE. A most interesting church of late thirteenth
century work, but much altered and defaced. Its nave, in which the
early shafts and capitals of the pure truncate form are unaltered, is
very fine in effect; its lateral porch is quaint and beautiful,
decorated with Byzantine circular sculptures (of which the central one
is given in Vol. II. Plate XI. fig. 5), and supported on two shafts
whose capitals are the most archaic examples of the pure Rose form
that I know in Venice.
There is a glorious Tintoret over the first altar on the right in
entering; the "Circumcision of Christ." I do not know an aged head
either more beautiful or more picturesque than that of the high
priest. The cloister is full of notable tombs, nearly all dated; one,
of the fifteenth century, to the left on entering, is interesting from
the color still left on the leaves and flowers of its sculptured
roses.
CASSANO, CHURCH OF ST. This church must on no account be missed, as it
contains three Tintorets, of which one, the "Crucifixion," is among
the finest in Europe. There is nothing worth notice in the building
itself, except the jamb of an ancient door (left in the Renaissance
buildings, facing the canal), which has been given among the examples
of Byzantine jambs; and the traveller may, therefore, devote his
entire attention to the three pictures in the chancel.
1. _The Crucifixion._ (On the left of the high altar.) It is
refreshing to find a picture taken care of, and in a bright though not
a good light, so that such parts of it as are seen at all are seen
well. It is also in a better state than most pictures in galleries,
and most remarkable for its new and strange treatment of the subject.
It seems to have been painted more for the artist's own delight, than
with any labored attempt at composition; the horizon is so low that
the spectator must fancy himself lying at full length on the grass, or
rather among the brambles and luxuriant weeds, of which the foreground
is entirely composed. Among these, the seamless robe of Christ has
fallen at the foot of the cross; the rambling briars and wild grasses
thrown here and there over its folds of rich, but pale, crimson.
Behind them, and seen through them, the heads of a troop of Roman
soldiers are raised against the sky; and, above them, their spears and
halberds form a thin forest against the horizontal clouds. The three
crosses are put on the extreme right of the picture, and its centre is
occupied by the executioners, one of whom, standing on a ladder,
receives from the other at once the sponge and the tablet with the
letters INRI. The Madonna and St. John are on the extreme left,
superbly painted, like all the rest, but quite subordinate. In fact,
the whole mind of the painter seems to have been set upon making the
principals accessary, and the accessaries principal. We look first at
the grass, and then at the scarlet robe; and then at the clump of
distant spears, and then at the sky, and last of all at the cross. As
a piece of color, the picture is notable for its extreme modesty.
There is not a single very full or bright tint in any part, and yet
the color is delighted in throughout; not the slightest touch of it
but is delicious. It is worth notice also, and especially, because
this picture being in a fresh state we are sure of one fact, that,
like nearly all other great colorists, Tintoret was afraid of light
greens in his vegetation. He often uses dark blue greens in his
shadowed trees, but here where the grass is in full light, it is all
painted with various hues of sober brown, more especially where it
crosses the crimson robe. The handling of the whole is in his noblest
manner; and I consider the picture generally quite beyond all price.
It was cleaned, I believe, some years ago, but not injured, or at
least as little injured as it is possible for a picture to be which
has undergone any cleaning process whatsoever.
2. _The Resurrection._ (Over the high altar.) The lower part of this
picture is entirely concealed by a miniature temple, about five feet
high, on the top of the altar; certainly an insult little expected by
Tintoret, as, by getting on steps, and looking over the said temple,
one may see that the lower figures of the picture are the most
labored. It is strange that the painter never seemed able to conceive
this subject with any power, and in the present work he is
marvellously hampered by various types and conventionalities. It is
not a painting of the Resurrection, but of Roman Catholic saints,
_thinking_ about the Resurrection. On one side of the tomb is a bishop
in full robes, on the other a female saint, I know not who; beneath
it, an angel playing on an organ, and a cherub blowing it; and other
cherubs flying about the sky, with flowers; the whole conception being
a mass of Renaissance absurdities. It is, moreover, heavily painted,
over-done, and over-finished; and the forms of the cherubs utterly
heavy and vulgar. I cannot help fancying the picture has been restored
in some way or another, but there is still great power in parts of it.
If it be a really untouched Tintoret, it is a highly curious example
of failure from over-labor on a subject into which his mind was not
thrown: the color is hot and harsh, and felt to be so more painfully,
from its opposition to the grand coolness and chastity of the
"Crucifixion." The face of the angel playing the organ is highly
elaborated; so, also, the flying cherubs.
3. _The Descent into Hades._ (On the right-hand side of the high
altar.) Much injured and little to be regretted. I never was more
puzzled by any picture, the painting being throughout careless, and in
some places utterly bad, and yet not like modern work; the principal
figure, however, of Eve, has either been redone, or is scholar's work
altogether, as, I suspect, most of the rest of the picture. It looks
as if Tintoret had sketched it when he was ill, left it to a bad
scholar to work on with, and then finished it in a hurry; but he has
assuredly had something to do with it; it is not likely that anybody
else would have refused all aid from the usual spectral company with
which common painters fill the scene. Bronzino, for instance, covers
his canvas with every form of monster that his sluggish imagination
could coin. Tintoret admits only a somewhat haggard Adam, a graceful
Eve, two or three Venetians in court dress, seen amongst the smoke,
and a Satan represented as a handsome youth, recognizable only by the
claws on his feet. The picture is dark and spoiled, but I am pretty
sure there are no demons or spectres in it. This is quite in
accordance with the master's caprice, but it considerably diminishes
the interest of a work in other ways unsatisfactory. There may once
have been something impressive in the shooting in of the rays at the
top of the cavern, as well as in the strange grass that grows in the
bottom, whose infernal character is indicated by its all being knotted
together; but so little of these parts can be seen, that it is not
worth spending time on a work certainly unworthy of the master, and in
great part probably never seen by him.
CATTARINA, CHURCH OF ST., said to contain a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Paul
Veronese, the "Marriage of St. Catherine." I have not seen it.
CAVALLI, PALAZZO, opposite the Academy of Arts. An imposing pile, on
the Grand Canal, of Renaissance Gothic, but of little merit in the
details; and the effect of its traceries has been of late destroyed by
the fittings of modern external blinds. Its balconies are good, of the
later Gothic type. See "BARBARO."
CAVALLI, PALAZZO, next the Casa Grimani (or Post-Office), but on the
other side of the narrow canal. Good Gothic, founded on the Ducal
Palace, circa 1380. The capitals of the first story are remarkably
rich in the deep fillets at the necks. The crests, heads of
sea-horses, inserted between the windows, appear to be later, but are
very fine of their kind.
CICOGNA, PALAZZO, at San Sebastiano, II. 265.
CLEMENTE, CHURCH OF ST. On an island to the south of Venice, from
which the view of the city is peculiarly beautiful. See "SCALZI."
CONTARINI PORTA DI FERRO, PALAZZO, near the Church of St. John and
Paul, so called from the beautiful ironwork on a door, which was some
time ago taken down by the proprietor and sold. Mr. Rawdon Brown
rescued some of the ornaments from the hands of the blacksmith, who
had bought them for old iron. The head of the door is a very
interesting stone arch of the early thirteenth century, already drawn
in my folio work. In the interior court is a beautiful remnant of
staircase, with a piece of balcony at the top, circa 1350, and one of
the most richly and carefully wrought in Venice. The palace, judging
by these remnants (all that are now left of it, except a single
traceried window of the same date at the turn of the stair), must once
have been among the most magnificent in Venice.
CONTARINI (DELLE FIGURE), PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, III. 17.
CONTARINI DAI SCRIGNI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. A Gothic building,
founded on the Ducal Palace. Two Renaissance statues in niches at the
sides give it its name.
CONTARINI FASAN, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, II. 244. The richest
work of the fifteenth century domestic Gothic in Venice, but notable
more for richness than excellence of design. In one respect, however,
it deserves to be regarded with attention, as showing how much beauty
and dignity may be bestowed on a very small and unimportant
dwelling-house by Gothic sculpture. Foolish criticisms upon it have
appeared in English accounts of foreign buildings, objecting to it on
the ground of its being "ill-proportioned;" the simple fact being,
that there was no room in this part of the canal for a wider house,
and that its builder made its rooms as comfortable as he could, and
its windows and balconies of a convenient size for those who were to
see through them, and stand on them, and left the "proportions"
outside to take care of themselves; which, indeed, they have very
sufficiently done; for though the house thus honestly confesses its
diminutiveness, it is nevertheless one of the principal ornaments of
the very noblest reach of the Grand Canal, and would be nearly as
great a loss, if it were destroyed, as the Church of La Salute itself.
CONTARINI, PALAZZO, at St. Luca. Of no importance.
CORNER DELLA CA' GRANDE, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. One of the worst
and coldest buildings of the central Renaissance, It is on a grand
scale, and is a conspicuous object, rising over the roofs of the
neighboring houses in the various aspects of the entrance of the Grand
Canal, and in the general view of Venice from San Clemente.
CORNER DELLA REGINA, PALAZZO. A late Renaissance building of no merit
or interest.
CORNER MOCENIGO, PALAZZO, at St. Polo. Of no interest.
CORNER SPINELLI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. A graceful and
interesting example of the early Renaissance, remarkable for its
pretty circular balconies.
CORNER, RACCOLTA. I must refer the reader to M. Lazari's Guide for an
account of this collection, which, however, ought only to be visited
if the traveller is not pressed for time.
D
DANDOLO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Between the Casa Loredan and
Casa Bembo is a range of modern buildings, some of which occupy, I
believe, the site of the palace once inhabited by the Doge Henry
Dandolo. Fragments of early architecture of the Byzantine school may
still be traced in many places among their foundations, and two doors
in the foundation of the Casa Bembo itself belong to the same group.
There is only one existing palace, however, of any value, on this
spot, a very small but rich Gothic one of about 1300, with two groups
of fourth order windows in its second and third stories, and some
Byzantine circular mouldings built into it above. This is still
reported to have belonged to the family of Dandolo, and ought to be
carefully preserved, as it is one of the most interesting and ancient
Gothic palaces which yet remain.
DANIELI, ALBERGO. See Nani.
DA PONTE, PALAZZO. Of no interest.
DARIO, PALAZZO, I. 370; III. 211.
DOGANA DI MARE, at the separation of the Grand Canal from the Giudecca.
A barbarous building of the time of the Grotesque Renaissance (1676),
rendered interesting only by its position. The statue of Fortune,
forming the weathercock, standing on the world, is alike
characteristic of the conceits of the time, and of the hopes and
principles of the last days of Venice.
DONATO, CHURCH OF ST., at Murano, II. 31.
DONA', PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. I believe the palace described under
this name as of the twelfth century, by M. Lazari, is that which I
have called the Braided House, II. 132, 392.
D'ORO CASA. A noble pile of very quaint Gothic, once superb in general
effect, but now destroyed by restorations. I saw the beautiful slabs
of red marble, which formed the bases of its balconies, and were
carved into noble spiral mouldings of strange sections, half a foot
deep, dashed to pieces when I was last in Venice; its glorious
interior staircase, by far the most interesting Gothic monument of the
kind in Venice, had been carried away, piece by piece, and sold for
waste marble, two years before. Of what remains, the most beautiful
portions are, or were, when I last saw them, the capitals of the
windows in the upper story, most glorious sculpture of the fourteenth
century. The fantastic window traceries are, I think, later; but the
rest of the architecture of this palace is anomalous, and I cannot
venture to give any decided opinion respecting it. Parts of its
mouldings are quite Byzantine in character, but look somewhat like
imitations.
DUCAL PALACE, I. 29; history of, II. 282, etc.; III. 199; plan and
section of, II. 282, 283; description of, II. 304, etc.; series of its
capitals, II. 332, etc.; spandrils of, I. 299, 415; shafts of, I. 413;
traceries of, derived from those of the Frari, II. 234; angles of, II.
239; main balcony of, II. 245; base of, III. 212; Rio Façade of, III.
25; paintings in, II. 372. The multitude of works by various masters,
which cover the walls of this palace is so great, that the traveller
is in general merely wearied and confused by them. He had better
refuse all attention except to the following works:
1. _Paradise_, by Tintoret; at the extremity of the Great Council
chamber. I found it impossible to count the number of figures in this
picture, of which the grouping is so intricate, that at the upper part
it is not easy to distinguish one figure from another; but I counted
150 important figures in one half of it alone; so that, as there are
nearly as many in subordinate position, the total number cannot be
under 500. I believe this is, on the whole, Tintoret's
_chef-d'oeuvre_; though it is so vast that no one takes the trouble
to read it, and therefore less wonderful pictures are preferred to it.
I have not myself been able to study except a few fragments of it, all
executed in his finest manner; but it may assist a hurried observer to
point out to him that the whole composition is divided into concentric
zones, represented one above another like the stories of a cupola,
round the figures of Christ and the Madonna, at the central and
highest point: both these figures are exceedingly dignified and
beautiful. Between each zone or belt of the nearer figures, the white
distances of heaven are seen filled with floating spirits. The picture
is, on the whole, wonderfully preserved, and the most precious thing
that Venice possesses. She will not possess it long; for the Venetian
academicians, finding it exceedingly unlike their own works, declare
it to want harmony, and are going to retouch it to their own ideas of
perfection.
2. _Siege of Zara_; the first picture on the right on entering the
Sala del Scrutinio. It is a mere battle piece, in which the figures,
like the arrows, are put in by the score. There are high merits in the
thing, and so much invention that it is possible Tintoret may have
made the sketch for it; but, if executed by him at all, he has done it
merely in the temper in which a sign-painter meets the wishes of an
ambitious landlord. He seems to have been ordered to represent all the
events of the battle at once; and to have felt that, provided he gave
men, arrows, and ships enough, his employers would be perfectly
satisfied. The picture is a vast one, some thirty feet by fifteen.
Various other pictures will be pointed out by the custode, in these
two rooms, as worthy of attention, but they are only historically, not
artistically, interesting. The works of Paul Veronese on the ceiling
have been repainted; and the rest of the pictures on the walls are by
second-rate men. The traveller must, once for all, be warned against
mistaking the works of Domenico Robusti (Domenico Tintoretto), a very
miserable painter, for those of his illustrious father, Jacopo.
3. _The Doge Grimani kneeling before Faith_, by Titian; in the Sala
delle quattro Porte. To be observed with care, as one of the most
striking examples of Titian's want of feeling and coarseness of
conception. (See above, Vol. I. p. 12.) As a work of mere art, it is,
however, of great value. The traveller who has been accustomed to
deride Turner's indistinctness of touch, ought to examine carefully
the mode of painting the Venice in the distance at the bottom of this
picture.
4. _Frescoes on the Roof of the Sala delle quattro Porte_, by
Tintoret. Once magnificent beyond description, now mere wrecks (the
plaster crumbling away in large flakes), but yet deserving of the most
earnest study.
5. _Christ taken down from the Cross_, by Tintoret; at the upper end
of the Sala dei Pregadi. One of the most interesting mythic pictures
of Venice, two doges being represented beside the body of Christ, and
a most noble painting; executed, however, for distant effect, and seen
best from the end of the room.
6. _Venice, Queen of the Sea_, by Tintoret. Central compartment of the
ceiling, in the Sala dei Pregadi. Notable for the sweep of its vast
green surges, and for the daring character of its entire conception,
though it is wild and careless, and in many respects unworthy of the
master. Note the way in which he has used the fantastic forms of the
sea weeds, with respect to what was above stated (III. 158), as to his
love of the grotesque.
7. _The Doge Loredano in Prayer to the Virgin_, by Tintoret; in the
same room. Sickly and pale in color, yet a grand work; to be studied,
however, more for the sake of seeing what a great man does "to order,"
when he is wearied of what is required from him, than for its own
merit.
8. _St. George and the Princess._ There are, besides the "Paradise,"
only six pictures in the Ducal Palace, as far as I know, which
Tintoret painted carefully, and those are all exceedingly fine: the
most finished of these are in the Anti-Collegio; but those that are
most majestic and characteristic of the master are two oblong ones,
made to fill the panels of the walls in the Anti-Chiesetta; these two,
each, I suppose, about eight feet by six, are in his most quiet and
noble manner. There is excessively little color in them, their
prevalent tone being a greyish brown opposed with grey, black, and a
very warm russet. They are thinly painted, perfect in tone, and quite
untouched. The first of them is "St. George and the Dragon," the
subject being treated in a new and curious way. The principal figure
is the princess, who sits astride on the dragon's neck, holding him by
a bridle of silken riband; St. George stands above and behind her,
holding his hands over her head as if to bless her, or to keep the
dragon quiet by heavenly power; and a monk stands by on the right,
looking gravely on. There is no expression or life in the dragon,
though the white flashes in its eye are very ghastly: but the whole
thing is entirely typical; and the princess is not so much represented
riding on the dragon, as supposed to be placed by St. George in an
attitude of perfect victory over her chief enemy. She has a full rich
dress of dull red, but her figure is somewhat ungraceful. St. George
is in grey armor and grey drapery, and has a beautiful face; his
figure entirely dark against the distant sky. There is a study for
this picture in the Manfrini Palace.
9. _St. Andrew and St. Jerome._ This, the companion picture, has even
less color than its opposite. It is nearly all brown and grey; the
fig-leaves and olive-leaves brown, the faces brown, the dresses brown,
and St. Andrew holding a great brown cross. There is nothing that can
be called color, except the grey of the sky, which approaches in some
places a little to blue, and a single piece of dirty brick-red in St.
Jerome's dress; and yet Tintoret's greatness hardly ever shows more
than in the management of such sober tints. I would rather have these
two small brown pictures, and two others in the Academy perfectly
brown also in their general tone--the "Cain and Abel" and the "Adam
and Eve,"--than all the other small pictures in Venice put together,
which he painted in bright colors, for altar pieces; but I never saw
two pictures which so nearly approached grisailles as these, and yet
were delicious pieces of color. I do not know if I am right in calling
one of the saints St. Andrew. He stands holding a great upright wooden
cross against the sky. St. Jerome reclines at his feet, against a
rock, over which some glorious fig leaves and olive branches are
shooting; every line of them studied with the most exquisite care, and
yet cast with perfect freedom.
10. _Bacchus and Ariadne._ The most beautiful of the four careful
pictures by Tintoret, which occupy the angles of the Anti-Collegio.
Once one of the noblest pictures in the world, but now miserably
faded, the sun being allowed to fall on it all day long. The design of
the forms of the leafage round the head of the Bacchus, and the
floating grace of the female figure above, will, however, always give
interest to this picture, unless it be repainted.
The other three Tintorets in this room are careful and fine, but far
inferior to the "Bacchus;" and the "Vulcan and the Cyclops" is a
singularly meagre and vulgar study of common models.
11. _Europa_, by Paul Veronese: in the same room. One of the very few
pictures which both possess and deserve a high reputation.
12. _Venice enthroned_, by Paul Veronese; on the roof of the same
room. One of the grandest pieces of frank color in the Ducal Palace.
13. _Venice, and the Doge Sebastian Venier_; at the upper end of the
Sala del Collegio. An unrivalled Paul Veronese, far finer even than
the "Europa."
14. _Marriage of St. Catherine_, by Tintoret; in the same room. An
inferior picture, but the figure of St. Catherine is quite exquisite.
Note how her veil falls over her form, showing the sky through it, as
an alpine cascade falls over a marble rock.
There are three other Tintorets on the walls of this room, but all
inferior, though full of power. Note especially the painting of the
lion's wings, and of the colored carpet, in the one nearest the
throne, the Doge Alvise Mocenigo adoring the Redeemer.
The roof is entirely by Paul Veronese, and the traveller who really
loves painting, ought to get leave to come to this room whenever he
chooses; and should pass the sunny summer mornings there again and
again, wandering now and then into the Anti-Collegio and Sala dei
Pregadi, and coming back to rest under the wings of the couched lion
at the feet of the "Mocenigo." He will no otherwise enter so deeply
into the heart of Venice.
E
EMO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no interest.
ERIZZO, PALAZZO, near the Arsenal, II. 262.
ERIZZO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, nearly opposite the Fondaco
de'Turchi. A Gothic palace, with a single range of windows founded on
the Ducal traceries, and bold capitals. It has been above referred to
in the notice of tracery bars.
EUFEMIA, CHURCH OF ST. A small and defaced, but very curious, early
Gothic church on the Giudecca. Not worth visiting, unless the
traveller is seriously interested in architecture.
EUROPA, ALBERGO, ALL'. Once a Giustiniani Palace. Good Gothic, circa
1400, but much altered.
EVANGELISTI, CASA DEGLI, II. 265.
[Illustration: Plate XII.
CAPITALS OF FONDACO DE' TURCHI.]
F
FACANON, PALAZZO (ALLA FAVA). A fair example of the fifteenth century
Gothic, founded on Ducal Palace.
FALIER, PALAZZO, at the Apostoli. Above, II. 253.
FANTINO, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a John Bellini, otherwise of no
importance.
FARSETTI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, II. 124, 393.
FAVA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
FELICE, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a Tintoret, which, if untouched,
I should conjecture, from Lazari's statement of its subject, St.
Demetrius armed, with one of the Ghisi family in prayer, must be very
fine. Otherwise the church is of no importance.
FERRO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Fifteenth century Gothic, very
hard and bad.
FLANGINI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance.
FONDACO DE' TURCHI, I. 328; II. 120, 121, 236. The opposite plate,
representing three of its capitals, has been several times referred
to.
FONDACO DE' TEDESCHI. A huge and ugly building near the Rialto,
rendered, however, peculiarly interesting by remnants of the frescoes
by Giorgione with which it was once covered. See Vol. II. 80, and III.
23.
FORMOSA, CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA, III. 113, 122,
FOSCA, CHURCH OF ST. Notable for its exceedingly picturesque
campanile, of late Gothic, but uninjured by restorations, and
peculiarly Venetian in being crowned by the cupola instead of the
pyramid, which would have been employed at the same period in any
other Italian city.
FOSCARI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. The noblest example in Venice of
the fifteenth century Gothic, founded on the Ducal Palace, but lately
restored and spoiled, all but the stone-work of the main windows. The
restoration was necessary, however: for, when I was in Venice in 1845,
this palace was a foul ruin; its great hall a mass of mud, used as a
back receptacle of a stone-mason's yard; and its rooms whitewashed,
and scribbled over with indecent caricatures. It has since been
partially strengthened and put in order; but as the Venetian
municipality have now given it to the Austrians to be used as
barracks, it will probably soon be reduced to its former condition.
The lower palaces at the side of this building are said by some to
have belonged to the younger Foscari. See "GIUSTINIANI."
FRANCESCO DELLA VIGNA, CHURCH OF ST. Base Renaissance, but must be
visited in order to see the John Bellini in the Cappella Santa. The
late sculpture, in the Cappella Giustiniani, appears from Lazari's
statement to be deserving of careful study. This church is said also
to contain two pictures by Paul Veronese.
FRARI, CHURCH OF THE. Founded in 1250, and continued at various
subsequent periods. The apse and adjoining chapels are the earliest
portions, and their traceries have been above noticed (II. 234) as the
origin of those of the Ducal Palace. The best view of the apse, which
is a very noble example of Italian Gothic, is from the door of the
Scuola di San Rocco. The doors of the church are all later than any
other portion of it, very elaborate Renaissance Gothic. The interior
is good Gothic, but not interesting, except in its monuments. Of
these, the following are noticed in the text of this volume:
That of Duccio degli Alberti, at pages 74, 80; of the unknown Knight,
opposite that of Duccio, III. 74; of Francesco Foscari, III. 84; of
Giovanni Pesaro, 91; of Jacopo Pesaro, 92.
Besides these tombs, the traveller ought to notice carefully that of
Pietro Bernardo, a first-rate example of Renaissance work; nothing can
be more detestable or mindless in general design, or more beautiful in
execution. Examine especially the griffins, fixed in admiration of
bouquets, at the bottom. The fruit and flowers which arrest the
attention of the griffins may well arrest the traveller's also;
nothing can be finer of their kind. The tomb of Canova, _by_ Canova,
cannot be missed; consummate in science, intolerable in affectation,
ridiculous in conception, null and void to the uttermost in invention
and feeling. The equestrian statue of Paolo Savelli is spirited; the
monument of the Beato Pacifico, a curious example of Renaissance
Gothic with wild crockets (all in terra cotta). There are several good
Vivarini's in the church, but its chief pictorial treasure is the John
Bellini in the sacristy, the most finished and delicate example of the
master in Venice.
G
GEREMIA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
GESUATI, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.
GIACOMO DE LORIO, CHURCH OF ST., a most interesting church, of the early
thirteenth century, but grievously restored. Its capitals have been
already noticed as characteristic of the earliest Gothic; and it is
said to contain four works of Paul Veronese, but I have not examined
them. The pulpit is admired by the Italians, but is utterly worthless.
The verdantique pillar, in the south transept, is a very noble example
of the "Jewel Shaft." See the note at p. 83, Vol. II.
GIACOMO DI RIALTO, CHURCH OF ST. A picturesque little church, on the
Piazza di Rialto. It has been grievously restored, but the pillars and
capitals of its nave are certainly of the eleventh century; those of
its portico are of good central Gothic; and it will surely not be left
unvisited, on this ground, if on no other, that it stands on the site,
and still retains the name, of the first church ever built on that
Rialto which formed the nucleus of future Venice, and became
afterwards the mart of her merchants.
GIOBBE, CHURCH OF ST., near the Cana Reggio. Its principal entrance is
a very fine example of early Renaissance sculpture. Note in it,
especially, its beautiful use of the flower of the convolvulus. There
are said to be still more beautiful examples of the same period, in
the interior. The cloister, though much defaced, is of the Gothic
period, and worth a glance.
GIORGIO DE' GRECI, CHURCH OF ST. The Greek Church. It contains no
valuable objects of art, but its service is worth attending by those
who have never seen the Greek ritual.
GIORGIO DE' SCHIAVONI, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a very precious
series of paintings by Victor Carpaccio. Otherwise of no interest.
GIORGIO IN ALIGA (St. George in the seaweed), Church of St. Unimportant
in itself, but the most beautiful view of Venice at sunset is from a
point at about two thirds of the distance from the city to the island.
GIORGIO MAGGIORE, CHURCH OF ST. A building which owes its interesting
effect chiefly to its isolated position, being seen over a great space
of lagoon. The traveller should especially notice in its façade the
manner in which the central Renaissance architects (of whose style
this church is a renowned example) endeavored to fit the laws they had
established to the requirements of their age. Churches were required
with aisles and clerestories, that is to say, with a high central nave
and lower wings; and the question was, how to face this form with
pillars of one proportion. The noble Romanesque architects built story
above story, as at Pisa and Lucca; but the base Palladian architects
dared not do this. They must needs retain some image of the Greek
temple; but the Greek temple was all of one height, a low gable roof
being borne on ranges of equal pillars. So the Palladian builders
raised first a Greek temple with pilasters for shafts; and, _through
the middle of its roof, or horizontal beam_, that is to say, of the
cornice which externally represented this beam, they lifted another
temple on pedestals, adding these barbarous appendages to the shafts,
which otherwise would not have been high enough; fragments of the
divided cornice or tie-beam being left between the shafts, and the
great door of the church thrust in between the pedestals. It is
impossible to conceive a design more gross, more barbarous, more
childish in conception, more servile in plagiarism, more insipid in
result, more contemptible under every point of rational regard.
Observe, also, that when Palladio had got his pediment at the top of
the church, he did not know what to do with it; he had no idea of
decorating it except by a round hole in the middle. (The traveller
should compare, both in construction and decoration, the Church of the
Redentore with this of San Giorgio.) Now, a dark penetration is often
a most precious assistance to a building dependent upon color for its
effect; for a cavity is the only means in the architect's power of
obtaining certain and vigorous shadow; and for this purpose, a
circular penetration, surrounded by a deep russet marble moulding, is
beautifully used in the centre of the white field on the side of the
portico of St. Mark's. But Palladio had given up color, and pierced
his pediment with a circular cavity, merely because he had not wit
enough to fill it with sculpture. The interior of the church is like a
large assembly room, and would have been undeserving of a moment's
attention, but that it contains some most precious pictures, namely:
1. _Gathering the Manna._ (On the left hand of the high altar.) One of
Tintoret's most remarkable landscapes. A brook flowing through a
mountainous country, studded with thickets and palm trees; the
congregation have been long in the Wilderness, and are employed in
various manufactures much more than in gathering the manna. One group
is forging, another grinding manna in a mill, another making shoes,
one woman making a piece of dress, some washing; the main purpose of
Tintoret being evidently to indicate the _continuity_ of the supply of
heavenly food. Another painter would have made the congregation
hurrying to gather it, and wondering at it; Tintoret at once makes us
remember that they have been fed with it "by the space of forty
years." It is a large picture, full of interest and power, but
scattered in effect, and not striking except from its elaborate
landscape.
2. _The Last Supper._ (Opposite the former.) These two pictures have
been painted for their places, the subjects being illustrative of the
sacrifice of the mass. This latter is remarkable for its entire
homeliness in the general treatment of the subject; the entertainment
being represented like any large supper in a second-rate Italian inn,
the figures being all comparatively uninteresting; but we are reminded
that the subject is a sacred one, not only by the strong light shining
from the head of Christ, but because the smoke of the lamp which hangs
over the table turns, as it rises, into a multitude of angels, all
painted in grey, the color of the smoke; and so writhed and twisted
together that the eye hardly at first distinguishes them from the
vapor out of which they are formed, ghosts of countenances and filmy
wings filling up the intervals between the completed heads. The idea
is highly characteristic of the master. The picture has been
grievously injured, but still shows miracles of skill in the
expression of candle-light mixed with twilight; variously reflected
rays, and half tones of the dimly lighted chamber, mingled with the
beams of the lantern and those from the head of Christ, flashing along
the metal and glass upon the table, and under it along the floor, and
dying away into the recesses of the room.
3. _Martyrdom of various Saints._ (Altar piece of the third altar in
the South aisle.) A moderately sized picture, and now a very
disagreeable one, owing to the violent red into which the color that
formed the glory of the angel at the top is changed. It has been
hastily painted, and only shows the artist's power in the energy of
the figure of an executioner drawing a bow, and in the magnificent
ease with which the other figures are thrown together in all manner of
wild groups and defiances of probability. Stones and arrows are flying
about in the air at random.
4. _Coronation of the Virgin._ (Fourth altar in the same aisle.)
Painted more for the sake of the portraits at the bottom, than of the
Virgin at the top. A good picture, but somewhat tame for Tintoret, and
much injured. The principal figure, in black, is still, however, very
fine.
5. _Resurrection of Christ._ (At the end of the north aisle, in the
chapel beside the choir.) Another picture painted chiefly for the sake
of the included portraits, and remarkably cold in general conception;
its color has, however, been gay and delicate, lilac, yellow, and blue
being largely used in it. The flag which our Saviour bears in his
hand, has been once as bright as the sail of a Venetian fishing-boat,
but the colors are now all chilled, and the picture is rather crude
than brilliant; a mere wreck of what it was, and all covered with
droppings of wax at the bottom.
6. _Martyrdom of St. Stephen._ (Altar piece in the north transept.)
The Saint is in a rich prelate's dress, looking as if he had just been
saying mass, kneeling in the foreground, and perfectly serene. The
stones are flying about him like hail, and the ground is covered with
them as thickly as if it were a river bed. But in the midst of them,
at the saint's right hand, there is a book lying, crushed but open,
two or three stones which have torn one of its leaves lying upon it.
The freedom and ease with which the leaf is crumpled is just as
characteristic of the master as any of the grander features; no one
but Tintoret could have so crushed a leaf; but the idea is still more
characteristic of him, for the book is evidently meant for the Mosaic
History which Stephen had just been expounding, and its being crushed
by the stones shows how the blind rage of the Jews was violating their
own law in the murder of Stephen. In the upper part of the picture are
three figures,--Christ, the Father, and St. Michael. Christ of course
at the right hand of the Father, as Stephen saw him standing; but
there is little dignity in this part of the conception. In the middle
of the picture, which is also the middle distance, are three or four
men throwing stones, with Tintoret's usual vigor of gesture, and
behind them an immense and confused crowd; so that, at first, we
wonder where St. Paul is; but presently we observe that, in the front
of this crowd, and _almost exactly in the centre of the picture_,
there is a figure seated on the ground, very noble and quiet, and with
some loose garments thrown across its knees. It is dressed in vigorous
black and red. The figure of the Father in the sky above is dressed in
black and red also, and these two figures are the centres of color to
the whole design. It is almost impossible to praise too highly the
refinement of conception which withdrew the unconverted St. Paul into
the distance, so as entirely to separate him from the immediate
interest of the scene, and yet marked the dignity to which he was
afterward to be raised, by investing him with the colors which
occurred nowhere else in the picture except in the dress which veils
the form of the Godhead. It is also to be noted as an interesting
example of the value which the painter put upon color only; another
composer would have thought it necessary to exalt the future apostle
by some peculiar dignity of action or expression. The posture of the
figure is indeed grand, but inconspicuous; Tintoret does not depend
upon it, and thinks that the figure is quite ennobled enough by being
made a key-note of color.
It is also worth observing how boldly imaginative is the treatment
which covers the ground with piles of stones, and yet leaves the
martyr apparently unwounded. Another painter would have covered him
with blood, and elaborated the expression of pain upon his
countenance. Tintoret leaves us under no doubt as to what manner of
death he is dying; he makes the air hurtle with the stones, but he
does not choose to make his picture disgusting, or even painful. The
face of the martyr is serene, and exulting; and we leave the picture,
remembering only how "he fell asleep."
GIOVANELLI, PALAZZO, at the Ponte di Noale. A fine example of
fifteenth century Gothic, founded on the Ducal Palace.
GIOVANNI E PAOLO, CHURCH OF ST.[72] Foundation of, III. 69. An
impressive church, though none of its Gothic is comparable with that
of the North, or with that of Verona. The Western door is interesting
as one of the last conditions of Gothic design passing into
Renaissance, very rich and beautiful of its kind, especially the
wreath of fruit and flowers which forms its principal molding. The
statue of Bartolomeo Colleone, in the little square beside the church,
is certainly one of the noblest works in Italy. I have never seen
anything approaching it in animation, in vigor of portraiture, or
nobleness of line. The reader will need Lazari's Guide in making the
circuit of the church, which is full of interesting monuments: but I
wish especially to direct his attention to two pictures, besides the
celebrated Peter Martyr: namely,
1. _The Crucifixion_, by Tintoret; on the wall of the left-hand aisle,
just before turning into the transept. A picture fifteen feet long by
eleven or twelve high. I do not believe that either the "Miracle of
St. Mark," or the great "Crucifixion" in the Scuola di San Rocco, cost
Tintoret more pains than this comparatively small work, which is now
utterly neglected, covered with filth and cobwebs, and fearfully
injured. As a piece of color, and light and shade, it is altogether
marvellous. Of all the fifty figures which the picture contains, there
is not one which in any way injures or contends with another; nay,
there is not a single fold of garment or touch of the pencil which
could be spared; every virtue of Tintoret, as a painter, is there in
its highest degree,--color at once the most intense and the most
delicate, the utmost decision in the arrangement of masses of light,
and yet half tones and modulations of endless variety; and all
executed with a magnificence of handling which no words are energetic
enough to describe. I have hardly ever seen a picture in which there
was so much decision, and so little impetuosity, and in which so
little was conceded to haste, to accident, or to weakness. It is too
infinite a work to be describable; but among its minor passages of
extreme beauty, should especially be noticed the manner in which the
accumulated forms of the human body, which fill the picture from end
to end, are prevented from being felt heavy, by the grace and
elasticity of two or three sprays of leafage which spring from a
broken root in the foreground, and rise conspicuous in shadow against
an interstice filled by the pale blue, grey, and golden light in which
the distant crowd is invested, the office of this foliage being, in an
artistical point of view, correspondent to that of the trees set by
the sculptors of the Ducal Palace on its angles. But they have a far
more important meaning in the picture than any artistical one. If the
spectator will look carefully at the root which I have called broken,
he will find that in reality, it is not broken, but cut; the other
branches of the young tree having _lately been cut away_. When we
remember that one of the principal incidents in great San Rocco
Crucifixion is the ass feeding on withered palm leaves, we shall be at
no loss to understand the great painter's purpose in lifting the
branch of this mutilated olive against the dim light of the distant
sky; while, close beside it, St. Joseph of Arimathea drags along the
dust a white garment--observe, the principal light of the
picture,--stained with the blood of that King before whom, five days
before, his crucifiers had strewn their own garments in the way.
2. _Our Lady with the Camerlenghi._ (In the centre chapel of the three
on the right of the choir.) A remarkable instance of the theoretical
manner of representing Scriptural facts, which, at this time, as noted
in the second chapter of this volume, was undermining the belief of
the facts themselves. Three Venetian chamberlains desired to have
their portraits painted, and at the same time to express their
devotion to the Madonna; to that end they are painted kneeling before
her, and in order to account for their all three being together, and
to give a thread or clue to the story of the picture, they are
represented as the Three Magi; but lest the spectator should think it
strange that the Magi should be in the dress of Venetian chamberlains,
the scene is marked as a mere ideality, by surrounding the person of
the Virgin with saints who lived five hundred years after her. She has
for attendants St. Theodore, St. Sebastian, and St. Carlo (query St.
Joseph). One hardly knows whether most to regret the spirit which was
losing sight of the verities of religious history in imaginative
abstractions, or to praise the modesty and piety which desired rather
to be represented as kneeling before the Virgin than in the discharge
or among the insignia of important offices of state.
As an "Adoration of the Magi," the picture is, of course, sufficiently
absurd: the St. Sebastian leans back in the corner to be out of the
way; the three Magi kneel, without the slightest appearance of
emotion, to a Madonna seated in a Venetian loggia of the fifteenth
century, and three Venetian servants behind bear their offerings in a
very homely sack, tied up at the mouth. As a piece of portraiture and
artistical composition, the work is altogether perfect, perhaps the
best piece of Tintoret's portrait-painting in existence. It is very
carefully and steadily wrought, and arranged with consummate skill on
a difficult plan. The canvas is a long oblong, I think about eighteen
or twenty feet long, by about seven high; one might almost fancy the
painter had been puzzled to bring the piece into use, the figures
being all thrown into positions which a little diminish their height.
The nearest chamberlain is kneeling, the two behind him bowing
themselves slightly, the attendants behind bowing lower, the Madonna
sitting, the St. Theodore sitting still lower on the steps at her
feet, and the St. Sebastian leaning back, so that all the lines of the
picture incline more or less from right to left as they ascend. This
slope, which gives unity to the detached groups, is carefully
exhibited by what a mathematician would call coordinates,--the upright
pillars of the loggia and the horizontal clouds of the beautiful sky.
The color is very quiet, but rich and deep, the local tones being
brought out with intense force, and the cast shadows subdued, the
manner being much more that of Titian than of Tintoret. The sky
appears full of light, though it is as dark as the flesh of the faces;
and the forms of its floating clouds, as well as of the hills over
which they rise, are drawn with a deep remembrance of reality. There
are hundreds of pictures of Tintoret's more amazing than this, but I
hardly know one that I more love.
The reader ought especially to study the sculpture round the altar of
the Capella del Rosario, as an example of the abuse of the sculptor's
art; every accessory being labored out with as much ingenuity and
intense effort to turn sculpture into painting, the grass, trees, and
landscape being as far realized as possible, and in alto-relievo.
These bas-reliefs are by various artists, and therefore exhibit the
folly of the age, not the error of an individual.
The following alphabetical list of the tombs in this church which are
alluded to as described in the text, with references to the pages
where they are mentioned, will save some trouble:
Cavalli, Jacopo, III. 82. | Mocenigo, Pietro, III. 89.
Cornaro, Marco, III. 11. | Mocenigo, Tomaso, I. 8, 26, III. 84.
Dolfin, Giovanni, III. 78. | Morosini, Michele, III. 80.
Giustiniani, Marco, I. 315. | Steno, Michele, III. 83.
Mocenigo, Giovanni, III. 89. | Vendramin, Andrea, I. 27, III. 88.
GIOVANNI GRISOSTOMO, CHURCH OF ST. One of the most important in
Venice. It is early Renaissance, containing some good sculpture, but
chiefly notable as containing a noble Sebastian del Piombo, and a John
Bellini, which a few years hence, unless it be "restored," will be
esteemed one of the most precious pictures in Italy, and among the
most perfect in the world. John Bellini is the only artist who appears
to me to have united, in equal and magnificent measures, justness of
drawing, nobleness of coloring, and perfect manliness of treatment,
with the purest religious feeling. He did, as far as it is possible to
do it, instinctively and unaffectedly, what the Caracci only pretended
to do. Titian colors better, but has not his piety. Leonardo draws
better, but has not his color. Angelico is more heavenly, but has not
his manliness, far less his powers of art.
GIOVANNI ELEMOSINARIO, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a Titian and a
Bonifazio. Of no other interest.
GIOVANNI IN BRAGOLA, CHURCH OF ST. A Gothic church of the fourteenth
century, small, but interesting, and said to contain some precious
works by Cima da Conegliano, and one by John Bellini.
GIOVANNI NOVO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
GIOVANNI, S., SCUOLA DI. A fine example of the Byzantine Renaissance,
mixed with remnants of good late Gothic. The little exterior cortile
is sweet in feeling, and Lazari praises highly the work of the
interior staircase.
GIUDECCA. The crescent-shaped island (or series of islands), which
forms the most northern extremity of the city of Venice, though
separated by a broad channel from the main city. Commonly said to
derive its name from the number of Jews who lived upon it; but Lazari
derives it from the word "Judicato," in Venetian dialect "Zudegà," it
having been in old time "adjudged" as a kind of prison territory to
the more dangerous and turbulent citizens. It is now inhabited only by
the poor, and covered by desolate groups of miserable dwellings,
divided by stagnant canals.
Its two principal churches, the Redentore and St. Eufemia, are named
in their alphabetical order.
GIULIANO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
GIUSEPPE DI CASTELLO, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a Paul Veronese:
otherwise of no importance.
GIUSTINA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
GIUSTINIANI PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, now Albergo all' Europa. Good
late fourteenth century Gothic, but much altered.
GIUSTINIANI, PALAZZO, next the Casa Foscari, on the Grand Canal.
Lazari, I know not on what authority, says that this palace was built
by the Giustiniani family before 1428. It is one of those founded
directly on the Ducal Palace, together with the Casa Foscari at its
side: and there could have been no doubt of their date on this ground;
but it would be interesting, after what we have seen of the progress
of the Ducal Palace, to ascertain the exact year of the erection of
any of these imitations.
This palace contains some unusually rich detached windows, full of
tracery, of which the profiles are given in the Appendix, under the
title of the Palace of the Younger Foscari, it being popularly
reported to have belonged to the son of the Doge.
GIUSTINIAN LOLIN, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance.
GRASSI PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, now Albergo all' Imperator d'
Austria. Of no importance.
GREGORIO, CHURCH OF ST., on the Grand Canal. An important church of
the fourteenth century, now desecrated, but still interesting. Its
apse is on the little canal crossing from the Grand Canal to the
Giudecca, beside the Church of the Salute, and is very characteristic
of the rude ecclesiastical Gothic contemporary with the Ducal Palace.
The entrance to its cloisters, from the Grand Canal, is somewhat
later; a noble square door, with two windows on each side of it, the
grandest examples in Venice of the late window of the fourth order.
The cloister, to which this door gives entrance, is exactly
contemporary with the finest work of the Ducal Palace, circa 1350. It
is the loveliest cortile I know in Venice; its capitals consummate in
design and execution; and the low wall on which they stand showing
remnants of sculpture unique, as far as I know, in such application.
GRIMANI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, III. 32.
There are several other palaces in Venice belonging to this family,
but none of any architectural interest.
J
JESUITI, CHURCH OF THE. The basest Renaissance; but worth a visit in
order to examine the imitations of curtains in white marble inlaid
with green.
It contains a Tintoret, "The Assumption," which I have not examined;
and a Titian, "The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence," originally, it seems to
me, of little value, and now, having been restored, of none.
L
LABIA PALAZZO, on the Canna Reggio. Of no importance.
LAZZARO DE' MENDICANTI, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
LIBRERIA VECCHIA. A graceful building of the central Renaissance,
designed by Sansovino, 1536, and much admired by all architects of the
school. It was continued by Scamozzi, down the whole side of St.
Mark's Place, adding another story above it, which modern critics
blame as destroying the "eurithmia;" never considering that had the
two low stories of the Library been continued along the entire length
of the Piazza, they would have looked so low that the entire dignity
of the square would have been lost. As it is, the Library is left in
its originally good proportions, and the larger mass of the Procuratie
Nuove forms a more majestic, though less graceful, side for the great
square.
But the real faults of the building are not in its number of stories,
but in the design of the parts. It is one of the grossest examples of
the base Renaissance habit of turning _keystones_ into _brackets_,
throwing them out in bold projection (not less than a foot and a half)
beyond the mouldings of the arch; a practice utterly barbarous,
inasmuch as it evidently tends to dislocate the entire arch, if any
real weight were laid on the extremity of the keystone; and it is also
a very characteristic example of the vulgar and painful mode of
filling spandrils by naked figures in alto-relievo, leaning against
the arch on each side, and appearing as if they were continually in
danger of slipping off. Many of these figures have, however, some
merit in themselves; and the whole building is graceful and effective
of its kind. The continuation of the Procuratie Nuove, at the western
extremity of St. Mark's Place (together with various apartments in the
great line of the Procuratie Nuove) forms the "Royal Palace," the
residence of the Emperor when at Venice. This building is entirely
modern, built in 1810, in imitation of the Procuratie Nuove, and on
the site of Sansovino's Church of San Geminiano.
In this range of buildings, including the Royal Palace, the Procuratie
Nuove, the old Library, and the "Zecca" which is connected with them
(the latter being an ugly building of very modern date, not worth
notice architecturally), there are many most valuable pictures, among
which I would especially direct attention, first to those in the
Zecca, namely, a beautiful and strange Madonna, by Benedetto Diana;
two noble Bonifazios; and two groups, by Tintoret, of the Provveditori
della Zecca, by no means to be missed, whatever may be sacrificed to
see them, on account of the quietness and veracity of their unaffected
portraiture, and the absolute freedom from all vanity either in the
painter or in his subjects.
Next, in the "Antisala" of the old Library, observe the "Sapienza" of
Titian, in the centre of the ceiling; a most interesting work in the
light brilliancy of its color, and the resemblance to Paul Veronese.
Then, in the great hall of the old Library, examine the two large
Tintorets, "St. Mark saving a Saracen from Drowning," and the
"Stealing of his Body from Constantinople," both rude, but great (note
in the latter the dashing of the rain on the pavement, and running of
the water about the feet of the figures): then in the narrow spaces
between the windows, there are some magnificent single figures by
Tintoret, among the finest things of the kind in Italy, or in Europe.
Finally, in the gallery of pictures in the Palazzo Reale, among other
good works of various kinds, are two of the most interesting
Bonifazios in Venice, the "Children of Israel in their journeyings,"
in one of which, if I recollect right, the quails are coming in flight
across a sunset sky, forming one of the earliest instances I know of a
thoroughly natural and Turneresque effect being felt and rendered by
the old masters. The picture struck me chiefly from this circumstance;
but, the note-book in which I had described it and its companion
having been lost on my way home, I cannot now give a more special
account of them, except that they are long, full of crowded figures,
and peculiarly light in color and handling as compared with
Bonifazio's work in general.
LIO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance, but said to contain a spoiled
Titian.
LIO, SALIZZADA DI ST., windows in, II. 252, 257.
LOREDAN, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, near the Rialto, II. 123, 393.
Another palace of this name, on the Campo St. Stefano, is of no
importance.
LORENZO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
LUCA, CHURCH OF ST. Its campanile is of very interesting and quaint
early Gothic, and it is said to contain a Paul Veronese, "St Luke and
the Virgin." In the little Campiello St. Luca, close by, is a very
precious Gothic door, rich in brickwork, of the thirteenth century;
and in the foundations of the houses on the same side of the square,
but at the other end of it, are traceable some shafts and arches
closely resembling the work of the Cathedral of Murano, and evidently
having once belonged to some most interesting building.
LUCIA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
M
MADDALENA, CHURCH OF STA. MARIA. Of no importance.
MALIPIERO, PALAZZO, on the Campo St. M. Formosa, facing the canal at its
extremity. A very beautiful example of the Byzantine Renaissance. Note
the management of color in its inlaid balconies.
MANFRINI, PALAZZO. The architecture is of no interest; and as it is in
contemplation to allow the collection of pictures to be sold, I shall
take no note of them. But even if they should remain, there are few of
the churches in Venice where the traveller had not better spend his
time than in this gallery; as, with the exception of Titian's
"Entombment," one or two Giorgiones, and the little John Bellini (St.
Jerome), the pictures are all of a kind which may be seen elsewhere.
MANGILI VALMARANA, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance.
MANIN, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance.
MANZONI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, near the Church of the Carità. A
perfect and very rich example of Byzantine Renaissance: its warm
yellow marbles are magnificent.
MARCILIAN, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a Titian, "Tobit and the
Angel:" otherwise of no importance.
MARIA, CHURCHES OF STA. See FORMOSA, MATER DOMINI, MIRACOLI, ORTO,
SALUTE, and ZOBENIGO.
MARCO, SCUOLA DI SAN, III. 16.
MARK, CHURCH OF ST., history of, II. 57; approach to, II. 71; general
teaching of, II. 112, 116; measures of façade of, II. 126; balustrades
of, II. 244, 247; cornices of, I. 311; horseshoe arches of, II. 249;
entrances of, II. 271, III. 245; shafts of, II. 384; base in
baptistery of, I. 290; mosaics in atrium of, II. 112; mosaics in
cupola of, II. 114, III. 192; lily capitals of, II. 137; Plates
illustrative of (Vol. II.), VI. VII. figs. 9, 10, 11, VIII. figs. 8,
9, 12, 13, 15, IX. XI. fig. 1, and Plate III. Vol. III.
MARK, SQUARE OF ST. (Piazza di San Marco), anciently a garden, II. 58;
general effect of, II. 66, 116; plan of, II. 282.
MARTINO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
MATER DOMINI, CHURCH OF ST. MARIA. It contains two important pictures:
one over the second altar on the right, "St. Christina," by Vincenzo
Catena, a very lovely example of the Venetian religious school; and,
over the north transept door, the "Finding of the Cross," by Tintoret,
a carefully painted and attractive picture, but by no means a good
specimen of the master, as far as regards power of conception. He does
not seem to have entered into his subject. There is no wonder, no
rapture, no entire devotion in any of the figures. They are only
interested and pleased in a mild way; and the kneeling woman who hands
the nails to a man stooping forward to receive them on the right hand,
does so with the air of a person saying, "You had better take care of
them; they may be wanted another time." This general coldness in
expression is much increased by the presence of several figures on the
right and left, introduced for the sake of portraiture merely; and
the reality, as well as the feeling, of the scene is destroyed by our
seeing one of the youngest and weakest of the women with a huge cross
lying across her knees, the whole weight of it resting upon her. As
might have been expected, where the conception is so languid, the
execution is little delighted in; it is throughout steady and
powerful, but in no place affectionate, and in no place impetuous. If
Tintoret had always painted in this way, he would have sunk into a
mere mechanist. It is, however, a genuine and tolerably well preserved
specimen, and its female figures are exceedingly graceful; that of St.
Helena very queenly, though by no means agreeable in feature. Among
the male portraits on the left there is one different from the usual
types which occur either in Venetian paintings or Venetian populace;
it is carefully painted, and more like a Scotch Presbyterian minister,
than a Greek. The background is chiefly composed of architecture,
white, remarkably uninteresting in color, and still more so in form.
This is to be noticed as one of the unfortunate results of the
Renaissance teaching at this period. Had Tintoret backed his Empress
Helena with Byzantine architecture, the picture might have been one of
the most gorgeous he ever painted.
MATER DOMINI, CAMPO DI STA. MARIA, II. 261. A most interesting little
piazza, surrounded by early Gothic houses, once of singular beauty;
the arcade at its extremity, of fourth order windows, drawn in my
folio work, is one of the earliest and loveliest of its kind in
Venice; and in the houses at the side is a group of second order
windows with their intermediate crosses, all complete, and well worth
careful examination.
MICHELE IN ISOLA, CHURCH OF ST. On the island between Venice and
Murano. The little Cappella Emiliana at the side of it has been much
admired, but it would be difficult to find a building more feelingless
or ridiculous. It is more like a German summer-house, or angle turret,
than a chapel, and may be briefly described as a bee-hive set on a low
hexagonal tower, with dashes of stone-work about its windows like the
flourishes of an idle penman.
The cloister of this church is pretty; and the attached cemetery is
worth entering, for the sake of feeling the strangeness of the quiet
sleeping ground in the midst of the sea.
MICHIEL DALLE COLONNE, PALAZZO. Of no importance.
MINELLI, PALAZZO. In the Corte del Maltese, at St. Paternian. It has a
spiral external staircase, very picturesque, but of the fifteenth
century and without merit.
MIRACOLI, CHURCH OF STA. MARIA DEI. The most interesting and finished
example in Venice of the Byzantine Renaissance, and one of the most
important in Italy of the cinque-cento style. All its sculptures
should be examined with great care, as the best possible examples of a
bad style. Observe, for instance, that in spite of the beautiful work
on the square pillars which support the gallery at the west end, they
have no more architectural effect than two wooden posts. The same kind
of failure in boldness of purpose exists throughout; and the building
is, in fact, rather a small museum of unmeaning, though refined
sculpture, than a piece of architecture.
Its grotesques are admirable examples of the base Raphaelesque design
examined above, III. 136. Note especially the children's heads tied up
by the hair, in the lateral sculptures at the top of the altar steps.
A rude workman, who could hardly have carved the head at all, might
have allowed this or any other mode of expressing discontent with his
own doings; but the man who could carve a child's head so perfectly
must have been wanting in all human feeling, to cut it off, and tie it
by the hair to a vine leaf. Observe, in the Ducal Palace, though far
ruder in skill, the heads always _emerge_ from the leaves, they are
never _tied_ to them.
MISERICORDIA, CHURCH OF. The church itself is nothing, and contains
nothing worth the traveller's time; but the Albergo de' Confratelli
della Misericordia at its side is a very interesting and beautiful
relic of the Gothic Renaissance. Lazari says, "del secolo xiv.;" but I
believe it to be later. Its traceries are very curious and rich, and
the sculpture of its capitals very fine for the late time. Close to
it, on the right-hand side of the canal which is crossed by the wooden
bridge, is one of the richest Gothic doors in Venice, remarkable for
the appearance of antiquity in the general design and stiffness of its
figures, though it bears its date 1505. Its extravagant crockets are
almost the only features which, but for this written date, would at
first have confessed its lateness; but, on examination, the figures
will be found as bad and spiritless as they are apparently archaic,
and completely exhibiting the Renaissance palsy of imagination.
The general effect is, however, excellent, the whole arrangement
having been borrowed from earlier work.
The action of the statue of the Madonna, who extends her robe to
shelter a group of diminutive figures, representative of the Society
for whose house the sculpture was executed, may be also seen in most
of the later Venetian figures of the Virgin which occupy similar
situations. The image of Christ is placed in a medallion on her
breast, thus fully, though conventionally, expressing the idea of
self-support which is so often partially indicated by the great
religious painters in their representations of the infant Jesus.
MOISÈ, CHURCH OF ST., III. 124. Notable as one of the basest examples
of the basest school of the Renaissance. It contains one important
picture, namely "Christ washing the Disciples' Feet," by Tintoret; on
the left side of the chapel, north of the choir. This picture has been
originally dark, is now much faded--in parts, I believe, altogether
destroyed--and is hung in the worst light of a chapel, where, on a
sunny day at noon, one could not easily read without a candle. I
cannot, therefore, give much information respecting it; but it is
certainly one of the least successful of the painter's works, and both
careless and unsatisfactory in its composition as well as its color.
One circumstance is noticeable, as in a considerable degree detracting
from the interest of most of Tintoret's representations of our Saviour
with his disciples. He never loses sight of the fact that all were
poor, and the latter ignorant; and while he never paints a senator, or
a saint once thoroughly canonized, except as a gentleman, he is very
careful to paint the Apostles, in their living intercourse with the
Saviour, in such a manner that the spectator may see in an instant, as
the Pharisee did of old, that they were unlearned and ignorant men;
and, whenever we find them in a room, it is always such a one as would
be inhabited by the lower classes. There seems some violation of this
practice in the dais, or flight of steps, at the top of which the
Saviour is placed in the present picture; but we are quickly reminded
that the guests' chamber or upper room ready prepared was not likely
to have been in a palace, by the humble furniture upon the floor,
consisting of a tub with a copper saucepan in it, a coffee-pot, and a
pair of bellows, curiously associated with a symbolic cup with a
wafer, which, however, is in an injured part of the canvas, and may
have been added by the priests. I am totally unable to state what the
background of the picture is or has been; and the only point farther
to be noted about it is the solemnity, which, in spite of the familiar
and homely circumstances above noticed, the painter has given to the
scene, by placing the Saviour, in the act of washing the feet of
Peter, at the top of a circle of steps, on which the other Apostles
kneel in adoration and astonishment.
MORO, PALAZZO. See OTHELLO.
MOROSINI, PALAZZO, near the Ponte dell' Ospedaletto, at San Giovannie
Paolo. Outside it is not interesting, though the gateway shows remains
of brickwork of the thirteenth century. Its interior court is
singularly beautiful; the staircase of early fourteenth century Gothic
has originally been superb, and the window in the angle above is the
most perfect that I know in Venice of the kind; the lightly sculptured
coronet is exquisitely introduced at the top of its spiral shaft.
This palace still belongs to the Morosini family, to whose present
representative, the Count Carlo Morosini, the reader is indebted for
the note on the character of his ancestors, above, III. 213.
MOROSINI, PALAZZO, at St. Stefano. Of no importance.
N
NANI-MOCENIGO, PALAZZO. (Now Hotel Danieli.) A glorious example of the
central Gothic, nearly contemporary with the finest part of the Ducal
Palace. Though less impressive in effect than the Casa Foscari or Casa
Bernardo, it is of purer architecture than either: and quite unique in
the delicacy of the form of the cusps in the central group of windows,
which are shaped like broad scimitars, the upper foil of the windows
being very small. If the traveller will compare these windows with
the neighboring traceries of the Ducal Palace, he will easily perceive
the peculiarity.
NICOLO DEL LIDO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
NOME DI GESU, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.
O
ORFANI, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.
ORTO, CHURCH OF STA. MARIA, DELL'. An interesting example of Renaissance
Gothic, the traceries of the windows being very rich and quaint.
It contains four most important Tintorets: "The Last Judgment," "The
Worship of the Golden Calf," "The Presentation of the Virgin," and
"Martyrdom of St. Agnes." The first two are among his largest and
mightiest works, but grievously injured by damp and neglect; and
unless the traveller is accustomed to decipher the thoughts in a
picture patiently, he need not hope to derive any pleasure from them.
But no pictures will better reward a resolute study. The following
account of the "Last Judgment," given in the second volume of "Modern
Painters," will be useful in enabling the traveller to enter into the
meaning of the picture, but its real power is only to be felt by
patient examination of it.
"By Tintoret only has this unimaginable event (the Last Judgment) been
grappled with in its Verity; not typically nor symbolically, but as
they may see it who shall not sleep, but be changed. Only one
traditional circumstance he has received, with Dante and Michael
Angelo, the Boat of the Condemned; but the impetuosity of his mind
bursts out even in the adoption of this image; he has not stopped at
the scowling ferryman of the one, nor at the sweeping blow and demon
dragging of the other, but, seized Hylas like by the limbs, and
tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his
destruction; nor is it the sluggish Lethe, nor the fiery lake, that
bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of
the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract; the river of
the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf where the world has
melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruins of nations, and
the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling, like
water-wheels. Bat-like, out of the holes and caverns and shadows of
the earth, the bones gather, and the clay heaps heave, rattling and
adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and
struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their
clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet,
like his of old who went his way unseeing to the Siloam Pool; shaking
off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the
clangor of the trumpets of the armies of God, blinded yet more, as
they awake, by the white light of the new Heaven, until the great
vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment seat;
the Firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human souls, that
drifts, and floats, and falls into the interminable, inevitable light;
the bright clouds are darkened with them as with thick snow, currents
of atom life in the arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly, and
higher and higher still, till the eye and the thought can follow no
farther, borne up, wingless, by their inward faith and by the angel
powers invisible, now hurled in countless drifts of horror before the
breath of their condemnation."
Note in the opposite picture the way the clouds are wrapped about in
the distant Sinai.
The figure of the little Madonna in the "Presentation" should be
compared with Titian's in his picture of the same subject in the
Academy. I prefer Tintoret's infinitely: and note how much finer is
the feeling with which Tintoret has relieved the glory round her head
against the pure sky, than that which influenced Titian in encumbering
his distance with architecture.
The "Martyrdom of St. Agnes" _was_ a lovely picture. It has been
"restored" since I saw it.
OSPEDALETTO, CHURCH OF THE. The most monstrous example of the
Grotesque Renaissance which there is in Venice; the sculptures on its
façade representing masses of diseased figures and swollen fruit.
It is almost worth devoting an hour to the successive examination of
five buildings, as illustrative of the last degradation of the
Renaissance. San Moisè is the most clumsy, Santa Maria Zobenigo the
most impious, St. Eustachio the most ridiculous, the Ospedaletto the
most monstrous, and the head at Santa Maria Formosa the most foul.
OTHELLO, HOUSE OF, at the Carmini. The researches of Mr. Brown into
the origin of the play of "Othello" have, I think, determined that
Shakspeare wrote on definite historical grounds; and that Othello may
be in many points identified with Christopher Moro, the lieutenant of
the republic at Cyprus, in 1508. See "Ragguagli su Maria Sanuto," i.
252.
His palace was standing till very lately, a Gothic building of the
fourteenth century, of which Mr. Brown possesses a drawing. It is now
destroyed, and a modern square-windowed house built on its site. A
statue, said to be a portrait of Moro, but a most paltry work, is set
in a niche in the modern wall.
P
PANTALEONE, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a Paul Veronese; otherwise of
no importance.
PATERNIAN, CHURCH OF ST. Its little leaning tower forms an interesting
object as the traveller sees it from the narrow canal which passes
beneath the Porte San Paternian. The two arched lights of the belfry
appear of very early workmanship, probably of the beginning of the
thirteenth century.
PESARO PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. The most powerful and impressive
in effect of all the palaces of the Grotesque Renaissance. The heads
upon its foundation are very characteristic of the period, but there
is more genius in them than usual. Some of the mingled expressions of
faces and grinning casques are very clever.
PIAZZETTA, pillars of, see Final Appendix under head "Capital." The
two magnificent blocks of marble brought from St. Jean d'Acre, which
form one of the principal ornaments of the Piazzetta, are Greek
sculpture of the sixth century, and will be described in my folio
work.
PIETA, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.
PIETRO, CHURCH OF ST., at Murano. Its pictures, once valuable, are now
hardly worth examination, having been spoiled by neglect.
PIETRO, DI CASTELLO, CHURCH OF ST., I. 7, 361. It is said to contain
a Paul Veronese, and I suppose the so-called "Chair of St. Peter" must
be worth examining.
PISANI, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. The latest Venetian Gothic, just
passing into Renaissance. The capitals of the first floor windows are,
however, singularly spirited and graceful, very daringly under-cut,
and worth careful examination. The Paul Veronese, once the glory of
this palace, is, I believe, not likely to remain in Venice. The other
picture in the same room, the "Death of Darius," is of no value.
PISANI, PALAZZO, at St. Stefano. Late Renaissance, and of no merit,
but grand in its colossal proportions, especially when seen from the
narrow canal at its side, which terminated by the apse of the Church
of San Stefano, is one of the most picturesque and impressive little
pieces of water scenery in Venice.
POLO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance, except as an example of the
advantages accruing from restoration. M. Lazari says of it, "Before
this church was modernized, its principal chapel was adorned with
Mosaics, and possessed a pala of silver gilt, of Byzantine
workmanship, which is now lost."
POLO, SQUARE OF ST. (Campo San Polo.) A large and important square,
rendered interesting chiefly by three palaces on the side of it
opposite the church, of central Gothic (1360), and fine of their time,
though small. One of their capitals has been given in Plate II. of
this volume, fig. 12. They are remarkable as being decorated with
sculptures of the Gothic time, in imitation of Byzantine ones; the
period being marked by the dog-tooth and cable being used instead of
the dentil round the circles.
POLO, PALAZZO, at San G. Grisostomo (the house of Marco Polo), II. 139.
Its interior court is full of interest, showing fragments of the old
building in every direction, cornices, windows, and doors, of almost
every period, mingled among modern rebuilding and restoration of all
degrees of dignity.
PORTA DELLA CARTA, II. 302.
PRIULI, PALAZZO. A most important and beautiful early Gothic Palace,
at San Severo; the main entrance is from the Fundamento San Severo,
but the principal façade is on the other side, towards the canal. The
entrance has been grievously defaced, having had winged lions filling
the spandrils of its pointed arch, of which only feeble traces are now
left, the façade has very early fourth order windows in the lower
story, and above, the beautiful range of fifth order windows drawn at
the bottom of Plate XVIII. Vol. II., where the heads of the fourth
order range are also seen (note their inequality, the larger one at
the flank). This Palace has two most interesting traceried angle
windows also, which, however, I believe are later than those on the
façade; and finally, a rich and bold interior staircase.
PROCURATIE NUOVE, see "LIBRERIA" VECCHIA: A graceful series buildings,
of late fifteenth century design, forming the northern side of St.
Mark's Place, but of no particular interest.
Q
QUERINI, PALAZZO, now the Beccherie, II. 255, III. 234.
R
RAFFAELLE, CHIESA DELL'ANGELO. Said to contain a Bonifazio, otherwise of
no importance.
REDENTORE, CHURCH OF THE, II. 378. It contains three interesting John
Bellinis, and also, in the sacristy, a most beautiful Paul Veronese.
REMER, CORTE DEL, house in. II. 251.
REZZONICO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of the Grotesque Renaissance
time, but less extravagant than usual.
RIALTO, BRIDGE OF THE. The best building raised in the time of the
Grotesque Renaissance; very noble in its simplicity, in its
proportions, and in its masonry. Note especially the grand way in
which the oblique archstones rest on the butments of the bridge, safe,
palpably both to the sense and eye: note also the sculpture of the
Annunciation on the southern side of it; how beautifully arranged, so
as to give more lightness and a grace to the arch--_the dove, flying
towards the Madonna, forming the keystone_,--and thus the whole action
of the figures being parallel to the curve of the arch, while all the
masonry is at right angles to it. Note, finally, one circumstance
which gives peculiar firmness to the figure of the angel, and
associates itself with the general expression of strength in the
whole building; namely that the sole of the advanced foot is set
perfectly level, as if placed on the ground, instead of being thrown
back behind like a heron's, as in most modern figures of this kind.
The sculptures themselves are not good; but these pieces of feeling in
them are very admirable. The two figures on the other side, St. Mark
and St. Theodore, are inferior, though all by the same sculptor,
Girolamo Campagna.
The bridge was built by Antonio da Ponte, in 1588. It was anciently of
wood, with a drawbridge in the centre, a representation of which may
be seen in one of Carpaccio's pictures at the Accademia delle Belle
Arti: and the traveller should observe that the interesting effect,
both of this and the Bridge of Sighs, depends in great part on their
both being _more_ than bridges; the one a covered passage, the other a
row of shops, sustained on an arch. No such effect can be produced
merely by the masonry of the roadway itself.
RIO DEL PALAZZO, II. 282.
ROCCO, CAMPIELLO DI SAN, windows in, II. 258.
ROCCO, CHURCH OF ST. Notable only for the most interesting pictures by
Tintoret which it contains, namely:
1. _San Rocco before the Pope._ (On the left of the door as we enter.)
A delightful picture in his best manner, but not much labored; and,
like several other pictures in this church, it seems to me to have
been executed at some period of the painter's life when he was either
in ill health, or else had got into a mechanical way of painting, from
having made too little reference to nature for a long time. There is
something stiff and forced in the white draperies on both sides, and a
general character about the whole which I can feel better than I can
describe; but which, if I had been the painter's physician, would have
immediately caused me to order him to shut up his painting-room, and
take a voyage to the Levant, and back again. The figure of the Pope
is, however, extremely beautiful, and is not unworthy, in its jewelled
magnificence, here dark against the sky, of comparison with the figure
of the high priest in the "Presentation," in the Scuola di San Rocco.
2. _Annunciation._ (On the other side of the door, on entering.) A
most disagreeable and dead picture, having all the faults of the age,
and none of the merits of the painter. It must be a matter of future
investigation to me, what could cause the fall of his mind from a
conception so great and so fiery as that of the "Annunciation" in the
Scuola di San Rocco, to this miserable reprint of an idea worn out
centuries before. One of the most inconceivable things in it,
considered as the work of Tintoret, is that where the angel's robe
drifts away behind his limb, one cannot tell by the character of the
outline, or by the tones of the color, whether the cloud comes in
before the robe, or whether the robe cuts upon the cloud. The Virgin
is uglier than that of the Scuola, and not half so real; and the
draperies are crumpled in the most commonplace and ignoble folds. It
is a picture well worth study, as an example of the extent to which
the greatest mind may be betrayed by the abuse of its powers, and the
neglect of its proper food in the study of nature.
3. _Pool of Bethesda._ (On the right side of the church, in its
centre, the lowest of the two pictures which occupy the wall.) A noble
work, but eminently disagreeable, as must be all pictures of this
subject; and with the same character in it of undefinable want, which
I have noticed in the two preceding works. The main figure in it is
the cripple, who has taken up his bed; but the whole effect of this
action is lost by his not turning to Christ, but flinging it on his
shoulder like a triumphant porter with a huge load; and the corrupt
Renaissance architecture, among which the figures are crowded, is both
ugly in itself, and much too small for them. It is worth noticing, for
the benefit of persons who find fault with the perspective of the
Pre-Raphaelites, that the perspective of the brackets beneath these
pillars is utterly absurd; and that, in fine, the presence or absence
of perspective has nothing to do with the merits of a great picture:
not that the perspective of the Pre-Raphaelites _is_ false in any case
that I have examined, the objection being just as untenable as it is
ridiculous.
4. _San Rocco in the Desert._ (Above the last-named picture.) A single
recumbent figure in a not very interesting landscape, deserving less
attention than a picture of St. Martin just opposite to it,--a noble
and knightly figure on horseback by Pordenone, to which I cannot pay a
greater compliment than by saying that I was a considerable time in
doubt whether or not it was another Tintoret.
5. _San Rocco in the Hospital._ (On the right-hand side of the altar.)
There are four vast pictures by Tintoret in the dark choir of this
church, not only important by their size (each being some twenty-five
feet long by ten feet high), but also elaborate compositions; and
remarkable, one for its extraordinary landscape, and the other as the
most studied picture in which the painter has introduced horses in
violent action. In order to show what waste of human mind there is in
these dark churches of Venice, it is worth recording that, as I was
examining these pictures, there came in a party of eighteen German
tourists, not hurried, nor jesting among themselves as large parties
often do, but patiently submitting to their cicerone, and evidently
desirous of doing their duty as intelligent travellers. They sat down
for a long time on the benches of the nave, looked a little at the
"Pool of Bethesda," walked up into the choir and there heard a lecture
of considerable length from their _valet-de-place_ upon some subject
connected with the altar itself, which, being in German, I did not
understand; they then turned and went slowly out of the church, not
one of the whole eighteen ever giving a single glance to any of the
four Tintorets, and only one of them, as far as I saw, even raising
his eyes to the walls on which they hung, and immediately withdrawing
them, with a jaded and _nonchalant_ expression easily interpretable
into "Nothing but old black pictures." The two Tintorets above
noticed, at the end of the church, were passed also without a glance;
and this neglect is not because the pictures have nothing in them
capable of arresting the popular mind, but simply because they are
totally in the dark, or confused among easier and more prominent
objects of attention. This picture, which I have called "St. Rocco in
the Hospital," shows him, I suppose, in his general ministrations at
such places, and is one of the usual representations of a disgusting
subject from which neither Orcagna nor Tintoret seems ever to have
shrunk. It is a very noble picture, carefully composed and highly
wrought; but to me gives no pleasure, first, on account of its
subject, secondly, on account of its dull brown tone all over,--it
being impossible, or nearly so, in such a scene, and at all events
inconsistent with its feeling, to introduce vivid color of any kind.
So it is a brown study of diseased limbs in a close room.
6. _Cattle Piece._ (Above the picture last described.) I can give no
other name to this picture, whose subject I can neither guess nor
discover, the picture being in the dark, and the guide-books leaving
me in the same position. All I can make out of it is, that there is a
noble landscape with cattle and figures. It seems to me the best
landscape of Tintoret's in Venice, except the "Flight into Egypt;" and
is even still more interesting from its savage character, the
principal trees being pines, something like Titian's in his "St.
Francis receiving the Stigmata," and chestnuts on the slopes and in
the hollows of the hills; the animals also seem first-rate. But it is
too high, too much faded, and too much in the dark to be made out. It
seems never to have been rich in color, rather cool and grey, and very
full of light.
7. _Finding of Body of San Rocco._ (On the left-hand side of the
altar.) An elaborate, but somewhat confused picture, with a flying
angel in a blue drapery; but it seemed to me altogether uninteresting,
or perhaps requiring more study than I was able to give it.
8. _San Rocco in Campo d' Armata._ So this picture is called by the
sacristan. I could see no San Rocco in it; nothing but a wild group of
horses and warriors in the most magnificent confusion of fall and
flight ever painted by man. They seem all dashed different ways as if
by a whirlwind; and a whirlwind there must be, or a thunderbolt,
behind them, for a huge tree is torn up and hurled into the air beyond
the central figure, as if it were a shivered lance. Two of the horses
meet in the midst, as if in a tournament; but in madness of fear, not
in hostility; on the horse to the right is a standard-bearer, who
stoops as from some foe behind him, with the lance laid across his
saddle-bow, level, and the flag stretched out behind him as he flies,
like the sail of a ship drifting from its mast; the central horseman,
who meets the shock, of storm, or enemy, whatever it be, is hurled
backwards from his seat, like a stone from a sling; and this figure
with the shattered tree trunk behind it, is the most noble part of the
picture. There is another grand horse on the right, however, also in
full action. Two gigantic figures on foot, on the left, meant to be
nearer than the others, would, it seems to me, have injured the
picture, had they been clearly visible; but time has reduced them to
perfect subordination.
ROCCO, SCUOLA DI SAN, bases of, I. 291, 431; soffit ornaments of, I.
337. An interesting building of the early Renaissance (1517), passing
into Roman Renaissance. The wreaths of leafage about its shafts are
wonderfully delicate and fine, though misplaced.
As regards the pictures which it contains, it is one of the three most
precious buildings in Italy; buildings, I mean, consistently decorated
with a series of paintings at the time of their erection, and still
exhibiting that series in its original order. I suppose there can be
little question, but that the three most important edifices of this
kind in Italy are the Sistine Chapel, the Campo Santo of Pisa, and the
Scuola di San Rocco at Venice: the first is painted by Michael Angelo;
the second by Orcagna, Benozzo Gozzoli, Pietro Laurati, and several
other men whose works are as rare as they are precious; and the third
by Tintoret.
Whatever the traveller may miss in Venice, he should therefore give
unembarrassed attention and unbroken time to the Scuola di San Rocco;
and I shall, accordingly, number the pictures, and note in them, one
by one, what seemed to me most worthy of observation.
There are sixty-two in all, but eight of these are merely of children
or children's heads, and two of unimportant figures. The number of
valuable pictures is fifty-two; arranged on the walls and ceilings of
three rooms, so badly lighted, in consequence of the admirable
arrangements of the Renaissance architect, that it is only in the
early morning that some of the pictures can be seen at all, nor can
they ever be seen but imperfectly. They were all painted, however, for
their places in the dark, and, as compared with Tintoret's other
works, are therefore, for the most part, nothing more than vast
sketches, made to produce, under a certain degree of shadow, the
effect of finished pictures. Their treatment is thus to be considered
as a kind of scene-painting; differing from ordinary scene-painting
only in this, that the effect aimed at is not _that of a natural
scene_ but _a perfect picture_. They differ in this respect from all
other existing works; for there is not, as far as I know, any other
instance in which a great master has consented to work for a room
plunged into almost total obscurity. It is probable that none but
Tintoret would have undertaken the task, and most fortunate that he
was forced to it. For in this magnificent scene-painting we have, of
course, more wonderful examples, both of his handling, and knowledge
of effect, than could ever have been exhibited in finished pictures;
while the necessity of doing much with few strokes keeps his mind so
completely on the stretch throughout the work (while yet the velocity
of production prevented his being wearied), that no other series of
his works exhibits powers so exalted. On the other hand, owing to the
velocity and coarseness of the painting, it is more liable to injury
through drought or damp; and, as the walls have been for years
continually running down with rain, and what little sun gets into the
place contrives to fall all day right on one or other of the pictures,
they are nothing but wrecks of what they were; and the ruins of
paintings originally coarse are not likely ever to be attractive to
the public mind. Twenty or thirty years ago they were taken down to be
retouched; but the man to whom the task was committed providentially
died, and only one of them was spoiled. I have found traces of his
work upon another, but not to an extent very seriously destructive.
The rest of the sixty-two, or, at any rate, all that are in the upper
room, appear entirely intact.
Although, as compared with his other works, they are all very scenic
in execution, there are great differences in their degrees of finish;
and, curiously enough, some on the ceilings and others in the darkest
places in the lower room are very nearly finished pictures, while the
"Agony in the Garden," which is in one of the best lights in the upper
room, appears to have been painted in a couple of hours with a broom
for a brush.
For the traveller's greater convenience, I shall give a rude plan of
the arrangement, and list of the subjects, of each group of pictures
before examining them in detail.
First Group. On the walls of the room on the ground floor.
[Illustration:
1. Annunciation. 5. The Magdalen.
2. Adoration of Magi. 6. St. Mary of Egypt.
3. Flight into Egypt. 7. Circumcision.
4. Massacre of Innocents. 8. Assumption of Virgin.
At the turn of the stairs leading to the upper room:
9. Visitation.]
1. _The Annunciation._ This, which first strikes the eye, is a very
just representative of the whole group, the execution being carried to
the utmost limits of boldness consistent with completion. It is a
well-known picture, and need not therefore be specially described, but
one or two points in it require notice. The face of the Virgin is very
disagreeable to the spectator from below, giving the idea of a woman
about thirty, who had never been handsome. If the face is untouched,
it is the only instance I have ever seen of Tintoret's failing in an
intended effect, for, when seen near, the face is comely and youthful,
and expresses only surprise, instead of the pain and fear of which it
bears the aspect in the distance. I could not get near enough to see
whether it had been retouched. It looks like Tintoret's work, though
rather hard; but, as there are unquestionable marks in the retouching
of this picture, it is possible that some slight restoration of lines
supposed to be faded, entirely alter the distant expression of the
face. One of the evident pieces of repainting is the scarlet of the
Madonna's lap, which is heavy and lifeless. A far more injurious one
is the strip of sky seen through the doorway by which the angel
enters, which has originally been of the deep golden color of the
distance on the left, and which the blundering restorer has daubed
over with whitish blue, so that it looks like a bit of the wall;
luckily he has not touched the outlines of the angel's black wings, on
which the whole expression of the picture depends. This angel and the
group of small cherubs above form a great swinging chain, of which the
dove representing the Holy Spirit forms the bend. The angels in their
flight seem to be attached to this as the train of fire is to a
rocket; all of them appearing to have swooped down with the swiftness
of a falling star.
2. _Adoration of the Magi._ The most finished picture in the Scuola,
except the "Crucifixion," and perhaps the most delightful of the
whole. It unites every source of pleasure that a picture can possess:
the highest elevation of principal subject, mixed with the lowest
detail of picturesque incident; the dignity of the highest ranks of
men, opposed to the simplicity of the lowest; the quietness and
serenity of an incident in cottage life, contrasted with the
turbulence of troops of horsemen and the spiritual power of angels.
The placing of the two doves as principal points of light in the front
of the picture, in order to remind the spectator of the poverty of the
mother whose child is receiving the offerings and adoration of three
monarchs, is one of Tintoret's master touches; the whole scene,
indeed, is conceived in his happiest manner. Nothing can be at once
more humble or more dignified than the bearing of the kings; and there
is a sweet reality given to the whole incident by the Madonna's
stooping forward and lifting her hand in admiration of the vase of
gold which has been set before the Christ, though she does so with
such gentleness and quietness that her dignity is not in the least
injured by the simplicity of the action. As if to illustrate the means
by which the Wise men were brought from the East, the whole picture is
nothing but a large star, of which Christ is the centre; all the
figures, even the timbers of the roof, radiate from the small bright
figure on which the countenances of the flying angels are bent, the
star itself, gleaming through the timbers above, being quite
subordinate. The composition would almost be too artificial were it
not broken by the luminous distance where the troop of horsemen are
waiting for the kings. These, with a dog running at full speed, at
once interrupt the symmetry of the lines, and form a point of relief
from the over concentration of all the rest of the action.
3. _Flight into Egypt._ One of the principal figures here is the
donkey. I have never seen any of the nobler animals--lion, or leopard,
or horse, or dragon--made so sublime as this quiet head of the
domestic ass, chiefly owing to the grand motion in the nostril and
writhing in the ears. The space of the picture is chiefly occupied by
lovely landscape, and the Madonna and St. Joseph are pacing their way
along a shady path upon the banks of a river at the side of the
picture. I had not any conception, until I got near, how much pains
had been taken with the Virgin's head; its expression is as sweet and
as intense as that of any of Raffaelle's, its reality far greater. The
painter seems to have intended that everything should be subordinate
to the beauty of this single head; and the work is a wonderful proof
of the way in which a vast field of canvas may be made conducive to
the interest of a single figure. This is partly accomplished by
slightness of painting, so that on close examination, while there is
everything to astonish in the masterly handling and purpose, there is
not much perfect or very delightful painting; in fact, the two figures
are treated like the living figures in a scene at the theatre, and
finished to perfection, while the landscape is painted as hastily as
the scenes, and with the same kind of opaque size color. It has,
however, suffered as much as any of the series, and it is hardly fair
to judge of its tones and colors in its present state.
4. _Massacre of the Innocents._ The following account of this picture,
given in "Modern Painters," may be useful to the traveller, and is
therefore here repeated. "I have before alluded to the painfulness of
Raffaelle's treatment of the Massacre of the Innocents. Fuseli affirms
of it, that, 'in dramatic gradation he disclosed all the mother
through every image of pity and terror.' If this be so, I think the
philosophical spirit has prevailed over the imaginative. The
imagination never errs; it sees all that is, and all the relations
and bearings of it; but it would not have confused the mortal frenzy
of maternal terror, with various development of maternal character.
Fear, rage, and agony, at their utmost pitch, sweep away all
character: humanity itself would be lost in maternity, the woman would
become the mere personification of animal fury or fear. For this
reason all the ordinary representations of this subject are, I think,
false and cold: the artist has not heard the shrieks, nor mingled with
the fugitives; he has sat down in his study to convulse features
methodically, and philosophize over insanity. Not so Tintoret.
Knowing, or feeling, that the expression of the human face was, in
such circumstances, not to be rendered, and that the effort could only
end in an ugly falsehood, he denies himself all aid from the features,
he feels that if he is to place himself or us in the midst of that
maddened multitude, there can be no time allowed for watching
expression. Still less does he depend on details of murder or
ghastliness of death; there is no blood, no stabbing or cutting, but
there is an awful substitute for these in the chiaroscuro. The scene
is the outer vestibule of a palace, the slippery marble floor is
fearfully barred across by sanguine shadows, so that our eyes seem to
become bloodshot and strained with strange horror and deadly vision; a
lake of life before them, like the burning seen of the doomed Moabite
on the water that came by the way of Edom: a huge flight of stairs,
without parapet, descends on the left; down this rush a crowd of women
mixed with the murderers; the child in the arms of one has been seized
by the limbs, _she hurls herself over the edge, and falls head
downmost, dragging the child out of the grasp by her weight_;--she
will be dashed dead in a second:--close to us is the great struggle; a
heap of the mothers, entangled in one mortal writhe with each other
and the swords; one of the murderers dashed down and crushed beneath
them, the sword of another caught by the blade and dragged at by a
woman's naked hand; the youngest and fairest of the women, her child
just torn away from a death grasp, and clasped to her breast with the
grip of a steel vice, falls backwards, helpless over the heap, right
on the sword points; all knit together and hurled down in one
hopeless, frenzied, furious abandonment of body and soul in the
effort to save. Far back, at the bottom of the stairs, there is
something in the shadow like a heap of clothes. It is a woman, sitting
quiet,--quite quiet,--still as any stone; she looks down steadfastly
on her dead child, laid along on the floor before her, and her hand is
pressed softly upon her brow."
I have nothing to add to the above description of this picture, except
that I believe there may have been some change in the color of the
shadow that crosses the pavement. The chequers of the pavements are,
in the light, golden white and pale grey; in the shadow, red and dark
grey, the white in the sunshine becoming red in the shadow. I formerly
supposed that this was meant to give greater horror to the scene, and
it is very like Tintoret if it be so; but there is a strangeness and
discordance in it which makes me suspect the colors may have changed.
5. _The Magdalen._ This and the picture opposite to it, "St. Mary of
Egypt," have been painted to fill up narrow spaces between the windows
which were not large enough to receive compositions, and yet in which
single figures would have looked awkwardly thrust into the corner.
Tintoret has made these spaces as large as possible by filling them
with landscapes, which are rendered interesting by the introduction of
single figures of very small size. He has not, however, considered his
task, of making a small piece of wainscot look like a large one, worth
the stretch of his powers, and has painted these two landscapes just
as carelessly and as fast as an upholsterer's journeyman finishing a
room at a railroad hotel. The color is for the most part opaque, and
dashed or scrawled on in the manner of a scene-painter; and as during
the whole morning the sun shines upon the one picture, and during the
afternoon upon the other, hues, which were originally thin and
imperfect, are now dried in many places into mere dirt upon the
canvas. With all these drawbacks the pictures are of very high
interest, for although, as I said, hastily and carelessly, they are
not languidly painted; on the contrary, he has been in his hottest and
grandest temper; and in this first one ("Magdalen") the laurel tree,
with its leaves driven hither and thither among flakes of fiery cloud,
has been probably one of the greatest achievements that his hand
performed in landscape: its roots are entangled in underwood; of which
every leaf seems to be articulated, yet all is as wild as if it had
grown there instead of having been painted; there has been a mountain
distance, too, and a sky of stormy light, of which I infinitely regret
the loss, for though its masses of light are still discernible, its
variety of hue is all sunk into a withered brown. There is a curious
piece of execution in the striking of the light upon a brook which
runs under the roots of the laurel in the foreground: these roots are
traced in shadow against the bright surface of the water; another
painter would have drawn the light first, and drawn the dark roots
over it. Tintoret has laid in a brown ground which he has left for the
roots, and painted the water through their interstices with a few
mighty rolls of his brush laden with white.
6. _St. Mary of Egypt._ This picture differs but little in the plan,
from the one opposite, except that St. Mary has her back towards us,
and the Magdalen her face, and that the tree on the other side of the
brook is a palm instead of a laurel. The brook (Jordan?) is, however,
here much more important; and the water painting is exceedingly fine.
Of all painters that I know, in old times, Tintoret is the fondest of
running water; there was a sort of sympathy between it and his own
impetuous spirit. The rest of the landscape is not of much interest,
except so far as it is pleasant to see trunks of trees drawn by single
strokes of the brush.
7. _The Circumcision of Christ._ The custode has some story about this
picture having been painted in imitation of Paul Veronese. I much
doubt if Tintoret ever imitated any body; but this picture is the
expression of his perception of what Veronese delighted in, the
nobility that there may be in mere golden tissue and colored drapery.
It is, in fact, a picture of the moral power of gold and color; and
the chief use of the attendant priest is to support upon his shoulders
the crimson robe, with its square tablets of black and gold; and yet
nothing is withdrawn from the interest or dignity of the scene.
Tintoret has taken immense pains with the head of the high-priest. I
know not any existing old man's head so exquisitely tender, or so
noble in its lines. He receives the Infant Christ in his arms
kneeling, and looking down upon the Child with infinite veneration and
love; and the flashing of golden rays from its head is made the centre
of light, and all interest. The whole picture is like a golden charger
to receive the Child; the priest's dress is held up behind him, that
it may occupy larger space; the tables and floor are covered with
chequer-work; the shadows of the temple are filled with brazen lamps;
and above all are hung masses of curtains, whose crimson folds are
strewn over with golden flakes. Next to the "Adoration of the Magi"
this picture is the most laboriously finished of the Scuola di San
Rocco, and it is unquestionably the highest existing type of the
sublimity which may be thrown into the treatment of accessaries of
dress and decoration.
8. _Assumption of the Virgin._ On the tablet or panel of stone which
forms the side of the tomb out of which the Madonna rises, is this
inscription, in large letters, REST. ANTONIUS FLORIAN, 1834. Exactly
in proportion to a man's idiocy, is always the size of the letters in
which he writes his name on the picture that he spoils. The old
mosaicists in St. Mark's have not, in a single instance, as far as I
know, signed their names; but the spectator who wishes to know who
destroyed the effect of the nave, may see his name inscribed, twice
over, in letters half a foot high, BARTOLOMEO BOZZA. I have never seen
Tintoret's name signed, except in the great "Crucifixion;" but this
Antony Florian, I have no doubt, repainted the whole side of the tomb
that he might put his name on it. The picture is, of course, ruined
wherever he touched it; that is to say, half over; the circle of
cherubs in the sky is still pure; and the design of the great painter
is palpable enough yet in the grand flight of the horizontal angel, on
whom the Madonna half leans as she ascends. It has been a noble
picture, and is a grievous loss; but, happily, there are so many pure
ones, that we need not spend time in gleaning treasures out of the
ruins of this.
9. _Visitation._ A small picture, painted in his very best manner;
exquisite in its simplicity, unrivalled in vigor, well preserved, and,
as a piece of painting, certainly one of the most precious in Venice.
Of course it does not show any of his high inventive powers; nor can a
picture of four middle-sized figures be made a proper subject of
comparison with large canvases containing forty or fifty; but it is,
for this very reason, painted with such perfect ease, and yet with no
slackness either of affection or power, that there is no picture that
I covet so much. It is, besides, altogether free from the Renaissance
taint of dramatic effect. The gestures are as simple and natural as
Giotto's, only expressed by grander lines, such as none but Tintoret
ever reached. The draperies are dark, relieved against a light sky,
the horizon being excessively low, and the outlines of the drapery so
severe, that the intervals between the figures look like ravines
between great rocks, and have all the sublimity of an Alpine valley at
twilight. This precious picture is hung about thirty feet above the
eye, but by looking at it in a strong light, it is discoverable that
the Saint Elizabeth is dressed in green and crimson, the Virgin in the
peculiar red which all great colorists delight in--a sort of glowing
brick-color or brownish scarlet, opposed to rich golden brownish
black; and both have white kerchiefs, or drapery, thrown over their
shoulders. Zacharias leans on his staff behind them in a black dress
with white sleeves. The stroke of brilliant white light, which
outlines the knee of Saint Elizabeth, is a curious instance of the
habit of the painter to relieve his dark forms by a sort of halo of
more vivid light, which, until lately, one would have been apt to
suppose a somewhat artificial and unjustifiable means of effect. The
daguerreotype has shown, what the naked eye never could, that the
instinct of the great painter was true, and that there is actually
such a sudden and sharp line of light round the edges of dark objects
relieved by luminous space.
Opposite this picture is a most precious Titian, the "Annunciation,"
full of grace and beauty. I think the Madonna one of the sweetest
figures he ever painted. But if the traveller has entered at all into
the spirit of Tintoret, he will immediately feel the comparative
feebleness and conventionality of the Titian. Note especially the mean
and petty folds of the angel's drapery, and compare them with the
draperies of the opposite picture. The larger pictures at the sides of
the stairs by Zanchi and Negri, are utterly worthless.
[Illustration: Second Group. On the walls of the upper room.
10. Adoration of Shepherds. 17. Resurrection of Lazarus.
11. Baptism. 18. Ascension.
12. Resurrection. 19. Pool of Bethesda.
13. Agony in Garden. 20. Temptation.
14. Last Supper. 21. St. Rocco.
15. Altar Piece: St. Rocco. 22. St. Sebastian.
16. Miracle of Loaves.]
10. _The Adoration of the Shepherds._ This picture commences the
series of the upper room, which, as already noticed, is painted with
far less care than that of the lower. It is one of the painter's
inconceivable caprices that the only canvases that are in good light
should be covered in this hasty manner, while those in the dungeon
below, and on the ceiling above, are all highly labored. It is,
however, just possible that the covering of these walls may have been
an after-thought, when he had got tired of his work. They are also,
for the most part, illustrative of a principle of which I am more and
more convinced every day, that historical and figure pieces ought not
to be made vehicles for effects of light. The light which is fit for a
historical picture is that tempered semi-sunshine of which, in
general, the works of Titian are the best examples, and of which the
picture we have just passed, "The Visitation," is a perfect example
from the hand of one greater than Titian; so also the three
"Crucifixions" of San Rocco, San Cassano, and St. John and Paul; the
"Adoration of the Magi" here; and, in general, the finest works of
the master; but Tintoret was not a man to work in any formal or
systematic manner; and, exactly like Turner, we find him recording
every effect which Nature herself displays. Still he seems to regard
the pictures which deviate from the great general principle of
colorists rather as "tours de force" than as sources of pleasure; and
I do not think there is any instance of his having worked out one of
these tricky pictures with thorough affection, except only in the case
of the "Marriage of Cana." By tricky pictures, I mean those which
display light entering in different directions, and attract the eye to
the effects rather than to the figure which displays them. Of this
treatment, we have already had a marvellous instance in the
candle-light picture of the "Last Supper" in San Giorgio Maggiore.
This "Adoration of the Shepherds" has probably been nearly as
wonderful when first painted: the Madonna is seated on a kind of
hammock floor made of rope netting, covered with straw; it divides the
picture into two stories, of which the uppermost contains the Virgin,
with two women who are adoring Christ, and shows light entering from
above through the loose timbers of the roof of the stable, as well as
through the bars of a square window; the lower division shows this
light falling behind the netting upon the stable floor, occupied by a
cock and a cow, and against this light are relieved the figures of the
shepherds, for the most part in demi-tint, but with flakes of more
vigorous sunshine falling here and there upon them from above. The
optical illusion has originally been as perfect as one of Hunt's best
interiors; but it is most curious that no part of the work seems to
have been taken any pleasure in by the painter; it is all by his hand,
but it looks as if he had been bent only on getting over the ground.
It is literally a piece of scene-painting, and is exactly what we
might fancy Tintoret to have done, had he been forced to paint scenes
at a small theatre at a shilling a day. I cannot think that the whole
canvas, though fourteen feet high and ten wide, or thereabouts, could
have taken him more than a couple of days to finish: and it is very
noticeable that exactly in proportion to the brilliant effects of
light is the coarseness of the execution, for the figures of the
Madonna and of the women above, which are not in any strong effect,
are painted with some care, while the shepherds and the cow are alike
slovenly; and the latter, which is in full sunshine, is recognizable
for a cow more by its size and that of its horns, than by any care
given to its form. It is interesting to contrast this slovenly and
mean sketch with the ass's head in the "Flight into Egypt," on which
the painter exerted his full power; as an effect of light, however,
the work is, of course, most interesting. One point in the treatment
is especially noticeable: there is a peacock in the rack beyond the
cow; and under other circumstances, one cannot doubt that Tintoret
would have liked a peacock in full color, and would have painted it
green and blue with great satisfaction. It is sacrificed to the light,
however, and is painted in warm grey, with a dim eye or two in the
tail: this process is exactly analogous to Turner's taking the colors
out of the flags of his ships in the "Gosport." Another striking point
is the litter with which the whole picture is filled in order more to
confuse the eye: there is straw sticking from the roof, straw all over
the hammock floor, and straw struggling hither and thither all over
the floor itself; and, to add to the confusion, the glory around the
head of the infant, instead of being united and serene, is broken into
little bits, and is like a glory of chopped straw. But the most
curious thing, after all, is the want of delight in any of the
principal figures, and the comparative meanness and commonplaceness of
even the folds of the drapery. It seems as if Tintoret had determined
to make the shepherds as uninteresting as possible; but one does not
see why their very clothes should be ill painted, and their
disposition unpicturesque. I believe, however, though it never struck
me until I had examined this picture, that this is one of the
painter's fixed principles: he does not, with German sentimentality,
make shepherds and peasants graceful or sublime, but he purposely
vulgarizes them, not by making their actions or their faces boorish or
disagreeable, but rather by painting them ill, and composing their
draperies tamely. As far as I recollect at present, the principle is
universal with him; exactly in proportion to the dignity of character
is the beauty of the painting. He will not put out his strength upon
any man belonging to the lower classes; and, in order to know what the
painter is, one must see him at work on a king, a senator, or a
saint. The curious connexion of this with the aristocratic tendencies
of the Venetian nation, when we remember that Tintoret was the
greatest man whom that nation produced, may become very interesting,
if followed out. I forgot to note that, though the peacock is painted
with great regardlessness of color, there is a feature in it which no
common painter would have observed,--the peculiar flatness of the
back, and undulation of the shoulders: the bird's body is all there,
though its feathers are a good deal neglected; and the same thing is
noticeable in a cock who is pecking among the straw near the
spectator, though in other respects a shabby cock enough. The fact is,
I believe, he had made his shepherds so commonplace that he dare not
paint his animals well, otherwise one would have looked at nothing in
the picture but the peacock, cock, and cow. I cannot tell what the
shepherds are offering; they look like milk bowls, but they are
awkwardly held up, with such twistings of body as would have certainly
spilt the milk. A woman in front has a basket of eggs; but this I
imagine to be merely to keep up the rustic character of the scene, and
not part of the shepherd's offerings.
11. _Baptism._ There is more of the true picture quality in this work
than in the former one, but still very little appearance of enjoyment
or care. The color is for the most part grey and uninteresting, and
the figures are thin and meagre in form, and slightly painted; so much
so, that of the nineteen figures in the distance, about a dozen are
hardly worth calling figures, and the rest are so sketched and
flourished in that one can hardly tell which is which. There is one
point about it very interesting to a landscape painter: the river is
seen far into the distance, with a piece of copse bordering it; the
sky beyond is dark, but the water nevertheless receives a brilliant
reflection from some unseen rent in the clouds, so brilliant, that
when I was first at Venice, not being accustomed to Tintoret's slight
execution, or to see pictures so much injured, I took this piece of
water for a piece of sky. The effect as Tintoret has arranged it, is
indeed somewhat unnatural, but it is valuable as showing his
recognition of a principle unknown to half the historical painters of
the present day,--that the reflection seen in the water is totally
different from the object seen above it, and that it is very possible
to have a bright light in reflection where there appears nothing but
darkness to be reflected. The clouds in the sky itself are round,
heavy, and lightless, and in a great degree spoil what would otherwise
be a fine landscape distance. Behind the rocks on the right, a single
head is seen, with a collar on the shoulders: it seems to be intended
for a portrait of some person connected with the picture.
12. _Resurrection._ Another of the "effect of light" pictures, and not
a very striking one, the best part of it being the two distant figures
of the Maries seen in the dawn of the morning. The conception of the
Resurrection itself is characteristic of the worst points of Tintoret.
His impetuosity is here in the wrong place; Christ bursts out of the
rock like a thunderbolt, and the angels themselves seem likely to be
crushed under the rent stones of the tomb. Had the figure of Christ
been sublime, this conception might have been accepted; but, on the
contrary, it is weak, mean, and painful; and the whole picture is
languidly or roughly painted, except only the fig-tree at the top of
the rock, which, by a curious caprice, is not only drawn in the
painter's best manner, but has golden ribs to all its leaves, making
it look like one of the beautiful crossed or chequered patterns, of
which he is so fond in his dresses; the leaves themselves being a dark
olive brown.
13. _The Agony in the Garden._ I cannot at present understand the
order of these subjects; but they may have been misplaced. This, of
all the San Rocco pictures, is the most hastily painted, but it is
not, like those we have been passing, _clodly_ painted; it seems to
have been executed altogether with a hearth-broom, and in a few hours.
It is another of the "effects," and a very curious one; the Angel who
bears the cup to Christ is surrounded by a red halo; yet the light
which falls upon the shoulders of the sleeping disciples, and upon the
leaves of the olive-trees, is cool and silvery, while the troop coming
up to seize Christ are seen by torch-light. Judas, who is the second
figure, points to Christ, but turns his head away as he does so, as
unable to look at him. This is a noble touch; the foliage is also
exceedingly fine, though what kind of olive-tree bears such leaves I
know not, each of them being about the size of a man's hand. If there
be any which bear such foliage, their olives must be the size of
cocoa-nuts. This, however, is true only of the underwood, which is,
perhaps, not meant for olive. There are some taller trees at the top
of the picture, whose leaves are of a more natural size. On closely
examining the figures of the troops on the left, I find that the
distant ones are concealed, all but the limbs, by a sort of arch of
dark color, which is now so injured, that I cannot tell whether it was
foliage or ground: I suppose it to have been a mass of close foliage,
through which the troop is breaking its way; Judas rather showing them
the path, than actually pointing to Christ, as it is written, "Judas,
who betrayed him, knew the place." St. Peter, as the most zealous of
the three disciples, the only one who was to endeavor to defend his
Master, is represented as awakening and turning his head toward the
troop, while James and John are buried in profound slumber, laid in
magnificent languor among the leaves. The picture is singularly
impressive, when seen far enough off, as an image of thick forest
gloom amidst the rich and tender foliage of the South; the leaves,
however, tossing as in disturbed night air, and the flickering of the
torches, and of the branches, contrasted with the steady flame which
from the Angel's presence is spread over the robes of the disciples.
The strangest feature in the whole is that the Christ also is
represented as sleeping. The angel seems to appear to him in a dream.
14. _The Last Supper._ A most unsatisfactory picture; I think about
the worst I know of Tintoret's, where there is no appearance of
retouching. He always makes the disciples in this scene too vulgar;
they are here not only vulgar, but diminutive, and Christ is at the
end of the table, the smallest figure of them all. The principal
figures are two mendicants sitting on steps in front; a kind of
supporters, but I suppose intended to be waiting for the fragments; a
dog, in still more earnest expectation, is watching the movements of
the disciples, who are talking together, Judas having just gone out.
Christ is represented as giving what one at first supposes is the sop
to Judas, but as the disciple who received it has a glory, and there
are only eleven at table, it is evidently the Sacramental bread. The
room in which they are assembled is a sort of large kitchen, and the
host is seen employed at a dresser in the background. This picture has
not only been originally poor, but is one of those exposed all day to
the sun, and is dried into mere dusty canvas: where there was once
blue, there is now nothing.
15. _Saint Rocco in Glory._ One of the worst order of Tintorets, with
apparent smoothness and finish, yet languidly painted, as if in
illness or fatigue; very dark and heavy in tone also; its figures, for
the most part, of an awkward middle size, about five feet high, and
very uninteresting. St. Rocco ascends to heaven, looking down upon a
crowd of poor and sick persons who are blessing and adoring him. One
of these, kneeling at the bottom, is very nearly a repetition, though
a careless and indolent one, of that of St. Stephen, in St. Giorgio
Maggiore, and of the central figure in the "Paradise" of the Ducal
Palace. It is a kind of lay figure, of which he seems to have been
fond; its clasped hands are here shockingly painted--I should think
unfinished. It forms the only important light at the bottom, relieved
on a dark ground; at the top of the picture, the figure of St. Rocco
is seen in shadow against the light of the sky, and all the rest is in
confused shadow. The commonplaceness of this composition is curiously
connected with the languor of thought and touch throughout the work.
16. _Miracle of the Loaves._ Hardly anything but a fine piece of
landscape is here left; it is more exposed to the sun than any other
picture in the room, and its draperies having been, in great part,
painted in blue, are now mere patches of the color of starch; the
scene is also very imperfectly conceived. The twenty-one figures,
including Christ and his Disciples, very ill represent a crowd of
seven thousand; still less is the marvel of the miracle expressed by
perfect ease and rest of the reclining figures in the foreground, who
do not so much as look surprised; considered merely as reclining
figures, and as pieces of effect in half light, they have once been
fine. The landscape, which represents the slope of a woody hill, has a
very grand and far-away look. Behind it is a great space of streaky
sky, almost prismatic in color, rosy and golden clouds covering up its
blue, and some fine vigorous trees thrown against it; painted in about
ten minutes each, however, by curly touches of the brush, and looking
rather more like seaweed than foliage.
17. _Resurrection of Lazarus._ Very strangely, and not impressively
conceived. Christ is half reclining, half sitting, at the bottom of
the picture, while Lazarus is disencumbered of his grave-clothes at
the top of it; the scene being the side of a rocky hill, and the mouth
of the tomb probably once visible in the shadow on the left; but all
that is now discernible is a man having his limbs unbound, as if
Christ were merely ordering a prisoner to be loosed. There appears
neither awe nor agitation, nor even much astonishment, in any of the
figures of the group; but the picture is more vigorous than any of the
three last mentioned, and the upper part of it is quite worthy of the
master, especially its noble fig-tree and laurel, which he has
painted, in one of his usual fits of caprice, as carefully as that in
the "Resurrection of Christ," opposite. Perhaps he has some meaning in
this; he may have been thinking of the verse, "Behold the fig-tree,
and all the trees; when they now shoot forth," &c. In the present
instance, the leaves are dark only, and have no golden veins. The
uppermost figures also come dark against the sky, and would form a
precipitous mass, like a piece of the rock itself, but that they are
broken in upon by one of the limbs of Lazarus, bandaged and in full
light, which, to my feeling, sadly injures the picture, both as a
disagreeable object, and a light in the wrong place. The grass and
weeds are, throughout, carefully painted, but the lower figures are of
little interest, and the face of the Christ a grievous failure.
18. _The Ascension._ I have always admired this picture, though it is
very slight and thin in execution, and cold in color; but it is
remarkable for its thorough effect of open air, and for the sense of
motion and clashing in the wings of the Angels which sustain the
Christ: they owe this effect a good deal to the manner in which they
are set, edge on; all seem like sword-blades cutting the air. It is
the most curious in conception of all the pictures in the Scuola, for
it represents, beneath the Ascension, a kind of epitome of what took
place before the Ascension. In the distance are two Apostles walking,
meant, I suppose, for the two going to Emmaus; nearer are a group
round a table, to remind us of Christ appearing to them as they sat at
meat; and in the foreground is a single reclining figure of, I
suppose, St. Peter, because we are told that "he was seen of Cephas,
then of the twelve:" but this interpretation is doubtful; for why
should not the vision by the Lake of Tiberias be expressed also? And
the strange thing of all is the scene, for Christ ascended from the
Mount of Olives; but the Disciples are walking, and the table is set,
in a little marshy and grassy valley, like some of the bits near
Maison Neuve on the Jura, with a brook running through it, so
capitally expressed, that I believe it is this which makes me so fond
of the picture. The reflections are as scientific in the diminution,
in the image, of large masses of bank above, as any of Turner's, and
the marshy and reedy ground looks as if one would sink into it; but
what all this has to do with the Ascension I cannot see. The figure of
Christ is not undignified, but by no means either interesting or
sublime.
19. _Pool of Bethesda._ I have no doubt the principal figures have
been repainted; but as the colors are faded, and the subject
disgusting, I have not paid this picture sufficient attention to say
how far the injury extends; nor need any one spend time upon it,
unless after having first examined all the other Tintorets in Venice.
All the great Italian painters appear insensible to the feeling of
disgust at disease; but this study of the population of an hospital is
without any points of contrast, and I wish Tintoret had not
condescended to paint it. This and the six preceding paintings have
all been uninteresting,--I believe chiefly owing to the observance in
them of Sir Joshua's rule for the heroic, "that drapery is to be mere
drapery, and not silk, nor satin, nor brocade." However wise such a
rule may be when applied to works of the purest religious art, it is
anything but wise as respects works of color. Tintoret is never quite
himself unless he has fur or velvet, or rich stuff of one sort or the
other, or jewels, or armor, or something that he can put play of color
into, among his figures, and not dead folds of linsey-woolsey; and I
believe that even the best pictures of Raffaelle and Angelico are not
a little helped by their hems of robes, jewelled crowns, priests'
copes, and so on; and the pictures that have nothing of this kind in
them, as for instance the "Transfiguration," are to my mind not a
little dull.
20. _Temptation._ This picture singularly illustrates what has just
been observed; it owes great part of its effect to the lustre of the
jewels in the armlet of the evil angel, and to the beautiful colors of
his wings. These are slight accessaries apparently, but they enhance
the value of all the rest, and they have evidently been enjoyed by the
painter. The armlet is seen by reflected light, its stones shining by
inward lustre; this occult fire being the only hint given of the real
character of the Tempter, who is otherways represented in the form of
a beautiful angel, though the face is sensual: we can hardly tell how
far it was intended to be therefore expressive of evil; for Tintoret's
good angels have not always the purest features; but there is a
peculiar subtlety in this telling of the story by so slight a
circumstance as the glare of the jewels in the darkness. It is curious
to compare this imagination with that of the mosaics in St. Mark's, in
which Satan is a black monster, with horns, and head, and tail,
complete. The whole of the picture is powerfully and carefully
painted, though very broadly; it is a strong effect of light, and
therefore, as usual, subdued in color. The painting of the stones in
the foreground I have always thought, and still think, the best piece
of rock drawing before Turner, and the most amazing instance of
Tintoret's perceptiveness afforded by any of his pictures.
21. _St. Rocco._ Three figures occupy the spandrils of the window
above this and the following picture, painted merely in light and
shade, two larger than life, one rather smaller. I believe these to be
by Tintoret; but as they are quite in the dark, so that the execution
cannot be seen, and very good designs of the kind have been furnished
by other masters, I cannot answer for them. The figure of St. Rocco,
as well as its companion, St. Sebastian, is colored; they occupy the
narrow intervals between the windows, and are of course invisible
under ordinary circumstances. By a great deal of straining of the
eyes, and sheltering them with the hand from the light, some little
idea of the design may be obtained. The "St. Rocco" is a fine figure,
though rather coarse, but, at all events, worth as much light as would
enable us to see it.
22. _St. Sebastian._ This, the companion figure, is one of the finest
things in the whole room, and assuredly the most majestic Saint
Sebastian in existence; as far as mere humanity can be majestic, for
there is no effort at any expression of angelic or saintly
resignation; the effort is simply to realize the fact of the
martyrdom, and it seems to me that this is done to an extent not even
attempted by any other painter. I never saw a man die a violent death,
and therefore cannot say whether this figure be true or not, but it
gives the grandest and most intense impression of truth. The figure is
dead, and well it may be, for there is one arrow through the forehead
and another through the heart; but the eyes are open, though glazed,
and the body is rigid in the position in which it last stood, the left
arm raised and the left limb advanced, something in the attitude of a
soldier sustaining an attack under his shield, while the dead eyes are
still turned in the direction from which the arrows came: but the most
characteristic feature is the way these arrows are fixed. In the
common martyrdoms of St. Sebastian they are stuck into him here and
there like pins, as if they had been shot from a great distance and
had come faltering down, entering the flesh but a little way, and
rather bleeding the saint to death than mortally wounding him; but
Tintoret had no such ideas about archery. He must have seen bows drawn
in battle, like that of Jehu when he smote Jehoram between the
harness: all the arrows in the saint's body lie straight in the same
direction, broad-feathered and strong-shafted, and sent apparently
with the force of thunderbolts; every one of them has gone through him
like a lance, two through the limbs, one through the arm, one through
the heart, and the last has crashed through the forehead, nailing the
head to the tree behind as if it had been dashed in by a
sledge-hammer. The face, in spite of its ghastliness, is beautiful,
and has been serene; and the light which enters first and glistens on
the plumes of the arrows, dies softly away upon the curling hair, and
mixes with the glory upon the forehead. There is not a more remarkable
picture in Venice, and yet I do not suppose that one in a thousand of
the travellers who pass through the Scuola so much as perceives there
is a picture in the place which it occupies.
[Illustration: Third Group. On the roof of the upper room.
23. Moses striking the Rock. 29. Elijah.
24. Plague of Serpents. 30. Jonah.
25. Fall of Manna. 31. Joshua.
26. Jacob's Dream. 32. Sacrifice of Isaac.
27. Ezekiel's Vision. 33. Elijah at the Brook.
28. Fall of Man. 34. Paschal Feast.
35. Elisha feeding the People.]
23. _Moses striking the Rock._ We now come to the series of pictures
upon which the painter concentrated the strength he had reserved for
the upper room; and in some sort wisely, for, though it is not
pleasant to examine pictures on a ceiling, they are at least
distinctly visible without straining the eyes against the light. They
are carefully conceived and thoroughly well painted in proportion to
their distance from the eye. This carefulness of thought is apparent
at a glance: the "Moses striking the Rock" embraces the whole of the
seventeenth chapter of Exodus, and even something more, for it is not
from that chapter, but from parallel passages that we gather the facts
of the impatience of Moses and the wrath of God at the waters of
Meribah; both which facts are shown by the leaping of the stream out
of the rock half-a-dozen ways at once, forming a great arch over the
head of Moses, and by the partial veiling of the countenance of the
Supreme Being. This latter is the most painful part of the whole
picture, at least as it is seen from below; and I believe that in some
repairs of the roof this head must have been destroyed and repainted.
It is one of Tintoret's usual fine thoughts that the lower part of the
figure is veiled, not merely by clouds, but in a kind of watery
sphere, showing the Deity coming to the Israelites at that particular
moment as the Lord of the Rivers and of the Fountain of the Waters.
The whole figure, as well as that of Moses and the greater number of
those in the foreground, is at once dark and warm, black and red being
the prevailing colors, while the distance is bright gold touched with
blue, and seems to open into the picture like a break of blue sky
after rain. How exquisite is this expression, by mere color, of the
main force of the fact represented! that is to say, joy and
refreshment after sorrow and scorching heat. But, when we examine of
what this distance consists, we shall find still more cause for
admiration. The blue in it is not the blue of sky, it is obtained by
blue stripes upon white tents glowing in the sunshine; and in front of
these tents is seen that great battle with Amalek of which the account
is given in the remainder of the chapter, and for which the Israelites
received strength in the streams which ran out of the rock in Horeb.
Considered merely as a picture, the opposition of cool light to warm
shadow is one of the most remarkable pieces of color in the Scuola,
and the great mass of foliage which waves over the rocks on the left
appears to have been elaborated with his highest power and his most
sublime invention. But this noble passage is much injured, and now
hardly visible.
24. _Plague of Serpents._ The figures in the distance are remarkably
important in this picture, Moses himself being among them; in fact,
the whole scene is filled chiefly with middle-sized figures, in order
to increase the impression of space. It is interesting to observe the
difference in the treatment of this subject by the three great
painters, Michael Angelo, Rubens, and Tintoret. The first two, equal
to the latter in energy, had less love of liberty: they were fond of
binding their compositions into knots, Tintoret of scattering his far
and wide: they all alike preserve the unity of composition, but the
unity in the first two is obtained by binding, and that of the last by
springing from one source; and, together with this feeling, comes his
love of space, which makes him less regard the rounding and form of
objects themselves, than their relations of light and shade and
distance. Therefore Rubens and Michael Angelo made the fiery serpents
huge boa constrictors, and knotted the sufferers together with them.
Tintoret does not like to be so bound; so he makes the serpents little
flying and fluttering monsters like lampreys with wings; and the
children of Israel, instead of being thrown into convulsed and
writhing groups, are scattered, fainting in the fields, far away in
the distance. As usual, Tintoret's conception, while thoroughly
characteristic of himself, is also truer to the words of Scripture. We
are told that "the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they
_bit_ the people;" we are not told that they crushed the people to
death. And while thus the truest, it is also the most terrific
conception. M. Angelo's would be terrific if one could believe in it:
but our instinct tells us that boa constrictors do not come in armies;
and we look upon the picture with as little emotion as upon the handle
of a vase, or any other form worked out of serpents, where there is no
probability of serpents actually occurring. But there is a probability
in Tintoret's conception. We feel that it is not impossible that there
should come up a swarm of these small winged reptiles: and their
horror is not diminished by their smallness: not that they have any of
the grotesque terribleness of German invention; they might have been
made infinitely uglier with small pains, but it is their
_veritableness_ which makes them awful. They have triangular heads
with sharp beaks or muzzle; and short, rather thick bodies, with bony
processes down the back like those of sturgeons; and small wings
spotted with orange and black; and round glaring eyes, not very large,
but very ghastly, with an intense delight in biting expressed in them.
(It is observable, that the Venetian painter has got his main idea of
them from the sea-horses and small reptiles of the Lagoons.) These
monsters are fluttering and writhing about everywhere, fixing on
whatever they come near with their sharp venomous heads; and they are
coiling about on the ground, and all the shadows and thickets are full
of them, so that there is no escape anywhere: and, in order to give
the idea of greater extent to the plague, Tintoret has not been
content with one horizon; I have before mentioned the excessive
strangeness of this composition, in having a cavern open in the right
of the foreground, through which is seen another sky and another
horizon. At the top of the picture, the Divine Being is seen borne by
angels, apparently passing over the congregation in wrath, involved in
masses of dark clouds; while, behind, an Angel of mercy is descending
toward Moses, surrounded by a globe of white light. This globe is
hardly seen from below; it is not a common glory, but a transparent
sphere, like a bubble, which not only envelopes the angel, but crosses
the figure of Moses, throwing the upper part of it into a subdued pale
color, as if it were crossed by a sunbeam. Tintoret is the only
painter who plays these tricks with transparent light, the only man
who seems to have perceived the effects of sunbeams, mists, and
clouds, in the far away atmosphere; and to have used what he saw on
towers, clouds, or mountains, to enhance the sublimity of his figures.
The whole upper part of this picture is magnificent, less with respect
to individual figures, than for the drift of its clouds, and
originality and complication of its light and shade; it is something
like Raffaelle's "Vision of Ezekiel," but far finer. It is difficult
to understand how any painter, who could represent floating clouds so
nobly as he has done here, could ever paint the odd, round, pillowy
masses which so often occur in his more carelessly designed sacred
subjects. The lower figures are not so interesting, and the whole is
painted with a view to effect from below, and gains little by close
examination.
25. _Fall of Manna._ In none of these three large compositions has the
painter made the slightest effort at expression in the human
countenance; everything is done by gesture, and the faces of the
people who are drinking from the rock, dying from the serpent-bites,
and eating the manna, are all alike as calm as if nothing was
happening; in addition to this, as they are painted for distant
effect, the heads are unsatisfactory and coarse when seen near, and
perhaps in this last picture the more so, and yet the story is
exquisitely told. We have seen in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore
another example of his treatment of it, where, however, the gathering
of manna is a subordinate employment, but here it is principal. Now,
observe, we are told of the manna, that it was found in the morning;
that then there lay round about the camp a small round thing like the
hoar-frost, and that "when the sun waxed hot it melted." Tintoret has
endeavored, therefore, first of all, to give the idea of coolness; the
congregation are reposing in a soft green meadow, surrounded by blue
hills, and there are rich trees above them, to the branches of one of
which is attached a great grey drapery to catch the manna as it comes
down. In any other picture such a mass of drapery would assuredly have
had some vivid color, but here it is grey; the fields are cool frosty
green, the mountains cold blue, and, to complete the expression and
meaning of all this, there is a most important point to be noted in
the form of the Deity, seen above, through an opening in the clouds.
There are at least ten or twelve other pictures in which the form of
the Supreme Being occurs, to be found in the Scuola di San Rocco
alone; and in every one of these instances it is richly colored, the
garments being generally red and blue, but in this picture of the
manna the figure is _snow white_. Thus the painter endeavors to show
the Deity as the giver of bread, just as in the "Striking of the Rock"
we saw that he represented Him as the Lord of the rivers, the
fountains, and the waters. There is one other very sweet incident at
the bottom of the picture; four or five sheep, instead of pasturing,
turn their heads aside to catch the manna as it comes down, or seem to
be licking it off each other's fleeces. The tree above, to which the
drapery is tied, is the most delicate and delightful piece of leafage
in all the Scuola; it has a large sharp leaf, something like that of a
willow, but five times the size.
26. _Jacob's Dream._ A picture which has good effect from below, but
gains little when seen near. It is an embarrassing one for any
painter, because angels always look awkward going up and down stairs;
one does not see the use of their wings. Tintoret has thrown them into
buoyant and various attitudes, but has evidently not treated the
subject with delight; and it is seen to all the more disadvantage
because just above the painting of the "Ascension," in which the full
fresh power of the painter is developed. One would think this latter
picture had been done just after a walk among hills, for it is full of
the most delicate effects of transparent cloud, more or less veiling
the faces and forms of the angels, and covering with white light the
silvery sprays of the palms, while the clouds in the "Jacob's Dream"
are the ordinary rotundities of the studio.
27. _Ezekiel's Vision._ I suspect this has been repainted, it is so
heavy and dead in color; a fault, however, observable in many of the
small pictures on the ceiling, and perhaps the natural result of the
fatigue of such a mind as Tintoret's. A painter who threw such intense
energy into some of his works can hardly but have been languid in
others in a degree never experienced by the more tranquil minds of
less powerful workmen; and when this languor overtook him whilst he
was at work on pictures where a certain space had to be covered by
mere force of arm, this heaviness of color could hardly but have been
the consequence: it shows itself chiefly in reds and other hot hues,
many of the pictures in the Ducal Palace also displaying it in a
painful degree. This "Ezekiel's Vision" is, however, in some measure
worthy of the master, in the wild and horrible energy with which the
skeletons are leaping up about the prophet; but it might have been
less horrible and more sublime, no attempt being made to represent the
space of the Valley of Dry Bones, and the whole canvas being occupied
only by eight figures, of which five are half skeletons. It it is
strange that, in such a subject, the prevailing hues should be red and
brown.
28. _Fall of Man._ The two canvases last named are the most
considerable in size upon the roof, after the centre pieces. We now
come to the smaller subjects which surround the "Striking the Rock;"
of these this "Fall of Man" is the best, and I should think it very
fine anywhere but in the Scuola di San Rocco; there is a grand light
on the body of Eve, and the vegetation is remarkably rich, but the
faces are coarse, and the composition uninteresting. I could not get
near enough to see what the grey object is upon which Eve appears to
be sitting, nor could I see any serpent. It is made prominent in the
picture of the Academy of this same subject, so that I suppose it is
hidden in the darkness, together with much detail which it would be
necessary to discover in order to judge the work justly.
29. _Elijah (?)._ A prophet holding down his face, which is covered
with his hand. God is talking with him, apparently in rebuke. The
clothes on his breast are rent, and the action of the figures might
suggest the idea of the scene between the Deity and Elijah at Horeb:
but there is no suggestion of the past magnificent scenery,--of the
wind, the earthquake, or the fire; so that the conjecture is good for
very little. The painting is of small interest; the faces are vulgar,
and the draperies have too much vapid historical dignity to be
delightful.
30. _Jonah._ The whale here occupies fully one-half of the canvas;
being correspondent in value with a landscape background. His mouth is
as large as a cavern, and yet, unless the mass of red color in the
foreground be a piece of drapery, his tongue is too large for it. He
seems to have lifted Jonah out upon it, and not yet drawn it back, so
that it forms a kind of crimson cushion for him to kneel upon in his
submission to the Deity. The head to which this vast tongue belongs is
sketched in somewhat loosely, and there is little remarkable about it
except its size, nor much in the figures, though the submissiveness of
Jonah is well given. The great thought of Michael Angelo renders one
little charitable to any less imaginative treatment of this subject.
31. _Joshua (?)._ This is a most interesting picture, and it is a
shame that its subject is not made out, for it is not a common one.
The figure has a sword in its hand, and looks up to a sky full of
fire, out of which the form of the Deity is stooping, represented as
white and colorless. On the other side of the picture there is seen
among the clouds a pillar apparently falling, and there is a crowd at
the feet of the principal figure, carrying spears. Unless this be
Joshua at the fall of Jericho, I cannot tell what it means; it is
painted with great vigor, and worthy of a better place.
32. _Sacrifice of Isaac._ In conception, it is one of the least worthy
of the master in the whole room, the three figures being thrown into
violent attitudes, as inexpressive as they are strained and
artificial. It appears to have been vigorously painted, but vulgarly;
that is to say, the light is concentrated upon the white beard and
upturned countenance of Abraham, as it would have been in one of the
dramatic effects of the French school, the result being that the head
is very bright and very conspicuous, and perhaps, in some of the late
operations upon the roof, recently washed and touched. In consequence,
every one who comes into the room, is first invited to observe the
"bella testa di Abramo." The only thing characteristic of Tintoret is
the way in which the pieces of ragged wood are tossed hither and
thither in the pile upon which Isaac is bound, although this
scattering of the wood is inconsistent with the Scriptural account of
Abraham's deliberate procedure, for we are told of him that "he set
the wood in order." But Tintoret had probably not noticed this, and
thought the tossing of the timber into the disordered heap more like
the act of the father in his agony.
33. _Elijah at the Brook Cherith (?)._ I cannot tell if I have rightly
interpreted the meaning of this picture, which merely represents a
noble figure couched upon the ground, and an angel appearing to him;
but I think that between the dark tree on the left, and the recumbent
figure, there is some appearance of a running stream, at all events
there is of a mountainous and stony place. The longer I study this
master, the more I feel the strange likeness between him and Turner,
in our never knowing what subject it is that will stir him to
exertion. We have lately had him treating Jacob's Dream, Ezekiel's
Vision, Abraham's Sacrifice, and Jonah's Prayer, (all of them subjects
on which the greatest painters have delighted to expend their
strength,) with coldness, carelessness, and evident absence of
delight; and here, on a sudden, in a subject so indistinct that one
cannot be sure of its meaning, and embracing only two figures, a man
and an angel, forth he starts in his full strength. I believe he must
somewhere or another, the day before, have seen a kingfisher; for this
picture seems entirely painted for the sake of the glorious downy
wings of the angel,--white clouded with blue, as the bird's head and
wings are with green,--the softest and most elaborate in plumage that
I have seen in any of his works: but observe also the general
sublimity obtained by the mountainous lines of the drapery of the
recumbent figure, dependent for its dignity upon these forms alone, as
the face is more than half hidden, and what is seen of it
expressionless.
34. _The Paschal Feast._ I name this picture by the title given in the
guide-books; it represents merely five persons watching the increase
of a small fire lighted on a table or altar in the midst of them. It
is only because they have all staves in their hands that one may
conjecture this fire to be that kindled to consume the Paschal
offering. The effect is of course a fire light; and, like all mere
fire lights that I have ever seen, totally devoid of interest.
35. _Elisha feeding the People._ I again guess at the subject: the
picture only represents a figure casting down a number of loaves
before a multitude; but, as Elisha has not elsewhere occurred, I
suppose that these must be the barley loaves brought from
Baalshalisha. In conception and manner of painting, this picture and
the last, together with the others above-mentioned, in comparison with
the "Elijah at Cherith," may be generally described as "dregs of
Tintoret:" they are tired, dead, dragged out upon the canvas
apparently in the heavy-hearted state which a man falls into when he
is both jaded with toil and sick of the work he is employed upon. They
are not hastily painted; on the contrary, finished with considerably
more care than several of the works upon the walls; but those, as, for
instance, the "Agony in the Garden," are hurried sketches with the
man's whole heart in them, while these pictures are exhausted
fulfilments of an appointed task. Whether they were really amongst the
last painted, or whether the painter had fallen ill at some
intermediate time, I cannot say; but we shall find him again in his
utmost strength in the room which we last enter.
[Illustration: Fourth Group. Inner room on the upper floor.
On the Roof.
36 to 39. Children's Heads. 41 to 44. Children.
40. St. Rocco in Heaven. 45 to 56. Allegorical Figures.
On the Walls.
57. Figure in Niche. 60. Ecce Homo.
58. Figure in Niche. 61. Christ bearing his Cross.
59. Christ before Pilate. 62. CRUCIFIXION.]
36 to 39. _Four Children's Heads_, which it is much to be regretted
should be thus lost in filling small vacuities of the ceiling.
40. _St. Rocco in Heaven._ The central picture of the roof, in the
inner room. From the well-known anecdote respecting the production of
this picture, whether in all its details true or not, we may at least
gather that having been painted in competition with Paul Veronese and
other powerful painters of the day, it was probably Tintoret's
endeavor to make it as popular and showy as possible. It is quite
different from his common works; bright in all its tints and tones;
the faces carefully drawn, and of an agreeable type; the outlines
firm, and the shadows few; the whole resembling Correggio more than
any Venetian painter. It is, however, an example of the danger, even
to the greatest artist, of leaving his own style; for it lacks all the
great virtues of Tintoret, without obtaining the lusciousness of
Correggio. One thing, at all events, is remarkable in it,--that,
though painted while the competitors were making their sketches, it
shows no sign of haste or inattention.
41 to 44. _Figures of Children_, merely decorative.
45 to 56. _Allegorical Figures on the Roof._ If these were not in the
same room with the "Crucifixion," they would attract more public
attention than any works in the Scuola, as there are here no black
shadows, nor extravagances of invention, but very beautiful figures
richly and delicately colored, a good deal resembling some of the best
works of Andrea del Sarto. There is nothing in them, however,
requiring detailed examination. The two figures between the windows
are very slovenly, if they are his at all; and there are bits of
marbling and fruit filling the cornices, which may or may not be his:
if they are, they are tired work, and of small importance.
59. _Christ before Pilate._ A most interesting picture, but, which is
unusual, best seen on a dark day, when the white figure of Christ
alone draws the eye, looking almost like a spirit; the painting of the
rest of the picture being both somewhat thin and imperfect. There is a
certain meagreness about all the minor figures, less grandeur and
largeness in the limbs and draperies, and less solidity, it seems,
even in the color, although its arrangements are richer than in many
of the compositions above described. I hardly know whether it is owing
to this thinness of color, or on purpose, that the horizontal clouds
shine through the crimson flag in the distance; though I should think
the latter, for the effect is most beautiful. The passionate action of
the Scribe in lifting his hand to dip the pen into the ink-horn is,
however, affected and overstrained, and the Pilate is very mean;
perhaps intentionally, that no reverence might be withdrawn from the
person of Christ. In work of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
the figures of Pilate and Herod are always intentionally made
contemptible.
_Ecce Homo._ As usual, Tintoret's own peculiar view of the subject.
Christ is laid fainting on the ground, with a soldier standing on one
side of him; while Pilate, on the other, withdraws the robe from the
scourged and wounded body, and points it out to the Jews. Both this
and the picture last mentioned resemble Titian more than Tintoret in
the style of their treatment.
61. _Christ bearing his Cross._ Tintoret is here recognizable again in
undiminished strength. He has represented the troops and attendants
climbing Calvary by a winding path, of which two turns are seen, the
figures on the uppermost ledge, and Christ in the centre of them,
being relieved against the sky; but, instead of the usual simple
expedient of the bright horizon to relieve the dark masses, there is
here introduced, on the left, the head of a white horse, which blends
itself with the sky in one broad mass of light. The power of the
picture is chiefly in effect, the figure of Christ being too far off
to be very interesting, and only the malefactors being seen on the
nearer path; but for this very reason it seems to me more impressive,
as if one had been truly present at the scene, though not exactly in
the right place for seeing it.
62. _The Crucifixion._ I must leave this picture to work its will on
the spectator; for it is beyond all analysis, and above all praise.
S
SAGREDO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal, II. 256. Much defaced, but full
of interest. Its sea story is restored; its first floor has a most
interesting arcade of the early thirteenth century third order
windows; its upper windows are the finest fourth and fifth orders of
early fourteenth century; the group of fourth orders in the centre
being brought into some resemblance to the late Gothic traceries by
the subsequent introduction of the quatrefoils above them.
SALUTE, CHURCH OF STA. MARIA DELLA, on the Grand Canal, II. 378. One
of the earliest buildings of the Grotesque Renaissance, rendered
impressive by its position, size, and general proportions. These
latter are exceedingly good; the grace of the whole building being
chiefly dependent on the inequality of size in its cupolas, and pretty
grouping of the two campaniles behind them. It is to be generally
observed that the proportions of buildings have nothing whatever to
do with the style or general merits of their architecture. An
architect trained in the worst schools, and utterly devoid of all
meaning or purpose in his work, may yet have such a natural gift of
massing and grouping as will render all his structures effective when
seen from a distance: such a gift is very general with the late
Italian builders, so that many of the most contemptible edifices in
the country have good stage effect so long as we do not approach them.
The Church of the Salute is farther assisted by the beautiful flight
of steps in front of it down to the canal; and its façade is rich and
beautiful of its kind, and was chosen by Turner for the principal
object in his well-known view of the Grand Canal. The principal faults
of the building are the meagre windows in the sides of the cupola, and
the ridiculous disguise of the buttresses under the form of colossal
scrolls; the buttresses themselves being originally a hypocrisy, for
the cupola is stated by Lazari to be of timber, and therefore needs
none. The sacristy contains several precious pictures: the three on
its roof by Titian, much vaunted, are indeed as feeble as they are
monstrous; but the small Titian, "St. Mark, with Sts. Cosmo and
Damian," was, when I first saw it, to my judgment, by far the first
work of Titian's in Venice. It has since been restored by the Academy,
and it seemed to me entirely destroyed, but I had not time to examine
it carefully.
At the end of the larger sacristy is the lunette which once decorated
the tomb of the Doge Francesco Dandolo (see above, page 74); and, at
the side of it, one of the most highly finished Tintorets in Venice,
namely:
_The Marriage in Cana._ An immense picture, some twenty-five feet long
by fifteen high, and said by Lazari to be one of the few which
Tintoret signed with his name. I am not surprised at his having done
so in this case. Evidently the work has been a favorite with him, and
he has taken as much pains as it was ever necessary for his colossal
strength to take with anything. The subject is not one which admits of
much singularity or energy in composition. It was always a favorite
one with Veronese, because it gave dramatic interest to figures in gay
costumes and of cheerful countenances; but one is surprised to find
Tintoret, whose tone of mind was always grave, and who did not like to
make a picture out of brocades and diadems, throwing his whole
strength into the conception of a marriage feast; but so it is, and
there are assuredly no female heads in any of his pictures in Venice
elaborated so far as those which here form the central light. Neither
is it often that the works of this mighty master conform themselves to
any of the rules acted upon by ordinary painters; but in this instance
the popular laws have been observed, and an academy student would be
delighted to see with what severity the principal light is arranged in
a central mass, which is divided and made more brilliant by a vigorous
piece of shadow thrust into the midst of it, and which dies away in
lesser fragments and sparkling towards the extremities of the picture.
This mass of light is as interesting by its composition as by its
intensity. The cicerone who escorts the stranger round the sacristy in
the course of five minutes, and allows him some forty seconds for the
contemplation of a picture which the study of six months would not
entirely fathom, directs his attention very carefully to the "bell'
effetto di prospettivo," the whole merit of the picture being, in the
eyes of the intelligent public, that there is a long table in it, one
end of which looks farther off than the other; but there is more in
the "bell' effetto di prospettivo" than the observance of the common
laws of optics. The table is set in a spacious chamber, of which the
windows at the end let in the light from the horizon, and those in the
side wall the intense blue of an Eastern sky. The spectator looks all
along the table, at the farther end of which are seated Christ and the
Madonna, the marriage guests on each side of it,--on one side men, on
the other women; the men are set with their backs to the light, which
passing over their heads and glancing slightly on the tablecloth,
falls in full length along the line of young Venetian women, who thus
fill the whole centre of the picture with one broad sunbeam, made up
of fair faces and golden hair. Close to the spectator a woman has
risen in amazement, and stretches across the table to show the wine in
her cup to those opposite; her dark red dress intercepts and enhances
the mass of gathered light. It is rather curious, considering the
subject of the picture, that one cannot distinguish either the bride
or the bridegroom; but the fourth figure from the Madonna in the line
of women, who wears a white head-dress of lace and rich chains of
pearls in her hair, may well be accepted for the former, and I think
that between her and the woman on the Madonna's left hand the unity of
the line of women is intercepted by a male figure; be this as it may,
this fourth female face is the most beautiful, as far as I recollect,
that occurs in the works of the painter, with the exception only of
the Madonna in the "Flight into Egypt." It is an ideal which occurs
indeed elsewhere in many of his works, a face at once dark and
delicate, the Italian cast of feature moulded with the softness and
childishness of English beauty some half a century ago; but I have
never seen the ideal so completely worked out by the master. The face
may best be described as one of the purest and softest of Stothard's
conceptions, executed with all the strength of Tintoret. The other
women are all made inferior to this one, but there are beautiful
profiles and bendings of breasts and necks along the whole line. The
men are all subordinate, though there are interesting portraits among
them; perhaps the only fault of the picture being that the faces are a
little too conspicuous, seen like balls of light among the crowd of
minor figures which fill the background of the picture. The tone of
the whole is sober and majestic in the highest degree; the dresses are
all broad masses of color, and the only parts of the picture which lay
claim to the expression of wealth or splendor are the head-dresses of
the women. In this respect the conception of the scene differs widely
from that of Veronese, and approaches more nearly to the probable
truth. Still the marriage is not an unimportant one; an immense crowd,
filling the background, forming superbly rich mosaic of color against
the distant sky. Taken as a whole, the picture is perhaps the most
perfect example which human art has produced of the utmost possible
force and sharpness of shadow united with richness of local color. In
all the other works of Tintoret, and much more of other colorists,
either the light and shade or the local color is predominant; in the
one case the picture has a tendency to look as if painted by
candle-light, in the other it becomes daringly conventional, and
approaches the conditions of glass-painting. This picture unites
color as rich as Titian's with light and shade as forcible as
Rembrandt's, and far more decisive.
There are one or two other interesting pictures of the early Venetian
schools in this sacristy, and several important tombs in the adjoining
cloister; among which that of Francesco Dandolo, transported here from
the Church of the Frari, deserves especial attention. See above, p.
74.
SALVATORE, CHURCH OF ST. Base Renaissance, occupying the place of the
ancient church, under the porch of which the Pope Alexander III. is
said to have passed the night. M. Lazari states it to have been richly
decorated with mosaics; now all is gone.
In the interior of the church are some of the best examples of
Renaissance sculptural monuments in Venice. (See above, Chap. II. §
LXXX.) It is said to possess an important pala of silver, of the
thirteenth century, one of the objects in Venice which I much regret
having forgotten to examine; besides two Titians, a Bonifazio, and a
John Bellini. The latter ("The Supper at Emmaus") must, I think, have
been entirely repainted: it is not only unworthy of the master, but
unlike him; as far, at least, as I could see from below, for it is
hung high.
SANUDO PALAZZO. At the Miracoli. A noble Gothic palace of the fourteenth
century, with Byzantine fragments and cornices built into its walls,
especially round the interior court, in which the staircase is very
noble. Its door, opening on the quay, is the only one in Venice
entirely uninjured; retaining its wooden valve richly sculptured, its
wicket for examination of the stranger demanding admittance, and its
quaint knocker in the form of a fish.
SCALZI, CHURCH OF THE. It possesses a fine John Bellini, and is renowned
through Venice for its precious marbles. I omitted to notice above, in
speaking of the buildings of the Grotesque Renaissance, that many of
them are remarkable for a kind of dishonesty, even in the use of
_true_ marbles, resulting not from motives of economy, but from mere
love of juggling and falsehood for their own sake. I hardly know which
condition of mind is meanest, that which has pride in plaster made to
look like marble, or that which takes delight in marble made to look
like silk. Several of the later churches in Venice, more especially
those of the Jesuiti, of San Clemente, and this of the Scalzi, rest
their chief claims to admiration on their having curtains and cushions
cut out of rock. The most ridiculous example is in San Clemente, and
the most curious and costly are in the Scalzi; which latter church is
a perfect type of the vulgar abuse of marble in every possible way, by
men who had no eye for color, and no understanding of any merit in a
work of art but that which arises from costliness of material, and
such powers of imitation as are devoted in England to the manufacture
of peaches and eggs out of Derbyshire spar.
SEBASTIAN, CHURCH OF ST. The tomb, and of old the monument, of Paul
Veronese. It is full of his noblest pictures, or of what once were
such; but they seemed to me for the most part destroyed by repainting.
I had not time to examine them justly, but I would especially direct
the traveller's attention to the small Madonna over the second altar
on the right of the nave, still a perfect and priceless treasure.
SERVI, CHURCH OF THE. Only two of its gates and some ruined walls are
left, in one of the foulest districts of the city. It was one of the
most interesting monuments of the early fourteenth century Gothic; and
there is much beauty in the fragments yet remaining. How long they may
stand I know not, the whole building having been offered me for sale,
ground and all, or stone by stone, as I chose, by its present
proprietor, when I was last in Venice. More real good might at present
be effected by any wealthy person who would devote his resources to
the preservation of such monuments wherever they exist, by freehold
purchase of the entire ruin, and afterwards by taking proper charge of
it, and forming a garden round it, than by any other mode of
protecting or encouraging art. There is no school, no lecturer, like a
ruin of the early ages.
SEVERO, FONDAMENTA SAN, palace at, II. 264.
SILVESTRO, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance in itself, but it contains
two very interesting pictures: the first, a "St. Thomas of Canterbury
with the Baptist and St. Francis," by Girolamo Santa Croce, a superb
example of the Venetian religious school; the second by Tintoret,
namely:
_The Baptism of Christ._ (Over the first altar on the right of the
nave.) An upright picture, some ten feet wide by fifteen high; the top
of it is arched, representing the Father supported by angels. It
requires little knowledge of Tintoret to see that these figures are
not by his hand. By returning to the opposite side of the nave, the
join in the canvas may be plainly seen, the upper part of the picture
having been entirely added on: whether it had this upper part before
it was repainted, or whether originally square, cannot now be told,
but I believe it had an upper part which has been destroyed. I am not
sure if even the dove and the two angels which are at the top of the
older part of the picture are quite genuine. The rest of it is
magnificent, though both the figures of the Saviour and the Baptist
show some concession on the part of the painter to the imperative
requirement of his age, that nothing should be done except in an
attitude; neither are there any of his usual fantastic imaginations.
There is simply the Christ in the water and the St. John on the shore,
without attendants, disciples, or witnesses of any kind; but the power
of the light and shade, and the splendor of the landscape, which on
the whole is well preserved, render it a most interesting example. The
Jordan is represented as a mountain brook, receiving a tributary
stream in a cascade from the rocks, in which St. John stands: there is
a rounded stone in the centre of the current; and the parting of the
water at this, as well as its rippling among the roots of some dark
trees on the left, are among the most accurate remembrances of nature
to be found in any of the works of the great masters. I hardly know
whether most to wonder at the power of the man who thus broke through
the neglect of nature which was universal at his time; or at the
evidences, visible throughout the whole of the conception, that he was
still content to paint from slight memories of what he had seen in
hill countries, instead of following out to its full depth the
fountain which he had opened. There is not a stream among the hills of
Priuli which in any quarter of a mile of its course would not have
suggested to him finer forms of cascade than those which he has idly
painted at Venice.
SIMEONE, PROFETA, CHURCH OF ST. Very important, though small, possessing
the precious statue of St. Simeon, above noticed, II. 309. The rare
early Gothic capitals of the nave are only interesting to the
architect; but in the little passage by the side of the church,
leading out of the Campo, there is a curious Gothic monument built
into the wall, very beautiful in the placing of the angels in the
spandrils, and rich in the vine-leaf moulding above.
SIMEONE, PICCOLO, CHURCH OF ST. One of the ugliest churches in Venice or
elsewhere. Its black dome, like an unusual species of gasometer, is
the admiration of modern Italian architects.
SOSPIRI, PONTE DE'. The well known "Bridge of Sighs," a work of no
merit, and of a late period (see Vol. II. p. 304), owing the interest
it possesses chiefly to its pretty name, and to the ignorant
sentimentalism of Byron.
SPIRITO SANTO, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.
STEFANO, CHURCH OF ST. An interesting building of central Gothic, the
best ecclesiastical example of it in Venice. The west entrance is much
later than any of the rest, and is of the richest Renaissance Gothic,
a little anterior to the Porta della Carta, and first-rate of its
kind. The manner of the introduction of the figure of the angel at the
top of the arch is full of beauty. Note the extravagant crockets and
cusp finials as signs of decline.
STEFANO, CHURCH OF ST., at Murano (pugnacity of its abbot), II. 33. The
church no longer exists.
STROPE, CAMPIELLO DELLA, house in, II. 266.
T
TANA, windows at the, II. 260.
TIEPOLO, PALAZZO, on the Grand Canal. Of no importance.
TOLENTINI, CHURCH OF THE. One of the basest and coldest works of the
late Renaissance. It is said to contain two Bonifazios.
TOMA, CHURCH OF ST. Of no importance.
TOMA, PONTE SAN. There is an interesting ancient doorway opening on the
canal close to this bridge, probably of the twelfth century, and a
good early Gothic door, opening upon the bridge itself.
TORCELLO, general aspect of, II. 12; Santa Fosca at, I. 117, II. 13;
duomo, II. 14; mosaics of, II. 196; measures of, II. 378; date of, II.
380.
TREVISAN, PALAZZO, I. 369, III. 212.
TRON, PALAZZO. Of no importance.
TROVASO, CHURCH OF ST. Itself of no importance, but containing two
pictures by Tintoret, namely:
1. _The Temptation of St. Anthony._ (Altar piece in the chapel on the
left of the choir.) A small and very carefully finished picture, but
marvellously temperate and quiet in treatment, especially considering
the subject, which one would have imagined likely to inspire the
painter with one of his most fantastic visions. As if on purpose to
disappoint us, both the effect, and the conception of the figures, are
perfectly quiet, and appear the result much more of careful study than
of vigorous imagination. The effect is one of plain daylight; there
are a few clouds drifting in the distance, but with no wildness in
them, nor is there any energy or heat in the flames which mantle about
the waist of one of the figures. But for the noble workmanship, we
might almost fancy it the production of a modern academy; yet as we
begin to read the picture, the painter's mind becomes felt. St.
Anthony is surrounded by four figures, one of which only has the form
of a demon, and he is in the background, engaged in no more terrific
act of violence toward St. Anthony, than endeavoring to pull off his
mantle; he has, however, a scourge over his shoulder, but this is
probably intended for St. Anthony's weapon of self-discipline, which
the fiend, with a very Protestant turn of mind, is carrying off. A
broken staff, with a bell hanging to it, at the saint's feet, also
expresses his interrupted devotion. The three other figures beside him
are bent on more cunning mischief: the woman on the left is one of
Tintoret's best portraits of a young and bright-eyed Venetian beauty.
It is curious that he has given so attractive a countenance to a type
apparently of the temptation to violate the power of poverty, for this
woman places one hand in a vase full of coins, and shakes golden
chains with the other. On the opposite side of the saint, another
woman, admirably painted, but of a far less attractive countenance, is
a type of the lusts of the flesh, yet there is nothing gross or
immodest in her dress or gesture. She appears to have been baffled,
and for the present to have given up addressing the saint: she lays
one hand upon her breast, and might be taken for a very respectable
person, but that there are flames playing about her loins. A recumbent
figure on the ground is of less intelligible character, but may
perhaps be meant for Indolence; at all events, he has torn the saint's
book to pieces. I forgot to note, that under the figure representing
Avarice, there is a creature like a pig; whether actual pig or not is
unascertainable, for the church is dark, the little light that comes
on the picture falls on it the wrong way, and one third of the lower
part of it is hidden by a white case, containing a modern daub, lately
painted by way of an altar piece; the meaning, as well as the merit,
of the grand old picture being now far beyond the comprehension both
of priests and people.
2. _The Last Supper._ (On the left-hand side of the Chapel of the
Sacrament.) A picture which has been through the hands of the Academy,
and is therefore now hardly worth notice. Its conception seems always
to have been vulgar, and far below Tintoret's usual standard; there is
singular baseness in the circumstance, that one of the near Apostles,
while all the others are, as usual, intent upon Christ's words, "One
of you shall betray me," is going to help himself to wine out of a
bottle which stands behind him. In so doing he stoops towards the
table, the flask being on the floor. If intended for the action of
Judas at this moment, there is the painter's usual originality in the
thought; but it seems to me rather done to obtain variation of
posture, in bringing the red dress into strong contrast with the
tablecloth. The color has once been fine, and there are fragments of
good painting still left; but the light does not permit these to be
seen, and there is too much perfect work of the master's in Venice, to
permit us to spend time on retouched remnants. The picture is only
worth mentioning, because it is ignorantly and ridiculously referred
to by Kugler as characteristic of Tintoret.
V
VITALI, CHURCH OF ST. Said to contain a picture by Vittor Carpaccio,
over the high altar: otherwise of no importance.
VOLTO SANTO, CHURCH OF THE. An interesting but desecrated ruin of the
fourteenth century; fine in style. Its roof retains some fresco
coloring, but, as far as I recollect, of later date than the
architecture.
Z
ZACCARIA, CHURCH OF ST. Early Renaissance, and fine of its kind; a
Gothic chapel attached to it is of great beauty. It contains the best
John Bellini in Venice, after that of San G. Grisostomo, "The Virgin,
with Four Saints;" and is said to contain another John Bellini and a
Tintoret, neither of which I have seen.
ZITELLE, CHURCH OF THE. Of no importance.
ZOBENIGO, CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA, III. 124. It contains one valuable
Tintoret, namely:
_Christ with Sta. Justina and St. Augustin._ (Over the third altar on
the south side of the nave.) A picture of small size, and upright,
about ten feet by eight. Christ appears to be descending out of the
clouds between the two saints, who are both kneeling on the sea shore.
It is a Venetian sea, breaking on a flat beach, like the Lido, with a
scarlet galley in the middle distance, of which the chief use is to
unite the two figures by a point of color. Both the saints are
respectable Venetians of the lower class, in homely dresses and with
homely faces. The whole picture is quietly painted, and somewhat
slightly; free from all extravagance, and displaying little power
except in the general truth or harmony of colors so easily laid on. It
is better preserved than usual, and worth dwelling upon as an instance
of the style of the master when _at rest_.
FOOTNOTES:
[71] "Am I in Italy? Is this the Mincius?
Are those the distant turrets of Verona?
And shall I sup where Juliet at the Masque
Saw her loved Montague, and now sleeps by him?
Such questions hourly do I ask myself;
And not a stone in a crossway inscribed
'To Mantua,' 'To Ferrara,' but excites
Surprise, and doubt, and self-congratulation."
Alas, after a few short months, spent even in the scenes dearest to
history, we can feel thus no more.
[72] I have always called this church, in the text, simply "St. John
and Paul," not Sts. John and Paul, just as the Venetians say San
Giovanni e Paolo, and not Santi G., &c.
* * * * *
CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.
Page 69: 'Italian sarcophagi are kept massive, smoth and gloomy' smoth
corrected to smooth.
Page 74: 'fallen back peacefully uppon his pillow' uppon corrected to
upon.
Page 100: 'men's modes of life, and tones of throught' throught changed
to thought.
Page 121: 'breathed upon her beaaty, until it melted away' beaaty
corrected to beauty.
Page 157: 'morbid action by terror, accompained by the belief'
accompained changed to accompanied.
Page 207: 'finds him by a fountaiu side' fountaiu corrected to fountain.
Page 222: 'Pietro di Castello, for the feast of St. Mary' Mary changed
to Mark.
Page 233: Number 2. misplaced. Moved to 'a. Lower arcade, Fondaco de'
Turchi.'
Page 233: Missing 4. added before 'a. Fondaco de' Turchi, central shaft,
upper arcade.'
Page 237: 'fourth order windows in Campo Sta. Ma Mater Domini' Ma
changed to M^a.
Page 293: 'the usual inportant purposes of the modern Italians.'
inportant changed to important.
Page 294: 'not the slightest touch os it but is delicious.' os corrected
to of.
Page 318: 'examine the two large tintorets' tintorets changed to
Tintorets.
Page 319: 'Mlaipiero, Palazzo, on the Campo St. M. Formosa.' Mlaipiero
corrected to Malipiero.
Page 358: 'drift of its clouds, and originalty and complication.'
originalty corrected to originality.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Stones of Venice, Volume 3 (of 3)" ***
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